Sarah Sanders Booted From 'Red Hen' - What To Do About This Discrimination?
Do we need the government to intervene in the case of a Virginia restaurant owner who kicked out Trump Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she did not like her politics? Ron Paul explains how understanding property rights helps solve such seemingly complicated problems.
Do we need the government to intervene in the case of a Virginia restaurant owner who kicked out Trump Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she did not like her politics? Ron Paul explains how understanding property rights helps solve such seemingly complicated problems.
Do we need the government to intervene in the case of a Virginia restaurant owner who kicked out Trump Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she did not like her politics? Ron Paul explains how understanding property rights helps solve such seemingly complicated problems.
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host, Daniel.
Good to see you.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
I'm doing very well.
We're not going to talk about foreign policy today, but we're going to be talking about Liberty.
There was a major incident this past week.
The president got involved and one of his top aides was involved.
And a lot of people chimed in, and that had to do with what happened to Sarah Sanders when she went to a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia.
And she went in, and I think they asked her to leave, or they kicked her out anyway.
And the big story was, why?
Well, she was a Trump supporter, and we don't like Trump supporters, and therefore she needs to get out of here.
A bit of discrimination.
That doesn't sound right.
What about free speech and discrimination?
You know, you can't do that.
So this owner, obviously, under today's political system, she doesn't have any right to throw her customer out because customers have rights too, you know.
You can't discriminate just out of the clear blue.
But that raises more questions than answers because if you write a law to correct this, you might be discriminating against the owner and telling the owner how to run a restaurant.
But the person that was another woman that was owning the restaurant is the one that confronted her.
And this became a bit of a scandal in how do you solve this problem.
But I think it asks some interesting questions because it introduces the notion of property rights, First Amendment rights, and this is freedom of speech, what you can do.
So the big question, why is the federal government getting involved in this restaurant business?
So when there's a problem, the chant is, let's just get the federal government to write a law.
But there are already laws that has made this complex because obviously they look at private property somewhat differently than we do.
And these kinds of issues are always good for us because we can point out the hypocrisy on all sides and we can also offer the corrected libertarian solution, the pro-liberty solution.
But, you know, there is a lot of hypocrisy.
And Stephanie Wilkinson is the owner of this Red Hen restaurant.
Sanders and her family, I guess eight people went in there to have dinner.
The cook had a freak out attack when he saw her.
He called his boss.
Oh, you'll never guess who's in here.
She comes, I'll come down and check it out.
She gets there.
Oh, no, what are we going to do?
She says that she took a vote among her staff, which I've never heard of a company doing something like that.
Took a vote among her staff, said we got to kick her out.
And they got a lot of publicity, bad and good.
But, you know, this brings to mind something we had just talked about, which is the masterpiece kick shop issue.
And of course, the left was furious about this.
How dare you refuse service to this same-sex couple?
It's terrible.
Now they're the same one saying, good for her.
She kicked out this horrible monster, you know.
And then you have the right wing who's loved the masterpiece and now was furious about this.
So it's always a situational thing.
See, so they never boil it down to a principle and the principle of private property.
Most of the time people could sort this out that if we were talking about somebody's house, their private home, you know, if somebody comes in, they're invited in, they're a guest, but if they're outlandish in what they're doing and cause a rumpus, you can put them out because it's your house and you come in on those terms.
But in the last several decades or longer, they've driven this line between property, private property, and what they call public property.
And it's arbitrary.
Why is it if you own this restaurant that you can't treat it and have the same rules that you have at your house?
They have rules all the time.
This became an incident because it was having to do with freedom of expression and who you work with and for.
So they wanted to get involved in more.
But if this family came in and all of a sudden they pulled out some instruments and started shouting and yelling and dancing around and disturbing everybody in there and nobody would come into the restaurant, of course they have a right.
It's their property.
So in many ways, what they're rejecting is the notion that an owner has really a right to discriminate and pick and choose.
You know, restaurants a lot of times have dress codes.
You're not allowed to go into restaurants near beaches.
You can't come in without a shirt and you can't come in in your bare feet.
So they discriminate all the time.
I like to think of this the First Amendment is you have to have this really bizarre understanding that, you know, in a free country, you really have a right to be a jerk if you don't hurt people.
And the punishment and the regulations come in a different way.
So what's the regulation here?
She owns the property and she throws this couple, you know, this group out.
Well, what's going to happen?
Right now, I don't think there are many Republicans going into her restaurant.
Lexington is probably a pretty conservative district.
But she addressed that, the owner addressed that and said, yeah, but there's sometimes you really have to stand up for principle, and that's why she had to do this.
And that is this driving dislike that verges on hatred toward Trump.
It justifies anything.
We try to balance it out and say when Trump does something that we like, say in Korea, we mention it.
But if we don't like what he's doing in Iran, we mention it.
