Category: general freedom

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First Amendment rights general freedom too much government

A Caricature Worth 25 Lashes?

One hallmark of a free society is the legal right to make fun of our leaders. Several times per week I engage in ridicule as well as argument against the folks who think they know what they are doing when they attempt to rule us.

We should wear this freedom to ridicule like a badge.

Iranians, alas, can’t say the same.

Mahmoud Shokraye was tried and found guilty for insulting Nameye Amir, a member of parliament. Shokraye drew a mildly funny caricature of Amir, in a colorful post-Nastian style (the kind most major papers now fall back on), and for his trouble got 25 lashes.

Heroically, a number of cartoonists have upped the ante and created even less flattering caricatures, as you can see at the Cartoon Blog. (I sample some of them, here.) Amir got more than he bargained for. I hope it stings — more than 25 lashes’ worth.

There are several lessons to draw from this.

First, “taking offense” is not the basis of any legal action. Or any violent action. In the west, we’re centuries away from duels and other deadly fights of “honor.” The Islamic east is, alas, still embedded in old honor cultures. The faster they can shuffle off that obsession and move to a rule of law, instead, the better.

Second, as Thomas Jefferson put it, governments should fear the people, not the other way around. That’s part of what it means to live in a free society.

Politicians who don’t like it are free to seek a less public job. Really.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies

Man Attacks Success

“Over the past decade, this all-volunteer force has been put to the test and has succeeded,” wrote Thomas E. Ricks, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, in Sunday’s Washington Post.

But Ricks argues that this success is “precisely the reason” that now is the “time to get rid of the all-volunteer force. It has been too successful.”

Scrap success! Instead, Ricks raves we should “[resume] conscription . . . to reconnect the people with the armed forces” even though, admittedly, a draft “would cause problems for the military.”

Though on this latter point I catch a whiff of understatement, Ricks has a legitimate concern. “Our relatively small and highly adept military” makes “it all too easy for our nation to go to war,” he wrote, “and to ignore the consequences.” America now takes to war far too easily. Only one man (the president) decides, really, where and when the U.S. goes to war, and he puts it all on the national credit card.

So the answer is giving the Commander-in-Chief more resources? What Ricks risks is giving the president and his back-room boys a blank check on the manpower of our children.

The only effective check (as in check-and-balance) would be, I guess, a vote every four years. Oh, and the presidential term limit.

You are probably thinking: What about Congress? Unfortunately, it’s congressional dereliction of duty that’s got us here in the first place.

Which brings us back to first principles. And here the case is clear: Ricks’s prescription is wrong because conscription is wrong. Dictators conscript “their” subjects; a free society finds voluntary defenders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture too much government

Down With the Capital

My wife and daughter have devoured Suzanne Collins’s trilogy of dystopian novels, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, and they let me accompany them to this weekend’s blockbuster movie of the first in the series.

In the depicted dystopia, a dozen outlying districts have been conquered by the capital. Once a year, for the diversion of sport and, moreover, to assert their life-and-death control over the districts, folks in the capital choose one male and one female teenager from each district — as “tribute” — to go to the capital to fight to the death. The last of the 24 left alive is the “winner.”

The story’s protagonist is Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year old girl whose prowess with bow and arrow helps (illegally) feed her family. When her 12-year old sister gets selected to meet a certain death in the games, Katniss “volunteers” to take her place.

Expressing an independent spirit, Peeta, her district’s male contestant, tells Katniss: “I just keep wishing I could find a way to show them they don’t own me. If I’m going to die, I want to still be me.”

In The Hunger Games, the capital thrives, while folks out in the districts struggle to find enough to eat. In our own country, today, seven of the 25 wealthiest counties are in the Washington, D.C. area. While much of the nation suffers a depressed housing market and high unemployment, that’s not the case in our nation’s capital region.

I liked the movie so much, I’m now reading the book.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Central Planning, Clarified

Last Friday, the President of the United States signed an Executive Order on “National Defense Resources Preparedness,” and it’s gotten no small amount of attention. It seems to commandeer the entire economy — pretty much anything the government needs — in cases of a presidentially (not congressionally) declared “emergency.”

