A Question from A Reader

“Timerty”, a visitor to my article, The Principles of the Anti-Immigrant Crowd, Reductio ad Absurdum, posted the following question:

Help me out here.

With the right of association comes the converse right of disassociation, or exclusion. I can choose who I want to hang around with, only if I can choose not to be with others. Right?

If my neighbors and I want to form a member only association, we are then excluding all non-members. Our individual property ownership gives us the right to exclude all non-members from our collective property. We have the right to create fences (borders) and/or hire a security force to prevent non-members from crossing our property. This works fine for a small group. What happens when this association grows into the size of a city, a state or a country? Do we not still have the right, as an association of private property owners, to prevent non-members to come on to our collective property?

I guess my question is – at what point does the right of association not apply?

My response:

Timerty -

You are exactly right. With the right of association comes the inverse right of non-association (or exclusion, as you put it.) Such associations may be exclusive and private based on the mutually and voluntarily agreed upon terms of each and every individual that enters into such a compact.

The right of association does not apply when someone you want to associate with doesn't want to associate with you in return. You can't force someone in to a relationship...that would be slavery.

If you and a bunch of people wanted to form such a collective as you speak of, that would be perfectly fine. But you have no right to force someone else to erect such barriers around their property. Free association necessarily means voluntary association.

Also, as the size of this group increases in number, having a consensus of opinion would become less and less likely. Hypothetically speaking, if the group grew to a size of a city, state, or even entire country, that is still fine...but in reality, how likely is that? If it really were a unanimous consensus that a specific group of people should be excluded, then its fairly obvious that you wouldn't need government to enforce such edicts. The fact that the anti-immigration crowd is turning to government is a de facto admission that they do not respect the rights of others.

The issue here is that the anti-immigrant crowd wants to use government to force their views on EVERYONE, regardless of whether they want immigrants here or not. If I am an American businessman, and I _want_ to hire Mexicans, and these Mexicans _want_ to work for me...the anti-immigrant crowd says that we should be punished because such an arrangement offends their sensibilities as to what is politically "correct". What they are doing is taking people who have not given their agreement to such a compact as the one you describe above, and saying, "too bad, we're making this decision for you." They are violating the right of association of the people they disagree with.

Hope it helps.

-LJ


Remember, any government in a free society is dedicated solely to the protection of the rights and property of its citizens. It does not endeavor to tell people how they must use their property, but simply to back up the right of property owners to use their property as they see fit.