Now understand that I am simply reminding you what sort of people we are dealing with. Blacks must have the same universal rights as everyone else, but it is a grave error to forget that they are not good people. The crazy presumption of the equality of character and the intolerance for any dissent on this matter is quite possibly the greatest humiliation inflicted upon Americans by their political class. It is stunning to watch the spectacle of the (on average) more wicked continuously denouncing the less wicked for non-existent crimes. That whites acquiesce to such treatment is a sign of their fear and foolishness and corruption and ultimately, a sign of some sort of hideous death wish. Do you really not want to live anymore? Snap out of it! Your civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement. Your ethics of liberty coupled with Christianity is the most sophisticated and powerful set of ideas ever developed. Are you so bored with life that you must entertain yourselves by indulging in sophistry?

Let us therefore state the obvious: American blacks are very fortunate to be part of the civilization created by the people of European descent. In their subconscious blacks are dimly aware of this fact and instinctively become anxious at any attempt on the part of whites to disassociate themselves of blacks. Yet race discrimination is not a political issue at all. If blacks have not persuaded people to work with or hire them, then the fault lies with them and them alone. This is precisely the case today. Indeed, blacks do not receive "equal" treatment simply because they are not equal to whites in terms of productivity, intelligence, time preference, and moral sense. (Look, I am not equal to other whites either, but liberals are not horrified when someone points out my deficiencies. At any rate, races and nationalities are personality clusters; they are very extended families whose members share certain unique combinations of traits. It is certainly true that the behavior and worldview of blacks offend the sensibilities of white liberals, so much that they refuse to believe that such people actually exist. But this only means that whites must learn to cope with the world as it is in all its bizarre variety.) However, while too many blacks indeed go through life full of dull hatred for their fellow man, to the extent that there exist incorrect prejudices, good people of all races should work to dispel them, instead of perpetuating further absurdities about the human condition and whooping it up for slavery, which is what forced association assuredly is. Yes, this process takes time. We must be content with that.

Notice that enslavement is a greater sin than refusal to cooperate. The former is a crime; the latter is at worst a vice. We can demonstrate that it is so by considering an extreme case. Suppose that a Ruritarian and a Waldavian are shipwrecked on a deserted island. Together they can build a boat and leave; neither can do it alone. Unfortunately, the Ruritarian despises the Waldavian and is so stubborn that he refuses to cooperate with him even at the expense of escaping the island himself. Would the Waldavian be justified in forcing the Ruritarian to work anyway? I believe you will agree that the answer is no. A fortiori, in a normal society refusal to cooperate should be perfectly legal. Consider also that a boycott represents a refusal to cooperate, yet nobody believes that boycotts should be outlawed, no matter how unseemly the reasons for them might be (e.g. the desire to get Southern states to pull down the Confederate flag). Very importantly, refusal to cooperate is a powerful yet more subtle tool of law and order than fines and prisons. By hampering the ability of individuals and businesses to enforce their own rules by excluding trouble-makers, the state deals chaos and disorder.

In general, in order to justify anti-discrimination laws it is not enough to notice that trade benefits both parties and that one party's refusal to trade "injures" the other one. So what? Consent is the issue here. At any rate, there is no harm done; both parties are left no worse off if the exchange does not take place. In terms of utility, destroying freedom of association, like all political violence, has a powerful de-civilizing effect. Had the massive welfare programs for blacks never been enacted, race relations would never have deteriorated so much. Next, if refusal to trade is now evil, then why not outlaw vacations and mandate eighty-hour workweeks? Nobody has ever gone so far as to allege that personal feelings must never interfere in business affairs, and yet this is precisely what the affirmative action advocates imply. And why is it only employers and landlords who are subject to these laws and not employees and tenants? Why may a worker reject a job for any reason at all, while a capitalist may not reject an applicant? The Marxian exploitation myth is alive and well. Besides, why stop there? Why should we not outlaw discrimination in friendship or marriage? Finally, it is surely grotesque to hear the state, which routinely cuts off trade with tariffs and quotas and sanctions and wars, protest that in this case it wants to facilitate trade!

