Category: Common Sense

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Common Sense education and schooling U.S. Constitution

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on October 3, 2005. When I read in the paper about a fifth grade class re-writing the Constitution, I immediately thought about our judiciary. Then I discovered the whole effort was part of a program mandated by Congress. We should all — freely — read the Constitution. Luckily, it is shorter than most of the bills in Congress. —PJ

James Madison, father of our U.S. Constitution, must be rolling over in his grave. You see, he forgot to put love in it. In the Constitution, that is.

By congressional edict, schools and universities across the nation were recently required to spend some time on or around September 17 teaching about the Constitution. That’s the date our nation’s founding document was ratified back in 1787.

One institution of higher learning, Irene’s Myomassology Institute in Michigan, was forced to comply because some students training to be tomorrow’s masseuses receive federal money. The Institute gave students a flier.

Marlboro College in Vermont held a parade featuring professors dressed up as constitutional articles and amendments.

Virginia’s James Madison University celebrated with a “We the People” cake and a trivia contest.

But you ask: What has love got to do with the Constitution?

Oh, yes, I almost forgot Sharon Alexander’s fifth-graders at Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia. In following the federal order, they did what too many federal judges do: they re-wrote the Constitution. Actually, just the Preamble. Their new kid-friendly version states that “kids, pets and adults” are entitled to “electricity, food, water, schools and love.”

Our Constitution doesn’t talk about love. Love isn’t government’s job. That’s ours. Government is power. And our Constitution is all about limiting that power. Read it — and read it to your kids, too, if you love ’em.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense term limits

Green Politicians and Ham

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on August 8, 2003. As a big fan of Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss — having read his books to my kids — this is one of my personal favorites. Amusing, too, that with all the hand-wringing by politicians over term limits, those actually living under the limits are showing relatively more favorable toward the limits. —PJ

“Do you like green eggs and ham? . . . Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may, I say.”

Same goes for politicians and term limits. When state legislators ever-so-reluctantly try term limits, turns out that they actually like green eggs and ham, that is, term limits, better than state legislators who aren’t term-limited.

I read an endless stream of stories about how politicians, about to be term-limited, say the limits aren’t working. News flash: Politicians have always hated term limits. But now a survey commissioned by the National Conference of State Legislatures finds something surprising: there is more support for term limits among legislators in term-limited states than there is among politicians who have no actual experience with term limits.

Think about that. When asked whether term limits “promote healthy change” or “don’t work,” legislators serving under term limits in their state were 50 percent more likely to see term limits in positive terms than their unlimited colleagues.

“Say! I like green eggs and ham! I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!”

Well, I guess we shouldn’t get carried away. Even in term-limited states, legislators oppose the limits by a margin of nearly four to one. Term limits were designed to please voters, not legislators.

Still, good to know that for legislators under term limits, the idea is starting to grow on them.

Ever so slowly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense nannyism responsibility Second Amendment rights

Unhappiness Is a Drawn Gun

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on September 20, 2007. The growing use of zero-tolerance policies — especially having anything to do with guns — is the opposite of common sense. Mass insanity may be more popular these days, but I still prefer common sense. —PJ

There’s the real world, and there are representations of it.

I draw a picture of, say, a gun. That picture is of a gun; it is not itself an actual gun. It’s just, well, a doodle.

This being the case — that doodles differ from real threats — then why was a 13-year-old boy near Mesa, Arizona, suspended from school?

He drew a gun . . . on a piece of paper. He didn’t point it at anybody. He made no hit list. He didn’t say “Bang.” No one even got a paper cut.

But school officials treated it as a threat, lectured his poor father on the shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School, and suspended the lad.

The district spokesman insisted that the doodle was “absolutely considered a threat.” But somehow, knowing that this student was suspended, I’m not feeling any safer.

If our teachers and administrators can’t distinguish real threats from doodles — doodles most boys do, doodles I drew when I was a boy — then what are they teaching the kids? To overreact to everything? To not be able to distinguish small problems from big ones? To treat every symbol or representation as the real thing?

It’s elementary: The map is not the actual territory; the representation is not the thing represented.

You’d think, then, that teachers would be trying to impart (not erase) that notion from the minds of students.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense general freedom too much government

The Two Americas

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on July 4, 2007. A longer version published at Townhall.com was picked up by Rush Limbaugh and read on his radio show. —PJ

Could Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards actually be right about something? Not where to go to get a haircut, mind you, I mean about there being two Americas.

There is the vibrant America . . . and the stagnant one.

There is the America of ever-increasing wealth, innovation, creativity, new products and services. Choices galore.

And there is the politician’s America: The regulated America, the subsidized America, the earmarked America. The failing America.

