Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Rare events often define our view of society and government. The regular slog of life we habitually forget and everyday crimes we let pass as if unnoticed. But a massacre, an assassination, or a big storm — these get a lot of coverage. And exercise our political imaginations.
Often unduly.
Yet, presently a rare-event story certainly qualifies as “newsworthy,” though almost no one talks about, and almost no media outlet covers: the serial infanticides of the abortion doctor currently on trial, Dr. Kermit Gosnell.
While media folks and political activists continue to publicize the Sandy Hooks shooting, on Gosnell’s bloody tale they remain silent. As Ed Krayewski notes at Reason.com, just as a rare shooting has served a political cause, so too could Gosnell’s grisly crimes. But from the president, no grand “it’s not about me” speeches. From his followers, no demands for instant action.
Why?
The question doesn’t need to be asked. It’s politically inconvenient for “pro-choicers” to confront the grotesque crimes of a doctor engaged in late-term abortions that often became postpartum infanticide. And grisly ones at that.
The pro-choice movement typically responds to abortion in the same fashion they accuse those at the NRA: give no inch. Abortion rights activists defend late-term abortions and argue that bringing up the killing of infants is just so “off-point.” But after reading about the Gosnell case, it’s not off-point at all.
Certainly, Dr. Gosnell’s alleged infanticide should be mentioned for the same reason that any big story deserves coverage. Should it lead to immediate calls for more government regulation of abortion? That’s debatable. Should it inform the debate?
Yes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“It’s not about me,” insisted the President of these United States, before crowds in Hartford, Connecticut.
Barack Obama, in expert oratorical mode, elaborated: “Some in the Washington press suggest that what happens to gun violence legislation in Congress this week will either be a political victory or defeat for me.” After a long and impressive facial pause, he went on. “Connecticut, this is not about me; it’s not about politics. This is about doing the right thing. . . .” but he didn’t stop there. He listed the beneficiaries of “gun violence legislation”:
Not about politics? Sounds exactly like politics.
No discussion of the efficacy or practicality of what’s on the line, universal background checks on all gun sales. (Private trades in legal armaments now constitute a “loophole,” you see.) What evidence is there that universal background checks would have stopped the murderous Adam Lanza — or most such hard-to-predict murderers?
The Orator-in-Chief’s earlier emphasis on the ostensible fact of 90 percent American support for this rule is also political. You can bet that the pollsters did not probe very deeply into the nitty gritty of the issue by asking about increases in bureaucracy, paperwork, the regulation of law-abiding folk.
Or how to get criminals to comply.
None of that.
It is all politics. The feel-good politics of politicians claiming they are “doing something.”
That is not principle. Not philosophy. And certainly not responsible policy making.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Socialism is a new form of slavery.
Any restraint on private property rights shifts the balance of power from impersonal attributes toward personal attributes and toward behavior that political authorities approve. That is a fundamental reason for preference of a system of strong private property rights: private property rights protect individual liberty.
Over at Townhall.com, the most recent Common Sense column explores recent legislative chicanery on a subject near and dear to Paul Jacob and to many of his readers: term limits. And yes, Republicans are finding ways of making their party less significant, less electable. The enemy is not just the Democratic Party. Not by a long shot.
Stop on over, then come back here for some extra reading:
Here, Nobel Laureate in Economics Vernon Smith introduces his colleague Steve Gjerstad on why the Fed’s early-in-the-millennium policy to induce a housing bubble “went awry”:
Smith and Gjerstad are working on a book on the Great Recession, and Gjerstad provides, here, a data-heavy discussion, and uses that data to show why Keynesian policy doesn’t work. Gjerstad makes an especially interesting comparisons between Japan and Finland. Well worth sitting through the whole lecture.
The fundamental purpose of property rights, and their fundamental accomplishment, is that they eliminate destructive competition for control of economic resources. Well-defined and well-protected property rights replace competition by violence with competition by peaceful means.
First they told us that we didn’t build our businesses. Now we learn that our kids aren’t ours.
“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have,” TV talking head Melissa Harris-Perry argues in the latest MSNBC “Lean Forward” propaganda spot, “because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children: Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility, and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments.”
Yeah, better investments. Like Solyndra. Or . . . the K-12 public education system for which, since 1970, the federal government has increased per-pupil spending by roughly 190 percent, only to flatline test scores in math, science and reading.
“When the flood of vitriolic responses to the ad began, my first reaction was relief,” Perry writes on her blog. “I had spent the entire day grading papers and was relieved that since these children were not my responsibility, I could simply mail the students’ papers to their moms and dads to grade!”
Doesn’t Tulane University pay her for grading those papers?
Claiming to “double down” in her defensive blog post, she actually admits that, “Of course, parents can and should raise their children with their own values.”
Of course.
What does Melissa Harris-Perry not get? That children belong, not to the state or the collective, and not really to their parents, but to themselves.
Is that much individual freedom leaning too far forward?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
For decades social critics in the United States and throughout the Western world have complained that “property” rights too often take precedence over “human” rights, with the result that people are treated unequally and have unequal opportunities. Inequality exists in any society. But the purported conflict between property rights and human rights is a mirage. Property rights are human rights.