On January 21, 1950, Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, with Whittaker Chambers being the main witness in Hiss’s prosecution. Chambers confessed to having been a Soviet spy, and accused Hiss as an accomplice, which Hiss denied to his dying day. Chambers wrote a fascinating memoir about all this in “Witness.”
Today is economist Tyler Cowen’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Tyler.
[C]apital does not increase automatically by means of compound interest, as Socialists are pleased to assert. . . .
Civilization is a choice, a habit, a line in the . . . sand.
For modern, prosperous society to progress, to grow more healthy and wealthy and wise, most of us have to agree on a small set of principles. Mostly, we must agree not to rush to violence at the merest provocation.
There has to be a lot of negotiation to get anything done. At least, in a free and open civilized society.
Terrorism is the repudiation of this principle.
The main perpetrators of terrorism these days hail from Muslim peoples. But there are non-Muslim terrorists, too. Many of the “school shootings” and similar violent acts in America and even in Europe rarely get listed as terrorism, though they certainly look terroristic. And most don’t have anything to do with Islam.
Even when Muslims are the ones committing the terrorism, their victims are often also Muslim.
Some folks estimate that as many as 95 out of a hundred terrorist victims are Muslim. Why? Because so much of this violence goes on in countries like Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
While this estimate is probably too high, the fact that Muslims themselves are the most common victims of Muslim violence suggests that the underlying problem is the lack of institutions in those lands that hold to the choice — the habit — of civilization.
So, yes: tyranny is at the root of the problem.
Americans, if we want fewer terrorists, might want to restrain our governments from propping up or closely allying ourselves to “Muslim” dictatorships, then.
This is something we can control.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On January 20, 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union was founded.
[T]he moment you limit free speech, it’s not free speech.
It used to be called “the Blue Flu.”
Cops, in the course of union negotiations, would deliberately slack on the job, or falsely call in sick (the “flu”) . . . just to get more moolah out of union contract negotiations.
Betraying a not wholly dissimilar epidemiology, New York’s finest have cut back on citations and arrests. According to a New York Times report, for “two consecutive weeks, New York City police officers have seemed to sit back, ignoring minor offenses and parking transgressions so completely that only 347 criminal summonses were written in the seven days through Sunday, down from 4,077 in the same period a year ago.”
This doesn’t seem union-directed, but a spontaneous result of the brutal police shootings that followed mass protests against police abuse . . . and seeming support for the protester’s critique from true-blue, left-leaning Mayor Bill de Blasio.
There is much apprehension about the police laggardness, of course.
But there is some jubilation, too, as folks receive fewer parking tickets. It’s mighty difficult to park in the Big Apple; a lot of folks appreciate the reprieve, however temporary.
The rap on the NYPD — and for that matter, police across the country — has regarded over-policing: enforcing the rulebook so aggressively that it becomes harassment. That sort of policing is counter-productive, leading to the current unrest, for instance.
Maybe we can learn something from this experiment in less policing.* We might discover that, in a lot of neighborhoods, less can be more.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* According to recent reports, city government and police officials are trying to crack down on the breakout of police restraint. Regardless of future efficacy of these efforts, inquiry into the results of the inadvertent experiment remain worthwhile.
“A man dies when he refuses to do that which is right.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
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On January 19, 1808, Lysander Spooner was born. Spooner’s achievements in American life, law, and political philosophy, are among the most colorful of the 19th century. Studying law privately, he sued to practice without joining the bar, and won the suit. He set up a postal service that directly competed with the United States Postal Service, delivering mail at a fraction of the cost. He wrote “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery,” and convinced noted Garrisonian abolitionist Frederick Douglass of his argument. (The book became the centerpiece of intellectual ammunition for the Free Soil Party.) Later in life Spooner turned against constiutionalism itself, and penned some of the most radical political works of his day, including “Vices Are Not Crimes” and “The Constitution of No Authority.” Spooner also clearly articulated a “jury nullification” position in his classic treatise “Trial by Jury.”
Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.
On January 18, 1689, Montesquieu, French satirist and philosopher, was born. His treatise “The Spirit of the Laws” was a major influence upon America’s founding generation.