Author: CS Admin

Categories
ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

The Great Diversion

Nazi, Civil War, soldiers, dead soldiers, Charlottesville, antifa

Though the breakdown of civil debate seems new, the subjects are old. We are actually talking about Nazis, again. Nazi death counts. And the Confederacy. The former defeated by my father’s generation, the latter defeated several generations earlier.

Why?

Because talking about the future would require actual thought. It’s easier to fight over the past, over symbols of the past.

That is why there was a Charlottesville debacle. It is about a statue, a monument to dead soldiers featuring the Confederacy’s General Robert E. Lee. And what it means. The “Unite the Right” rally was set in Charlottesville because of the city council’s decision to remove it. 

It is interesting, though, that the event did not unite “the Right.” Conservative and even many alleged “alt-​right” groups refused to participate. 

But “the Left” seems more united than before. If you focus on past racism and the persistence of Nazi and Confederate symbology, it’s pretty easy to agree. I agree. 

And yet, I take a step back, and remember that those monuments do not have the univocal racist meaning attributed to them. They were intended to heal wounds.*

Now they open up old ones.

And yet this is all a diversion. We are facing a major set of crises that could lead to war, depression, chaos, and (possibly) worse. But we are not now handling them because we are fighting over symbols of the past.

This may be a very human thing to do.

But it is not smart.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* At least 350,000 young American men died wearing Confederate uniforms in the Civil War, and half a million Union soldiers are believed to have died directly from their war wounds. Today’s population is ten times greater, so adjusted for today it would be eight million deaths. That is a lot of searing wounds.

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Categories
crime and punishment folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism

Loco Micro Repression

Close but no cakewalk prize.

Modern social justice advocates sometimes come up with legitimate complaints … only to wander off terra firma and into cloud-​cuckoo land.

“Microaggressions” is one of these airy wanderings, and Katherine Timpf has spotted another in the ever-​growing catalog of social justice beefs:

The size of our society’s chairs is now being considered a “microaggression” against overweight people, according to a guide released by The New School, a private college in New York City. 

Proponents of this cause, Timpf notes, insist that “Microaggression is not ‘Micro’ in Impact,” and that the best response to faux pas, slights, indelicacies, and what-​have-​you is snitching to the administration and intervention from same. Quite overbearing, if you ask me. During my too brief college stint it would have been considered an insult — a microaggression? — to think that young adults could not handle minor affronts such as so helpfully listed at The New School.

But let’s get real here. Microaggressions do not justify treating adults as children and setting up college administrators as in loco parentis tribunals — much less Molotov cocktails, sucker punches or bike locks in socks. At best, as has been pointed out elsewhere, Ned’s microaggression justifies Zed’s microretaliation. Nothing more.

So how does one micro-respond? 

Manners; etiquette.

In olden times, a well-​mannered person, when snubbed or otherwise insulted had the option of responding with a cutting remark … without any actual cutting, without even raising the tone of his or her voice. 

Activists and collegians really should look into it.

And not bring up chair size: the micro-​chair/​macro-​posterior issue has too many “microaggressive” jokes built into it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability folly free trade & free markets local leaders nannyism property rights responsibility too much government

How to Ruin a Thoroughfare

city planner, city planning, Portland, Oregon, Better Naito, business

Cities require some planning. But the further beyond a certain minimum, the greater the ease with which a central planning authority can be captured — by zealots with more stars in their eyes than brains in their heads.

Portland, Oregon, is a case in point. Students from Portland State University had this brainchild: “Better Naito,” a project to transform SW Naito Parkway to “enhance the lives of pedestrians and bikers along the Waterfront,” as Jessica Miller of Cascade Policy Institute explains. Their notion was to reduce “car capacity from two lanes to one” during the peak season (actually more than half the year), opening up the cordoned-​off lane to folks walking and riding bicycles.

I’m not kidding.

Though proponents of the program enthuse about the “positive feedback” from the public, they tend not to deal with complaints from adjacent business owners, who now “see fewer shoppers” and must accommodate “employees who experience longer commutes.”

Opponents are organizing. The Portland Business Alliance promotes its petition with a simple question: “How Exactly Is ‘Better Naito’ Better?”

Portland is a prime example of the New Urbanism in action, which seems set on creating cramped places for people to live and discouraging folks from using their own cars. I’ve talked about this before, focusing on planning critic and Cato Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole. He has long been fighting the city planning cranks who appear dubious about their very job: providing roads and sewers and waterways that serve the all a city’s citizens, native, newcomer, and traveler alike.

My advice? Sign that petition, if you vote in Portland. 

