Author: CS Admin

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national politics & policies Second Amendment rights tax policy too much government

Was the Line Crossed?

Trump, Congress, budget, 2nd Amendment, guns,

Everybody has a limit, a point after which they reach for the nearest weapon and fire.

Or, in normal politics, withdraw support and go on the attack.

But it is not normal politics right now.

In mid-March, a Congressman from Long Island expressed his frustration with the Trump administration by saying, “This is where the Second Amendment comes in, quite frankly, because you know, what if the president was to ignore the courts?”

Days after this pol darkly implied insurrection, attacking gun rights became, on our Democratic Congressman’s end of the spectrum, a cause célèbre. Obviously, there remains a strong tension between politically opposing gun rights and the commonsense acknowledgment of the vital political function of the Second Amendment.* Lines are drawn all over the place.

But last week a very different line was crossed.

Donald Trump signed the latest Omnibus whopper. And a few of the gonzo president’s biggest Internet supporters — including the oddest, anarchist Stefan Molyneux — could take no more. Trump’s fatal flaw, Molyneux stated, “is his desire to shovel the money of the unborn into the Great White Shark maw of the military-industrial complex.” Molyneux identifies “the largest military budget in human history” as what Trump wanted in exchange for betraying his base.

So, you can see where Mr. Molyneux draws the line of support.

Meanwhile, others are wondering about Trump’s own line on trade policy. With much ballyhoo and bluster, he raised tariffs on steel — and then, quietly, exempted most of America’s steel trading partners.

Crazyman? Or genius?

The line between those two concepts is notoriously gray.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* In my weekend column I noted that “when the populace is armed sufficiently to realistically repel tyranny, the calculations of self-interested politicians per what they can get away with changes.” Guns can remain holstered, most of the time.

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folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Bipartisan Planks

gaslight, gas-light, delusion, reality, Resist

When a partisan discovers that opposition leaders engage in blatant, bald-faced lying, do you find it charming . . . or sad?

Donald Trump and his “administration are gaslighting us,” writes Ariel Leve. “It’s a term we are hearing a lot of right now.”

Of course we are. “The term ‘gaslighting’ refers to when someone manipulates you into questioning and second-guessing your reality,” explains The Guardian’s helpful reality guard.

By way of explanation, she discusses some vague abuse* her family directed towards her as a child, and then asserts that her mother’s denial of the issues, the “erasure of the abuse,” was, to her, “worse than the abuse.”

I can see that. But what if “your reality” — what you defend — is irreal itself?

Sure, she thinks Trump and the Republicans are “gaslighting” her. Well, welcome to the club, Ms. Leve. I thought Bush and the Republicans were gaslighting me — as were, in the previous century, the Clintons and all those Friends of Bill, and, more recently, Obama and Pelosi and the incredibly fawning media.

The problem sure looks like the proverbial protesting about the mote in the other guy’s eye while not seeing the two-by-four in one’s own. But it is worse when the lumber juts from most eyes on both sides of the partisan aisle — enough to build a McMansion with all the spare wood.

Leve advises the reader to do like she did — trust in her “version of reality. Not allowing it to be altered on demand. Resistance.”

Good advice, but only if you aren’t deluded.

And could politics be too often an avenue for wounded people to lash back at (or make up for) childhood grievances? That would explain a lot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Ms. Leve helpfully expands upon the chaos of her childhood elsewhere. Sounds horrifying enough to me. She is convincing.

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Accountability ballot access folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies Regulating Protest

The Real Democracy Hack

Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, data mining, hack, hacking, elections, democracy, meddling

A whistleblower in a British data company called Cambridge Analytica accuses his company of stealing as many as 50 million Facebook profiles. This is the latest version of the “hacked the election” meme pushed by the establishment after Trump’s 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton.

Cambridge received data on 270,000 Facebook users, who traded their personal Facebook data and their friends’ profiles to download and use an app. The 50 million figure is an extrapolation supposing the average user had 200 friends.

The outrage over this “hack” — by the whistleblower and by the television news commentators, who seem collectively to suffer from a case of the vapors — appears to be mostly pretense. That is, they pretend voters voted in a way they did not want to vote.

But that simply wasn’t the case. The implication that conspiratorial, behind-the-scenes puppeteers changed votes in some nefarious scam remains far off the mark. All we are really talking about is data miners gaining additional info that they pushed to political propagandists who in turn did what campaign propagandists always do.

Maybe we should be grateful. 

And saying this data group propelled Trump is like saying that support for term limits propelled the GOP to take over Congress in 1994 — though, in this analogy, the data firm deserves less credit than the term limits issue. 

This is more a “life hack” than a technological intrusion into the political process. “Democracy was hacked” like civilization was hacked by Johannes Gutenberg.

