Category: U.S. Constitution

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general freedom individual achievement U.S. Constitution

The Ruins

Volney, Jefferson, translation, Alien and Sedition Act, John Adams, Ruins of Empires

We have just learned something interesting about the nastiest presidential election in American history.

No, not this year’s. It’s not the nastiest . . . yet.

It is about the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson beat back the Federalist Party and its Alien and Sedition Acts.

The Federalists made much of fears that the freethinking Jefferson would suppress Christianity. Some folks are said to have buried Bibles in their backyards, for safe keeping.

Overkill, sure. Jefferson was quite earnest in his support for religious freedom, as he famously wrote to the Danbury Baptists. (Jefferson garnered overwhelming Baptist support.) But he was a freethinker.

So much so that, in the year leading up to the big race, Jefferson translated all but the last chapters of C.-F. Volney’s The Ruins of Empires. This secret was uncovered recently by Thomas Christian Williams, who found in the Boston archives of the Massachussetts Historical Society many chapters of The Ruins, in English, in Jefferson’s hand. Williams wrote up his discovery in the March 2016 issue of The Skeptic, Michael Shermer’s journal.

The Ruins — once infamous, now almost forgotten — is mostly devoted to advancing a very deep view of the importance of limited government. Only the last few chapters, which Jefferson left to somebody else to translate, engage in a skeptical account of religion.

But note: Jefferson thought enough of Volney’s book to translate it himself, putting his political career at risk.

Oh, it also turns out that the Comte de Volney’s very presence in 1790s’ America served to spark the widespread panic about French spying . . . and thus President John Adams’s Alien Friends and Alien Enemies Acts!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Volney, Jefferson, translation, Alien and Sedition Act, John Adams, Ruins of Empires

 

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom government transparency moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Zetabytes and Zombies

Apple, iphone, security, police, NSA

Zombie government wants to eat our brains. Did I overstate this on Sunday?

Most folks don’t look at the Apple/FBI controversy over digital security quite that starkly.

The National Security Administration sure doesn’t see it that way. The NSA is in the “information harvesting business,” says Business Insider. And boy, “business is booming.” The NSA measures its operations in zetabytes. And in the acreage of its Maryland and Utah sprawls.

The idea is that the NSA protects us.

But notice that government, collecting all that information, and in trying to beat back malicious and sportive hacker attacks from around the world, treats computer companies antagonistically. And it doesn’t provide us, individually, with help on our personal cyber-security: we have to pay for our own cyber-security. When some thief (local or overseas) steals a digital identity and grabs a netizen’s wealth and credit, of what help is government?

Not much.

It’s little different from back in Herbert Spencer’s day, over a century ago, when he noted that government practiced “that miserable laissez faire,” making citizens bear the costs of their own protection, to financial ruin defending themselves in court.

Indeed, for all our reliance upon law enforcement, we have to notice that the real work of defense and conflict avoidance happens best outside of government “help” — as is the case in Detroit, Michigan, where it is private security that does what many expect the police to do.

As long as the police and the federal government operate mainly as antagonists to peaceful citizens as well as to criminals, then looking warily at police power and privilege (and thus the NSA and the FBI) seems like . . .

. . . Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Apple, iphone, security, police, NSA

 

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers U.S. Constitution

Faces Veiled, Fallacies Unveiled

Gary Johnson, libertarian, burka, Common Sense, illustration

A real-life politician has admitted to having been wrong, even going so far as to dismiss his own previous comment as “stupid.”

He wasn’t abject about it — didn’t “apologize.” He simply explained how and why he had erred.

This . . . from a presidential contender.

No, it wasn’t Hillary Clinton, she of many errors and untruths. It wasn’t Bernie Sanders, whose love of Big, Intrusive Government is an error in and of itself. And it wasn’t Trump, known hyperbolist.

The erring politician? Gary Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico.

Johnson, who is currently running for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, told Reason last year that banning the burqa would be a reasonable step in protecting the rights of women. Here in America.

Sound sort of Trumpian?

