Category: ideological culture

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free trade & free markets ideological culture

A Briefing for the President

Say we have evidence that entrepreneurs can build roads, railroads, and other means of transport even without government-spewed largesse and macro-mismanagement.

Would President Obama tell us?

Considering the man’s wonted denigration of individual achievement, probably not. Why should mere track records put a damper on his lust to conclude that social cooperation as such, especially as shoved and molded by government, somehow renders individual achievement less pivotal or praiseworthy? “You didn’t build that,” not all by your little lonesome, the Discourager-in-Chief says of anyone too proud of personal accomplishment; government’s always been there to help, however hinderingly.

Turns out, though, that as historians Larry Shweikart and Burton Folsom detail in a recent article, we do “build that,” even roads, when allowed to. Nothing about getting from here to there is intrinsically gotta-be-made-by-government.

The authors observe that auto makers put cars in “almost every garage” long before the 1956 Highways Act. They “began building roads privately long before [governments] got involved.” Businessmen also helped build the first transcontinental highway in 1913.

Before the Civil War, railroads were built and financed privately. When government decided to push for transcontinental railroads, the only continent-spanning railroad to be consistently profitable was the only one not scooping federal stimulo-funding: James J. Hill’s Great Northern.

What about, earlier, Robert Fulton’s steamboat? Was the steamboat able to ride the rivers even before subsidies for canals?

Must airports be government-owned?

Read the whole thing.

You too, Mr. President. It is, after all, a brief brief. But if you are looking for longer accounts, complete with footnotes and citations of primary documents, they are available, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

A Very American Turn

Is there a wisdom emanating from the great mass of Americans — a common sense?

A new USA Today/Bipartisan Policy Center poll found that Americans still possess a strong civic-mindedness, but are souring on government and politics: “Americans by more than 2-1 say the best way to make positive changes in society is through volunteer organizations and charities, not by being active in government.” This is even more true of younger people than older folks, like me.

And yet, despite the distaste increasing numbers of Americans have towards their governments, they aren’t turning against service. They’re just switching from the realm of the State to the realm of communities and non-profits.

This seems entirely rational, a welcome development. Rational, in that, yes, of course today’s big government politics is poisonous. And government doesn’t work the way people dream it might. It’s not magic. And there are sharp diminishing returns. That’s why the political realm works best when distinctly constrained.

That is, the best governments govern least, when limitations — constitutional checks and balances, a rule of law, term limits, etc. — are placed upon its operations.

Now, there’s no real magic in the non-profit sector, either. It’s not as easy to give effectively as it is garner donations from the sympathetic. But, more good news, the charitable sector may be on the brink of a major revolution, too.

While hordes of well-meaning folks turning off of politics may cede ground to the politically unsound, better, younger, and more enthusiastic (and even ambitious) folks entering the voluntary sector has to be a good thing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture too much government

Progressives’ Progress

Want to understand a political movement? Distinguish between its early proponents and its later followers. The thinking and rhetoric change over time.

Take Progressivism. It started out as an intellectual movement. Its leading lights were Americans who had studied in foreign colleges and universities. They brought back European ideas of an aggrandized state to counteract American notions of limited government.

Though I disagree with their notions almost totally (with interesting exceptions), it’s worth noting that they thought they were “scientific,” and would sometimes even encourage an experimental attitude towards public policy: Devise new programs, test them, chuck them when they don’t work.

Modern “progressives” don’t seem to sport that “testing” idea any longer.

I just received an email from BarackObama.com, which was complaining about the Speaker of the House, who — on TV, of all things! — said that “Congress ‘should not be judged on how many new laws we create,’ but rather on ‘how many laws . . . we repeal.’” My BO correspondent found this “embarrassing”:

We elected our members of Congress to work on the issues we care about: creating jobs, fixing our immigration system, fighting climate change, and passing laws to reduce gun violence.

We didn’t put them in office to sit there and wind back the clock.

Notice the assumption here: All the laws on the books are good, serving the common good; none are worthy of repeal.

Doesn’t seem like an assumption an early Progressive thinker would have made. But for too many of today’s progressives, progress apparently consists in accumulating regulations, rules, prohibitions, and tax programs as if each one were a pearl of great price.

Progress is government growth? That defies common sense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture insider corruption national politics & policies

Non-Reciprocity

There’s a basic rule that folks who seek power tend to forget and those in power flout outright: the principles we foist on others must apply also to ourselves.

