Category: individual achievement

Parker and the Pope

Kathleen Parker, Pope Francis, Bernie Sanders, economic fairness

Kathleen Parker is far from my favorite columnist, but her Sunday column comparing Pope Francis and presidential aspirant Sen. Bernie Sanders regarding their shared message on economic fairness and equality of outcomes was well worth the effort.

She treats the men differently. She gives Pope Francis a pass because, as a religious leader, he “wants to raise consciousness about our obligation to the less fortunate,” while bashing Sanders, the politician, who “wants to restructure America’s economic institutions to ensure that money trickles down — mandatorily rather than charitably.”

“Let’s face it, most of us work hard . . . for a paycheck.” So Parker pointedly asks, “As the tax man chisels away at such monetary rewards, where goes the incentive to work hard?”

How persuasive — encouraging actual, real-world achievement — would a Sanders Four Year Plan be?

Addressing the Pope’s harsh words for individualism, Parker argues, “The ‘rampant individualism’ that Francis condemns is precisely what has driven American ingenuity, entrepreneurship and a level of prosperity unmatched in human history.”

Precisely.

In other words, maybe — just maybe — we did build it. Through our own sweat and toil. Individualism is decidedly not big government. And it is not public-private crony capitalism, either.

So, considering that it was America’s laissez–faire-ism that created such great wealth and prosperity, which presidential candidates are promising a return to more robust and vivacious individualism?

Not the ones promising everything. Nor the one promising the “best deal.”

The job of the next heroic leader will be to shovel whole layers of intrusive government out of our way.

Parker seems on board, boasting, “This is common sense.”

Hey, wait a second, Kathleen, that is my line. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Bernie Sanders, equality, fairness, individualism, Kathleen Parker, Pope Francis

general freedom individual achievement U.S. Constitution

The Ruins

Volney, Jefferson, translation, Alien and Sedition Act, John Adams, Ruins of Empires

We have just learned something interesting about the nastiest presidential election in American history.

No, not this year’s. It’s not the nastiest . . . yet.

It is about the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson beat back the Federalist Party and its Alien and Sedition Acts.

The Federalists made much of fears that the freethinking Jefferson would suppress Christianity. Some folks are said to have buried Bibles in their backyards, for safe keeping.

Overkill, sure. Jefferson was quite earnest in his support for religious freedom, as he famously wrote to the Danbury Baptists. (Jefferson garnered overwhelming Baptist support.) But he was a freethinker.

So much so that, in the year leading up to the big race, Jefferson translated all but the last chapters of C.-F. Volney’s The Ruins of Empires. This secret was uncovered recently by Thomas Christian Williams, who found in the Boston archives of the Massachussetts Historical Society many chapters of The Ruins, in English, in Jefferson’s hand. Williams wrote up his discovery in the March 2016 issue of The Skeptic, Michael Shermer’s journal.

The Ruins — once infamous, now almost forgotten — is mostly devoted to advancing a very deep view of the importance of limited government. Only the last few chapters, which Jefferson left to somebody else to translate, engage in a skeptical account of religion.

But note: Jefferson thought enough of Volney’s book to translate it himself, putting his political career at risk.

Oh, it also turns out that the Comte de Volney’s very presence in 1790s’ America served to spark the widespread panic about French spying . . . and thus President John Adams’s Alien Friends and Alien Enemies Acts!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Alien and Sedition Acts, election, history, Thomas Jefferson, Volney

First Amendment rights general freedom individual achievement obituary

A Life Too Short

One lesson from the classic film, It’s a Wonderful Life, is that “Every man’s life touches so many others.”

Every woman’s life does, too.

On Monday, I was stunned and saddened to read in my morning paper that Cornell University President Elizabeth “Beth” Garrett had died, barely a month after being diagnosed with colon cancer, at only 52 years of age.

“Being the first woman president of Cornell, just as I was the first woman provost at U.S.C., puts me in the position of being a role model — not just for young women, but also for men,” she told an interviewer.

While at the University of Southern California, Beth “was the driving force behind the Initiative and Referendum Institute becoming part of USC,” according to my friend, Dane Waters, founder of the Institute.

I met her in the late 1990s. While we certainly were not in full agreement politically, my respect for her intellectual honesty grew and grew. She produced top notch research on the initiative process

And she cared. Years ago, when the Oklahoma Attorney General unsuccessfully sought to persecute myself and two others, Beth Garrett, an Okie native, reached out to lend her moral support.

Reason magazine mourned her passing by calling her “a staunch defender of free speech on campus.”

