Category: Popular

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crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies Popular The Draft

Daughter Draft

draft, registration, conscription, women, war

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” 

For years, the Selective Service System — the friendly folks who bring us the military draft — used the above slogan to portray registering for the draft as a rite of manhood. 

If macho draft registration is now expanded to women, perhaps the slogan will change to: “Men and women have to do what they’re told — equally.” That’s where the issue is headed: to equality. Equality before the law is important, sure — but we don’t want equal servitude. Equal freedom is better.

“It appears that, for the most part, expanding registration for the draft to include women would enhance further the benefits presently associated with the Selective Service System,” stated a Pentagon report to Congress recommending the mandatory registration of women.

What benefits are those?

Spending $25 million each year on a Washington bureaucracy to keep a woefully inaccurate and incomplete list of young people between 18 and 25 years of age for a possible future military draft doesn’t hold any benefit for me. 

If a draft were conducted, many observers believe the Selective Service would throw away its coerced list of young people (gathered by threatening and punishing and imprisoning young people*) and simply purchase a list or lists on the open list market.

But there is no need for conscription. Never has been. Citizens in these United States have always stepped forward. Today, the All Volunteer Force is the best military in the world. 

Most of all, conscription is anathema to the idea of individual liberty. We can and will defend ourselves, but without registering or forcing our daughters into the military. 

Or our sons. 

Ending registration, forswearing conscription, that’s equal freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* I know, I was one of those prosecuted back in the 1980s. 

 

Additional Reading:

Common Sense: For Genderless Freedom

Common Sense: Needless List?

Townhall: Obama’s New Rite

Common Sense: Equal or Free?

Common Sense: Junk the Law

Townhall: Draft the Congress and Leave My Kid Alone

Townhall: Americans Gung-​Ho to Draft Congress

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Categories
folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Popular Regulating Protest U.S. Constitution

Force Over Persuasion

free speech, BLM, Black Lives Matter, tolerance, censorship

Today’s campus radicals assert that free speech is bad because it “gives voice” to people with hateful, dangerous views.

Does that argument seem at all familiar? It is the old RightThink rationale for censorship.

A recent Spiked “Unsafe Spaces” event at Rutgers (“Identity Politics: the New Racialism”) was interrupted by now-​too-​famiar shouts and out-​of-​turn questions and invective. Kmele Foster, one of the panelists, had been explaining how important free speech rights were to the civil rights protesters in the 1960s, and to Martin Luther King in particular.

At “that precise moment,” as Reason’s Matt Welch puts it, the shouts of “Black lives matter!” began. And continued.

But more interesting than this bullying? Some of the more coherent theses articulated by the interrupters. One woman, CampusReform relates,

yelled in response to the panelists that she doesn’t “need statistics,” later complaining that “the system” controls facts.

“It’s the system. It’s the institution,” she said. “Don’t tell me about facts. I don’t need no facts.”

Well, the moment you prove immune to any fact is the exact point in time that you’ve given up on rationality, free inquiry, and maybe even civilization itself.

It’s so 1984-ish.

And it demonstrates the old idea that, when you can no longer reason or allow others to express different opinions … or even discuss the factuality of this or that contention, you have only one other option: force. 

Become bully.

Or tyrant.

Civilization is the triumph of persuasion over force. Being against free speech is to reverse that.

The acme of barbarism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers Popular responsibility

The Law of Unintended Trump Support

Donald Trump, Afghanistan, outsider, consensus

Last week, when President Donald Trump abandoned his previous policy position on getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in favor of continuing the establishment-​supported policy of keeping those troops there, he was very well-​received in our nation’s capital.

NeverTrumper/​neo-​con Sen. Lindsay Graham (R‑S.C.) spoke of Mr. Trump’s “smarts” and “moral courage.” 

The #NeverPraiseTrump Washington Post applauded the president’s valiant “self-​correction.”

Yet when Trump holds a view contrary to the Washington consensus his wisdom and moral bravery elicit less celebration.

Instead, we hear that The Donald is unfit to command.

“I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,” says James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence.

“The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability,” Sen. Bob Corker (R‑Tenn.) concurred, “that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”

And from the usual suspect list of television talking heads we get clinical diagnoses, talk of “erratic behavior and mental instability that place the country in grave danger.” 

Mr. Trump combines every bad personality trait imaginable, the litany runs.

But all this is for nought.

Donald Trump has been able to withstand media negativity as well as the lack of support from his own party’s insiders for one simple reason: it validates him. 

Every insider attack, every media-​fueled outrage campaign, just proves him as the ultimate outsider to a system that the long-​frustrated, increasingly angered electorate wants turned upside down.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*This episode of Common Sense condenses my regular weekend remarks at Townhall.

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Categories
Accountability crime and punishment government transparency Popular responsibility

Five for Ferguson

Ferguson, Michael Brown, body camera, police, lapel camera, rights, accountability, abuse

Michael Brown is dead. No video can bring him back.

As the world remembers, Brown was the unarmed 18-​year-​old black man killed in a violent 2014 altercation with Officer Darren Wilson, who is white — making Ferguson, Missouri, famous.

Or rather, infamous.

With little information, folks quickly picked sides. Some claimed Brown was gunned down in cold blood with his hands up, yelling, “Don’t shoot.” After seeing footage from a convenience store surveillance camera, which showed Brown seeming to strong-​arm an employee and steal cigarillos* mere minutes before the fatal police encounter, others placed the blame on Brown.

