A law of spoliation may be passed and carried into effect, but in the event of its results becoming permanent, it runs the risk of destroying the government which has assumed the responsibility for it.
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Author: Redactor
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Look in the Backyard
“Social scientists have long tried to determine why some children grow up to be successful adults and others don’t,” fatherhood blogger Kevin Hartnett wrote in the Washington Post. “The causes are hard to untangle.”
Really? I think the causes are pretty obvious. Number one being parents.
Hartnett’s opinion piece was entitled, “What matters more to my kids’ future: Their school or quality time with their parents?” Frustratingly, Hartnett’s not sure, though he “intuitively” feels his two very young sons would gain more benefit from additional time with their parents than a better school.
Harnett and his wife are beginning careers, concerned about the trade-offs between earning higher income to afford the best schools versus providing more parental time at home.
So he turned to several researchers:
- Susan Mayer, author of the book, What Money Can’t Buy: Family Income and Children’s Life Chances, and a professor at the University of Chicago, believes that inexpensive trips to the museum or books in the home are often more important than expensive tutoring or schools.
- “I think it’s very reasonable for parents to choose to work less in order to have more face time with their children,” Professor Annette Lareau of the University of Pennsylvania told Hartnett, “even if that means their children attend a school where they’re not challenged as much as the parents might like.”
- University of California at Irvine Professor Greg Duncan looked at the impact of non-parents on children and concluded, “Schools and neighborhoods might have some effect, but I think it’s pretty clear that a lot more of the action around child development takes place at home.”
The future will be shaped at home, more than at school.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Yves Guyot, 1910
There are three words which Socialism must erase from the facades of our public buildings—the three words of the Republican motto:—
Liberty, because Socialism is a rule of tyranny and of police.
Equality, because it is a rule of class.
Fraternity, because its policy is that of the class war.
Clint Eastwood, crazy? Like a fox.
Last Thursday, at the Republican Party Convention in Tampa, he spoke to a primetime television audience of millions in the type of direct language politicians never utter. The movie star’s message was simple, but his presentation was more acting routine than speech, using an empty chair as a prop and pretending President Obama was sitting next to him. His delivery came in stops and starts, seemingly ad-libbed with the 82-year old no quicker or more nimble of thought and word than other octogenarians I know.
Much of the mainstream media pounced, diagnosed Eastwood as nearly insane, and noted that the actor’s 12-minute talk upstaged presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Funny, I think Eastwood’s words touched many regular folks — and perhaps a raw nerve for those favoring the president.
While celebrities have every right to speak, I’m tired of the usual sophomoric spewing of famously uninformed opinion — “hot-dogging it,” as Eastwood put it. But we didn’t watch movie star Clint Eastwood last week; we saw businessman Clint Eastwood.
In 1967, early in his Hollywood career, Eastwood created his own production company, Malpaso, which has handled virtually all of his American films. Eastwood knows firsthand the demands of running a business. In fact, he enjoys a reputation for finishing his films on time and on budget and making profits.
When someone doesn’t do the job, Eastwood signs the proverbial pink slip. He thinks voters should do likewise. After all, “we own this country,” Eastwood reminded us. “Politicians are employees of ours.
“When somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Yves Guyot, 1910
Proudhon was nothing but a “petit bourgeois” as Karl Marx said. There is but one true socialism, the socialism of Germany, whose formula was propounded by Karl Marx and Engels in the “Communistic Manifesto” of 1848.
They chose “communism” because the word “socialism” had been too much discredited at the time, but they subsequently resumed it, for the logical conclusion of all socialism is communism. The word “collectivism,” says Paul Lafargue, was only invented in order to spare the susceptibilities of some of the more timorous. It is synonymous with the word “communism.” Every socialistic programme, be it the programme of St. Mandé, published in 1896 by M. Millerand, which lays down that “collectivism is the secretion of the capitalist régime,” or that of the Havre Congress, drawn up by Karl Marx, and carried on the motion of Jules Guesde, concludes with “the political and economic expropriation of the capitalist class and the return to collective ownership of all the means of production.”
But is this conclusion really so very different from that of their predecessors whom they treat with such scorn?
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Video: The Simulacrum of Democracy
How the Ron Paul delegates at the Big Show, er, Republican National Convention, were routed.
Go to 1:21 on this and watch to the end. The teleprompter tells the speaker how the RNC delegates are “going to vote” on changing the rules to knock out the Ron Paul delegates. Something ain’t quite kosher about this.
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Ludwig von Mises, 1947
Whatever people do in the market economy, is the execution of their own plans. In this sense every human action means planning. What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution of the planner’s own plan for the plans of his fellow-men. The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute pre-eminence of his own plan.
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Ludwig von Mises, 1947
When people were committed to the idea that in the field of religion only one plan must be adopted, bloody wars resulted. With the acknowledgment of the principle of religious freedom these wars ceased. The market economy safeguards peaceful economic co-operation because it does not use force upon the economic plans of the citizens. If one master plan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge. Those who disagree with the dictator’s plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.
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Putin, Unlimited
There once seemed to be no hope for Russia, formerly the core of a group of oppressed countries called the Soviet Union.
In the post-Stalin decades, opposing the totalitarian regime often meant a one-way ticket to Siberia. Dissidents weren’t cut down en masse the way they were in the early years of the Soviet Union. But protesting the government was a very lonely and costly enterprise.
These days, it’s less lonely. In recent months, tens of thousands of Russians have filled the streets of Moscow to protest the electorally suspect return to power of Vladimir Putin, constitutionally debarred from the presidency after two terms in office. But Russians knew that Putin’s successor, Dmitry Medvedev, was just a placeholder until Putin could regain the presidency in name as well as fact. Russia’s presidential term limits are thus more sham than surety of rotation in office.
Opposing the regime can still be costly. Fees for attending an illegal anti-Putin demonstration (they’re all illegal) have been jacked up by a docile parliament. Stand out from the crowd in your political resistance and you may end up incarcerated.
Three members of the radical Russian punk group/political performance artists Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years in prison for what is being called “hooliganism.” That’s the crime of making a music video entitled “Holy Mother, Chase Putin Away!” It seemed worth a try. Fake term limits hadn’t done the job.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Ludwig von Mises, 1962
It is a double-edged makeshift to entrust an individual or a group of individuals with the authority to resort to violence. The enticement implied is too tempting for a human being. The men who are to protect the community against violent aggression easily turn into the most dangerous aggressors. They transgress their mandate. They misuse their power for the oppression of those whom they were expected to defend against oppression. The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.