Earlier this month, Johnson retracted his statement. Last week on Fox Business Network’s Kennedy, he explained why prohibiting the face-veil wouldn’t work.

“We need to differentiate between religious freedom, which is [sic] Islam, and Sharia law, which is politics,” he said — and I add a “sic” there because he is obviously driving at this point: religious freedom means we cannot prohibit the religion of Islam, but Sharia law amounts to a religious intrusion into the legal and political realm. And thus must be opposed as “contrary to the U. S. Constitution.”

The reason Johnson had earlier floated the banning of the Islamic face-veil was to save women from Islamofascist enforcement of Sharia’s mandate to go around in public only when completely covered.

“We cannot allow Sharia Law to, in any way, be a part of our lives.”

I’m with him. Let’s hold tight to both religious and political freedom. And how refreshing for a politician to admit an error.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Gary Johnson, libertarian, burka, Common Sense, illustration

 

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crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies The Draft too much government U.S. Constitution

Junk the Law

conscription, draft, selective service, Common Sense, Paul Jacob

Would your favorite presidential candidate force women to register for the military draft?

A federal court case, National Coalition for Men v. Selective Service System, is bouncing around the Ninth Circuit. It challenges the male-only draft registration program as discriminatory against men.

Thirty-five years ago, when yours truly was fighting the draft, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a male-only program because women were then barred from combat. Now the All-Volunteer Force has opened all military fields to women, including combat roles. It follows that the federal courts will likely strike down male-only registration.

What will Congress do? What will the next commander-in-chief advocate? Allow the program to end — or mandate that both young men and young women register?

Hillary Clinton answered this question in 2008, during her first run for the presidency: yes, register women for the military draft.

What about the other presidential hopefuls?

Back in 1980, then-candidate Ronald Reagan pledged to end it, saying that conscription (and registration for it) “destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.”

Sadly, President Reagan continued draft registration, prosecuting me and others.

“The question is nothing less, than whether the most essential rights of personal liberty shall be surrendered,” the great Daniel Webster railed against conscription, “and despotism embraced in its worst form.”

Men and women have an equal right to freedom — not conscription. Free people will always volunteer to defend their country.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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conscription, draft, selective service, Common Sense, Paul Jacob

 

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Accountability Common Sense First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

re: Solutions

New Year, 2016, resolutions, Common Sense, illustration

Today’s the traditional day for New Year’s “Resolutions,” but instead of resolutions, how about some solutions?

Sure, Thomas Sowell has sagely reminded: there are no solutions in social life, only trade-offs.

But, utopian perfection aside, let’s agree that some changes would be better than others, and, let us resolve to solve some nagging problems — or at least trade up. And since the really nagging problems are political . . .

For Republicans: this could be the year to give up on government as society’s chief moral agent, empowered to regulate everybody’s medicine cabinets and bloodstreams. End the failed War on Drugs, with legalizing marijuana the simplest first step. Vice will continue, as it always has. But it’s another kind of vice to think that force, policing and imprisoning folks, will “solve” the problem. Much less even reduce the availability of drugs.

For Democrats: this could be the year to give up on government as micromanager of markets — and people’s marketplace choices. Face it: folks will make decisions that liberals don’t like. They’ll eat at McDonalds and buy large sodas — and the wrong stocks. And guns! But adding to the mass of regulations doesn’t make consumers choose better, it makes stuff more expensive and business less open to competition. Indeed, almost all the regulations designed to help “the little guy” backfire, helping big business by hobbling their upstart competitors.

Our leaders, at present, cannot even balance budgets. They are addicted to debt. To pretend we must have more and more government to prevent our addictions or save us from personal debt is ludicrous.

Can we resolve to stop pretending that bigger government is always the solution?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Forfeiting Forfeiture

Asset, Forfeiture, police, crime, Department of Justice, DOJ, illustration, Common Sense

“The Department of Justice announced [last] week that it’s suspending a controversial program that allows local police departments to keep a large portion of assets seized from citizens under federal law and funnel it into their own coffers,” reports the Washington Post.

The Feds call the paused program “equitable sharing”; as I explained last month, I call it “equitable stealing.”

