Category: general freedom

Under the Law, Not Beneath It

Post author By CS Admin
Post date June 17, 2015
3 Comments on Under the Law, Not Beneath It

Celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta Libertatum this week, I noted how a document intended to serve the very upper classes, by limiting each others’ powers, led to liberty for all.

The Nation, on the other hand, used it to excoriate the Citizens United ruling.

“Magna Carta reminds us that no man is above the law,” wrote John Nichols on Monday. “But it should not be imagined that Magna Carta established democracy, or anything akin to it.”

Of course the Magna Carta did not establish democracy. No one said it did. And neither Britain nor America has pure democracy, if you define it … in Nichols fashion. What is he driving at?

If we respect the notion that the rule of law must apply to all … then surely it must apply to corporations.

And, surely, the best celebration of those premises in the United States must be the extension of the movement to amend the US Constitution to declare that corporations are not people, money is not speech, and citizens and their elected representatives have the authority to organize elections — and systems of governance — where our votes matter more than their dollars.

Sure, Mr. Nichols, corporations shouldn’t be above the law. But they shouldn’t be below it, either. And in America we have rights to free speech and press. Those rights “surely … must apply to corporations.”

Let’s increase the liberating powers of democracy: open up ballot access, de-privilege incumbents, count votes in a non-mere-plurality-wins fashion.

But let’s not throw out equal rights under the law, even in the name of democracy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Citizens United, corporations, magna carta, The Nation

general freedom U.S. Constitution

An 800th “Birthday”

Magna Carta, free speech, collage, photomontage, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, political, politics, King John

Something happened 800 years ago yesterday, something of note.

The much-loathed and legendary — but real-life — King John signed a document with his barons that limited his power. It was later called the “Magna Carta,” the great charter.

Strange history. It was signed, made a big deal of, and then quickly repudiated. But it was never completely dead, possessing a zombie afterlife, and eventually helping give birth to the Enlightenment idea of limited government, as well as to the United States Constitution.

Most of the document is concerned with the king’s relationship with his subordinate (and insubordinate) barons. There’s a lot of power-wrangling in it, it’s all about divvying up prerogatives and responsibilities and taxes and fees. But it does contain a few passages of note (I’ve listed them on my “Today in Freedom” feature, in the past, and revive one for today’s).

My friend Sheldon Richman quotes scholar John Millar (1735 – 1801), one of Adam Smith’s most illustrious students, to put the document in its best perspective: “A great tyrant on the one side, and a set of petty tyrants on the other, seem to have divided the kingdom … who, by limiting the authority of each other over their dependents, produced a reciprocal diminution of their power.”

They were selfish men, Millar notes, not much concerned with ordinary folk, “But though the freedom of the common people was not intended in those charters, it was eventually secured to them.…”

Britain and then America stumbled onto liberty — a general and shared freedom — by the jealousy of competing powers.

We, the people, win when our “rulers” are divided, not united.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags freedom, kings, liberty, magna carta, power

folly general freedom nannyism

A Spring in Their Step?

The “Free State” — Maryland — just got a little freer.

Deborah Ramelmeier, Social Services Administration head honcho, has laid forth from her mighty public perch in Maryland’s Department of Human Resources an official directive to the state’s Child Protective Services (CPS).

She finally addressed the issues in the Meitiv case.

You’ll recall that Danielle and Alexander Meitiv allowed their 10-year old son and 6‑year old daughter to walk home together, without a parent or guardian or attorney present, from a public park a mile away. Silver Spring police snatched the two children off the street last December and so began a Maryland CPS investigation for neglect.

In April, the Meitiv kids were again caught flagrantly walking home from a park. This time they were held for more than five hours by police, then CPS, before their frantic parents were informed and the family reunited.

In the midst of threats, accusations, and fears, the CPS neglected to do the one sensible thing you’d expect: articulate a policy position defining just when or how or even if ever children are allowed out in public without constant and direct adult supervision.

That smidgen of sanity came last week, in Ms. Ramelmeier’s otherwise boring, bureaucratic 23-page directive. “Children playing outside or walking unsupervised does not meet the criteria for a CPS response absent specific information supporting the conclusion that the child has been harmed or is at substantial risk of harm if they continue to be unsupervised.”

Shazam! Just like that, “playing outside” and “walking unsupervised” are once again legal.

