Category: general freedom

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom responsibility

Heroism for Everybody

self defense, gun, responsibility, terrorism, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Liberty is achieved, when it is achieved, at a price. Vigilance.

And this isn’t just an inspiring political message. It’s practical advice for extraordinary circumstances.

What’s the best thing to do if you meet a mass murderer on a rampage, or a terrorist on his mission? It may not be to merely call 911. As one counterterrorism consultant puts it, “We are conditioned to dial 911 and wait, but, in the case of an active shooter, that does not work.”

This conflict expert, Alon Stivi, went on to explain that “[m]ost casualties occur within the first ten or fifteen minutes, and police response usually is too late.”

And speaking of 911, remember that on 9/11/2001, the most successful anti-terrorist effort was by the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93.

That was heroism. It cost them their lives, but they accomplished something in that they saved lives, too.

Some people don’t like bringing this up for fear of, well, hurting some feelings. But Ari Armstrong has an answer for this:

If we avoid serious discussions about self-defense and survival tactics in cases of intended mass murder out of fear that such discussions are somehow insensitive to victims of past attacks, all we accomplish is to ensure that more people will be murdered in possible future attacks.

There is a reason we should keep ourselves fit, and alert. Who knows when we may be called upon, by circumstance, to defend not only ourselves and our loved ones, but our way of life?

Sure, this “call” is made by the unjust. But we, the just, should answer anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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self defense, gun, responsibility, terrorism, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

 

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folly general freedom too much government

Worth a Crackdown?

Little Free Library, illustration, Common Sense, Paul Jacob

Charming. That is the best word to describe the “Little Free Library” movement.

Haven’t heard of it? It is the practice by which just plain folks share their books by building these little birdhouse-sized free lending libraries that they place in their yards by the curb. Usually, the little “libraries” encourage folks to take a book, bring a book.

Sometimes they advise readers to just take.

It’s the spirit of the public library, only provided privately, and without great pretense. Or expense.

The example in the artwork, above, is from across the country, in the tiny burg of Cathlamet, Washington. A reader sent me the photo. It is obvious: libraries like this are both quaint and useful — encouraging literacy, the activity of reading, and the appreciation of learning.

And yet, local governments across the country are cracking down.

Andrew Collins, writing at the Franklin Center website, points to an excellent Conor Friedersdorf article published early this year in The Atlantic, “The Danger of Being Neighborly Without a Permit.” Both these pieces present how meddlesome, ugly, intrusive, and anti-social local governments can be. Harassing friendly book providers with cease-and-desist letters, fines, and other niggly, invasive spins on zoning and public nuisance laws is just so idiotic it hardly merits much comment. But I agree with Friedersdorf — folks hosting Little Free Libraries are acting in the “venerable tradition” described by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, the cooperative, neighborly culture that made our country great.

Government officials attacking this new, endearing bit of Americana are grand examples of the pettiness that is bringing America down.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Little Free Library, illustration, Common Sense, Paul Jacob

 

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folly general freedom ideological culture

Caliph/f or Nyet

drought, war, Syria, Global Warming, California, illustration

We live in a time when intelligent people expend vital brain power concocting explanations for war that weigh drought as a more significant cause than . . . previous tyranny and warfare.

Yes, the President’s friends and acolytes defend the notion, in all seriousness, that it is unregulated capitalism leading to global warming and Levantine droughts that made Syrians all unruly. This explains everything!

Just blame Islamic State violence on the weather and not on . . . the murderous dictator willing to kill masses of his own people, the intoxicating ideology of jihad, and (definitely not!) on Barack Obama’s Mideast policies.

I emphasized the Syrian dictator’s acts last Sunday. But surely American foreign policy — going back to Bush, at least — destabilized the region, and constitutes a major cause of the violence.

A far greater cause than our car-driving addiction! And coal!

And flatulent cows . . .

Blame shifting is not just a foreign policy vice, though. My Townhall column began not with the nascent Caliphate’s droughts, but California’s. And there’s more than just a few syllables of pronunciation similarity. People are assigning the wrong causes in both regions.