One argument in favor of anti-discrimination laws is that they socialize the cost of enforcement of profit-maximizing policies of big corporations. As a rule, shareholders want their companies to hire based on merit and in so doing gain an edge on the competition. They could insist that the top executives demand merit-based hiring practices, or sell the stock if the company is performing poorly, but why take chances? Let us mandate non-discriminatory hiring practices throughout the land. This ignores the tremendous cost of state-provided security to the big corporations themselves. The cost of lawsuits alone should give pause to anyone who is in favor of this idea. A much more serious objection is that it is simply impossible for government officials to determine in any given case whether a hiring decision was justified. The state, whose own enterprises always lose money, wants to decide who is or is not qualified! One should rather consult a crystal ball.

What is wrong with having the government itself adopt merit-based hiring practices and then require any company that wants to do business with it to do the same? This seems to involve no coercion, merely gentle nudging. First, most discrimination is not only rational but absolutely vital, involving rejecting unqualified candidates and accepting qualified ones of whatever race. Since only the market can know which is which via the test of profit and loss, the government has no choice but to outlaw all discrimination, take over the companies' HR departments, and institute quotas. That ought to make American businesses more competitive! Second, such a policy sets a dangerous precedent of social engineering. If government should stamp out discrimination, then why not bad manners and smoking and violent video games? And where does it end? "Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music?" Third, as a general rule, the government, being evil, is not allowed to claim the mantle of moral superiority and in so doing confuse the public about its essential, i.e. evil, nature. Forth, to the extent that businesses will obey out of their own self-interest, we have a great argument in favor of making the government so small that almost no one does business with it and so it doesn't matter what its own policies are.

What about the cabbies who refuse to pick up black passengers or pizza places that do not deliver to bad neighborhoods? This is easy: safety is more important to them than gains from trade. It is not they who should be blamed, but those black criminals who, by their actions, have made race differences so clear that it has become too risky for these entrepreneurs to do business with all blacks. Now it is true that blacks are not at fault for being born "that way," but neither are whites at fault for taking into account race differences. The world is not a Barney-the-Dinosaur happy place where everything is pleasantly agreeable, and there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it. It is also important to understand that regardless of whether or not one considers the cabbies' or pizza boys' reasons for discrimination to be sufficient, these people are always within their rights, and if one wanted to influence them, one would have to reason with them. The alternative is to subjugate them and change their behavior by force. But if they consider such subjugation to be unjust (and I hope that this essay has made clear that it is unjust), then sooner or later they will rebel. This state of affairs is unsustainable.

Finally, consider hate crime laws. The trouble here is not, as many commentators have averred, that these laws are not applied fairly, i.e. to blacks criminally harming whites out of racial hatred. Hate crime laws are a purely sentimental device designed to soothe liberals who think that it is "bad" to "hate" and who exalt the state. "Oh dear," one can hear them saying, "hating is just so dreadful. Let the good people in government outlaw it." But they do not mean that it is dreadful for blacks to hate. Indeed how can it be? One does not condemn wolves for eating sheep, and one does not condemn black people for violent behavior.

This is why one will get no sympathy from liberals by using the equality before the law argument. It does not even matter. The crucial problem with hate crime laws is their assumption that white people are a violent bloodthirsty mob and need to be constantly restrained by their enlightened rulers, and not the other way around. Hence these laws are used precisely for the purpose of thought control. They are yet another insult to the formerly free people.

We can observe that as whites forget their own ideals, blacks descend into barbarism even more rapidly. This is extremely unfortunate, not the least because blacks' only chance of any kind of dignified existence is if they are ruled – yes, ruled – by whites. In practice this implies on the one hand, unwavering commitment to liberty, lest whites themselves become savages under the influence of the omnipotent state and in order to force blacks back under the supremacy of the consumers, and on the other hand, severe external incentives to compel blacks to behave given that the latter do not possess the same internal restraints that whites do. Today the first step towards normalcy must be to acknowledge our inequality, abolish the evil anti-discrimination laws, and affirm our commitment to freedom of association. Let us hope that we take it.

July 24, 2002