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Racism and the Freedom to Associate

By Gordon Francis Corbett

    According to Nazi theory, Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and Orientals were "Untermenschen," or, in English, "sub-humans."  Because they were supposedly less than human, the Aryans could treat them in any way that would further the Aryan race's National Socialism.

    Therefore, the National Socialists' "Leader," Adolf Hitler, decided to eliminate these "human vermin," so that only the racially superior Aryans would live in National Socialist Germany and in its newly conquered empire.  This horrific mass murder achieved the Nazis' idea of "racial justice."

    By the way, just to get an idea of how "inferior" some of these people are, American Jews have long been famous for their superb scholarship at all educational levels, and the same goes today for Chinese-, Japanese-, and Viet-Namese-Americans.  Adolf would not have liked to see that.

    Some people try to use Hitler's horrors, the ultimate results of the denial of freedom and of individual's merit, as examples demonstrating why we should deny freedom and individual's merit here in America.

    Consider laws mandating "fairness" in housing, employment, and other aspects of our economy.  These laws deny to businessmen the freedom to refuse to trade with people on the grounds of race, creed, or national origin.

    Business is a form of association, and when laws forbid "A" the power to refuse association with "B," they outlaw freedom.  To be truly free, we must have the freedom to refuse to associate.  Otherwise, the association we have is not free, but forced.

    Racism's denial of individuals' merit is ugly, and it becomes horrific when it induces people to violate others' rights, as by stealing their property or murdering them.  Nevertheless, a denial of association to someone, even on grounds of race, creed, or national origin, does not violate his rights.

    The word "right" implies the word "claim."  Rights may only be violated by an initiation of force or fraud.  If I violate someone's rights, I give him a claim enforceable by the victim's public guardians against my rights.

    If I murder someone, I create a claim on my life which, if a fair trial finds me guilty, my victim's paid public guardians must exact.  Similarly, if I steal property, and am found guilty, my victim's paid public guardians must exact a claim on my property equal to my victim's loss, so that they might restore to him the value I stole.  In addition, because my theft forfeited my right to liberty, his public guardians may imprison me.

    The natural law permits victims to defend themselves in ways commensurate with a predator's initiation of force.  If he endangers the victim's life, that victim may respond with deadly force.  If he endangers only the victim's property, he must refrain from killing the thief, but he may do other things to protect his property.

    Contrast those situations with a racist's refusal to honor a black man's offer to do business.  If he refuses to employ him, or to rent or to sell to him, he initiates no force against him, and so does not violate his rights.

    Instead, he hurts himself.  He denies to himself the black man's labor, rent, or custom.  The black man, on the other hand, proceeds to the next employer, renter, or merchant, who profits from the opportunity that the black man offers.

    Such self-injury will teach the racist that ignoring race would let him exploit potential profit.  Then, however reluctantly, when a black man wants to do business, he might seize his offer with both hands.

    Eventually, forced by sheer economics to ignore his racist foolishness, the racist might realize that, excepting his material wealth, a man's worth comprises his rights, his intelligence, his learning, his energy, and his ethics.  If he comes to see that the other man's brain is not dissimilar from his own, he will have taken a long step toward recognizing the value of his fellow man.
 
 

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