But no, this is something that they do, and they just think that I think that the hatred of Trump drives these people to do things that they wouldn't do.
Like in the cake incident, they don't have a basic principle that they work on.
It's arbitrary.
Well, under these circumstances, we do this.
On those circumstances, we do something else.
And we can dislike this woman's philosophy and think that it's really ridiculous and petty to kick someone out because you don't like the person they work for for political reasons.
But in a way, you have to admire the fact that she stood up for her property rights and said, this is my restaurant.
I don't want to serve you.
But the problem is, and I may be wrong, but I bet if you asked her, she probably would support forcing that cake baker to bake the cake for the couple.
So it's a situational thing.
But you know, here's a funny thing.
As predictable, the Washington Post is trying to come to some conclusion about it.
They had an article the other day.
Understanding Property Rights00:05:30
Did the Red Hen violate Sarah Huckabee Sanders' rights when it kicked her out and they had all kinds of human rights lawyers and everyone?
But they concluded, no problem.
She's powerful, white, and heterosexual, so she can't be discriminated against, was their conclusion.
Right.
And, you know, it came up on the Sunday reports, Elijah Cummings, a congressman, a very decent person I've known.
But his views on, you know, segregation and restaurant management of restaurant-owned customers.
And I would understand where his position is.
But he touched on, you know, the real reason.
He was being more consistent because he understood he stood with the Republicans, said, say, she shouldn't be thrown out.
And he was right from his viewpoint.
He at least was consistent.
He was consistent in saying, well, you can't discriminate.
We argue that in private property, discrimination happens all the time.
But he disagreed with Sanders' position, didn't like it, but he understood this would challenge this whole mentality that property rights may apply somewhat to our homes, but they certainly don't apply as soon as you deal with the public.
You no longer own it.
You better obey the social decorum and social rules that the federal government is writing.
Yeah, that's unfortunate.
But, you know, she will suffer the consequences of her action.
She already is suffering.
I'm sure she'll probably suffer at the bank.
But the problem is, though, the Republican backlash now, or the pro-Sanders backlash, is almost violent.
You know, they're putting phony bad reviews and they're aggressively hacking her website.
Why not just tell your friends don't go there, you know, have a decent, so you're against a very uncivilized behavior and you're being twice as uncivilized.
Speaking of uncivilized, you can't go without mentioning Maxine Waters.
Here's what she said.
She thinks that's great.
She said, let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up.
And if you see somebody from that cabinet in a restaurant, department store, at a gas station, you get out there and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they're not welcome anywhere.
Well, I would say her attitude was not quite as gentle as Congressman Cummings.
That's an understatement.
A little bit different.
But you know, it really is down to understanding what the First Amendment is all about.
Because I mentioned that I think it means you have a right to be a jerk and do dumb things and the market will handle it, you know, as long as you're not hurting people.
But you have a right to protect your house and your property, your church, your synagogue, your mosque, all this.
You have a right to do this.
But think of all the terrible things that happen in some people's houses.
Think of what happens when you have intellectual freedom.
They conspire for promoting communism and fascism and all these kind of things, but we still respect freedom of speech.
And the same way on religion, a lot of nasty stuff has occurred when it morphs over into theocracy.
And the religious element controls the government, but you don't throw everything out.
But people can't handle this decision-making when it comes to commercial.
They can maybe with in education, you know, in intellectuals matter.
But even that's getting bad.
So sometimes what they'll do is the PC people come in.
They say, oh, well, we still believe in the First Amendment, but what we need to do is just show them that what they're saying is bad.
But that gets morphs over to people losing jobs and all kinds of things that are happening.
Well, I would just conclude by saying the market is a great thing.
It's about human action and how humans behave.
And the market will regulate even, as you say, jerky behavior.
No, and that is true.
You know, most of these problems can be solved with, first, for the most part, the federal government need not be involved in this.
It wasn't meant to be that.
The second thing is people have to understand what property is meant to be.
It's supposed to be private.
And if you don't endorse that, you can't solve these problems.
And you're over in a socialist authoritarian camp.
So the other thing that must go along with this is voluntary associations, both social and economic.
Some people believe it in religious and intellectually, but not on economics.
You can't have any voluntarism there.
Everything should be voluntary and non-violent and property rights understood and promises and contracts should be respected.
You can solve all these problems.
All this other nonsense.
And Daniel pointed out so well: the left and the right, how they come about.
If they would stick to a principle like this, these problems wouldn't even be discussed, they wouldn't appear.
But the monstrosity of government intervention that we have now in the courts and in social media and with the federal government and all these rules and regulations, then we get to the point where they have this big debate between right and left on what do you do with a problem like this.
Then you find out the right has been on both sides and the left has been on both sides.
So, we suggest take a look at the position of those of us who believe in non-intervention, minding our own business.
We can solve a lot of problems with that philosophy.