You can’t feed a part of it without feeding the whole damn thing.
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Government
Category: too much government
Categories
Don’t Worry!
Bernie’s plan will SAVE MONEY through Government Efficiency!
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Because BIG BROTHER is okay as long as enough people vote for him!
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A “rule of law” is based on general principles, and makes room for — or, better yet, is based upon — the protection of individual rights.
It used to be common to say, “a rule of law, not of men”; it was even as common in political oratory as was spouted out over drinks at the Rotary. But as the modern Regulatory State has grown in scope and power, most folks seem to have lost track of the notion. It is now not even a cliché. Few even of our most educated folks can explain this idea. Vast swaths of the mis-educated public appear not to “get” the idea of limiting government to the enforcement of a few general principles; instead, they cry for more “regulations” (along with additional spending and maybe even a whole new division of the executive government) every time a crisis, tragedy or atrocity occurs.
So we are left with a political culture in which the words of Tacitus seem to a majority as implausible at best, evil at worst: “The more the laws, the more corrupt the State.” Contrary to today’s trendy prejudice, we do not need “more laws” — edicts legislated by representatives, or regulations concocted by bureaucracies — we need Law.
As in, “a rule of Law.”
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The Meaning of “Liberal”
Once upon a time “liberal” meant opposition to authority.
Now “liberal” means the worship of government.
Do you see the problem here?
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Caution: Do Not Over-Feed Government!
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Thomas Sowell, who retired from his syndicated column last week, may be the greatest public intellectual of our time.
Though he is “an original,” an iconoclast, his work is best seen as the carrying on of a tradition. Or two.
Consider his most famous research area: race. An African-American, Sowell is the age’s most persuasive dissident to the dominant strains of racial advocacy. He brought much common sense to a subject beset with unhinged passion.*
And yet even here he was obviously drawing on traditions that, if not well known, were firmly established.†
One of Sowell’s most important contributions, in books such as A Conflict of Visions and The Vision of the Anointed, is his distinction between two very different ways of looking at the social world:
- the “constrained vision” . . . . of most conservatives and classical liberals; and
- the “unconstrained vision” . . . of so many socialists, anarchists and progressives.
For many conservatives, this is Sowell at his best. But is it original? A few of my readers could probably lecture me on its origins in a famous essay by F. A. Hayek, “Individualism: True and False.”‡
Over at the Foundation for Economic Education, David R. Henderson addresses the one area where I tend to disagree with Sowell: foreign policy. Henderson gently calls out Sowell’s apparent credulity regarding the dishonesty of our war party leaders. Sure, Henderson writes, “[t]here are downsides to distrust. . . . But there are upsides too.”
Mourning the loss of trust in presidents, Sowell blames it on presidents lying to us in recent decades. But, as Henderson notes, “war presidents” lying to us about war is not new — providing examples.
Pity that Sowell, of all people, does not see the pattern here.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* See Sowell’s Ethnic America: A History, Race and Culture: A World View, and The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective; but also popular argumentation, such as Pink and Brown People and Black Rednecks and White Liberals. And then there is the important Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?
† Economists W. H. Hutt and Gary Becker, at the very least, provided the background for Sowell’s research with their respective books The Economics of the Colour Bar and The Economics of Discrimination.
‡ See F. A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order. In another essay, Hayek provides Sowell with the seed of Knowledge and Decisions.
It’s a truism in politics: the pendulum swings. Now, around the world, we see a deep swing rightward:
- Brexit, and the collapse of Britain’s Labour Party;
- Donald Trump, and the routing of the Democrats;
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s turnaround on Muslim refugee acceptance; and,
- in France, the rise of the National Front’s Marine Le Pen.
Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported on events in Poland. There, the Law and Justice Party is not only making sweeping changes of a pro-family, religious conservative nature, it has also grown in popularity.
Fearing an anti-intellectual “neo-Dark Age,” the Post finds cause for that worry in the fact that the Poles are downplaying evolutionary science in government school curricula.*
Before the big freak out, note the why of this: the dominant progressive-left paradigm has proven itself incapable of dealing with the challenges of the present age — most being caused by their own policies. Worse yet, those on the vanguard left have become moral scolds and petty language tyrants.