When California’s government-run water system subsidizes almond growing in a near desert, of course there is going to be waste. And yet politicians focus on home water use, scolding folks for taking long showers.

Yet, who sets the price of the water homeowners buy? Who, then, is responsible for the incentives to which consumers react?

The State of California. Suffering no drought of disastrous dictates by politicians in over their heads.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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drought, war, Syria, Global Warming, California, illustration

 

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Common Sense folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers tax policy too much government

Weekend with Bernie: Fairy-Tale “Free”

Bernie Sanders, Free, Fairy Tale, promises, collage, photomontage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, illustration

Bernie Sanders is many a progressive’s fairy-tale candidate.

Well, yeah.

Not “once upon a time,” but today . . .  the federal government’s public debt is in the double-digit trillions. The total debt — consisting also of unfunded/underfunded welfare state “promises” — may be in the triple digits. Still, politicians pat themselves on their backs when they deliver annual deficits under half a trillion per year.

Meanwhile, Senator Sanders, former member of America’s Socialist Party and current caucuser with the Democrats, is running on the “freebie” platform: let’s spend more!

He serves as the pusher of a very old folly: thinking that good things come to us without cost.

But the costs have to be paid.

And will be.

That’s the essence of common-sense wisdom since ancient times. Usually I conjure up an accountant or an economist to explain this, but why not go back to folklore? Folk and fairy tales, along with myths both ancient and modern (remember Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings?), tell us that magic powers come at a price.

And those costs can be killer.

Far-left-of-center magic pretends that not only can Bernie provide “free” stuff for everyone (including those of us in his “hard-working middle class”), but also that the wherewithal for these goodies (college, medicine, food, shelter, meaningful work) can easily come from . . . three pot-of-gold sources: “the rich,” “print more money,” and that least plausible sprinkle of fairy dust, “government efficiency.”

We tell children fairy tales not to make them wish for magic solutions, but to illuminate the logic of responsibility.

Bernie didn’t get that lesson.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bernie Sanders, Free, Fairy Tale, promises, collage, photomontage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, illustration

 

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture

No Reconciliation with Communism

Pope, Castro, Vatican, Cuba, collage, photomontage, illustration, Paul Jacob, James Gill, Common Sense

Pope Francis met with Fidel Castro over the weekend.

It’s not the first time the Bishop of Rome has met with a dictator, in Cuba or elsewhere. But it is the first time this particular pope has done so.

Next stop on this tour? The United States.

The pope’s most pointed words were directed not to the Communist nation but south by southwest, to Colombia, from where hail contestant parties to peace talks (the government versus leftist insurrectionists) now being held in Havana. The pope wishes no breakdown in the talks, urging that the world cannot afford “another failure on the path of peace and reconciliation.”

Pope Francis has been credited with the thawing of cold war relations between the United States and Cuba, and, for his part, praises both parties for the detente, which he has dubbed “an example of reconciliation for the whole world.”

But Cuba remains under tyranny; the people cannot speak freely and are impoverished under the thumb of socialistic regulation. The pope may not be seeing elements of causality here, of teleology, of purpose: Cuba’s poverty is not caused by the American embargo, really, but by a pernicious attachment to outdated ideas of government supremacy over people.

Unfortunately, many of the pope’s most famous remonstrances about capitalism suggest that he may be closer to the Castro brothers’ oppressive Marxist ideology than to a more liberatory approach.

While the pope publicly prays for reconciliation, Americans would be better off if we repudiated reconciliation with destructive ideas that too easily get packaged as “humane” and “Christian” when they are really, and deeply, precisely the opposite.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Pope, Castro, Vatican, Cuba, collage, photomontage, illustration, Paul Jacob, James Gill, Common Sense

 

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Common Sense crime and punishment education and schooling folly general freedom national politics & policies

Another Leaf Out of Gov’t’s Playbook

Zero Tolerance, schools, hysteria

Could government be a suck-hole for intelligence? Could one’s proximity to government reduce one’s IQ?

America’s public (read: government) schools too often serve as Wisdom-Free Zones.