Notoriously, Congress piles regulation over regulation upon the American people, but absolves itself from those very same laws. This became an issue, recently, when our moral exemplars on Capitol Hill began to speak loftily for a higher minimum wage and against modern internship programs.

“A new study,” Bill McMorris wrote last month, “found that 97 percent of lawmakers backing the minimum wage are relying on unpaid interns to help get the bill passed.” McMorris used the H-word in his title, as have many similar reports before him: hypocrites.

The program requirements of the Democrats’ “ObamaCare” have proven to be more burdensome than Nancy Pelosi promised. So President Obama now declares, unilaterally, to postpone applying the employer mandate in the law. Consider, too, the many waivers granted to other groups for various rules and regulations rules. None of this was done to better implement a carefully thought-out policy, but not to aggrieve certain influential groups.

And here we get to the heart of today’s weakness on principles.

You see, it’s not individuals who matter to our leaders, it’s powerful groups . . . groups that fund or swing re-elections.

And that’s the principal reason government policy works at cross-purposes, to our general detriment. Instead of insisting on broad rules that apply to all, our leaders pit group against group, favoring one, then another, then later still another.

Madness for us; method for them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture nannyism

Forced Visits

When I’m ancient and stuck in a nursing home, I’d like my children to visit me.

But would I want them to visit only because they’re being forced to? So they resent every minute subtracted from something they’d rather be doing? No.

While I don’t want that kind of world, Barry Davis seems to. Davis, a New York Times reader, says that he and his friends don’t hear from their kids as much as they’d like.

He praises a new Chinese law ordering children to visit aging parents. Nothing he has seen “in recent times so manifests our common humanity” as this facile compulsion. “We need Congress to pass an American version of the ‘Protection of Rights and Interests of Elderly People’. . . .”

“We,” kemosabe?

I’m in favor of children, however old themselves, visiting their aging parents. I’m also in favor of a free society in which everyone respects the rights and sovereignty of others — including those of children who have left the nest and now live as independent adults. In such a society, relationships are voluntary, whether we’re exchanging money and goods or time and attention. Persons respect the fact that we each have our own lives and priorities. We deal with each other because we want to; we’re not outlaws if we don’t.

That’s a basis for good will. Things are different if every time we interact with another person, it’s at the point of gun, with every participant’s actual judgments and desires treated as irrelevant.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

We the Congress

Grumpy. Nervous. Fearful.

That’s not how members of Congress look in TV interviews.

But if their attitudes matched their job approval ratings that’s how they should look, right?

A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that a mere 7 percent of likely U.S. voters “think Congress is doing a good or excellent job.” The national telephone survey shows 65 percent of American voters marking Congress as doing a poor job. Real Clear Politics, averaging out the polling of a number of different researchers, asking slightly different questions, places the job approval by Congress at 13.6 percent, with disapproval at a whopping 78 percent.

And yet, Congress remains unfazed.

A joint study by the Congressional Management Foundation and the Society for Human Resource Management, “Life in Congress: The Member Perspective,” shows how unfazed folks in Congress are.  We learn how these public servants spend their time, how they prioritize their activities, what they see as their challenges, and, indeed, how they feel about their job performance.

They think they’re doing a bang-up job.

So why the differing evaluations? The report hands us the general view of the membership: Congress blames the media — because of the media, We, the People, misperceive what Congress does.

Another possible explanation, not aired by the report, goes like this: Congress and the citizenry have radically different views of what “doing a good job” is, and these differences may be the result of that most ancient of class divides, between the rulers and the ruled.

We modern folk tell ourselves that this ancient divide is passé, in a democracy. Not possible. “We are the government.”

But we certainly aren’t Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

A Little More

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt” goes the old saying. It’s a message completely unappreciated by the folks producing MSNBC’s Lean Forward spots, featuring various network stars spouting lame political talking points.

Go figure — in place of paid advertisements from real customers, the propaganda vignettes air frequently.

Months ago, I took issue with MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry for saying in one spot that “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”Melissa Harris-Perry

She was arguing for higher taxes so government can spend more money on education. I was anxious we not replace Mommy and Daddy with Big Brother.

Harris-Perry is back for Round Two.

“Americans will always want some level of inequality,” she informs us, “because it’s a representation of a meritocracy.” Then the Tulane professor reassuringly adds, “People who work hard and sacrifice and save their money and make major contributions: we think that they should earn a little more. And they should have more resources. And that’s fine.”

