Originally Posted by
Julio3000
I don’t understand your direct question. You seem to be confusing the issue, or perhaps being confused by it. Things can be more than one thing. An immoral legal order (or a de facto order, as in the Jim Crow South) can explicitly discriminate against a group of people, and also, necessarily, violate their rights as individuals. I can believe in individual rights, while also noting (as Jonah Goldberg did) that collective action is often the most expedient means to guaranteeing the deliverance of individual rights—womens’ suffrage, civil rights, and LGBT rights movements being notable examples. While you may demogogue this as eek group rights, the fact is that legislation to this effect is guaranteeing the rights of individuals. I can be me and still be part of us.
Whatever problems exist with land reform in South Africa, it’s a process to redress what I assume you would consider to be a massive violation of individual rights, i.e. legal title to A’s land being revoked and awarded to B, with A having no recourse because they were disenfranchised and denied the basic rights of full citizenship. So, fast-forward a couple of decades, when a new constitution is written that fully recognizes the personhood and citizenship of A. A then enters into a process of adjudication—based on the violation of their individual rights—which may, in extremis, after a legal process and appeal and buyout attempts, etc, involve the expropriation of land belonging to B. This can be viewed solely as an issue of law and justice, rather than an issue of race or “group rights.” I get that both black and white South Africans may view it differently, because it’s perhaps inextricably bound to their particular traumas, but it’s still a legal issue, and an issue of individual rights, at its core.
We’re not talking about ancient history here. We’re talking about stuff that happened in our lifetimes, so spare me the dredging up history bit. The double standard is this:
People got their **** taken because the law didn’t consider them people. There’s no question that their rights, as a libertarian would understand them, were egregiously violated. What you’re saying is that the results of a legal process that existed under apartheid law are ok, and should stand in perpetuity because it happened yesterday, and our concern for individual’s rights should only extend to things that happened today. Meanwhile, a legal process undertaken by a democratic and representative government to redress the violation of these rights should be considered as invalid and merely revanchist.
Now, I’m not going to argue that the issue hasn’t been demagogued in revanchist fashion, nor should you argue that it hasn’t been utterly stripped of context and demagogued by opposing forces. I’m merely asking why your oft-repeated concern for individual rights, and your likewise repeated abhorrence of double standards don’t trip you up here. Why do individual rights matter today, but not when these offenses were committed, well within the lifetimes of many of the principal actors?
It’s the same question on the domestic front. Why are you a supporter of the Confederacy and an apologist for secession when those very ideas explicitly embraced and endorsed—and were, in fact, born of—the most significant violation of individual rights in the history of our nation?
WRT South Africa, I’m inclined to say that a legal process undertaken by a fully representative government is more valid than a legal process undertaken by a radically anti-democratic government. If, in extremis, it results in the expropriation of property, I’d say that it was still the lesser of two evils. What I’m positing may be imperfect, but it seems a damn sight better than merely accepting the result of an barely-comprehensible crime of history.
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