The Ahmed Mohamed story shocked a lot of people. A kid with a clock was mistaken for a terrorist with a bomb and the school and local police threw reason and procedure and everything else out the window. But no one should be shocked. Every week, maybe every day, news creeps out of America’s “common schools” to prove, once again, that its administrators and teachers seem to be deficient in common sense.

When I wrote about Ahmed’s timepiece yesterday, I mentioned several examples of public school hysteria over fictitious, symbolic, or non-existent weapons. Such stories are Old Faithfuls here at Common Sense. But one case I haven’t written about* is the six-month-old tale of the Bedford County, Virginia, lad who was expelled from school for possession of a marijuana leaf.

The police dropped the drug case upon testing the leaf in evidence. It was not Cannabis sativa but Acer palmatum, the Japanese maple leaf, a harmless shrub.

Still, the school stuck to the year-long suspension, wouldn’t let up. Zero tolerance.

Now, the 11-year-old boy had supposedly boasted about having marijuana. And schools do have rules against “look-alike” drugs. I just wonder why the student received zero due process and how we expect youngsters to grow up in a world without even a tidbit of tolerance.

This dysfunction is not racism or fear or Islamophobia, as some claim in the Ahmed case.

It’s just the inflexible witlessness of those with too much unchecked authority.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Coming, as it did, immediately on the heels of the infamous Pop Gun Tart insanity. . . .

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Zero Tolerance, schools, hysteria

 

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Common Sense folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Case Closed . . . But Ticking

Ahmed, clock, terrorism, terrorist, alarm, hysteria, collage, photomontage, illustration, political, chicken little, fear

Irving, Texas, authorities — I use that term loosely — announced yesterday that the case has been closed. Over. Finito. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

What case? That of the 14-year-old clock-maker assumed to be a potential bomb-making/let’s-err-on-the-side-of-panic terrorist.

Perhaps it didn’t help that the youngster had the wrong last name: Mohamed. Or that his family had immigrated from Sudan.

Ahmed loves to tinker. On Monday, he brought one project, a clock, to school hoping to impress his engineering teacher. His teacher mistook the clock for an improvised bomb, and told Ahmed not to show it to anyone. When the clock’s alarm went off later, his English teacher took the clock and told him to pick it up after school.

Later, the principal pulled Ahmed out of class. Five policemen then interrogated the lad, eventually handcuffing and marching him to juvenile detention.

A police spokesman admitted there was never any threat made. And, of course, no bomb. Ahmed’s engineering teacher clearly wasn’t scared. Yet, this 14-year-old was still treated like a . . . terrorist.

Before being released.

Some charge this is a case of obvious bias against this student’s race or religion. Maybe that’s why even Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for the student and why President Obama invited Ahmed to bring his clock to the White House.

Though prejudice may be part of this story, I doubt it’s the main issue. Many students not named Mohamed have been treated similarly — for bringing a butter knife to cut an apple at lunch, or gnawing a PBJ sandwich into the shape of a gun, or (horrors!) “shooting” pointed fingers at classmates.

Public school’s zero-judgment zero-tolerance is equal opportunity insanity.

Not Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Ahmed, clock, terrorism, terrorist, alarm, hysteria, collage, photomontage, illustration, political, chicken little, fear

 

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Trump Blot

Trump Blot, collage, photomontage, Rorshach, inkblot, editorial, political cartoon, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/

I’m almost professionally required to say something nice about Donald Trump — because mainstream media feel professionally required to ridicule him. So here goes: he’s doing us a great service in his presidential run.

Trump’s sort of a bung puller; he’s unstopped the cork of polite political society, and shown the massive voter dissatisfaction by giving more realistic voice to just how stupid government is. “Really stupid!”

But, beyond that, where does he stand? On too many issues, that’s murky. For economist David Henderson, a friend of mine from way back, this shows promise.

Henderson is a free-market economist. He’s not into the whole warfare/big stick bullying that some conservatives channel from the first Progressive president, Teddy Roosevelt. Trump, writes Henderson, stands out, by not having “foreign policy advisers.” Which Henderson regards as “refreshing, given the hawkish views of the vast majority of his Republican competitors.”

