Author: Redactor

Categories
ideological culture

Tea Readers

According to a New York Times article by Kate Zernike, the “Movement of the Moment Looks to Long-Ago Texts.” A strange way of saying that Tea Party folks are reading, learning, and studying ideas older than those of, say, Paul Krugman.

Tea Partiers are reading classics . . . but ones not recognized as such by the New York Times:

  • Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
  • F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
  • Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Huh? That third book serves as an oddity on the list. It’s a handbook on street-level ways to effect political change. The left’s loved it for years. Now it’s in the hands of people with scant interest in mass expropriation or heavy, vindictive regulation, or a vast, tax-funded gimme-gimme state.

The article cites the “Austrian School of Economics” — a brand of economics that includes many of the most important free-market thinkers — as an important force, but merely mentions its 20th century leader, Ludwig von Mises, as if a duty. Bastiat, a French economist who died before the school was founded, is lumped in with Mises and Hayek, perhaps because he’s so radically anti-taxation that the Times hopes by mentioning his ideas over and over, readers might dismiss him as a nut.

That could backfire. Some of the Times’s smarter readers might become curious, reading Bastiat and Mises and Hayek with the notion of learning something.

Maybe they’ll even read the Constitution.

Wow. What a revolutionary thought.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling

My Child Before My Country

Last week, NBC launched its Education Nation Summit, stating its goal as providing “every American with an opportunity to pursue the best education in the world.”

Perhaps you see our trouble right from the start: There’s little agreement on what constitutes “the best education.” Best for whom?

NBC says, “Education is the key to our future success as a country . . .  Yet, we have allowed our students to fall behind. . . . One-third of our students drop out of high school, and another third aren’t college-ready when they graduate. . . . Our workforce is largely unprepared for today’s rapidly changing marketplace, and we face stiff competition from abroad. . . . The stakes are high for our economy and for our society as a whole.”

I have three kids: One grown, one a college freshman and one still at home. My wife, with my expert advice and assistance, has homeschooled all three. We have not concerned ourselves with what is best for the country or the economy or how to compete with other nations. We have focused, solely, on what is best for our kids — on what they care about, what inspires them.

As long Americans try to solve “our” education problems as “national policy” to be battled over by politicians and teachers’ unions, we will fail.

Focus, instead, on each individual child, not an Education Nation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Categories
national politics & policies responsibility

Deficits Matter Morally

There are two things I don’t understand.

Actually, there are many things I don’t understand, but what I’m thinking about, now, is how one can honestly defend massive government deficits in one of the two usual ways.

The first defense became a cliché while I still wore footsie pajamas: Deficits don’t matter because we owe the debt “to ourselves.”

The truth? More complicated. Some people buy debt; others don’t. Were we to “forgive us our debts” (to appropriate a familiar phrase), we wouldn’t be forgiving what we owe “us,” but what the “U.S.” owes just those investors who’ve bought that debt.

And not even “everybody” owes the debt, since the taxes that would be collected, extra, to pay the debt might not come out of your pocket, or mine — it’ll come out of those pockets, over there. (Of course, you’re probably thinking, “I should be so lucky!”)

No wonder government debt is so tempting. On the surface it’s all inclusive. “We’re all in this together.” But beneath, it’s some folks trying to get one over on other folks.

Nasty, eh?

Then what about today’s excuse: “We owe it to folks overseas.” Since much of our governments’ debt gets bought up by investors abroad, we don’t have to worry about it because . . .

The unspoken thought is: “We’ll just renege on our promises.” Not pay it. Screw them.

Simple truth: Apologists for growing deficits flirt with mass theft from the government’s creditors.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights too much government

Leahy versus the Internet

A censor’s work is never done. So, in a civilization where everybody salutes freedom of speech, censors must be especially clever, seeking new ways to hide their goals.

The latest camel’s rump under the tent? A bill to censor entire Internet domains on the grounds of alleged violations of rights that have not been prosecuted. Pending in the Senate and sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy, it’s called the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA).

The bill would create two blacklists in response to accusations of copyright violation or sales of counterfeit goods. One would consist of sites to which Internet service providers would be required to block access.

