Worse, Paul’s entirely abstract intellectual argument wrests pure principles out of an actual society, with actual historical atrocities, violence, oppression and contempt. That’s why I cannot be a libertarian the way some others like Paul are. I do not believe you can rectify an abstraction like liberty and separate it from the context - historical, cultural, moral - in which it lives and breathes and from which it emerged. I can believe in freedom and believe in equality of opportunity but I should be mature enough to see when there has to be a compromise between the two - and decide. On the issue of race in America, the libertarian right was proven wrong - morally, empirically wrong. Giving up the ancient and real freedom to discriminate was worth it - indeed morally and politically necessary for America to regain its soul.
I’m not sure I agree it’s a loss of freedom to outlaw discrimination (after all, whose freedom are we privileging, the one denied service or the denier of service?), but this kind of sums up my problem with libertarianism: it’s an abstraction from reality and it pretends things are not as they are.