The rest of us better plan to take a hard look at our city planners.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility U.S. Constitution

Saturday’s Violence

police, violence, Charlottesville, white supremacist, Nazi, protest, counter protest, law and order

After delivering the final address at the Liberty International World Conference in Puerto Rico, Friday night, I learned that there had been violent clashes between white nationalists and counter-​demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

A dozen people required medical treatment after being sprayed with mace. 

Then, after traveling to the airport with new friends from Kazakhstan, China, and socialist-​torn Venezuela, I began my eight-​hour trek home. I had the subject for my weekend column, I decided: the lack of reports of even one arrest. 

Last I checked, dousing folks with a chemical agent was a crime. 

“Men in combat gear, some waring [sic] bicycle and motorcycle helmets and carrying clubs and sticks and makeshift shields,” the Washington Post reported as I landed for my connecting flight home, “fought each other on the downtown streets, with little police interference.”

By the time I touched down in Washington, DC, James Field had driven his car into a crowd of counter-​protesters, killing Heather Heyer and seriously wounding many others. A searing and sobering event.

My column, mostly written in transit, focused on the police response to political violence. From Trump rallies last year to the events at UC-​Berkeley that “shut down” planned speeches … to attacks on Charles Murray and others at Middlebury College … to this Saturday’s events in Charlottesville, policing has been tepid at best.

People have a right to speak, to assemble, to protest, to let out a primal political scream. Our governments must protect that right, without regard to viewpoint, by preventing and policing against acts of violence. 

When violence succeeds without consequences — garnering tons of attention for its perpetrators — we are likely to see more violence.

Government is not doing job one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
general freedom individual achievement

Hardy at 89

Hardy Johnson, work ethic, retirement, birthday, profile

Hardy Johnson marked his 89th birthday by doing what he’s always doing, working as a cobbler at Custom Shoe Builders in Knoxville, Tennessee. His son, who manages the business that his dad founded in 1953, was out of town. The back orders had been piling up. And Johnson takes only one day off each week anyway.

In a profile for The Knoxville Focus, Steve Williams observes that many people make it to 89, but few “still work six days a week like Hardy … or on their birthday.”

Friends dropped by all week long, and on the day itself neighbors at Henson’s Automotive and Alignment swung by with cupcakes and coffee. Johnson also enjoys an ongoing sweet barter deal with the owner: Johnson supplies Steven Henson with shoe and other repair work, Henson supplies brake jobs and oil changes.

Henson testifies to the cobbler’s work ethic, saying he “can set my clock to Hardy every morning at 7:15 when he pulls into the parking lot. He’s the best neighbor I’ve ever had. He’s a great guy.”

Why didn’t Hardy Johnson take it easy on his birthday? 

Maybe because doing work that he enjoys and does well is one of the things he’s celebrating as he enters his golden years. Maybe that — and being a great guy — is how you get to be 89 to begin with.

Not that he’s perfect. It doesn’t seem to bother him that his dog is an admitted Democrat.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability crime and punishment folly ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Excepting Responsibility

Google, memo, sexism, discrimination, responsibility, guilt, justice, crime

Responsibility: demand it of others, expect it demanded of you.

So you might think that those who try to redress old grievances with compensatory (“reverse”) discrimination would be a bit more careful. 

Yesterday I wrote about the bizarre Google Memo case, wherein an employee was fired for (basically) warning of a groupthink ideological monoculture at Google … thus proving him right.*

Last weekend I wrote about racial quotas in college entrance. 

In both cases, there’s this idea that moderns in general and white males in particular must “accept responsibility” for the past.

And the evidence is undeniable: Our pale-​faced ancestors — or more likely a very small percentage of other white people’s ancestors — held human beings in bondage. So, too, did almost all peoples around the world; slavery’s old. Here in these United States, after our bloodiest war, our forebears ended that ancient crime. Then there was another century of Jim Crow discrimination, with systemic violence committed against blacks in many areas of the country, often with government acquiescence or involvement.

Harvard and other educational institutions are trying to right those wrongs. 

But there’s a problem: the principle behind their affirmative action schemes is lunatic: Each person of one race bears responsibility for the crimes committed by any person of that same race.

Far better is individual responsibility. Individuals have every right to compensation for any harm another has caused them, certainly. But folks have no right to create new harms against innocent people who happen merely to be of the same race or gender as those who have caused them past harm.

Justice is supposed to be blind, not crazy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The author, it is worth noting, addressed this monoculture in his title, “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” I wonder if being proven right by one’s enemies compensates for job loss.

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