The second would consist of sites to which ISPs would be merely encouraged to block access.

Any chance the government might pressure ISPs to ensure the “voluntary” censorship of disapproved domains . . . including domains with just a few pages of dubious legality but many pages of criticism of government?

Sounding the alarm, the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already gives copyright holders a means of taking action against copyright violations. The Foundation argues that Leahy’s bill would enable the U.S. to join the ranks of the “profoundly anti-democratic regimes that keep their citizens from seeing the whole Internet.”

The Foundation’s message: “Tell Your Senator: No Website Blacklists, No Internet Censorship!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Ninth Amendment rights Tenth Amendment federalism too much government

Two Words to Know and Share

Two old words, newly relevant: Federalism and nullification.

Last Sunday, on Townhall.com, I noted ten state ballot measures to watch. Third on my list was Colorado’s Amendment 63:

If swing-state voters in Colorado join Missouri voters, who in August enacted a state measure protecting citizens from being forced to purchase health insurance through the “Obamacare” mandate, it will go a long way in strengthening GOP backbone to repeal the mandate should Republicans regain control of Congress.

The surface issue is your right to contract, freely, with medical professionals. Or not.

Below the surface lie the doctrines of enumerated powers, individual rights, and state prerogatives. After all, the logic runs, the Constitution — a deal among the states — grants the federal government no power to regulate medicine. And nullification, one of Thomas Jefferson’s favored notions, promises to serve as an actual, effective check on out-of-control federal politicians.

A similar storm brews in California, where the state’s Regulate, Control and Tax Marijuana Act goes way beyond a narrow reading of “medical marijuana.” Flouting federal (and probably unconstitutional) law, this citizen initiative seeks to legalize the plant for recreational use.

At issue, really, is not drugs or medicine, but who’s in control: Distant and privileged politicians and bureaucrats, or the citizens of the states.

On the side of the citizens is the founder’s theory of federalism, with its corollary that the states should serve as experiments in legal innovation.

We sure need innovation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Swooning Over Citizen Control?

D. Dowd Muska attacks conservatives and libertarians for so strongly supporting voter initiative and referendum. From the august pages of the Hartford Business Journal, he writes that we’re “hopped up on the false notion that elected officials respond not to voters but the dictates of liberal elites.” It all started, he says, after passage of Proposition 13 in California, back in 1978: “America’s right swooned.”

Well, I plead guilty — for both swooning and then being “hopped up” on citizen access to a path to check their elected know-it-alls. Prop 13 not only saved Californians from losing their homes to exploding property taxes, it also touched off a nationwide revolt. Within two years, 43 states passed property tax relief and another 15 states (including California) enacted income tax cuts.

But Muska warns initiatives “have a mixed record.” He points to a number of measures, some initiatives and others placed on the ballot by legislators, which have expanded government spending or regulation.

Talk about astounding revelations! Of course voters aren’t going to always be right. They won’t agree with Muska 100 percent of the time. They won’t even acquiesce to my superior wisdom and vote my way every time.

Still, it seems to me that any decision legitimately the province of our government ought to be open to democratic oversight by citizens.

Others, like Muska, prefer that voters choose between candidates Tweedledum and Tweedledee — and then to butt out.

Real options work better. For everyone but insiders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Demolition Time!

The socialist party of Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela, expects to lose seats in the next election. El Presidente pled with voters to not forsake the “revolution.” He dubbed the opposition — which last time around boycotted the elections — “Operation Demolition.”

This is supposed to be a bad thing?

Surely what we hope for in an opposition party, in South America or El Norte, is, in everything but the incendiary, literal sense, demolition.

Of expansive, intrusive, know-it-all government.

“Big” and “intrusive” are just two words that characterize what the GOP brought to America during its heyday. Others? Massive spending, a new medical “entitlement,” growing public debt, and — as a sort of crackpot coda — bailouts for rich people.

Same for united government under the Democrats: More uncontrolled spending, an even more massively expensive medical “entitlement,” ballooning public debt — and, as a variation on a theme — more bailouts yet.

Massive government with no limits. But we’re told we can’t call it socialism!

