Sometimes It's Right to Debate the Past

Libertarians are often accused of spending too much time debating the past (a political rather than philosophical concern).

But, sometimes it makes sense to debate the past, particularly if there are salient facts that change the discussion significantly.

Reason magazine has an excellent blog post about the nascent controversy over Rand Paul's views on property rights and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, mentioned in my previous post.

Author Damon Root makes some important points about how property rights afforded African-Americans protection against discrimination by government. And when the government decided to simply ignore those.

From the post:

"It’s also important to acknowledge that economic rights are not in some inherent conflict with civil rights. In fact, we have significant historical evidence showing that legally enforced property rights (and other forms of economic liberty) actually undermined the Jim Crow regime. Most famously, the NAACP won its first Supreme Court victory in 1917 by arguing that a residential segregation law was a racist interference with property rights under the 14th Amendment.

"Finally, keep in mind that Plessy v. Ferguson, the notorious 1896 Supreme Court decision that enshrined “separate but equal” into law and become a symbol of the Jim Crow era, dealt with a Louisiana law that forbid railroad companies from selling first-class tickets to blacks. That’s not a market failure, it’s a racist government assault on economic liberty."