Hi photog,
I basically agree with your analysis (I haven’t listened to the Zman’s podcast though). Freedom of association is critically important and it’s childish for people to demand to be included in clubs where they aren’t welcome. For example all the current hubbub about Taylor Swift is, in my opinion, because football was one of the last few bastions of testosterone heavy entertainment remaining and now even it is being eroded.
I completely agree that all levels of government must be color blind in their enforcement of the law. Separate but equal was always nonsense.
I will say I have some reservations about “public accommodations” being excluded from freedom of association. I can see forcing grocery stores to allow all law abiding members of a community (that would exclude shop lifters) to purchase food. On the other hand I don’t see why we need to force coffee shops to serve their over priced drinks to everyone. When I was younger the general attitude was that if we force people who don’t like each other to associate then we’ll all discover we aren’t so different after all. The ink is black, the page is white, together we learn to read and write… That just doesn’t seem to be true.
Feel free to call me an idiot (well, within reason :-)).
The coffee shop example is interesting. I was thinking if you really want to exclude the general public from your establishment then maybe setting it up as a private club might be the best way. Members have a key card to the door. If someone annoys the rest of the clientele management can void the card from the door opening system. But in general I’m a sort of live and let live kind of guy. If everyone follows the rules (and individual merchants can make the rules as specific and rigorous as he cares to) I think we can tolerate… Read more »