The powers are vast.

The checks and balances, vague.

The whole thing is matter-of-fact, sporting that business-as-usual style we’ve come to know and . . . view suspiciously. A few clauses at the end of the document build up to a sort of finale of weirdness with this clarification: “This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.” It may be about “national security,” but the government has certainly protected itself. Against us.

Reasons for angst? Yes.

But the angst should not be conceived as new.

Economic historian Robert Higgs, writing for The Independent Institute, notes our long history of what he calls “fascist central planning.” Citing his own milestone work Crisis and Leviathan, he fingers warfare as the major rationale behind the centralization of power and industry. Under the Defense Production Act of the Truman Era, “the president has lawful authority to control virtually the whole of the U.S. economy whenever he chooses to do so and states that the national defense requires such a government takeover.”

It’s breathtaking. It’s sweeping. It’s almost ancient.

And it shows how important actual peace is to our freedoms, our property rights, our very lives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom U.S. Constitution

A Serious Mistake

“I have signed this bill,” President Barack Obama said months ago about the National Defense Authorization Act, “despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”

Those provisions include the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial.The Fifth Amendment

Former President George W. Bush had tried that with Jose Padilla; now, courtesy of President Obama’s signature, the policy is codified into law.

“Let me be clear,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told a university audience yesterday, “an operation using lethal force in a foreign country, targeted against a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al Qaeda or associated forces, and who is actively engaged in planning to kill Americans, would be lawful . . .”

Holder goes on to say that “a thorough and careful review” by the government would be required, and that capture must not be “feasible,” and that the hit be “conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles.”

But something is missing. There’s absolutely no check on this awesome power. No due process. No day in court to contest the government’s “thorough and careful review” and avoid an unjustified death by bullet or drone strike.

Moreover, these extraordinary powers, which obliterate all basic legal protections going back to 1215 AD, are for the execution of an undeclared war against a concept, “terrorism,” vague enough to provide a state of permanent war.

Asked about Holder’s position, presidential candidate Ron Paul warned, “If the American people accept that, it’d be a serious mistake.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture

A Nickel’s Worth of Freedom

“If we are going to pay for your contraceptives,” said Rush Limbaugh on air, referring to Ms. Sandra Fluke’s congressional testimony, “and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

In my Townhall column this weekend, “’Tis a Pity He’s a Boor,” I responded with a “No, thanks.” But I did defend what I took to be the point Rush was trying to make: “The issue isn’t about contraceptives, but the right to choose . . . on your own nickel.”

The flak Rush received became an avalanche of advertiser pull-outs from his show. And an apology.

And this all points to something interesting about freedom.

Rush has freedom of speech. He would still have it if every advertiser in the world refused to touch him and he took to blogging. His freedom requires no one to support him. Free speech doesn’t force anyone to listen – or advertise.

Similarly, Ms. Fluke has freedom of association, sexually and otherwise, including her relationships with the university in question and its contracted insurance company. But such freedom doesn’t obligate her school or insurance company or other consumers (through passed-on costs) to pay for her contraceptives. We all have freedom.

The same freedom of contract that allows advertisers to drop Rush’s show also allows businesses to choose employee benefit plans, workers to choose where they will work, and insurance companies to decide what terms they will offer.

Or it should. And in the specific case of contraception coverage did, until the Obama Administration dictated otherwise.

Several nasty words ago, that’s what started this brouhaha.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability general freedom national politics & policies

Against Regimentation

On Monday, Senator Rand Paul got caught in a contretemps with the TSA. He was not in transit to or from his work in Congress, so he couldn’t enlist constitutional protection from being detained.

And detained he was.

Well, the TSA insists that he was not “at any point detained,” but what he says is this:

I was detained by the Transportation Security Administration . . . for not agreeing to a patdown after an irregularity was found in my full body scan. Despite removing my belt, glasses, wallet and shoes, the scanner and TSA also wanted my dignity. I refused.

