Category: general freedom

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies

The War on Terror Lumbers On

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up himself and 277 other people on Flight 253 to Detroit Christmas Day. Fellow passengers subdued and disarmed him.

Lessons? Start with the obvious: There are still terrorists in other countries who want to hurt us. 

Some will say that we must beef up security. But consider: America’s security state, which has been in alleged high gear (or some bright color) since 2001, has already been beefed up. And yet, once again, this security broke down.

It could be that preventing violence is just not that easy to do. If you have determined enemies who spring up in unexpected quarters, it’s really hard for government to stop them.

Herbert Spencer, a 19th century sociologist, explained it this way: “The law-​made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.”

We cannot expect government to always foresee dangers. We cannot even rely on government to transmit warnings of a specific terrorist from one department to another, and do something about it.

I’m not saying we should expect nothing of government. Just don’t expect too much.

All hope is not lost, however. We have each other. From the heroism of

Flight 93 on 9.11 to this Christmas Day incident, passengers have shown they’re not powerless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

China’s Not-​so-​Great Wall

The Chinese government has been tightening its cyber-​noose. Its officials fear  the ideas that can proliferate so easily on the Internet. So they’re making it ever harder for citizens to use the Net — even to visit nonpolitical websites.

Multiple-​choice question: The new restrictions mean that Web surfers will have a harder time a) viewing pornography; b) watching streaming TV shows; c) starting an Internet-​based business or personal web site; d) criticizing the Chinese government; or e) all of the above? 

The answer is “all of the above.”

This year, China has blocked Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and many other sites. The latest round of restrictions has resulted in the shutdown of some 700 homegrown sites. Chinese dictocrats talk about combating pornography or piracy to justify restrictions that have a much wider scope. But they also freely admit their eagerness to block the flow of ideas they call “bad,” which is to say, inconvenient to themselves. China’s public security minister complains that the Internet “has become an important avenue” for “anti-​China” forces.

Beijing can’t stamp out the Internet altogether. But it can certainly keep cooking up new ways to boil it down to an easier-​to-​control (or comprehend) size. 

Chinese citizens who are determined to keep resisting the tyrants need more and better technology to circumvent the firewalls, and to protect their own anonymity and privacy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom

A Deadly Law

Suppose I donated bone marrow to help save someone’s life … and you, to encourage people like me to step forward, offered college scholarships for such donations.

Most folks would applaud us. But not the federal government. It would charge us with a felony and send us to prison for up to five years.

The fear that people might sell their non-​renewable organs — such as kidneys — for money, led Congress to pass The National Organ Transplant Act in 1984. The act also makes it illegal to compensate someone for donating bone marrow — which is renewable. 

Thousands of Americans have rare and potentially fatal blood diseases requiring bone marrow transplants, often from a stranger. Every year thousands die because they can’t find donors. 

The folks at MoreMarrowDonors​.org want to recruit more donors through scholarships and financial incentives. Makes sense. But by law they can’t.

Doreen Flynn has three daughters with a blood disease. To fight their deadly disease, she is stepping forward to fight this deadly law that blocks their treatment. 

Flynn and MoreMarrowDonors​.org, represented by the Institute for Justice, have sued the U.S. Attorney General to overturn the ban on compensating bone marrow donors. The case is Flynn v. Holder.

Attorney Jeff Rowes put it plainly: “The bottom line is that throwing people in prison for trying to save lives isn’t just wrong; it’s unconstitutional.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Wait a Minaret!

In a national referendum, the Swiss just voted to ban the construction of any new minarets in the country.

Minarets are the onion-​shaped crowned spires of Islamic mosques, from which Muslims are called to prayer five times each day.

At MarginalRevolution​.com, economist Tyler Cowen’s first thought on the Swiss vote was, “Sooner or later an open referendum process will get even a very smart, well-​educated country into trouble.”

Cowen doesn’t elaborate on what he means by “open.” But he does raise an important distinction between freedom and democracy.

