Category: general freedom

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First Amendment rights general freedom

T-shirt Freedom

Electioneering laws that prohibit campaigning at or near polling sites are a bit peculiar. Generally, you’ve got a right to peacefully campaign for your candidate, or party, or reform, so long as you don’t obstruct lawful traffic. But, on the other hand, one doesn’t want to have to run through a gauntlet of mad campaigning activity on the way to vote, even if one technically can navigate a path.

Electioneering law prohibits free speech and association in the cause of assuring access to the ballot box.

But what constitutes “electioneering”?

In the January issue of Reason, Brian Doherty told the story of Tea Party activist Diane Wickberg. She had gone to the polls wearing a “We The People” t-shirt, emblazoning the words “Flagstaff Tea Party — Reclaiming Our Constitution Now.” She got to vote, the poll workers said, only because she was the only voter on the premises. “Coconino County Recorder Candace Owens later warned her that she would not be allowed to vote at a polling station in the county again if she wore the shirt,” Doherty reported.

Wickberg donned the shirt, again, for her next trip to the polls, and was told to cover up, and was scolded never to wear it to any future poll trip. She sued.

And won.

The county has agreed to implement objective standards, re-train their poll workers, and prohibit t-shirts only if they pitch for a particular candidate, party, or specific issue on the ballot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom

Locavore Focus

As the federal government goes on a spending binge, continuing to tread heavily on the American people —

As the state governments, too, carry on the federal government’s wayward tradition —

As even county and metro governments get out of hand —

Perhaps it’s time to shore up truly local government, which might be a bit more concerned with personal freedom and individual responsibility.

And perhaps Sedgwick, Maine, is as good a place to start as any.

On the first Saturday in March, the folks assembled in the town meeting considered and passed a “Food Sovereignty” law. Designed to oust state and federal busybodies who prohibit farmers from selling whole, raw milk to neighbors, the ordinance states that the townsfolk “have the right to produce, process, sell, purchase and consume local foods thus promoting self-reliance, the preservation of family farms, and local food traditions.” Soon after, the Penobscot township passed a similar ordinance, but the notion failed in Brooksville.

Basically, these are attempts by townships to nullify federal and state regulation. It’s worth remembering such ideas are not exactly unheard of.

Thomas Jefferson advocated state nullification of laws — and historian Tom Woods has recently written a very popular book on the subject. The great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises went further, thinking that liberalism (old-fashioned believing-in-liberty liberalism) entailed the right of secession down to the local level.

So it’s not just locavores and food puritans rejoicing over the victories in Maine. Freedom-lovers can rejoice, too!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Enslaved for Your Own Good

If government is “justified” in forcing you to buy health insurance for your own good — the fabled and perhaps fatal conceit of Obamacare — is it also justified in forcing us to keep up with “good” TV shows?

That’s the nutty notion floated at the satirical site The Onion, which drily reports: “FCC to Fine Americans Who Don’t Keep Up with TV Shows.” Seems too many office hours are spent explaining what happened on some iconic television show a co-worker missed. So the FCC is fining anyone who falls behind.

Hyuk, hyuk, get it? The government would never actually mandate television watching! No, it just makes us pay for boring documentaries on PBS.

Nor would the government ever issue commandments about when you can smoke on private property or even in your own homes. Or . . . would it?

But the government would never declare what you can and can’t eat, or what foods you can and can’t dish out. Right? Unless, that is, you’re a kid in a government-overseen cafeteria or a chef in a New York City restaurant prohibited from serving dishes containing the allegedly alarming ingredient of trans fat.

Well, the government would never require you to dutifully read even so salutary an e-letter as Common Sense, eh? (I’m pretty sure about this one.)

Whether the policy-makers’ notion of “the good” comports with your own doesn’t matter, of course. They’re the government, and they’re here to help.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Swiss Gun Control

In mid-February, Swiss voters rejected stricter gun controls.

No one knows how many guns the Swiss own. There’s no national registration system, yet the Swiss do not suffer a high crime rate, like America does.

But the country does have the highest gun suicide rate in Europe.

The stranger issue, though — and in contrast to most countries around the world — is the number of semi-automatic rifles belonging to the army that soldiers and ex-soldiers store at home. It’s part of the Swiss defense plan. The army can quickly rise up in case of an attack.

The gun control proposal would have required solders’ firearms to be locked up in armories. This, it was argued, was to help reduce suicide rates . . . though a few high-profile shootings also gave impetus to the gun control measure. During the debate much was made of the country’s long history of firearm expertise and unique military heritage.

The measure was defeated in 20 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons, with over 56 percent of voters rejecting it, nationwide.

Does the Swiss system seem strange?

It’s certainly different.

Switzerland still uses conscripts, while the U.S. rightly recruits an all-volunteer military. But their method of decentralized governance, borrowed more than 150 years ago from us and today far more decentralized than ours, is wise not only for the firepower of national defense, but for more bang for the buck in all areas of government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

The Tree of Liberty

For years, Egyptians have called for greater democracy and constitutional limits — like term limits. Now newly appointed Egyptian Vice President Omar Suhleiman dangles the concession of term limits for the president, freedom for the press and an end to the three decades of emergency powers, the better to retain the keys to the nation’s executive washroom and the army. Or so he hopes.

Wisely, both pro-democratic and not-so-democratic opponents aren’t buying it. Opponents fear that such concessions will (if Mubarak or his chosen cronies remain in power) be pulled back later.

