Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 March 22

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March 22

New Zealand Man 3D Prints the World’s Smallest Working Drill

http://3dprint.com/51677/3d-printed-smallest-drill/ New Zealand Man 3D Prints the World’s Smallest Working Drill — Just 7.5mm Wide

Did he use a Type 408 coreless motor? (4 mm in diameter, 8 mm in length) -- Toytoy (talk) 04:53, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Orange Order: Races

Hello. My question is short and I`ll hope you can answer them: Is the Orange Order an white-only organization or are there any members who are of a different race, like asian or black etc. I know, there is no official membership criteria (BBC) that you have to be white, and I also know, that there are some small lodges in West Africa, but my question regards the Orange Order from the British Islands. Are there any non-white-members? I haven`t found a source (or picture) which would answer my question. --BeverlyHillsCop (talk) 22:28, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

There's two different questions you are asking, can you clarify which you mean. Do you mean "Does the Orange Order allow only White people to join?" or do you mean "Have only White people ever been part of the Orange Order" even if they have no official or unofficial policy banning people from other races? The question of "Would they?" is different from "Have they?" --Jayron32 23:39, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm no lawyer, but selecting membership by ethnicity is illegal in the UK under the Equality Act 2010, Part 7 of which deals specifically with "associations". 13:22, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

That doesn't necessarily mean they don't do it. They may (or may not, have no idea) even have policies on the books that say "This organization does not discriminate on the basis of race", and then the real people who make the actual membership decisions simply do so discriminate, though without putting anything in writing proving that they did. Happens all the time. --Jayron32 13:52, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I am sure, that we wouldn`t find out, if there`s an unofficially criteria to be white; so my question is: Have they any non-white members in the UK? --BeverlyHillsCop (talk) 15:01, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

A quote from Billy Owens, Provincial Grand Master of the Order in Liverpool; "We were parading through Toxteth, and some Republican sympathisers began telling people in the area that we were from the National Front. But we had 30 or 40 black members in our lodges who explained the real position to them." [1] So the answer seems to be "yes", in England at least. See also The Orange Order in Africa. Alansplodge (talk) 16:31, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for this answer, this is sufficient for me. --BeverlyHillsCop (talk) 12:45, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Now, are there orange people in the Black Order? Clarityfiend (talk) 18:28, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Every place is different, but I must ask: By what right does a government get to tell a private organization who they have to admit as members? Public services, or public accommodations, sure. But private clubs? How? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:50, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

The argument in such cases is that the size and public influence of some clubs makes them more than just private organizations. One can certainly imaging the NFL being forced to admit black players had it not done so voluntarily, although it is a private organization. I don't agree with this argument, but it exists, and it is the same one being used to force Christian organizations to pay for contraception or to do commerce with gay couples which they oppose on principle. μηδείς (talk) 19:27, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I can see that argument regarding influential organizations and their members. What you're talking about has to do with a company's employee, and that's a different story. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:08, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

If discriminating against people because of the colour of their skin is wrong (we hold this truth to be self evident) then it's wrong to do it either in public or private. A crime is a crime. Alansplodge (talk) 19:58, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Equality before the law is not the same thing as requiring a broadway show to cast Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg in blackface as Harriet Tubman in the name of racial equality. I am aware of EEOC laws and think they embody a moral principle which should not be enforced by the guns and cages of the state. μηδείς (talk) 00:23, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like a quote from Lester Maddox. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:02, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Bug's if you're going to cite Lester Maddox as a libertarian opposing the use of government coercion, the least you could do is link to such a brilliant theorist. μηδείς (talk) 19:52, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Maddox had a white-only restaurant, and he got around the court order to integrate by making it a private club. I heard a good quote recently. To paraphrase: Guys like Maddox hate big government for the same reason criminals hate cops. If libertarianism is about returning to the Jim Crow days, include me out. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:26, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Here I'd cite the non-aggression principle of libertarianism as relevant. I really know nothing about Maddox, and have no desire to defend him personally. But the issue, according to thinkers like Isabel Paterson and Ayn Rand, would be that no one has the right to force anyone to do anything, including selling to people they don't want to sell to; i.e., government force should only be used in reaction to actual criminal aggression. Maddox not cooking you dinner isnot "aggression". In most cases it was jim Crow laws in the South, instituted by the states, that forbade miscegenation and punished it legally, even if the businesses did not want to enforce such strictures. I am sure there were plenty of racists. It's curious how well Maddox's restaurant chain is doing nowadays. μηδείς (talk) 22:45, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