“There isn’t any idea that ought not to be tested and questioned,” Garrett once told students. “Because that’s how we get closer to the truth. . . . So if you disagree with someone, the answer isn’t to shut them down.”

Beth Garrett lived a wonderful life, leading by example. We’ll miss her.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags ballot initiative, Beth Garrett, first amendment, Initiative Rights, obituaries, obituary

crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture individual achievement judiciary media and media people national politics & policies obituary

Life After Scalia

Antonin Scalia, Justice, Supreme Court, battle, death, Common Sense

President Reagan appointed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to the nation’s highest court in 1986. Scalia served for 29 years before passing away over the weekend at age 79. May he rest in peace.

None of the rest of us will get any.

Why? An often conservative 5-4 majority is gone. The court is now tied, deadlocked, at 4-4.

“With the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia, President Barack Obama will make another nomination to the Supreme Court,” explained an email from the very liberal Democracy for America (I’m on a lot of lists). “It is critically important that President Obama choose a strongly progressive person who can lead the Supreme Court and our country in a new direction.”

That’s Obama’s prerogative, of course. But the president’s nominee must be approved by the United States Senate — controlled 54 to 46 by Republicans.

And guess what?

Almost as fast, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued this statement: “The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”

Now, our Democratic president could negotiate with the Republican Senate majority, come up with a consensus (yeah, right) or compromise choice (watch out).

But don’t hold your breath.

You may also want to plug your ears. There will be shouting. The media will overwhelmingly take Obama’s side — surprise, surprise— and berate Republicans for obstructing.

Republican Senators have a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent to the president’s pick. Unless Mr. Obama’s choice will improve the High Court, those senators should withhold their consent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Congress, obituary, Scalia, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Justice

Accountability general freedom ideological culture individual achievement national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Virus and Host

John McAfee, libertarian, presidential race, president, candidate

Presidential candidate John McAfee is an adventurer. Best known for founding the first successful anti-computer virus company, he has also been shot at in tropical jungles, by men trained by U. S. forces, with American-bought guns. This range of experience makes him the most interesting presidential hopeful, bar none.

His big issue is cyber-security. He thinks Americans have placed themselves in a too-precarious position. As he sees it, the war on terror has served as a grand distraction from the real threat, a prime example of doing foreign policy and national security completely upside-down wrong.

He has a point.

But he’s neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and not long ago he realized that his own Cyber Party didn’t have the oomph to get him on the ballot in enough states.

So he has announced his candidacy for the Libertarian Party nomination.

Why? He’s obviously not a libertarian in any strict capital-L sense. But the septuagenarian insists that he has been a libertarian at heart since before the word entered common use.

This is what the Libertarians get for their most obvious success: obtaining and keeping ballot status in more states for more election cycles than any other “minor party.”

Think of the Libertarian Party as the host, and one-time Republicans like former Congressman Bob Barr and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson — and now McAfee — as viruses, aiming to commandeer the host’s operating system.

Of course, one might also view the LP as a virus attempting to do the same to the federal government.

Shall we root for the viruses, for once?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, John McAfee, libertarian, Libertarian Party, Presidential campaign 2016

free trade & free markets general freedom individual achievement

Falcon 9 Delivers Eleven

SpaceX, Falcon 9, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Space, NASA, Common Sense, illustration

Earlier this week, SpaceX made history. Again.

Back in 2008, the company had launched the Falcon 1 into orbit —a big deal in the Space Age, previously dominated by governments.

Blue Origin, which is the baby of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has been providing Elon Musk’s SpaceX some stiff competition. A few weeks ago, Blue Origin sent up the New Shepard rocket — and returned it to earth vertically.

This week, SpaceX pulled ahead, sending its Falcon 9 up beyond New Shepard’s suborbital heights, putting eleven (count ’em: 11) satellites into orbit . . . and returning to touch down safely onto dry land — on the launch pad — vertically.

Just like we imagined when we (well, some of us oldsters) were young, before we witnessed Mercury and Apollo splashdowns.

Back in 2012, when I wrote about SpaceX — and NASA’s outsourcing of launches — I called it progress. One reader worried about the whole thing, though: “A spy satellite is still a spy satellite even if some telecom conglomerate puts it in space.” He was afraid of privatizing tyranny. That would be bad, but it doesn’t seem to apply to this week’s new satellites . . . unless M2M (machine-to-machine) Internet devices mean something different than what I understand them to be.

In any case, costs have been contained: while NASA’s Space Shuttle was also reusable, it cost about half a billion bucks per launch, which, we’re told, is “about eight times the current cost of a Falcon 9.”

Free enterprise: delivering the goods at a fraction of the cost.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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