noun
1. freedom from the influence, control, or determination of another. If a country has independence, it has its own government and is not ruled by any other country.
2. If a country has independence, it has its own government and is not ruled by any other country.
Justice Elena Kagan has a way with words. The conservative majority on the court, she said after two recent rulings, is “weaponizing the First Amendment.”
What a phrase! But what does it mean?
“Conservative groups, borrowing and building on arguments developed by liberals,” explains The New York Times, “have used the First Amendment to justify unlimited campaign spending, discrimination against gay couples and attacks on the regulation of tobacco, pharmaceuticals and guns.”
First: if “liberals” now find themselves not supporting the idea of particular freedoms, or freedom in general, are they really “liberal”?
Second: “borrowing arguments” is what we expect to happen. Logic isn’t partisan.
Third: the point of the Bill of Rights is to “weaponize” the defense of freedom.
Remember, it is freedom of speech; freedom of the press; freedom of association; freedom of exercising one’s religion. The First Amendment weaponizes their defense by disallowing Congress from legislating against them.
Now, it has long been a “problem” that these listed freedoms blend together. They all work together or don’t work at all. And each points to freedom more broadly.
Kagan wants to read freedoms narrowly — though liberals historically have, indeed, read them broadly.
She’s objecting to two recent rulings. The first prohibits states from requiring pregnancy centers to talk up abortion options to their clients. An obvious free speech issue. The second prohibits governments from backing unions in their extraction of “agency fees” from non-members. An incontrovertible issue of freedom of association.
Kagan and The New York Times apparently think that “liberalism” means defending some freedoms in some contexts, but denying freedom in others.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration by Newtown grafitti
I was in Arkansas on Saturday when the downtown streets of Portland, Oregon, “exploded into its worst protest violence of the Trump era,” as The Guardian explains. “More than 150 supporters of the far-right Patriot Prayer group fought pitched street battles with scores of anti-fascist protesters. In total, nine people were arrested.”
Notice that “Patriot Prayer” — a group sponsored by a Republican Senatorial candidate, and which says it stands for free speech — was labeled “far right” while the “anti-fascist protesters” were not called “far left.”
Characteristically, The Guardian vagues it up. “Violence suddenly ‘erupted,’” noted a Romanian YouTuber of the British rag’s evasiveness. “Who started it? We don’t know.”
Well, from the videos I saw it looked like the “anti-fascists” started it. The “patriots” were marching down the street when a young man, with helmet and backpack, and a young women, dressed in black, marshaled antifa mobs towards the legal march, and then stones and bottles were thrown, and explosives, too . . . into the Patriot Prayer rally.
Note: the Patriot Prayer group had filed the paperwork for the march; antifa had not. The Portland police did not protect the licensed marchers, but did revoke their license, telling everyone to disperse (threatening “duress” to the non-compliant) after the violence broke out.
If you did not carefully look at more than one video, you might be confused. Indeed, not all videos showed the crucial break from peace to violence.
So, what other clues might one look for?
In old cowboy movies, whoever ganged up masked, and wore black, were usually the bad guys.
Antifa — thanks for providing the clues: masks, black fighting gear, and Luciferian handsigns.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Had Sara Huckabee Sanders been asked to leave the Washington, DC, Red Hen, rather than the restaurant of that name in Lexington, Virginia, things might’ve turned out a bit different. In the nation’s capitol, it is illegal to discriminate against customers for reasons of political affiliation.
Out in Lexington? Not so much. One can “86” a politico there with impunity, I guess.
A Yelp reviewer defended the restaurateur’s request not to serve President Trump’s Press Secretary. “Thank you for refusing to serve a person who lies to the American people for a living.”
Wait — I thought that is what all Press Secretaries do: present the official lie. Be that as it may, or not, objecting to one Administration and not another implicitly endorses the policies and lies of the 
Administration not censured. And the grounds given in this Red Hen cluckery — that the Trump Administration is racist, etc. — might possess a tad more plausibility had the Obama Administration not engaged in policies startlingly similar to the ones Trump and Sanders are blamed for.
The “right to refuse service to anyone” may be a right retained by the people, but since the Ninth Amendment is a dead letter, and the federal government, at least, does not recognize such rights when the refused parties fall into certain “protected groups,” talking about it at length is probably a waste of time.
While the anti-Trump side of the current political-cultural divide seems resolute in denying a right to refuse to bake specialty cakes for gay couples, refusing to serve standard meals to political enemies is apparently copacetic.
Which can only mean: that democratically elected and appointed government officials are not the right “protected group” — which is odd, isn’t it, when those doing the discriminating call themselves “Democrats”?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
It would be nice if the federal government used its often-abused authority over state and local governments to outlaw various forms of state and local oppression.
In his book Leviathan: The Growth of Local Government and the Erosion of Liberty, Clint Bolick argues that the federal government is not alone in hugely violating individual rights. Eminent domain, asset forfeiture, zoning, and occupational licensing are among the modes of sub-federal assault on the innocent. Even as policymakers in various regions of the land act to stop the worst of these abuses, they proceed unchecked elsewhere.
U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Democrat Elizabeth Warren are the unlikely duo who may interrupt the now-common practice of depriving delinquent borrowers of student loans of their right to earn a living from certain trades. Rubio recently admitted on Twitter that as a Florida lawmaker, he once voted to allow the state “to suspend professional licenses of those who defaulted on student loans. I WAS WRONG. . . . How can they pay back if they can’t work?”
Yes, Rubio was wrong.
Senator Warren, for her part, agrees that the practice is “wrong and counterproductive.”
The bi-partisan duo’s bill would prohibit states from denying driver’s licenses and occupational licenses to borrowers who default on student loans.
I don’t think the legislation goes as far as it should, even in the delimited area of occupational licensing. The absurdities of occupational licensing go way beyond the scope of the proposed remedy.
But it’s a start.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photos by Gage Skidmore and Edward Kimmel
“My students are my kids . . . and I want to be able to protect them just like I would protect my own son,” says the Oho teacher, who participates in a program called FASTER Saves Lives. (“FASTER” stands for Faculty/Administrator Safety Training & Emergency Response.)
Since 2013, FASTER Saves Lives has trained teachers and other school employees to carry and shoot firearms. Although many lawmakers and school officials around the country oppose letting teachers bear arms in the classroom, a growing number sanction the practice.
It makes sense. Is there any better way to prepare for the possibility of having to defend your life and your students’ lives against an armed assailant bent on mass murder? (We can set aside the notion that aspiring murderers will scrupulously respect gun-control laws.)
People do have counterproposals. Congressional candidate Levi Tillman urges arming teachers with pepper spray. Well . . . there are problems, as blogger Tom Knighton elaborates. How do you get close enough to use the pepper spray before the killer squeezes the trigger again? What if he sees you coming?
And suppose you do spray the attacker? He won’t be immediately incapacitated. He may even be unaffected.
Some brave people have stopped a gunman by tackling him in mid-rampage. Great . . . if you have the ability and opportunity to do that.
On the other hand, suppose you’re neither strong nor nimble but can shoot, carry a gun, and shoot back — when the assailant is on the floor, bleeding: no more threat.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