At a time more opportune for thuggery.

Still, how to get from a brutally repressive state to a free, constitutional democratic republic? Revolution is a clumsy, dangerous mode of political change.

Jefferson may have written something about “refreshing” the tree of liberty every generation with the blood of patriots, but most of us prefer more peaceful methods.

Lo and behold, they exist: Free elections. Here in America, voters have had the power to change party control of the U.S. Congress several times this decade. Hasn’t gotten us the reforms we want yet, but it’s better than in Egypt.

Plus, in half the states and most cities, citizens can check government and inject reform into the political system through the initiative, referendum and recall.

Egyptians are struggling to get democracy; Americans should use what we’ve got.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies too much government

The Kill Switch for Freedom

The Egyptian government — or perhaps a mysterious inter-dimensional vortex, we’re not sure which — has shut down some 99 percent of the Internet within Egypt as protests mount demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down. Mubarak has ruled autocratically for three decades and the protesters are fed up. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other cyber-tools have played a part in their protest, helping them document Egyptians’ clashes with authorities in word and image.

Declan McCullough, a veteran reporter on privacy and the Internet, observes that the Egyptian government is “conducting a high-profile experiment in what happens when a country with a $500 billion GDP, one that’s home to the pyramids and the Suez Canal, decides that Internet access should be restricted to a trickle.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, U.S. pols like Senator Joseph Lieberman are again pushing a bill to give the president authority to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” in the event of a crisis and shut down major portions of the Internet. For our own good, of course. No judicial review would be necessary before the executive branch could snap the cyber-spine.

Perhaps American politicians who advocate letting the president throw a so-called kill switch for the Internet in case of emergency would deny any tyrannical intentions. And perhaps their motives are indeed pure . . . in some aesthetic sense. But once you give government new authority to exercise destructive control over us, there is, of course, the temptation to use it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

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.

“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.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Bureaucracy

Ted Williams — not the late baseball great, but a formerly homeless, recovering drug and alcohol addict of the same name — received a second chance at life thanks to his announcer-quality voice.

A video displaying his talent — first posted at the Columbus Dispatch site — won him that chance. Soon he was headed to New York to appear on television and visit his mom, whom he had not seen in many years.

But, not so fast. Williams wasn’t allowed to fly.

The hold-up? Government control of airport security protocols.

You see, those who cannot “prove” their identity by displaying a government-issued ID are treated as terrorism suspects.

Sure, sure: It would’ve been easy to confirm that Williams lacked both the intention and the weapons to take over a plane. But that’s not the bureaucratic way.

Jim Harper, an expert on the burgeoning national surveillance state, pointed out on Cato@Liberty that one likely result of a national ID requirement will be to “exclude the indigent from rungs on the ladder [of advancement in life]. . . . A land of freedom doesn’t put paperwork requirements between a man on the rebound and a long-awaited reunion with his mother.”

Homeland Security’s obstreperousness resulted in what turned out to be a minor delay. Thanks to The Today Show and The Early Show, Williams was able to fly the next day.

Great for Williams. For others? Most rungs up from homelessness don’t garner major network support.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Commerce, Compulsion and the Constitution

Every once in a while a judge attends to the Constitution, and freedom lovers cheer wildly as if this were very strange, even wondrous. I guess it is, considered in light of the sweep of human history.

Should the Democrats’ “health care reform” package kick in fully, it would compel people to purchase medical insurance by punishing abstainers with a steep, extra tax. So hurray for Judge Henry Hudson of the federal district court in Richmond, according to whose recent decision the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not empower Congress to point a gun to our heads and force us to buy health insurance.

If the Constitution could be honestly read that way, it would mean that the Founding Fathers had fought to replace British tyranny with an even worse home-grown one. But no, no Founder thought that giving the federal government power to smooth trade relations among the states equaled authorization for universal, compulsory purchase of books, booze, bobby pins — or whatever Congress-Approved “health care” delivery system some future central planners might concoct. Nor does it.

We’re not out of danger yet, obviously. There are many more battles to come, many other provisions of “Obamacare” that have yet to be challenged and quashed in courts or in Congress. But in any tough job, you need to accomplish the first step.

Judge Hudson’s common-sense conclusion sounds like a great first step to me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies

Fat Lot of Good That’ll Do

It sounded like a good idea — Michelle Obama would get involved in a campaign to reduce childhood obesity. Obesity is a problem, yes, and a good cause for the First Lady. But, today, advocacy must always be paired with legislation.

An AP news story provides all you really need to know:

A child nutrition bill on its way to President Barack Obama — and championed by the first lady — gives the government power to limit school bake sales and other fundraisers that health advocates say sometimes replace wholesome meals in the lunchroom.

So now we are to have federal government’s micro-mismanagement reach far beyond the curriculum. The basic idea being . . . give up on parents. Give up on local control. Go, Washington!

Our national nannies took special care with the bill’s language, adding the category of school fundraisers as a special target of the regulations. Apparently, they can’t stand the fact that, on special occasions, mothers and fathers bake up sugary treats to sell, to support special school activities that affect their kids.

I guess they want us to sell broccoli.

Yup. That’ll send the school band to Disneyland.

The whole bill is a bad idea, and not just because Washington can’t tell special occasions from one’s day-in/day-out diet. The very singling out of special fundraisers for federal attention shows just how far into our lives Washington’s busybodies believe they can insert themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.