In one America, it is what you produce that gets you ahead. In the other, it’s who you know.

In one America, to earmark some money means setting aside funds (into savings) for a purchase — a car, house, college.

In the other America, to earmark is to grab from taxpayers to give to cronies. It is the highest rite of career politicians: Buying their votes with other people’s money. Oh, there have been reforms, sure. But a recent bill in the House had 32,000 earmark requests.

In one America, we decide what we pay for. We choose constantly about little things and big. We call the shots. Or we walk down the street and associate with someone else. So we have some faith in those we work with.

In the other America, we vote. But we rarely get what we vote for.

Maybe that’s why the new Democratic Congress just registered the lowest approval rating in poll history.

It surely isn’t because folks love the Republicans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

A Great Country or What?

Some 233 years ago we made a clean break from the corrupt Old World of Europe. Fifty-six men risked it all to proclaim in the Declaration of Independence that:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . .

That sums it up — the grand total of good government. The rest is history. Freedom prospers. Empowered citizens work a whole lot better than dictators.

But the most striking lesson of history is sadly the opposite of America’s July 4, 1776, birth. So much of the world has long lived under political oppression.

I’ve been watching and reading about the protests in Iran, knowing that people are choosing to risk beatings and death to stand up in the streets to speak out for freedom. I’m frustrated that there is so little I can do.

And then it occurs to me: the best thing I can do, as an American, is to fight to keep our country all that it should be.

That’s no easy fight. As you know.

Our governments from Washington, DC, to Hometown, USA, are out of control.

What’s the trouble? Spending. Debt. Regular attacks on our property rights.
The list runs long: Corruption. Arrogance. Nanny-statism. Those relentless assaults on any process of reform — from term limits to voter initiative, referendum and recall.

The philosophy running government for some time now directly opposes the creed of 1776: A belief in unlimited government, the idea that everything is permissible, anything is possible, and nothing is sacred.

Disaster is on the horizon; the storm clouds of several coming catastrophes are dark and visible.

Politicians cannot stop the rain.

But I have faith in you. And in Common Sense.

Our political problems are solvable. But your work and commitment to freedom is ultimately the difference maker.

And I like to think Common Sense helps. By laughing at the sad absurdities. By voicing a little righteous indignation. And by using wit . . . whenever I can find it.

But mainly Common Sense does its job by connecting the outrages of unaccountable government with the great citizens all across America who stand up to defend their rights and the rights of their neighbors from politics gone wild.

Common Sense helps bring folks together to put citizens in charge and ensure that government is accountable to the people.

On radio, online and in your email, the Common Sense program is run on a shoestring by Citizens in Charge Foundation. But even shoestrings cost money. We need to raise $52,000 to cover the program for the remainder of the year and to step up our marketing of the program on radio and online.

On July 4, 1776, they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

This July 4, 2009, I’m asking you to pledge some of your fortune to help keep Common Sense on the air, online and in your email Inbox — and to help us reach out to new audiences.

A number of readers and listeners have made a monthly pledge of $17.76. That’s a big help. Can you make the same pledge?

Or give a one-time contribution of $17.76 today? If you can, please consider donating $1,776. Or $10, $25, $100 — whatever amount works for you.

The antidote to government gone wild is simple: Common Sense. Help us keep it coming.

Happy Independence Day!

Categories
Common Sense First Amendment rights

More than a Breach of Professional Ethics?

The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority has a mission, to provide “Public Television For All of Oklahoma.”

And its top-listed production is news.

Oklahoma Educational Television Authority website
Oklahoma Educational Television Authority

And yet when the non-profit organization I work with, the Citizens in Charge Foundation, sent out a press release to OETA — that’s the outfit’s acronym — OETA sent an official complaint to our Web host, calling the press release spam.

Our former Web host, Hostica, shut down our site and our email.

This is the second time this happened. Obviously, we won’t be sending any more press releases to that news source.

But think about this. OETA is in the news biz. For it to call a press release “spam” — unwanted — is not just nasty, it’s an astounding breach of professional ethics. It’s like a weather man refusing to cover snow, or a preacher refusing to talk about God, or . . . a politician refusing to read the Constitution.

Now, it could be that we sent the press release to the wrong department. Their proper response? Forward it to the right people, then reply back.

But email routing is not what this is all about. Our press release covered a story that put a top Oklahoma politician in bad light. The public TV folk in Oklahoma aren’t independent. Being all-too-political, OETA — or someone at OETA — attempted to squelch our speech rights.

So I ask you: What should our response be?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability Common Sense free trade & free markets too much government

New Prez Pleads for Common Sense

I like a president who pleads for common sense.

