“…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”
–Thomas Jefferson, 1801
One of my more persistent critics on this site asked, last week, why I might believe anything the current president says — considering all the lies.
For reasons of decorum I won’t repeat his exact wording.
The odd thing about the comment was not the vulgarity, though (unfortunately). It was the idea that I was relying upon belief in Donald Trump’s veracity. The whole point of my commentary regarding Trump’s handling of trade and foreign policy was to read between some lines.
I try never to believe anything … er, everything … any politician says.
In Donald Trump’s case, though, there are lies and there are fictions and there are exaggerations. And corkers … and “negotiating gambits.” Separating the wheat from the chaff from the grindstone is not always easy.
Based not only on some of what he says, but also on results-thus-far from the EU negotiations, Trump’s idea of “fair trade” appears to be multilateral free trade. But he has chosen a bizarre method to get there: the threat of high-tariff protectionism — which in the past has led to multilateral protectionism, not free trade.
Trump sees everything as a contest. Trade isn’t a contest as such. It’s win-win. But trade negotiations are contests. And Trump’s game of chicken is dangerous.
Regarding foreign policy generally, though, he seems to be playing a more familiar game: we can outspend everybody. The recent increase in Pentagon spending is bigger than Russia’s annual military budget!
So, who pays? Americans in
That’s awfully daring of him. For us.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photo from Max Pixel
The relationship between the First and Second Amendments is closer than commonly believed.
This is especially clear in the 3D gun printing story, the subject of yesterday’s Common Sense, “Progressive Designs.” As I finished the copy, a news story broke: U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik “muzzled Defense Distributed with a court order,” as Declan McCullagh puts it.
And then, as McCullagh goes on, a mirror site appeared. Though Cody Wilson, the man behind Defense Distributed, immediately took his plans offline, “the Calguns Foundation, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and other civil rights groups” published plans for “AR-15, AR-10, Ruger 10 – 22, Beretta 92FS, and other firearms” on their sites.
This made my footnote especially relevant, for it was there that I noted that “plans like this have been available on the not-exactly-easy-to-access Dark Web for some time.” And now Cody Wilson’s precise “freely downloadable computer-aided design (CAD) files,” though “dark” on his site, are bright elsewhere.
McCullagh admits that though it is certainly “possible that Defense Distributed may lose this legal skirmish and be prevented from returning its instructions to the DEFCAD site,” since such plans are now everywhere, and not easily stoppable, constitutionally, the “Second Amendment, it turns out, is protected by the First.”
Which is, of course, natural enough — for the Second Amendment’s protections of self-defense has held power-lusting politicians at bay, keeping Americans freer than citizens anywhere else. What other country has better free speech protections?
All freedoms help each other, reinforce each other.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“There is one law for man,” goes an ancient saying, “another for cattle.”
Moo.
Glenn Reynolds, writing in USA Today, sees this principle in operation now, where the ruling class gets away with a whole heckuva lot while the rest of us do not: “Freedom from consequences: It’s the defining consequence of our modern titles of nobility.”
Reynolds cites Charles W. Cooke for the “titles of nobility” angle. Cooke, who hails from Britain but was recently inducted into American citizenship, has objected to the “grotesque’ American tradition of continuing to use a person’s former title in government service long after the officeholder has left the post.
“Throughout the 2012 election, Mitt Romney was referred to as ‘Governor Romney,’ though he had not been in public office for six years,” Cooke wrote. “One can only ask, ‘Why?’ America being a nation of laws and not men, political power is not held in perpetuity, and there is supposed to be no permanent political class.”
“Americans do not have rulers, they have employees,” Cooke asserted.
If you are like me, you have probably made this point umpteen times in the last few decades.
Reynolds goes on to make the obvious corollary: our public servants do not behave like our “employees.” They behave like our rulers.
Their class privilege is now deep into our law — even if some doctrines, like absolute immunity, were just invented by judges to protect prosecutors and … judges.
Maybe the first step to upend this would be to balk at ceremony. Our exes Jimmy Carter, the two George Bushes, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama should not be addressed as “President X.”
“Mister” will do.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Some people believe that aggression is physical force and nothing else. From this they derive the notion that only physical violence should be prosecuted — or, more generally, retaliated against with force.
But it is obvious that some invasions of private property or personal space, with malice and anger and alarming unhinged-ness, are aggressive.
And should be prosecuted in law.
Take the current case of Timothy Trybus, who is testing a further point of law that especially concerns those of us strongly motivated to focus on initiated force.*
“It is pretty clear,” writes Jacob Sullum in Reason, that the man “broke the law when he harassed Mia Irizarry for wearing a T‑shirt featuring the Puerto Rican flag at a park in Chicago last month.”
Mr. Trybus was drunk, and he “got in her face,” so to speak, challenging her in a not-unusual nationalistic/pseudo-patriotic/jingoistic fashion that seems old-fashioned and up-to-date Trumpian:
Puerto Rico may not be a state, but … the proper reaction might have been to challenge the not-Saint Timothy to a bit of patriotic one-upmanship: “How can you be so un-American as to object to an American commonwealth flag?”
He’s now being prosecuted for a hate crime as well as assault. Though he may never have touched the woman, his aggressiveness is legally regarded as a threat of force.
Understandably. But if the hate crime thing sticks, will antifa and other obvious anti-American thugs be given that extra legal consideration in similar situations?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Which, I confess, I like to think of as “all civilized people.” But I may be optimistic. Reducing violence is an almost universal desire, and the question of who started violence is nearly universal. But the focus is, well, in our times called “libertarian.”
A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free Convention, which rights do pertain to them, and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government.