Reports from Venezuela say the opposition has shifted from hatred of Hugo to issues such as rising crime and cost of living. In America, Tea Party folks have gained most ground when they attack spendthrift and socialistic policies rather than demonizing President Obama.

In both cases, ordinary people’s everyday concerns — taxes, debt, inflation, thuggery, and all the other things that go along with socialist-leaning policies — trump the cult/anti-cult of personality as well as political theory, expressed by this ism or that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture too much government

Sir Terry Confesses to Forge-ry

Recently, two dreams came true for comic fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett. Yet, the final result was comic reality . . . Great Britain-style.

First dream? He was knighted by the Queen.

Second? He forged a magic sword.

Well, he mined ore off his estate, and, with the help of a friend, smelted it using a hand-made kiln heated with sheep dung. Pratchett even added in meteoric iron to make his sword. The heavens-sent ore is called “thunderbolt iron.” Yes, that’s the “magic part.”

But perhaps more magical, really, is Pratchett’s personal hankering for a sword. Swords are out of fashion these days. But if you dream up Discworld, Pratchett’s comic magic domain, it makes some sense.

There is a sad tag to this story. Pratchett suffers from Alzheimer’s. That little tidbit, a terrible disease, lends a sort of strange discord that takes over the tale, if you let it.

Of course, there’s the ever-present political element. One is not allowed to carry around large knives, daggers and swords in England.

Pratchett says that it it annoys him that “knights aren’t allowed to carry their swords. That would be a knife crime.”

Normally, I’d agree with him. Knights should be able to carry around large blades. So should regular folk. It’s the criminals, who keep them hidden, who are the problem. Not the citizenry. And certainly not knights.

Still, should dementia hit him full, perhaps it’s just as well he’s hid his sword.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling ideological culture

The Bad Lesson

If you favor hiding evidence and quashing open inquiry with regard to public questions of the most urgent interest, what does that say about your philosophy of education?

Teachers’ union officials in Los Angeles have been in a tizzy because the Los Angeles Times, a liberal bastion, published a detailed series casting controversial light on the quality of public school education in the city. The articles include a database of scores assessing — gasp! — the effectiveness of teachers.

This is a disturbing development for union reps demanding ever greater pay and job security for even lackluster instructors. To be sure, it’s not the negative evaluations that most intensely disturb them, nor even any debatable aspect of the methodologies used to assess effectiveness. It’s that the data has been publicized and discussed at all. The Times should not have published the database, complained one union official, Randi Weingarten. Another union honcho, A.J. Duffy, even called for a boycott of the paper, as if it were morally turpitudinous to give parents even an inkling of teacher performance.

Slate.com contributor Jack Shafer concludes that the Times has “done its readers a great service” by exposing Duffy and his cronies as “enemies of open inquiry, vigorous debate, critical thinking, and holding authority accountable — essentially the cognitive arts that students are supposed to be taught in schools.”

Is there any way to bypass the dilapidated and authoritarian educational regime altogether? You homeschoolers out there: Any ideas?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism too much government

A Tour of Over-Regulation

Want a measure of the regulatory state run amok?

Recently in the Washington Post, Robert McNamara of the Institute for Justice informed us that “In the 1950s, only about one out of every 20 Americans needed a license to pursue the occupation of their choice. Today, that number is one out of every three.”

Wow. A lot more hoops to jump through to get a job or start a business.

Want to add insult to injury? The actual regulation McNamara was writing about makes it illegal — punishable by three months in the local jail in our nation’s capital — to “describe . . . any place or point of interest in the District to any person” as part of a tour without first getting a license.

And the license process is no picnic, either. Sure, this past summer the city did repeal the rule requiring a doctor’s certification that the aspiring guide is not a drunkard. But there remain plenty of stupid regulations, including new ones that require guides to be proficient in English. And yes, that applies even to guides who talk to those benighted folk who speak foreign languages.

Applicants must also pass a test on their knowledge of “various facets of Washington life, including architecture, history and regulations.”

Tour guides must be expert in “regulations.”

Even the Washington Post headlined its editorial, “Tour de farce,” suggesting that a system of “voluntary certification” would work better than big government rules.

Yes. That’s right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.