Yes, political correctness is one of the big offenders, here.
So, of course there’s a backlash.
But, turnabout being fair play, if the move to the “right” goes too far — as it probably will — we can expect another swing leftward.
Isn’t it time to give that pendulum bob a whack, to initiate something like an equilibrium position? Many of today’s problems are caused by partisans trying to force their kind of change down others’ throats. There is an alternative: limit government, setting it to just a few tasks, letting society evolve naturally, without forced central planning.
That would be “evolutionary,” and thus neither rightist nor revolutionary-left. Call it neo-Enlightenment.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Poland’s new government has become scary, by reducing transparency, limiting press access, purging the government news network of anti-rightist journalists, hiking subsidies to traditional families and the elderly, shelving the gay marriage issue and allowing local governments to cut back on granting public protest permits. Not all of these are equally frightening, of course. Why should any government be allowed to maintain a government-run news agency? (Ideological purges come with the territory.)
Today the Electoral College meets to elect the 45th President of these United States.
But if they fail to cast the required majority for a candidate, the contest goes into the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote — Wyoming and California equally weighted — and a state’s vote can only be cast for one of the top three Electoral College vote-getters.
Of course, only two candidates won electoral votes, because only they won states. Donald Trump won 30 states comprising 306 electoral votes; Hillary Clinton won 20 states with 232.
That’s the arithmetic. But, as I explored at Townhall yesterday, nothing in the Constitution requires an elector pledged to Trump or Clinton to vote for that candidate.* They can vote their conscience.
That’s why in recent days, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, a California elector, petitioned to have electors receive an intelligence briefing about Russian hacking — hoping to sway electors.
Her petition was denied.
Desperation showing, a group of Hollywood actors led by Martin Sheen starred in a Unite for America video talking down to — er, directly to — Republican electors. Asserting that the Electoral College was designed by “Hamilton himself” to prevent an “unfit” “demagogue” (they mean Mr. Trump) from attaining the presidency, the actors claim to “stand with” and “respect” GOP electors, who could be heroes in Hollywood (no honor more tempting!) if only they’d cast their vote for someone other than Trump.
Anyone! — who meets presidential qualifications. “I’m not asking you,” three actors in a row assure, “to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
As much as I support the idea of voting one’s conscience and as much fun as this election has been, I think we’ve all now had enough. Let’s prepare ourselves to help Mr. Trump do what’s right and stop him from doing what’s wrong . . . with a clear conscience.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Some electors do sign a loyalty pledge to the candidate and there are state laws, almost certainly unconstitutional, which penalize electors who do not vote for the candidate they are pledged to.
Original (cc) photo by Crosa on Flickr
The first I heard of an actual enumeration of federal “intelligence agencies” was from Hillary Clinton. In the final presidential debate, she claimed that the truths spilling out of the Podesta emails had been revealed courtesy of Russian hackers, and she knew this because all 17 U.S. “intelligence agencies” had briefed her.
Seventeen!
The number, at least, does not come from a secret source. Business Insider had popularized it. “These 17 Agencies Make Up The Most Sophisticated Spy Network In The World,” Paul Szoldra informed us three-and-one-half years ago in a fascinating listicle.
Call me paranoid . . . but if I am told that the government has 17 spy agencies, I wonder about one more: The Really, Really Secret Infodump Agency. There is, after all, no official definition of “government agency”; the federal government doesn’t even publish an official overall count, intelligent or otherwise.
Besides, the prime number 17 just seems too . . . contrived. Sixteen or 18? Boring numbers. But 17? Its numerological magic lends plausibility to “the most sophisticated spy network in the world.”
Of course, when Mrs. Clinton insisted that all 17 had concurred that the Russians were on Trump’s side, I did not believe her. And now that mainstream media outlets — in an apparent frenzy to prove themselves a more reliable fake news source than the Twittersphere, blogosphere, Facebook-o-sphere and Breitbart combined — run with nearly the same story, I don’t believe them, either.
It is as if they’ve had their talking points delivered in a secret dossier.
Reasons for doubt? All the anonymous sources, all the hedges on the order of “may be linked to” and “‘one step’ removed.”
Fake news. Brought to you by the number 17.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
