A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act II, scene
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Joseph Addison
Category: Common Sense
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Abigail Adams
I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and, like the grave, cries, ‘Give, give!’ The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.
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Corruption Beyond Imagination
“Two Baltimore detectives were convicted Monday of robbery and racketeering,” the Washington Post reported, “in a trial that laid bare shocking crimes committed by an elite police unit and surfaced new allegations of widespread corruption in the city’s police department.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise presented the jury with “things more horrible in some cases than you ever could have imagined.”
Test your imagination:
- Four police officers, already convicted, testified to routinely violating the rights of citizens in order to steal cash and property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Officers left the scene of an accident they caused without summoning assistance for those injured, and then covered up their involvement.
- Detectives “doubled their salaries by lying to claim extravagant overtime when they were actually at bars or … out of the country on vacation.”
- There was an allegation of murder against one policeman and a charge that another high police official covered it up.
A total of eight officers of the Gun Trace Task Force have now been convicted of or pleaded guilty to felonies.
Where was Internal Affairs? “The head of internal affairs has been transferred” the Post informed, after he was “implicated in misconduct during trial testimony.”
We could sic the feds on them! Oh, wait, “[m]ost of the behavior charged in the case took place even as the [Baltimore police] department was already under federal investigation by the Justice Department …”
Prospects for reform?
Last Wednesday, Mayor Catherine Pugh claimed to having been “too busy to follow the trial closely or read Baltimore Sun coverage…”
Baltimore, we’ve got a problem.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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A Revolutionary Turn-around
Donald J. Trump, 45th President under the Constitution of these United States, may be re-establishing some constitutional order.
“The president has the power to veto half-baked legislation,” explains Josh Blackman at the National Review. “If Trump returned a bill to Congress, stating in his message that it failed to include sufficient guidelines, there would be a paradigm shift in Washington, D.C.” And, in recent speeches at the Federalist Society, Blackman notes, administration lawyers appear to be advancing just such a shift:
- Congress must no longer delegate legislative power to the executive branch;
- Informal “guidance documents” must no longer be used to deprive people of the due process of law; and
- The courts’ rubber-stamping of executive diktats must end.
Couple this agenda with Trump’s just-in-office executive order instructing that two old rules be stricken for every new rule concocted, and we could be witnessing an almost-revolutionary turn-around here.
Why is this happening?
Not, I think, because Trump is an originalist or strict constructionist. “Donald Trump did not campaign for president as the guy who would reverse the mostly unbroken, century-old trend of the executive power assuming more and more power in the face of an increasingly self-marginalizing Congress,” Matt Welch reminds us over at Reason.
Maybe it is because Trump has been so roundly scorned and rejected and rebelliously opposed by Democrats in general and the far left in particular — including, especially, most major media figures — that the mogul-turned-politician’s many and obvious left-leaning proclivities have been made … politically useless. His opposition on the left has sent him right … to good policy.
On this issue, anyway.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Americans actually agree on a lot of things; it’s a pity that today’s media and political debates play up the discord.
Or so argues A. Barton Hinkle at The Richmond Times-Dispatch. Sure, he admits, “[a] lot of people seem willing to tear your head off over the smallest thing.” But “on some topics, the public is of one mind, or as close to that as you can get.”
Hinkle notes that “Nine out of 10 Americans think a background check should be required for every firearm purchase.” A few percentage points fewer wish to keep “Dreamers” in the country; a mere one point fewer disapprove of civil asset forfeiture. Medical marijuana is approved of by 83 percent of Americans.
Not on Hinkle’s list? American agreement on term limits. A year ago, a Rasmussen Poll found support for limiting congressional terms at 74 percent of likely voters, with only 13 percent opposed and 13 percent undecided. This overwhelming public support has been consistent for many decades.
But consistently ignored by Congress. Not so surprisingly.
Can Americans put their united oomph behind their overwhelming agreement? U.S. Term Limits thinks so.
The group isn’t depending on cajoling the Congress, either. They’re mobilizing concerned citizens to convince 34 state legislatures to call a Term Limits Convention.* The convention’s purpose is to propose a constitutional amendment for congressional term limits, which then still requires 38 states to ratify it.
Rather than brewing up a civil war over tweets and “microaggressions,” join the Term Limits Team.
Let’s agree to agree. And make our representatives agree, too.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* As Article V of the U.S. Constitution states, “The Congress … on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several
These United States are approaching a crisis. Mounting debt seems increasingly unpayable. Sovereign default and financial chaos are “in the offing” — drifting from the (future) horizon to the (present) shore.
The costs of our debt load have been accommodated as astute economists predicted, with the weakest recovery in American history.
Seven years ago I wrote:
According to increasing numbers of Americans, it’s the level of spending by government that must decrease. We must balance budgets. Soon.
One could play sloganeer and say “It’s the spending, stupid”; or, twist that, to say “It’s the stupid spending.” But however you formulate the problem, what the new Republican House must do is find a way to cut spending.
They haven’t. Is there any reason, even with super-duper businessman Donald Trump riding herd, that they will make net cuts?
We can expect gross spending to increase and the debt to balloon even bigger.
Why?
Well, we are trapped.
Even the politicians themselves feel trapped.
You see, once the government begins a program, a constituency comes to depend upon it, and resists being “betrayed.” And the media supplies a steady stream of sob stories about the brutality of “austerity.” Politicians fear the passion of voters reacting to a specific hyped human need more than the general desire for less spending. So politicians increase the stupid spending.
Well, if the politicians are trapped, release them. Free them.
How? Term limits.
Congressional term limits would un-trap not just the pols — it’d free the voters, too. Let’s end the pretense that sending the same politicians to Washington term after term can produce local prosperity. Oh, the power of incumbency may lavish benefits on career congressmen, but it doesn’t pay off for the rest if us.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* It was President Harry Truman who said that term limits would “help to cure senility and seniority — both terrible legislative diseases.”
Illustration: Gustave Doré, “Avaricious and Prodigal”