Paul Rosenberg – While little appreciated and little studied, there is a gigantic difference between forced associations and free associations. But if you pay attention to the issue, you’ll find that the very act of forcing people together carries a poison in itself. And that poison inevitably bears bad fruit, whether in ethnic hatred, the formation of street gangs, or simply the evils of bullying. Whenever it is that forced associations are examined scientifically, they will be condemned as anti-human.
Free associations, on the other hand, have a magic to them. Leave people alone to do as they wish, in unforced conditions, and even ancient hatreds drain away. This has happened – quietly – in a hundred places and in a hundred times. Wherever free commerce (aka, free human interaction) isn’t forcibly opposed, strangers learn how to get along.
In ancient times, it happened in Rome and Alexandria and Athens and Corinth. In the Middle Ages, it happened in Paris and Hamburg and Lubek and Antwerp. And it will happen again, whenever and whenever people are free to trade and interact as they wish.
And this is what happened on one of the commercial streets of my youth, Devon Avenue. (Devon, by the way, was and still is pronounced da-VON, however incorrectly.)
Where Ancient Hatreds Faded
I have been told by those older than me that Devon was once a very German street. Then the Jews moved in as most of the Germans moved away. The Greeks came too, though mostly just to the south. Koreans as well, but a little to the southwest. And then, directly to Devon, came the Russians and Georgians and Croatians. And then came the Indians and the Pakistanis.
All of this happened in my lifetime, on a mile-or-so stretch of Devon Avenue. And here’s the thing: absolutely no one was ever forced to move into the hundreds of apartment buildings just off Devon Avenue, and no one was ever forced to rent a storefront there.
As a result, these people learned to get along.