No problem. You want to invent amazing new technology, develop life-saving drugs, create inspiring art, produce incredible abundance? Fine. For your “work” and “sacrifice” and frugality and “contributions” Melissa Harris-Perry is willing to permit you to have, well, “a little more.”

Emphasis on “little.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment education and schooling ideological culture Second Amendment rights

Wear NRA T-shirt, Go to Jail

In April, eighth-grader Jared Marcum was arrested for refusing to change a T-shirt with the National Rifle Association logo, a picture of a rifle, and the words “Protect Your Right.” The 14-year-old now faces a possible $500 fine . . . and up to a year in prison.

Jared had bean wearing the shirt in the cafeteria when a teacher demanded he either change it or reverse it. He refused and was sent to “the office,” where he again refused. And then a police officer was called in.

According to press accounts, when Jared was sent to the principal’s office, he went. Doesn’t sound like he posed a threat to anybody. Why was the cop called in?

Jared did nothing to “obstruct” the officer — the charge that may send him to prison — except reportedly continue talking when asked to stop. If so, sounds like poor judgment, given the power over us that police have. Maybe it would be good for Jared not to remain 14 years old indefinitely. He will probably grow older even if not sent to prison, however.

What the whole controversy comes down to is this: The kid peaceably displayed a pro-rights sentiment which a particular teacher happened to dislike. Logan County Schools’ dress code doesn’t prohibit references to the Bill of Rights — indeed, it doesn’t prohibit messages on clothing unless they contain “profanity, violence, discriminatory messages or sexually suggestive phrases.”

One hopes that the school doesn’t regard a defense of the Second Amendment as “violent,”  and therefore worthy of prohibition.

Nor does wearing a pro-NRA shirt deserve the threat of a year in prison.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

The L, You Say

With recent scandals, public trust in leaders of both major parties continues to droop ever lower. So much so that people are taking more about libertarians. Consider Chris Cillizza’s June 9 effort for Washington Post’s The Fix, “Libertarianism is in vogue. Again.”

Is he right? I hope so.

Amidst the current scandals, the reason to say this L word, and not the C word of “conservatism,” is that, deep down, we know that conservatives in power tend to support the kind of spy program that now dominates the headlines. Just like the Obama administration. Those moved mainly by the news of current scandals will perhaps cast their eyes and ears to more consistent critics.

Cillizza points to two other factors, though: legal marijuana and gay marriage, support for both being extraordinarily high amongst young folks, and both quite compatible with libertarian ideas, to say the least.

He also points out the successful political “failures” of Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, and the cautious Sen. Rand Paul, who, Cillizza says,

has been careful to avoid being labeled as a flat-out libertarian. . . . Instead, Rand Paul has sought to create a sort of Republicanism with libertarian principles that fits more comfortably within the bounds of the GOP.

Cillizza concludes with a suggestion: “for a party badly in need of finding new voters open to its message, embracing libertarianism — at least in part — might not be a bad avenue to explore.”

It would actually be an old idea, familiar to Goldwater and Reagan supporters.

Is that in vogue, yet? Again?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people

Invasion of the Wrong-Lesson Snatchers

A seeming lone gun nut sends threatening, ricin-laced letters to New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and U.S. President Barack Obama.

“What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you” is a typical line. “. . . Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional God given right.”

Hmm. Perhaps one difference between the letter-sender and most Americans who support the right to bear arms is that the latter would never prepare threatening poison-laced letters?

That’s merely common sense, though; and some editorialists and other opinion-lock-and-loaders lurched to another “obvious” conclusion. Clearly, they intimated, we have a gun nut allied in his nuttiness with Americans who also cite the Second Amendment provided by the gun-nut Founding Fathers.

Guilt by association is a fallacy in any case. But there were at least two motives for writing such a letter. One, to assert a right to bear arms in so wacky and threatening a way that, presumably unbeknownst to one’s wacky self, one proves that one should be allowed nowhere near guns. Two, to frame an estranged, pro-gun-rights husband.

Shannon Richardson, an actress best known for playing a zombie on TV, told the FBI that her pro-gun-rights husband was probably the culprit. But mounting evidence soon pointed to her, not her husband. Uh oh . . .

My conclusion? Many opinion-bearers should be a little more thoughtful and a little less zombie-like when taking ideological aim.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.