The children won’t be arrested! And their parents won’t be investigated or threatened with losing their little ones!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags child, children, CPS, law, police

general freedom

Free Brazil

Kim Kataguiri — a founder and the most prominent public face of the Free Brazil Movement, which recently led millions in protest against high inflation, high taxes, and economy-crippling cronyism — is an unusual man.

First, there’s his age: 19.

Second, there’s his background — atypical but hardly unique, given the country’s substantial Japanese-Brazilian minority.

Third and most important, there’s the fact that he’s influenced by the ideas of free-market thinkers like Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman, ideas communicated online by Brazilian and American think tanks. In consequence, Kataguiri’s popular, social-media-conveyed critique of Dilma Rousseff’s tax-happy socialist government is openly liberal in perspective.

“Liberal,” of course, as in “having something to do with freedom and responsibility.” Classical liberal. Libertarian. Not warmed-over socialist-leaning liberal, as in America’s Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Do his free-market ideas and those of other young Free Brazil leaders mean that most Brazilians inspired by the Free Brazil Movement are just as principled? No; they may just be angry at the destruction wrought by an openly socialist government. Consistency may be the furthest thing from their minds.

But they do seem open to a new, positive alternative.

Kataguiri is perhaps overly optimistic, predicting that “in the next decade or two, most of our society will not only understand classical liberalism, but defend it too.”

But I like optimism. Especially since, whether you call it “classical liberalism,” libertarianism, or “small-government conservatism,” freedom isn’t exactly winning here on our fertile soil.

Still, I invite Kataguiri to drop by the United States when he has a chance … and do what he can to convert us to classical liberalism as well.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Brazil, classical liberalism, freedom, Kim Kataguiri, liberalism, libertarian, Milton Friedman

ballot access general freedom national politics & policies

The Duopoly Rules

As Americans brace themselves for another presidential campaign, USA Today’s editors hazard that the “configuration” of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) “certainly creates an appearance of a political duopoly designed to limit independent voices.”

In 1987, after the League of Women Voters displeased the two major parties, the duopoly’s respective chairmen cooked up the CPD. Both men indicated that including non-R-or‑D candidates was not part of the plan.

Thirteen years later, to keep the CPD’s tax-exempt status, the CPD established a “non-partisan” rule to “fix” an opportunity for minor parties: candidates must garner 15 percent support in the polls for inclusion in the debates.

Fast forward to today, and we witness a new group pushing the CPD to drop that requirement. Change the Rule wants one third-party nominee to be included, provided that candidate is on enough state ballots to mathematically have a chance to win the presidency.

“A third person in the general-election debates would make it harder for the major-party candidates to stick to talking points and platitudes,” agrees USA Today. But the newspaper worries about “unintended consequences,” that rather than the “centrist” they want in the debates, a new system might produce someone “on the far left or far right.”

Dear Editors, the election process ought not be designed to produce a certain pre-arranged ideological outcome.

Establishing a fair system entails not limiting voter choice ahead of time. Voters should get to hear from every candidate on enough ballots to be elected president.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, debates, democracy

folly general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Political Theatrics

Our suspicions have been proved: the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) doesn’t secure much of anything; it is mere “security theater.”

After revelations that TSA screeners failed to find weapons and other deadly contraband in 96 percent of tests, David A. Graham, writing for The Atlantic, asked “what kind of theater this is.… A period drama, satirizing the 2000s? Vaudeville farce?”

Easy answer: the genre is “statism.”

Statism is the worship of government, or the reliance upon government to do many more than a few tasks. It is very old.

The ancient states arose from conquest, developing as a way to milk the masses for the benefit of the few. That’s what states traditionally do: use force to move wealth from one group to another.

Along the way, the states did do some good. Amidst all their horrors.

But mostly rulers just leveraged myth and bluster to cover crimes.

In more recent times, in this great country, the idea arose that the state should be limited to a few necessary jobs, tightly controlled by the people so that government might actually defend rights, not abridge them.

But this revolutionary democratic-republican ideology did not alter the basic nature of reality, turning the sow’s purse of the conquerors’ art into the gold of the Public Interest.

Without our vigilance, government always reverts back to its roots.

The TSA is simply the latest myth-and-bluster-backed scam aiding the ludicrous notion that government is all-powerful … while providing only faux security. Get rid of it; let its people go. Then watch airlines come up with more effective, less intrusive, more passenger-friendly security systems.

Want theater? Try “vigilance theater.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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