Even when state and local laws prohibit it, local police have been using this federal program to continue taking people’s money and property without ever convicting them of a crime.

The loophole? They split the loot with the Feds.

Now that has ended. According to the Post, this is the result of “budget cuts” in the recently passed omnibus spending bill; the Wall Street Journal calls it a “reallocation of funds.”

Either way, Happy Holidays!

Yet, sadly, the return to freedom, justice and the American Way may be short-lived.

“The Department does not take this step lightly,” wrote M. Kendall Day, the chief of DOJ’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section. “We explored every conceivable option that would have enabled us to preserve some form of meaningful equitable sharing. . . .”

In his letter, he proclaiming a commitment to the principle of guilty-until-proven-innocent and to grabbing people’s stuff, telling state and local and tribal police departments, “We will take all appropriate and necessary measures to minimize the impact of the rescission and reinstate sharing distributions as soon as practical and financially feasible.”

As the Wall Street Journal editorialized, “Congress should make sure that never happens.”

Of course, Congress will likely need a mighty nudge from us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Asset, Forfeiture, police, crime, Department of Justice, DOJ, illustration, Common Sense

 

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general freedom U.S. Constitution

Merry Christmas, America

Christmas 2015, George Washington, Common Sense

In addition to the religious significance of Christmas, Americans share an excellent historical reason to celebrate this day.

In January of 1776, Thomas Paine published his smash hit, “Common Sense.” This pamphlet galvanized public opinion in favor of the American Revolution, which had begun the previous year at Lexington and Concord with the shot heard ’round the world.

That July, the Declaration of Independence was written, signed and proclaimed to the new nation by the Continental Congress.

But by December of the same year, the prospects for the American cause were looking bleak.

British forces, along with their mercenary Hessian reinforcements, had manhandled the Continental Army. Gen. George Washington’s troops were routed at Long Island, pushed out of Manhattan, forced to retreat across the Hudson to New Jersey, and then run out of Jersey across the Delaware River to Pennsylvania “exhausted, demoralized and uncertain of [their] future.”

Soon, the British believed, the American revolt would be extinguished.

“To compound Washington’s problems,” recounts the EyeWitnesstoHistory.com website, “the enlistments of the majority of the militias under his command were due to expire at the end of the month and the troops return to their homes.”

Yet, on Christmas night, Washington marshaled his ragtag soldiers and crossed the icy Delaware, marching his men nine miles to Trenton. In the wee hours of the morning on Dec. 26, the Continentals attacked, catching more than 1,000 Hessian soldiers by surprise and taking nearly all of them captive.

In strictly military terms, the victory was not terribly significant. But in terms of American morale, as well as the perception of important potential allies such as France, the win was an absolutely perfect Christmas gift to the new Republic.

Our Republic, dedicated to liberty and justice for all, continues to this day.

And today, you and I are left to defend it — just like the barefoot minutemen who walked through the snow to face the most powerful military force of their world.

If on this happy and historic holiday you want to launch a surprise attack against modern day tyranny and Big Brother government, to give a gift that will protect and grow freedom, there’s a link here to speed your way across the Delaware and right to the donate page of Citizens in Charge Foundation.

Perhaps you’d like to join Team 1776 by making a monthly pledge of $17.76, or to make a one-time contribution to keep Common Sense coming.

While you’re still free to do so.

Merry Christmas, America!

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Christmas 2015, George Washington, Common Sense

 

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Anti-Gun Barrage

guns, anti-gun, second amendment, Common Sense, illustration

America’s would-be gun-grabbers, chiefly in the media and “on the left,” don’t know much about guns.

But they know what they hate.

After the horrific terrorist shooting spree in San Bernardino, MSNBC and CNN went on a shooting-their-mouths-off spree, relentlessly pushing the need for stricter gun control. President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats echoed the theme.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks went full accelerando, unleashing a foul rant about how “we” are the terrorists and “we” are letting “us” get away with mass murder “every week,” ignoring the statistics that murder rates have gone down, are still going down, and that the rest of the world is being hit with mass shootings too, mainly from Muslim radicals.

