On Dec. 7, 1787, the U.S. Constitution is unanimously ratified by all 30 delegates to the Delaware Constitutional Convention, making Delaware the first state of the modern United States.
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Author: Redactor
“The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.”
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Following My Conscience
In 1984, twenty-seven years ago this very day, three FBI agents pushed their way into my North Little Rock, Arkansas, home and placed me under arrest.
My crime? Violating the Military Selective Service Act — that is, absolutely, positively, publicly refusing to register for the military draft. (I’d have resisted civilian service just as ardently.)
Some folks might call it dodging the draft. But not so — I met the draft head on, and in the great spirit of civil disobedience, I resisted.
Of course, there was no actual draft of young men into the military, simply a bureaucratic and regimented preparation for conscription. Seemed like the optimum time to let Uncle Sam know not to plan on me.
Rest assured, had the country been attacked I’d have been there lickety-split. It was not the military or defending the country to which I objected; it was doing it as a conscript — a slave — rather than as a free man.
I expressed my rationale in detail in several of my writings below, from 27 years ago as well as more recently. But my view was and remains neither radical nor alien, tracking, as it does, with what Ronald Reagan said in 1980: “The draft or draft registration destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.”
As is par for the political course, it was Mr. Reagan’s Justice Department that prosecuted me for continuing to stand up for those “values.” U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, today a presidential candidate, testified on my behalf at trial.
At the trial, the prosecutors freely admitted they had every stitch of personal information the government needed the better to spit me out a draft notice should they decide to conscript young Americans. They lacked only my signature on the form.
But that is what they wanted most: my acquiescence. The law said I must “present myself and submit” to registration. I had not submitted to it; I would not — could not in good conscience do so.
At 24 years of age, with wife and an eight-month old daughter, it was certainly a bit disconcerting to begin my adulthood, my career, as a felon. Moreover, to take that risk simply on the principle of the matter, that conscription is un-American, a totalitarian idea, and not because I was actually threatened with being drafted.
Had I wished not to serve, I could have signed up only to refuse to go when the draft notice arrived . . . or I could have quietly refused to register, and faced no threat of being prosecuted. But my goal wasn’t to personally escape the draft. It was to prevent the draft from coming back, to prevent the damage the draft does to our freedom and our country by enabling a foreign policy of acting as the world’s policemen.
Some disagree with the politics of my stand. They have a right to their opinion. But I think that what we ask of everyone should be to do what they believe is right. Not to be a silent spectator, but to speak up and, when necessary, to take action.
In the end, I was convicted and served five and a half months in a Federal Correctional Institution. For better or worse, the “correction” didn’t take.
And never for an instant have I regretted doing what I thought was right.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
further reading:
Why I Refuse to Register, 5/17/1985
Draft the Congress and Leave My Kids Alone, 12/28/2003
Americans Gung-Ho to Draft Congress, 1/4/2004
“Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it? Forbid it, Almighty God!”
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13th Amendment Ratified
On Dec. 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, officially ending the institution of slavery. It reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The ratification came eight months after the end of the Civil War.
“You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”
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Prohibition Ends
On Dec. 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and bringing an end to the era of national prohibition of alcohol in America. Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment. Pennsylvania and Ohio had ratified it earlier in the day.
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Trash Heap Economics
Andy Stern, writing in the Wall Street Journal, covers familiar ground. They do things better elsewhere. Give up, America: adopt a foreign ideology. His title/subtitle combo — “China’s Superior Economic Model: The free-market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap of history” — provides a grand example of passive voice construction allowing evasion of the crucial elements: Who throws what away?
First, the what: “The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model” described as “so successful in the 20th century” . . . with no discussion, absolutely none, as to what extent our business life is actually run by this “model.”
“Shareholder only”? Some of the biggest businesses in the U.S. are privately held, not publicly traded. Not a few huge and influential enterprises, like the absurdly mismanaged postal service, the disruptive Fannie and Freddie, and the morally bankrupt Federal Reserve are government-created and not public in the shareholder-model sense. Add in taxes, regulation, and a perpetual deficit government budget, backed by the inflationist Fed, and the truth pops up exactly opposed to Stern’s: America’s a very mixed “mixed economy.”
In this context, who holds to “free-market fundamentalism”? A number of people, almost exclusively on the outs. The richest and most powerful insiders work against free markets, no matter what they say. Hence bailouts, subsidies, and a whole lot of “planning.”
China may be “blessed” with a huge population aiming to get ahead and with a government that runs budget surpluses, while we are cursed, primarily, with continuous deficit financing of the federal government, and everything that entails.
The solution? Reassert the model Stern wants to chuck.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“We do not want to fritter away our short lives in chains, even if they are golden chains of prosperity and power.”
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Committee for Assistance to Jews
On 4 Dec. 1942, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz set up the underground Council for the Assistance of the Jews in Warsaw, Poland, codenamed Żegota. Providing medical care, relief money and false identity documents for those hiding in German-occupied Poland, the organization helped save some 4,000 Polish Jews.
On this day in 2005, an estimated 60,000 to 250,000 people in Hong Kong protested for democracy, calling for universal and equal suffrage, the right to directly elect the Chief Executive and all the seats of the Legislative Council, and am end to the appointed seats of the district councils.