I showed them the potentially offending part of my body, my leg. They were not interested. They wanted to touch me and to pat me down. I requested to be rescanned. They refused and detained me in a 10-foot-by-10-foot area reserved for potential terrorists.

Both Senator Paul and his father, Congressman Ron Paul, have criticized the TSA. They echo those 19th century classical liberals who had a word for the kind of treatment that modern security-obsessed Rand Paul makes a statementgovernments inflict upon a (too willing) populace: “regimentation.” What’s more regimenting than being forced to wait in lines, holding shoes in hand, emptying the contents of pockets into institutional-gray trays, submitting to a variety of scans and gropes?

There have got to be better ways of securing big ol’ jet airliners. Why not apply greater legal liability to airlines for safety, and let them figure out more customer-friendly methods of keeping terrorists out of cockpits?

Any government security effort ought to focus on spotting and stopping terrorists . . . without sacrificing everyone’s freedom and dignity.

It’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom

Determined to Be Free

Years ago, on a past Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I played a video of his speeches for my children. Upon hearing the words King delivered in a Selma church in 1965, I was overcome with emotion. Who wouldn’t be?

“Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36-years-old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life – some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right.
Martin Luther King, Jr., arrested in Montgomery, 1958
“A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he’s 80. He’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. The cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. . . .

“We’re going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!”

Moving. Inspiring. And common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

This edition of Common Sense originally appeared in January 2011.
Categories
Common Sense general freedom ideological culture

Happy Common Sense Day

Credit George Washington for mobilizing our military to win the Revolutionary War. It was Thomas Paine, though, who did the most to mobilize the people in support of the cause of freedom and independence from Britain. He did it with his stirring pamphlet, Common Sense.

Originally published anonymously on this very date 235 years ago, and addressed to “the Inhabitants of America,” Paine’s polemic circulated to a higher percentage of the American population than any book save the Bible.
Happy Common Sense Day
One reason for its success was Paine’s style, which was much more accessible to the common person than most political writing of that time. In fact, Common Sense was read aloud in public, allowing citizens who lacked letters to engage in the debate over separation from the British empire — some seven months before the Declaration of Independence.

Common Sense attacked both the evils of monarchy, generally, noting that “Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins . . .” and the British monarchy specifically, referring to William the Conqueror as a “French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives.”

Paine’s pamphlet cogently endorsed republican forms of future government. “Society in every state is a blessing,” he wrote, “but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one. . . .”

More than two centuries after its publication, Paine’s message still rings prophetic: “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.”

That remains true. And Paine’s mission remains ours: To resist tyranny, to “prepare an asylum for mankind.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture too much government

Two Decades Later

Twenty years ago yesterday, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his position as head of the Soviet Union. It was a momentous occasion. It was also slightly comic, since he was resigning from a government that didn’t quite exist any longer.

December 25, 1991, was the last day of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

It was the end of an age. The republics that had allied to form the original empire withdrew their support and formed a new union, the Commonwealth of Independent States.

This was one of history’s most momentous developments — or “undevelopments”?

The abandonment of Marxian communism — indeed, of state socialism — marked a turning point in ideological thought, too. Total government control of economic life had been a joke — a miserable, bitter joke — within the Soviet Union during its heyday. The news of its demonstrated unfeasibility shocked the protected sensibilities of the West’s intelligentsia, even eliciting startling confessions from professional socialist rah-rah boys like Robert Heilbroner, who publicly admitted that “Mises was right” about the unworkability of socialism.

For my first 30 years of life, the Cold War with the Soviet Union dominated the newspapers and our imaginations. And then it collapsed. Surprisingly quickly.

As Russians take to the streets to protest Putin’s revealed corruption, and as the United States of America itself buckles under the weight of its own “internal contradictions” — that is, the attempt to live on debt alone — the lesson becomes clear: The mighty can fall.

Radical change becomes possible, even where impregnability was previously assumed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.