A jovial band of jolly political activists walk into a bar, they are each united by their love of policies that seek to take control over the lives of others, their tolerance or support for pervasive surveillance, for controls on speech, by their support for a party that endorsed an illegal war, and their fondness for spending other people’s money and controlling the property of others that they cannot tax away. They were also united by the fact that they each had, or had sympathy for those with unusual sexual or gender preferences – they were a Labour LGBT group.
The duty manager, after a while, says something like “we don’t serve your kind around here”. Bravo I say. I would not want to serve such a group either, but the problem here was that he referred not to their overt love of fascism but to their sexual and gender preferences.
I am not saying that the discrimination that took place was less evil because the people being discriminated against were fascists (okay, Labour Party members). What I am doing is asking isn’t it strange that they were discriminated against for being kinky, rather than for being fascists? That is a further example for my list of social judgments, ethical calculations performed in groups, going badly wrong. Discrimination against fascists isn’t really a thing, but it should be – more so now than ever.
Anyway, the duty manager was fired – rightly – by an apologetic brewery. Society worked. The calculation worked. The free-market worked. The idiot was made accountable for being an idiot. This is exactly the kind of thing libertarians rely on when we say we dislike bigotry but do not support state regulation of bigots. This is what non-state regulation of bigots looks like.
Something else that libertarians rely on is pubs. We tend to have meetings in them. Another group booked our usual pub so tonight we are in the pub where the above happened. We will talk about sexual freedom in a place where society has scored a victory over its more unsavory and intolerant self – in favor of sexual freedom.
It also happens to have been the last pub available, so don’t read too much into it.
Libertarian Home 
Whether a war is “legal” or not is determined by the high court of the Crown in Parliament – it is naught to do with the United Nations or its “international law”.
The action of Mr Blair was not wise (I said it was unwise at the time) as it was based on the idea that most people in Iraq were lovely and that the only problems were the nasty dictator and a few “extremists” – but it is was most certainly “legal”, and to argue otherwise is to side with Jeremy Corbyn.
However, I agree with the general point – private property is just that, private.
J.S. Mill was mistaken – the freedom of a butcher or a baker (or an inn keeper) is not somehow under a different “principle” from the freedom of a writer like himself.
Economic freedom (the freedom to sell to those one wishes to sell to – and not to sell to those one does not wish to sell to) is under the same principle of freedom as freedom of speech – “my house my rules” (ditto with a book, newspaper, or radio station – private property).
However, any bar that excluded people because the owner did not like what they did in the bedroom – is not a place that I would want to visit.
“You do not want their money. up to you – but then you do not have my money either”.
LikeLike
The view that the war was illegal correlates, in my experience, with being left-wing and labour supporters are more leftwards than I. So the point I was making was that these guys may well have believed the 2003 war was illegal, but were still members of the labour party making them, in their own terms …. what, exactly?
I don’t point all my barbs in the same direction.
LikeLike
The reason the Left hated the Iraq War (2003) was that the protagonists were the United States (bad) and the Ba’athist (Arab Renaissance Socialist Party) Iraqi regime (good), and that is that.
LikeLike
The Common Law does not deal with a “butcher” or a “baker” or a “bar keeper” – the Common Law (the law of such people as Chief Justice Sir Edward Cook, of Dr Bonham’s case, and Chief Justice Sir John Holt of 1688 and all that) deals with a person (or private club or association….) that happens to sell meat, or bread, or booze.
If there is no force or fraud involved then, as far as the Common Law (the Common Law of such people as Chief Justice Sir John Holt) is concerned, no crime has been committed.
And refusing to trade with (or employ) someone is NOT aggressing against them.
LikeLike
As every school boy (and girl) used to know – Dr Bonham’s case was about a man (by the name of Bonham) who was accused of the “crime” of practicing medicine without paying for a piece of paper called a “license”.
Chief Justice Sir Edward Cook correctly ruled that selling a good or service without paying for piece of paper called a “license” was not a crime as the Common Law understood the concept.
LikeLike