Congeries of cross connected concepts
WizBang is upset that a business owner has been evicted from his rental property because he doesn’t speak Spanish. I have to disagree with WizBang on this — the problem is not that the guy was evicted, but that the law is asymmetric and any land lord evicting a business tenant for not speaking English would have the law on him faster than a liberal on an anti-Bush story. It’s another example of how we’re trading the rule of law for the rule of ethnicities.
| erp Wednesday, 08 August 2007 at 18:13 |  |
I’m more upset that nobody else is upset that the government is involved. Landlords should rent to whomsoever they wish and make whatever rules they like in their rental agreements. Tenants can likewise rent or not, as they wish. When did every @#^*+*&% thing become a federal case.
| Peter Burnet Sunday, 12 August 2007 at 06:28 | |
Would you also hold that landlords large and small should be free to deny rentals on the basis of race? AOG, I confess that your argument tempts me to ask you why you think that, in the country that treasures both the reality and language of freedom more than any other, libertarianism never musters more than a small minority politically.
| Annoying Old Guy Sunday, 12 August 2007 at 08:08 | |
I have to say yes, because I don’t think the owner of property should have to answer anything other than “because it’s mine”. One might think that the 5th Amendment would support that.
As for the libertarian comment, are you aware that not too many decades ago, the libertarian view of the matter was so common as to be basically an unquestioned assumption?
| cjm Sunday, 12 August 2007 at 18:26 | |
property rights are under attack from our ever more socialistic government, with the abominable kelo ruling. what if some group starts saying “high home prices discriminate against group x” ? should a renter be able to tell the landlord how much he can charge ?
| Annoying Old Guy Sunday, 12 August 2007 at 19:21 | |
That’s called “rent control” and “the Community Reinvestment Act”.
| erp Tuesday, 14 August 2007 at 10:23 | |
If rentals are private property, then, of course, the owner has the right to do whatever he wants to do with it . . . period and end of story.
It’s unfortunate that socialist propaganda has become so pervasive that people actually believe the guvmint has the right to dictate what an individual must do with his own property.
