Statism is the very
paradoxical idea that people
are inherently greedy and
self-interested and therefore
we should pick a handful of
them and give them all
the power.
– Spike Cohen
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Statism
Category: Common Sense
Maryland election workers should definitely not have to wait a full two days after the November 8th General Election to begin processing mailed-in ballots.
At least, that’s my opinion.
It’s also the view of the Democrat-controlled General Assembly.
Plus, it’s the preference of the state’s Republican Governor, as well as what the State Election Board wants to do “[a]fter a primary cycle plagued by long delays arising from counting a surge of mail-in ballots.”
Accordingly, you might surmise that when the Maryland Court of Appeals recently agreed with a lower court that the Election Board was A-OK to count mail-in ballots early, before the election, I would applaud their ruling.
Instead: the Bronx cheer.
This decision undercuts something much more important than ballot-counting speed and efficiency. It destroys the rule of law.
There is a constitutional method for repealing or changing laws on the books, and in fact, as The Washington Post explained,“State lawmakers tried to change the law during this year’s legislative session when they passed a bill that would have permanently removed the provision. But, Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who said he supported counting mail-in ballots early, vetoed the bill, citing other concerns with the legislation.”
Thus, the state’s representative political process spoke, for better or worse. It may be “an outdated law,” as The Post charged, but if it isn’t violating anyone rights, it should not be jettisoned by a judge for the government’s momentary convenience.
Government officials should be required to follow the law, when as here they can, until changed.
Not merely do whatever they want to.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On Labor Day…
The fact that communists pretended to be “for labor” doesn’t make it so:
- Labor’s Holiday (a historical perspective, September 2, 2019)
- Wisdom for Labor Day (from Thomas Jefferson, September 3, 2018)
- “I’ve Got a Plan for That” (July 12, 2019)
This site has provided many arguments against socialism in general — if not Marxism in particular. We appreciate it when you share our work online. Sharing is caring — not communist!
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Those core ideas of independence and liberty still matter — perhaps now more than ever.
And to help take Common Sense with Paul Jacob beyond 2022, join . . .
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Why cannot the media print the most important stories?
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William Saroyan
Everything and everybody is sooner or later identified, defined, and put in perspective. The truth as always is simultaneously better and worse than what the popular myth-making has it.
William Saroyan, Memories of the Depression (1981).
Recently, a tyke and his mommy were booted from a Big Apple Applebee’s because the little boy lacked a vaccine passport.
That is, the mother possessed no proof that her son had been vaccinated against the disease of the day.
Now, parents have every right to refrain from getting their kids injected — especially given the low risk that kids will become seriously ill from COVID-19 and the non-negligible risk of harm from vaccine side effects.
But such considerations didn’t prevent a gang of police — no students of Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor — from ordering the expulsion. (There’s video.)
Residents of New York City’s vaccination regime can at least move to another town. People elsewhere, in larger jurisdictions — Austria, Australia, England — face greater difficulties escaping pandemic tyranny. But, like us, they can protest and they can sue.
In England, a group called Big Brother Watch is challenging the COVID Pass Scheme imposed by the government of Boris Johnson. Their lengthy “pre-action letter” argues that no evidence exists that the passes will reduce the spread of the virus and that the scheme is “unnecessary and disproportionate.”
Amidst so much “information” under dispute, we know three things.
One, for all the suffering and death it has inflicted on the most vulnerable, the current pandemic is hardly the Black Death. It isn’t even the Spanish flu.
Two, being “vaccinated” against COVID-19 does not prevent one from becoming infected or from infecting others.
Three, shutting down society also inflicts suffering. Great suffering. As must shutting down whichever segments of society decline Draconian mandates.
Maybe the scourge of tyranny isn’t the best balm for the scourge of COVID-19.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Merry Christmas!
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If you live in Maine, you may now grow your own food. The right to do so has been safeguarded in the state constitution.
If you have the right to life and to sustain your life, surely you have a right to farm. As we all know, though, governments regularly find excuses to interfere with all kinds of peaceful activities.
So this past November, Maine voters passed a constitutional amendment authored by Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham (whose energetic campaigns for freedom have previously caught Common Sense notice) and proposed by the legislature.
Maine’s Right to Food Amendment makes clear that “All individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable . . . right to save and exchange seeds and the right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume . . . as long as an individual does not commit trespassing, theft, poaching or other abuses of private property rights public lands or natural resources in the harvesting, production or acquisition of food.” (So there’s no California-style de facto “right” to loot.)
Foes of the amendment worry that it will enable people to bypass regulations.
Let’s hope so.
Don’t we want the new law to ban governments in Maine from banning agriculture for the sake of “esthetics,” protecting Big Milk, or any other rationalization for foiling farming on a person’s own property?
And for the idea to spread to the other states, where far too often the scales of justice don’t properly consider the citizen’s right to produce food against the bureaucrat’s regulations frustrating same.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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A. C. Grayling
Thus justice is not equality but equity; as Aristotle says, “Injustice arises when equals are treated unequally, and unequals are treated equally.”
A.C. Grayling, “Protest,” Life, Sex, and Ideas (2002).