The chain consisted of one store, which closed 50 years ago. "No one has the right to force anyone to do anything." How does that differ from anarchy? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:35, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

See minarchism, which holds tha the government exists only to react against criminal aggressions and war. μηδείς (talk) 19:22, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

The Jim Crow laws were criminal aggression. As will be the law they just passed in Indiana. Defeating that insidious stuff is why "big government" is needed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:30, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Agreed Jim Crow was government aggression. If a supermajority or loud minority want injustice they can usually wangle it. But the answer to bad law is judicial review not unsutainable entitlement spending. (No comment on Indiana, since I have only heard it alluded to, not described in any factual way. Email me, and I'll send you some anti-racist pamphlets. At this point I'll withdraw on this thread. μηδείς (talk) 23:57, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

There is also a precept of Freedom of association. See [2] (pretty detailed). Collect (talk) 20:06, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

A huge problem in the US is that we have lobbies that will bring SLAP suits against small institutions, making an example out of them, because they have to settle or go bankrupt due to legal fees. Britain may suffer the indignity of being a parliamentary dictatorship with no Bill of Rights, but at least there in a civil case the loser pays the court costs as a matter of course. In the US, being sued is the equivalent of being the victim legal arson, and it doesn't matter what the outcome at the supreme court if you've been reduced to pauperism years before your appeal is heard. μηδείς (talk) 20:21, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

How would you fix that problem? Isn't libertarianism about leaving businesses alone? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:35, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I really don't think we should continue this here, but looking at the article, the restaurant was closed in 1965, which makes me assume market forces don't support racism. Maddox himself was a lifelong Democrat, himself both a governor of Georgia and Jimmy Carter's lieutenant governor. So, perhaps further questions should be directed to the former president. I basically believe in the night-watchman state and classical liberalism's policies of free trade and suffrage and emancipation, whether that be for Catholics or women or whatever. You might read Larry Niven's Oath of Fealty and Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Farnham's Freehold. Maddox's business died the death it deserved, from lack of patronage. μηδείς (talk) 19:22, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

In the US, the basis is generally "liquor licenses" which fall under state law per the 21st Amendment. Giving states the power basically to make any rules they wish - even for "private clubs" which have such licenses. Collect (talk) 19:16, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

The UK may be a parliamentary dictatorship, but it does have a Bill of Rights 1689. Widneymanor (talk) 16:14, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

So did the USSR. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:37, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

My lay understanding is that such a bill can be overwritten with a simple majority of the HoC at this point, assuming royal assent, which is always assumed, I assume. Am I wrong? (I am sincerely curious about this.) To get rid of our Bill of Rights on paper you'd need 2/3 of both houses of congress, and 38 of the 50 states. In any case, any educated American blames Britain for our liberties and admirable system of government. μηδείς (talk) 02:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

The Bill of Rights 1689 ia a bit of a misnomer, since it doesn't deal with individual human rights but establishes the constitutional relationship between Parliament and the Crown. However, see Parliamentary sovereignty. A bill will also have to pass through the House of Lords before assent, and they can return it to the Commons with suggested amendments, although the Commons have the power to overrule the Lords eventually. The final resort for Britons who think that their rights have been impinged is the European Court of Human Rights, which the UK was a founder member of. Alansplodge (talk) 11:50, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

... and which Parliament has the right to sever ties with and nullify the rulings of at any time. The issue with Parliamentary sovereignty is that no Parliament can restrict the actions of a future Parliament. That of course means that the rights of the English people are dependent on the prudence and good sense of the members of Parliament, and not on any statute. Of course, there are dozens of countries which have extensive "Bills of Rights" and other formal statutes which grant citizens all sorts of rights that the State routinely ignores, so the presence (or absence) of formal statutes restricting government power and/or granting individual liberties and freedoms to citizens is likewise only dependent on the prudence and good sense of their government as well. It is at least somewhat refreshing that the UK dispenses with the fiction that pieces of paper can restrict the power of the state; what restricts the power of the state is the willingness of the holders of that power to restrict themselves and nothing else, and by not keeping up the pretense of anything more than that, the UK is at least honest with the fact that lacking a formal written constitution or formal restrictions on the role of its Government doesn't make it not a liberal democracy. What makes it a liberal democracy is not the statutory limitations on its State actors, but their actions. --Jayron32 19:32, 27 March 2015 (UTC)