I’m a huge fan of voter initiative and referendum, but a bigger fan of freedom of religion. Freedom for the individual must come first — no dictator has a right to deny it. 

Nor does a revolutionary tribunal. 

Neither does the Congress or a state legislature or city council. Or even a solid majority of voters in a referendum.

But Cowen misses something, too. The problem in Switzerland isn’t really their initiative and referendum. Legislators make mistakes, too … as do, of course, authoritarian regimes. We generally have far less to fear from government under such voter control.

In fact, though I deplore this vote, the ability of Swiss citizens to directly check the power of their government has helped make it one of the best places in the world to live. That is, one of the freest.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Personal Liberty Allowance

In a time of expanding surveillance and shrinking liberty, the citizens of Great Britain are now threatened with yet another massive assault on their rights and dignity.

A certain Lord Smith of Finsbury wants the government to lord it over Her Majesty’s subjects even more obnoxiously by slapping them with a “personal carbon allowance.”

This carbon allowance would be enforced by giving everybody a personal ID number. Britons would have to supply the number whenever they buy anything, from gas to airline tickets, affecting their carbon output. Presumably, vendors would check a customer’s newest proposed purchase against some database. Only so many logs you could toss on the fire and then you’re out of luck, unless you buy more carbon credits.

The proposal is vicious in itself. But the potential for “abuse” of such an abusive protocol is also massive. In an age of rampant credit card fraud and identity theft, how hard would it be for a sales clerk in the proposed regime who has used up his own quota to “borrow” somebody else’s carbon-​permission ID number? 

If the British government wields this latest Orwellian bludgeon and the citizens don’t rebel, they’ll accept anything. We Americans may shake our heads in disbelief, but we’re hardly immune to such eco-​totalitarian trends. 

It can happen here. After all, Lord Smith’s proposal merely takes the obsession over carbon emissions to its logical — and absurd — conclusion.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom

Tough Medicine, Tough Luck

Don’t get sick in Union, Missouri. Not if you need Sudafed in a hurry.

Union is the second city in the nation to require a prescription for sales of medicine containing pseudoephedrine. This is an active ingredient in Sudafed, a drug that good-​hearted and responsible people might take to relieve nasal congestion.

However, pseudoephedrine can also be used to make methamphetamine, a very popular and very strong (and very illegal) psychoactive drug.

The reasoning seems to be that if something used in a good thing can also be used in a bad thing, you can’t trust people to use the good thing without erecting blocks to said usage. 

If applied consistently, such a regulatory principle would mean you’d have to get a prescription for 80 percent of the stuff in your home. Did you know that if you gargle with detergent, it can be injurious to your health? No wonder you need a doctor’s prescription.

Over at the Show-​Me Institute’s blog, Sarah Brodsky notes that when sufferers have no good alternative to Sudafed, they must call in sick, “find time to go to the doctor’s office … or go to work unmedicated.” She adds that unmedicated allergy sufferers aren’t exactly at their best.

But hey. The important thing is politicians pretending to do good by making it harder for us to do good for ourselves. Right?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability general freedom

Neither Left Nor Right

Sometimes you just have to scratch your head. 

Nathan Koppel, in an article at the Wall Street Journal’s online site, finds it odd that a former Bush administration attorney is now in private practice arguing against a prosecutor who fabricated evidence in a murder suit. A similar piece at law​.com, by Tony Mauro, proclaims that, “To Build Practice, Ex-​Bush [Solicitor General] Embraces Liberal Clients.”

Now, I’m not exactly a conservative, but I make common cause with conservatives all the time. Many of my best friends are conservative, and so are some of my best ideas. So I ask you: Since when is defending a wrongfully convicted man against a lying, unjust prosecutor any more “liberal” than “conservative”?

Does conservatism really mean letting governments cook up evidence to throw innocents into prison?

No.

And yet both of these writers characterized former Solicitor General Paul Clement as somehow liberal and un-​conservative for “embracing” — yes — “liberal clients.” 

