Category: general freedom

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Tea & Tyranny

We were not invited. Instead, the presence of 27 of the world’s “Sovereign Monarchs” was properly and politely requested for a lunch last week with one Liz Windsor, in celebration of her 50th year on England’s throne.

Apparently, the Queen didn’t want to spend her Diamond Jubilee hanging out with the 99 percent. Or even the 99 percent of the 1 percent. After all, it’s her party (albeit financed by the common man), and she’ll twist and shout with her fellow blue-​blood royals if she wants to. But, while nice ol’ Liz was serving a sophisticated supper to kings, queens, sheiks, emirs, sultans, emperors and empresses, there were detractors.Menu for the big bash

“Inviting these blood-​soaked dictators brings shame to the monarchy and tarnishes the Diamond Jubilee celebrations,” declared human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, pointing to tyrants attending from Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Swaziland.

He missed a few. Why not add King Mohammed VI of Morocco, who still has the power to veto most government decisions, or Sultan Qaboos of Oman, who personally makes all the key decisions in his country?

What level of despotism is just too much? Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s role may be largely symbolic, but citizens remain subject to arrest for any insult to the king.

Granted, most of the remaining monarchs hold their positions of privilege and pomp with little circumstance. They are not the dictators of old, brutalizing the people at whim.

Progress, I guess.

But why continue even the trappings of monarchy? And why dine with the real thing?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.