Henderson also acknowledges Trump’s downsides, including “Trump’s claim, in 2011, that the U.S. government, having won the war in Iraq, should have taken their oil.” This nationalist plunder idea is evil on its face. And disturbingly retro, harkening back to the days of rapine and pillage.

Understandably, Americans fixate on the man’s “charisma.” Should that make us comfortable? Of Max Weber’s three types of authority (traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal), charismatic is the least predictable, least stable. People will follow too far those they love too much. Or find too entertaining?

Trump serves, for now, as a sort of Rorshach inkblot test. What you see depends on your hopes, fears, or the context of Trump’s candidacy, as you understand it.

For my part, I don’t see an accountable proponent of responsible, limited government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Trump Blot, Rorshach, inkblot, editorial, political cartoon

 

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Common Sense First Amendment rights folly general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall Regulating Protest too much government

Citizen Registration Fee

Ron Calzone, Missouri, citizenship, freedom, lobbyists

It’s not about the ten bucks — or the thousand. An important principle is involved.

Professional lobbyists in Missouri are legally required to submit reports about the corporations, local governments, industries, associations, and special interests for whom they lobby, how much they are paid, and the goodies they bestow upon the politicians they seek to influence. The registration fee is $10.

Problem is, as I revealed at Townhall yesterday, Ron Calzone isn’t a lobbyist. So, naturally enough, he didn’t file.

Calzone is president of Missouri First, a group advocating constitutional governance and mobilizing fellow citizens for an enormous impact on Show-Me State government. He regularly treks to the capitol, while Missouri First helps folks who can’t get to Jefferson City submit testimony online . . . all to weigh in on issues like the Second Amendment, property rights, initiative petition rules, and cronyism.

It’s true that Calzone lobbies every time he speaks to a legislator. But hey: he’s not a lobbyist under the legal definition. Why? Because he earns not a penny. Missouri First doesn’t even have a bank account. And Calzone doesn’t represent various clients as a professional lobbyist would; he represents himself — and those citizens who agree with him.

Despite the letter of the law, last week the Missouri Ethics Commission fined Mr. Calzone $1,000 for not registering as a lobbyist. It also ordered him not to speak to any state legislator until he registers.

Ron Calzone — with the help of the Freedom Center of Missouri and the Center for Competitive Politics — is appealing the case.

And will win in court.

Yet, that an “ethics” agency is harassing a citizen volunteer speaking truth to power . . . speaks volumes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Ron Calzone, Missouri, citizenship, freedom, lobbyists

 

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Weekend with Bernie: Hard Looker?

Weekend with Bernie Sanders, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill

What is a “democratic socialist”?

According to leading presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders, such a socialist “takes a hard look at countries around the world who [sic] have successful records fighting and implementing programs for the middle class and working families.”

I don’t believe him. He shows his cavalier attitude in his next few words: “When you do that you automatically go to countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden . . .”

Competent comparative economics doesn’t simply focus on a few policies one happens to admire and then trumpet them for America. Other countries following Bernie-branded socialist policies are in or headed into the proverbial toilet, i.e. PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain).

The common-on-the-left meme runs like this: “No Other Advanced Country,” which Kevin D. Williamson handily demolishes in a recent article:

If we are to go around the world cherry-picking policies from happy countries, we might pass over French paid-leave laws in favor of the Swiss capital-gains tax (generally 0.00 percent) or the Swiss national minimum wage (there isn’t one), or Finland’s very liberal (in the good sense of that word) education system, or Sweden’s free-trade regime and its financial-regulatory system. We’d have to make radical improvements on our federal balance sheet to get our public debt down to Norwegian levels.

American success has never really been about copycatting Europe. We need to look hard at those who pretend otherwise — like nova Bernie, the rising star of the left, who’s now besting Hillary in polls in New Hampshire and Iowa.

And about “democratic socialism” — extreme redistributionism in a putative republic — Bernie needs to look hard at the worldwide experience . . . not hardly look.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Weekend with Bernie Sanders