Well, a hug was involved. But if a lawyer ably defended you against a malign, immoral agent of the state, mightn’t you offer a hug?

Embraces aside, the issue at hand is neither conservative nor liberal. Americans — of any party — oppose injustice. Right?

Or: left?

This is not a matter of left-​right disagreement. Or party politics. Or, even, America vs. other nations. It’s simple justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Wait Until Next Year

Enjoy the Major League Baseball playoffs. Me? I’ll be crying in my beer. Except that I don’t even drink beer … it messes with my sinuses.

I had very high hopes that the Detroit Tigers would make it to the playoffs, perchance to the World Series. In first place in the Central Division throughout June, July, August and September, the Tigers tied for first at season’s end with the Minnesota Twins. So after 162 games, it took one more to anoint the division champion. That 163rd game went back and forth for twelve innings. But we lost.

Boo and hoo. Not everyone can be a winner. Except, maybe, in another sense.

The corporate-​government complex that has taken over baseball and most of professional sports has milked billions from taxpayers. Everyone pays for stadiums even as players and owners rake in extraordinary rewards.

We could all win if this subsidy system were stopped. The fans, especially, could rejoice, savoring in good conscience the game’s important lessons: The ethic of always working your very hardest, doing your best, never giving up.

It’s entertainment and solid lessons about life that I can share, even now, with my kids. This summer we had the opportunity to travel to Detroit to see one game. And then, sitting on our couch, we watched on TV until the final pitch, hooping and hollering enough to make my wife shake her head.

After the game, we complained about missed calls and blind umpires, reminding ourselves that there’s always next year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Petition Police

It’s a dangerous world. You never know when someone may be out there … petitioning their government? 

In the past few months, citizens circulating petitions for an anti-​tax referendum have hit Oregon streets. And with those citizens trailed a team of investigators. The Secretary of State had hired them, paying with funds provided courtesy of state legislators — the same politicians who passed the tax increases petitioners are seeking to block. 

The surveillance proved almost as amusing as it is frightening. For four-​fifths of the time investigators put in — at $40 to $70 an hour — they couldn’t even locate petition circulators to commence their stakeouts. 

One government agent secretly infiltrated a training seminar held by Americans for Prosperity. The covert op filed this shocking report: “The training was very thorough and was consistent with the training provided by the Elections Division.” 

In the end, investigators found no serious wrongdoing — none of the fraudulent activity that might justify secretive investigations of citizens who just happen to oppose the legislators’ policies. 

Oregon politicians claim such tactics are necessary to “to protect the integrity of our electoral system.” But they’ve completely lost touch with basic democratic principles. Without any evidence a crime has been committed, citizens petitioning their government or engaging in other political pursuits should not be subjected to secret witch-hunts. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom tax policy

Making the IRS Integral to “Health”

If a doctor who is supposed to help you get better keeps stabbing you with a knife instead, it may seem beside the point to focus on any particular wound. The whole stabbing process is wrong.

Democrats in Congress have found a way to duplicate this effect. Their evolving medical reform package is prolific in ways to attack our freedom. 

But remember: Some stab wounds may slice closer to the heart than others.

If the current majority government has its way, in the new healthcare regime we won’t simply be invited to cooperate. There are huge hunks of coercive power built into their system. Force. Not friendly reminders and advertising enticements.

Take a simple provision of their plan: Individuals who decline to sign up for approved medical insurance will be financially penalized. You might be ordered to forfeit 2.5 percent of your income above a certain level. What happens if you refuse to pay this fine? The IRS could swoop in and seize your assets. Eventually, you could end up in jail.

Today, we don’t have much privacy right when it comes to dealings with the IRS. But at least agents refrain from prying into details of our medical coverage. Under the new regime, though, the tax agency would directly monitor your insurance compliance, and give your tax info to health commissars.

Kind of makes you feel sick, doesn’t it?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.