When the news came out that the perps were, indeed, Muslim, the barrage of anti-gun talk didn’t stop, though their intellectual ammunition had fizzled.

The president went further off his rocker, calling the guns he wanted to ban “powerful” — though they are of lower caliber than many handguns — while Hillary Clinton talked about the need to ban “assault rifles.”

As has been noted by others, “assault rifle” only means what anti-gun folks say it means, and what they designate as assault weapons are not (contrary to their constant implications) the equivalent of machine guns (which have been illegal for citizen ownership for a long, long time).

Being scared of scary-looking guns is no excuse not to be able to define them. While it would be good to reduce incentives for folks to “go postal” or to commit terroristic acts, we aren’t going to prevent mass shootings by a simple prohibitionary or mere regulatory regime.

That’s for scare-mongers to push. And us to resist.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies privacy U.S. Constitution

Our Masters’ Malign Agenda

Constitution, Bill of Rights, Politics, Terrorism, populism, Common Sense

Reacting to terrorism, President Obama’s first thought? Scratch out the Second Amendment and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of “due process” from the Bill of Rights. Why? To advance his mania for gun control.

Now comes Republican front-runner Donald Trump, one-upping the president. He wants to block any Muslim from entering the U.S. — whether immigrant, refugee or even tourist.

That’s after advocating a government database for tracking American citizens who are Muslim.

Terrorism is winning.

Ignore the Constitution? Disregard individual rights? Demonize an entire religion? Thus our leaders play into ISIS’s hands, encouraging Muslims worldwide to see the U. S. as their enemy.

Cooler heads must prevail. Or else. A Republican friend posted on Facebook that he “would gleefully vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump.” I just cannot muster any glee.

In fact, I’m beginning (again) to wonder if John Fund wasn’t on to something last June, when he wrote in National Review that “just maybe Trump is a double agent for the Left.”

Think “Manchurian Candidate.”

“It’s all very un-American,” my friend Suhail Khan, an American Muslim and conservative activist, told the Washington Post. “Our country was based on religious freedom.”

No more?

Surely, our experiment in limited government has not ended.

But we need to get serious.

We must demand a real commitment from any candidate seeking the country’s highest office. To be entrusted to execute our union’s laws, he or she must actually demonstrate allegiance to the rule of law.

That is, a willingness to fit one’s ego within the confines of the Constitution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Constitution, Bill of Rights, Politics, Terrorism, populism, Common Sense

 

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Enumerated Wrongs

Bill of Rights, Ten Amendments, Freedom of Speech, Bear Arms, Common Sense

Will the government soon quarter troops in your home?

The Third Amendment prohibits that, sure — but if prominent and powerful Democrats are so anxious to toss out the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution, who’s to say they wouldn’t jettison the Third?

Last year, every Democratic U.S. Senator voted to repeal the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech and replace it with new, broad powers for them to regulate campaign spending, thereby speech.

Luckily, those 54 senators lacked the two-thirds margin needed for their amendment.

Now, in the face of “gun violence” and (pssst) terrorism, President Obama, presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton, and true-blue MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, want to scrap the Second Amendment. How? By first scrapping the Fifth, which guarantees that “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” They demand that Americans on the so-called “terrorist no-fly list” be denied the Second Amendment right to a firearm, despite the fact that the bureaucratically created no-fly list offers not a scintilla of due process: no charge, jury, trial.

Would this new regulation have prevented the San Bernardino murderers from getting guns? No — they had recently flown across the world.

The frequent-flying Boston Marathon bombers didn’t make the list, either.

But the list did label an 18-month-old girl a terrorist, snatching her rights like taking candy from a . . . toddler.

“Just what will it take for Congress to overcome the intimidation of the gun lobby and do something as sensible as making sure people on the terrorist watch list can’t buy weapons?” Mrs. Clinton asked rhetorically at a campaign event.

Answer: an illegal abrogation of the most fundamental and cherished rights in human history.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bill of Rights, Ten Amendments, Freedom of Speech, Bear Arms, Common Sense