Here’s the story, headlined in the New York Times: “Obama Calls for ’Common Sense’ on Executive Pay.”

The president announced a salary cap for top executives working for companies garnering the greatest gobs of booty under the most recent federal bailout. The cap? Half a million bucks.

President Obama allayed a few qualms, right away. He said that “This is America, we don’t disparage wealth. . . .” And he said, “we certainly believe that success should be rewarded.”

But he does talk about the “height of irresponsibility” in Bush administration bailouts, with execs taking huge bonuses after running their companies into the ground. Who wasn’t sickened by this? Obama sees it as common sense to make sure we don’t reward massive failure with the usual rewards of success.

Still, America is also about respecting contracts. Those corporations had negotiated very explicit contracts with their execs regarding the big bucks. And — surprise, surprise — Congress wrote up the law on the gargantuan bailouts without requiring those contracts be renegotiated.

And consider: Do we really want our politicians setting non-government salaries?

This is all a side issue, though. Take the bailouts themselves. Where’s the common sense there? They do reward failure. They will not help the economy. If our leaders had acted according to common sense, the whole salary issue wouldn’t even have come up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

How to Spell “America”

In Franz Kafka’s famous-but-incomplete novel, Amerika, his protagonist treks to our brave new world only to repeatedly find himself persecuted by a bizarre assortment of authorities.

That was fiction. How’s our factual world?

Today, our governments — particularly our police and prosecutors — seem to treat Kafka’s nightmare as a blueprint for action. Accuse. Accost. Ticket. Jail. Innocence is no excuse. Sense is no criterion.

There has to be a better artistic model for our country. There is: The Andy Griffith Show.

Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry never used his toughness in a bullying or bureaucratic way. He was respectful of the public, interpreting both the rules and his own discretion with a healthy dose of common sense.

Unlike modern America, Mayberry was never Kafkaesque.

In searching about for standards, better to reach to Andy rather than Franz. Our enforcement culture sure needs something.

Still, many police are exemplary public servants providing necessary service. So let’s keep our cool, not over-react. Every time law enforcement goes even slightly off the beam, someone, somewhere, starts spelling “America” with a “k” — as in Kafka’s novel. But remember, Kafka had an excuse: He wrote in German, and in German “America” is spelled with a “k,” not a “c.”

For me, I’d like to keep the “c,” and let it stand for . . . Common Sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Change and Hope

’Tis the season of “Hope” and “Change.” All the more so, since those are the bywords of the President-Elect.

It’s too early to see whether his changes will match our hopes, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still hope for better days and ways.

This Common Sense program is all about hope. I hope that Americans will work together to restore citizen control of government. I share examples of citizens fighting to hold government accountable, hoping that regular folks doing unusually good deeds will inspire more people to join the cause.

For the last two years, we’ve been sponsored by the freedom fighters at the Sam Adams Alliance. The Alliance trains and links allies in the freedom movement. They’ve helped bloggers and activists throughout the country, emphasizing new online media.

I owe the folks at Team Sam a deep debt of gratitude. But change is good, too, and for 2009 this program is moving to a new sponsor, the Citizens in Charge Foundation.

I’m the president of the Citizens in Charge Foundation. We work to educate the public on the importance of voter initiative and referendum, and we defend the petition rights of citizens in the courts.

I’ll continue to speak out on the need for reform, for citizens to be empowered and politicians held accountable. I hope you’ll keep listening. In the end, what we think, what we decide, and what we do will make all the difference.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Santa Speaks Out

Oh, sure, he’s a jolly old elf most of the time. But just ask Mrs. Claus: He’s got a temper.

Not long ago, I compared Congress to Santa Claus, because both hand out lots of goodies. Well, Santa was not amused.

“How in the name of the North Pole can you compare me with the politicians in Congress?” he wanted to know. “My elves and I produce our presents ourselves and we make a list so they go to the nice people. The Congress takes from others and often gives the loot to folks who are naughty.”

He’s got a point. And who wants to argue with Santa this time of year? Then there was the flap in Kensington, Maryland, where the long tradition of Santa lighting the town tree was ended after complaints from families who don’t celebrate Christmas.

Santa called and I was ready for an earful. But Santa wasn’t mad at the families who complained or the town officials. “Christmas is my holiday,” Santa said calmly, “and I’ll not let anyone turn it into something that’s forced on people. That’s not my style. I don’t want anyone forced to pay taxes against their will to celebrate Christmas. And that’s what’s been going on in this little town.

“I don’t need any government mandates; after all, hundreds of people in Santa suits brought their own holiday cheer to the Kensington tree lighting. The spirit of Christmas is something you give, not something you take. Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.