What the fainting couch crowd really regrets? Their inability to control new media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment education and schooling general freedom media and media people national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights

Good Guy With Gun

Blaine Gaskill, school shooting, gun, gun control, Maryland, defense, 2nd Amendment

Short version of the story: a good guy with a gun at a Maryland high school stopped a bad guy with a gun. In less than a minute. How? Because the good guy had a gun and was inside the school with the gun.

The bad guy was able to shoot a 16-year-old female student, apparently someone with whom he had a previous relationship, as well as a 14-year-old male before an officer on site responded. This officer, Blaine Gaskill, was on the spot in less than a minute. Gaskill and the assailant fired simultaneously. The assailant fell dead. What exactly happened is still unclear; there has been some media speculation that the bad guy may have shot himself.

But the 17-year-old shooter is dead. The female victim, though still alive, is unfortunately in critical condition. The male victim is in stable condition.

The good guy was armed — with a gun. And he was on site. If you’re learning about the incident here first, it’s because the story isn’t being plastered all over the place 24-7 as it would have been had the shooter been able to wreak much more havoc because nobody could quickly counter him.

So, is it okay to let responsible, well-trained administrators, teachers and others in schools be armed?

Well, ask the question a different way. If you happened to be inside the school at the time, would it be okay to survive when some maniac with a gun starts shooting at you and others inside that school?

Let’s defend our loved ones.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom media and media people moral hazard too much government

Governments Gone Wilding

South Africa, land, expropriation, reform, genocide, refuges, media, racism

I was late to the story, and had a hard time finding information on the anti-white violence in South Africa — farm families raped, pillaged, slaughtered, beheaded.

And I wasn’t at all aware of the “land reform” that South Africa’s Congress is voting on, the explicit aim of which is to expropriate white farmers without compensation.

Every day, I read through The Washington Post but noticed no articles there. Or elsewhere — until a fleeting Facebook post sent me to Lauren Southern’s video documentary, “Farmlands.”

The Wall Street Journal did cover the farm expropriation story — on its editorial pages. “No country ever became rich through its government’s seizure of private property (exhibit A: the Soviet Union), but politicians in South Africa want to give it another go.”

Zimbabwe on repeat.

Worse yet, it is being argued for on racial grounds, and some of its proponents are notoriously . . . genocidal?

Quartz takes a different approach, in an article charmingly titled “South Africa’s much needed land debate is being turned into an international racist rant.” The Leftwing publication appears to be gearing up to defend mass theft as “land reform,” heedless of its long, violent, destructive history.

Meanwhile, Ms. Southern, the “gonzo journalist” who detailed the ongoing race-based murder spree in South Africa* that Quartz failed to mention, found herself detained in Calais, France, prevented from entering Britain. Why? In part for “being racist.”

Southern had once engaged in a stunt pitching the provocation that “Allah is a gay god” — to seek reactions from people after a major news source produced an article claiming Jesus was gay.

Islam is a religion, not a race, of course, but it’s racial collectivism that still unhinges minds.

To what extent? Socialist expropriation, at least.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “According to the best available statistics,” the BBC relates, “farm murders are at their highest level since 2010-11.”

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Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders political challengers Regulating Protest too much government

New-Fangled Vote Counting

Florida, Proposal 97, Constitution, democracy, voting, initiative, Constitution Revision Commission

Call me old-fashioned, but when you go to the pols to cast your vote on a ballot measure, your Yes vote should count for yes and your No vote for no.

And if you choose not to vote, your non-vote should count for neither yes nor no.

That’s just common sense. Right?

Well, meet its antithesis: Proposal 97, now being considered by Florida’s powerful Constitution Revision Commission (CRC).* Proposal 97 would count all those who do not cast a vote for or against a ballot measure as a No vote against it.

To pass a constitutional amendment in the Sunshine State already requires a supermajority vote of at least 60 percent of those who do cast a vote on the measure. Under Proposal 97, counting all those not voting on it as No votes, that percentage would necessarily go even higher. If 10 percent don’t vote, Yes would have to come in at 67 percent to win.

This is minority rule . . . with an extra perverse twist.

The supermajority requirement encourages big money interests to spend heavily against ballot initiatives — even when the issues have clear majority support — because if they can manage to lose by less than 20 points (60–40 percent), they win. Now all opponents need do is poison the water with the nastiest campaigning imaginable, causing more voters to throw up their hands or pinch their noses and avoid the issue . . .

. . . thus, being counted as voting No.

Don’t abstain. Stop Proposal 97. Tell them NO here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* How powerful is the CRC? Every 20 years it meets with the awesome authority to refer constitutional amendments directly to the ballot — as many as it wishes and the amendments can be packaged to include several different subjects. No other state has a similar body. Of the 37 commission members, the governor appoints 15, the Senate president and the House speaker each appoint nine, the chief justice of the state supreme court appoints three and the attorney general is an automatic member.

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general freedom meme

Equality vs. Freedom

equality, freedom, Milton Friedman

“A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.”

—Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, p. 148.

 

Categories
education and schooling general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Second Amendment rights too much government

Civic Engagement Activities

blackboard, sheep, public schools, indoctrination, protest, guns

I love a good protest.

My first was in Mrs. Grubb’s third grade class, after a substitute teacher gave us a ton of math homework. During recess we organized and delivered a written statement  announcing a student strike against doing the math.

Believe it or not, the assignment was withdrawn, called an April Fools joke . . . but boy did we catch hell when Mrs. Grubb returned.

This week, with the school walkouts across the country to protest “gun violence” and demand “gun control,” some older kids finally got in the game. I may disagree with their public policy shibboleths and disdain their tone, but I would defend to the . . .

Well, you know.

The problem isn’t students or protests. It is the partisan government school system. The system’s taxpayer-paid agents — teachers, administrators — believe they can support student protest movements for changing laws they want changed, but block and punish protests on issues they do not favor.

And, especially, bring the hammer down on anyone who dares notice the double standard out loud.

Rocklin High School teacher, Julianne Benzel, “has been placed on paid administrative leave due to several complaints from parents and students involving the teacher’s communications regarding today’s student-led civic engagement activities,” the California school district said in a statement.

Benzel told CBS in Sacramento that she did not discourage her students from joining the protest — er, I mean, civic engagement activity. But in class, she did raise the issue of whether the school administration would similarly allow (much less facilitate, dare we say, encourage) student protests against abortion, instead of guns.

Let’s protest what we can actually change: public schools engaging in partisan political activity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
general freedom individual achievement local leaders political challengers responsibility

Liberty Rising?

Nick Freitas, Republican, Virginia’s House of Delegates, libertarian, conservative freedom

“Let me make something very clear,” Nick Freitas stated unequivocally. “I don’t have a political career.”

Freitas, a Republican member of Virginia’s House of Delegates announcing his candidacy for the United States Senate, was responding to advice that running against incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine “could hurt [his] political career.”

It’s music to my ears. And to Matt Kibbe’s. The leader of Free the People calls Freitas “the most interesting liberty Republican you’ve never heard of.”

Yet, in Virginia’s conservative networks, Freitas has made quite a name for himself, defending the Second Amendment and fighting Medicaid expansion in a one-seat GOP-majority House.

“You can’t fix everything through government force and coercion,” he explained to Kibbe. “If the path we’re going down, which is just ‘let us manage the federal government as it continues to expand, as it continues to increase debt,’ that’s just not a Republican Party I’m interested in.”

Del. Freitas added that the American people seem similarly uninterested.

Perhaps he is simply telling us what we want to hear. He wouldn’t be the first bait-and-switch politician. But Freitas isn’t exactly playing for the bleachers by naming Calvin Coolidge rather than Ronald Reagan as “the best president of the 20th century.”

And he talks about individual liberty, which, he explains, is “based off the premise that I have a right to pursue happiness in accordance of what my definition of happiness is, so far as it doesn’t infringe on your right to do the same thing.”

He had me with “I don’t have a political career.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
education and schooling First Amendment rights folly ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies

The Critique of Pure Intolerance

Christina Hoff Sommers, Lewis & Clark Law School, Federalist Society, fascism, free speech, censorship, no platform

If you are older than 50, you probably remember when “liberal” meant free speech advocacy to the point of absolutism. “I may disagree with what you say,” stalwart liberals pledged back in the Sixties, “but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

Nowadays, if you are under 30 and have gone to college, you may not even have encountered this saw.

Which has consequences.

Nine student groups protested, last week, the Federalist Society’s invitation of writer Christina Hoff Sommers to speak at Lewis & Clark Law School. The groups called it an “act of aggression and violence” and smeared the philosopher and Democrat as “a known fascist.”

Bari Weiss, writing in The New York Times, calls this “the moral flattening of the earth,” the “main effect is that these endless accusations of ‘fascism’ or ‘misogyny’ or ‘alt-right’ dull the effects of the words themselves. As they are stripped of meaning, they strip us of our sharpness — of our ability to react forcefully to real fascists and misogynists or members of the alt-right.”

While this “flattening” does prevent the flatteners (bullies) from even seeing any gradations of threat or error, let’s not pretend to be surprised. Their techniques do not merely echo, but replicate exactly, neo-Marxist postmodernist philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s proposal, in “Repressive Tolerance,”* to censor writing and speech “from the right.”

Ideas have consequences. Just as Marxian socialism led to Lenin, Stalin and Mao, these tyrants led to Marcuse, whose thinking set much of today’s Academia into full tyranny mode.

It’s time for liberals “on the left” to repudiate explicitly the methods of tyrants . . . to their left.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* See Herbert Marcuse and Robert Paul Woolf, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (1965). My college political theory professor, a proud communist, was a big fan of Marcuse.

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