printIn her latest column, “DON’T BLAME ROMNEY,” Ms. Coulter suggests that,
…purist libertarian Barry Goldwater … — as you will read in [her] book, ‘Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama’ — nearly destroyed the Republican Party with his pointless pursuit of libertarian perfection in his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Well, that immutably just position on private-property rights, taken by “purist libertarian Barry Goldwater,” is the position adopted in Into the Cannibal’s Pot, where I write the following:
In a free society—one not silhouetted by the State—honored is the right of the individual to associate and disassociate, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will. Contrary to the civil servant, the private person’s “refusal to deal” ought to be sacrosanct. … In the encroaching American State, the right of free association has been circumscribed by crippling codes of hiring, firing, renting, and money lending. The culprit is the Civil Rights Act of 1964…
(Pages 119-120)
Cited in Into the Cannibal’s Pot is another “purist” who feels no compunction about defending a sacred individual right: the fine libertarian legal theorist Richard Epstein, author of Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws.
(“The Cannibal’s” predictive value seems to dovetail with its respectable Amazon rank below, today:
#3 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
#23 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Civil Rights & Liberties
#29 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Public Affairs & Policy > Social Policy)
UPDATE: In response to the Facebook thread: Ms. Coulter is very bright. Brilliant in many ways. But she’s not a deep thinker. I think she’s a solid writer and has a quick mind. I’ve always liked her b/c of those qualities, so rare among the the teletwats (sorry, could not help that).