Subsequent rioting left dozens injured, seventeen businesses torched and millions in property damage. Meanwhile, President Obama’s Department of Justice found Officer Wilson’s actions justified.

However, had Wilson been equipped with a lapel camera, that footage would have enhanced finding justice. Moreover, the knowledge that the public could see the truth of what happened might have prevented the riots and recriminations.

More information is better.

That’s why the best news of all is this: on April 4, three weeks from today, the people of Ferguson will vote on The Public Video Recording Accountability Amendment to Ferguson’s City Charter. The charter amendment mandates that officers wear lapel cameras while on duty and sets sensible rules for allowing maximum public access.

The campaign needs your help to alert Ferguson voters about the election by mailing information on the ballot measure. For instance, studies demonstrate that not only do police behave better when wearing cameras, but so do the citizens with whom they interact.

Would you give five dollars for Ferguson?

Please help bring a better day for justice and transparency.

It’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Over the weekend, more video surfaced from the convenience store as part of a documentary entitled, “Stranger Fruit,” which suggested Michael Brown had made a drug deal at the store, and not stolen anything. A St. Louis County prosecutor disputed the filmmaker’s interpretation, and released more footage.

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Categories
ideological culture meme moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Popular too much government U.S. Constitution

How Socialism Kills

socialism kills, redistribution, how socialism kills, why socialism kills, meme, illustration

3 Ways That Socialism Kills:

  1. state enforced redistribution requires violence (even if some participate willingly, it’s guns and gulags for everybody else)
  2. central planning produces starvation
  3. a state powerful enough to enforce socialism is an irresistible temptation to those who would abuse power

All the good intentions in the world can’t change this…

but hold on… what about “democratic socialism?”

 

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom meme moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Popular too much government

Is Denmark Socialist?

Democratic Socialism, meme, problems, solve

First… some definitions:

Socialism advocates the public ownership (or control) of business and industry in service of a more equal distribution of wealth.

Bernie Sanders and his version of “democratic socialism” places emphasis on redistribution and downplays the public ownership and control part of the system.

However… Bernie seems never to have met a government monopoly he didn’t love, or a free market enterprise he didn’t distrust or despise.

What are the problems (dangers) of socialism?


It idealizes envy.


It rationalizes theft.


It idealizes state power.


It penalizes accomplishment.


It rewards indolence.


It promotes obedience to the state.


It encourages dependence on the state by treating citizens as children.

It dismisses the protection of individual rights with a vague appeal to the “collective good” or “public good.”


It has repeatedly led to economic collapse, oppression, poverty and starvation. So how have Scandinavian democratic socialists managed to overcome these problems?

Quote from the current Prime Minister of Denmark:

“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
—Speech, Harvard Institute of Politics

 

From “Scandinavian Unexceptionalism” (from the Institute of Economic Affairs):

Today the Nordic economies are again growing, following a return to broadly free-​market policies that served them well before policies changed during the 1960s and 1970s.

The countries are changing in the face of serious long-​term problems that have developed over the last 30 years.

Finland, Sweden and Denmark have…introduced far-​reaching market reforms. These changes include greater openness to trade, clear reductions in the tax burden, private provision of welfare services, the introduction of personal retirement accounts and, in Denmark, even a shift towards a liberal labour market.

—Scandinavian Unexceptionalism (highly recommended!)

And the moral hazards?

The development of Scandinavian welfare states has led to a deterioration in social capital.

Nordic societies have for hundreds of years benefited from  a strong Lutheran work ethic, a strong sense of individual responsibility and high levels of trust and civic participation.

In the early stages of their transition to “democratic socialism”, safety nets DID exist, but few used them. Over time, an increasing share of the population became dependent on government transfers. The welfare states moved from offering services to the broad public to transferring benefits to those who did not work.

The situation that exists in Nordic societies today is one in which ethics relating to work and responsibility are not strongly encouraged by the economic systems. Individuals with low skills and education have limited gains from working. This is particularly true of parents of large families, which gain extra support if on welfare.

It is true that welfare systems have reduced poverty. However, especially in the second generation, they have also created a form of social poverty of the same type that is apparent in the countries from which many of the admirers of the Scandinavian systems come. Detailed research clearly shows that welfare systems have formed a culture of dependency which is passed on from parents to children.

MUCH MORE HERE on the moral and economic capital that preceded the welfare state, and its gradual disintegration over time… 

Do you believe that socialism is a good idea that has simply been corrupted by ruthless dictators? Consider the story of the Chinese Cultural Revolution…  a mass movement of Chinese youth dedicated to eradicating capitalism and advancing socialism. Its bloody history tells us quite a lot about the logic of this flawed political philosophy… “Socialism’s Idealistic Youth”

 Useful References

Scandinavian Unexceptionalism (Institute of Economic Affairs)
This paper is especially valuable because it was written by someone who actually favors a large welfare state. His willingness to concede the problems inherent in such a state are refreshingly honest… and useful for anyone interested in the issues.

What Can the United States Learn from the Nordic Model? (CATO Institute)

Myth: The Scandinavian countries are proof socialism works (Being Classically Liberal)

The Myth of the Scandinavian Model

Economic Freedom of the World: 2013 Annual Report

International government spending (Wikipedia)

Index of Economic Freedom (Heritage Foundation)

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