Guess where Paul Jacob is? At FreedomFest in Nevada!
Here is a video snippet of Gov. Gary Johnson’s speech. You may also have seen the terrific keynote by Sen. Rand Paul, since it streamed live on Fscebook yesterday. But this gives you a good idea of the quality of the talks.
Next week, perhaps, Paul might give us a debriefing on this year’s Freedom Fest. The photo at top shows a panel Paul was on with Gary Johnson.
How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can’t say and what we can show and what we can’t show — it’s enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t eat steak.
Robert A. Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon
On July 16, 1931, Ethiopia’s Emperor Haille Selassie I signed a new Constitution. Not exactly a model of limited government, 
the new document proved that the emperor was in keeping with the time, which was a period of weakening constitutional limits in America, Europe, and Britain. A flavor of the document can be gained by its most “rights-oriented” measures:
Art. 22. Within the limits laid down by the law, Ethiopian subjects have the right to pass freely from one place to the other.
Art. 23. No Ethiopian subject may be arrested, sentenced, or imprisoned except in pursuance of the law.
Art. 24. No Ethiopian subject may, against his will, be deprived of his right to be tried by a legally established court.
Art. 25. Except in cases provided for by law, no domiciliary searches may be made.
Art. 26. Except in cases provided by the law, no one shall have the right to violate the secrecy of the correspondence of Ethiopian subjects.
Art. 27. Except in cases of public necessity determined by the law, no one shall have the right to deprive an Ethiopian subject of any movable or landed property which he owns.Art. 28. All Ethiopian subjects have the right to present to the Government petitions in legal form.
Art. 29. The provisions of the present chapter shall in no way limit the measures which the Emperor, by virtue of his supreme power, may take in the event of war or public misfortunes menacing the interests of the nation.
Yesterday, we discovered that modern America asks police to do “too much.” Which prompts the next question: What should police stop doing?
Here are two immediate reforms where police can do less, while protecting the public more:
(1) End the War on Drugs. Preventing violence and fraud is the rightful role of police. Not preventing people from engaging in activities that are peaceful, however misguided or self-harming. The criminalization of marijuana means more than 150 million Americans are criminals, warranting police involvement.
Now, Mr. Obama has released some convicts serving long drug-related sentences, but we need a president who will go much farther in changing law enforcement priorities.
(2) Stop Using Civil Asset Forfeiture, whereby police steal people’s stuff without charging and convicting those people of any crime. Not only do federal agencies from Justice to the IRS take our property in violation of our rights, but the Feds encourage state and local police to join them in this bad behavior through their “equitable sharing” program.
While Obama has spoken against seizing assets without a criminal conviction, he hasn’t stopped it. And he could at the federal level, with a stroke of his pen — as I have advocated at Townhall. Ending civil asset forfeiture is an executive order actually within his constitutional power.
Would these two steps end all racism or violence or crime? No, no, no.
They would be, however, two steps forward toward a more principled, lawful and respectful style of policing that would better serve to unite rather than divide citizens and police.
It’s a different two-step than reformers have been witnessing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photo Credit: Tomasz Iwaniec
As great and strong societies have arisen, as the sphere of warfare has diminished while the sphere of industry has enlarged, the need for absolute conformity has ceased to be felt, while the advantages of freedom and variety come to be ever more clearly apparent. At a late stage of civilization, the flexible or plastic society acquires even a military advantage over the society that is more rigid, as in the struggle between French and English civilization for primacy in the world. In our own country, the political birth of which dates from the triumph of England in that mighty struggle, the element of plasticity in man’s nature is more thoroughly heeded, more fully taken account of, than in any other community known to history; and herein lies the chief potency of our promise for the future.
John Fiske, The Meaning of Infancy
, 1883.
On July 15, 1976, Jimmy Carter accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party to run for the presidency.
Three years later, as president, he gave his infamous “malaise” speech, in which he focused on energy but did not mention the one thing that actually helped turn the ’70s’ energy crisis around: the phased deregulation of oil prices that had started three months earlier, under his own directive. Instead of touting this deregulatory effort, Carter did the usual politic thing and promised a number of new government programs, extensively ground home a “crisis of confidence” message, and vaguely talked of a spiritual challenge. 
The deregulation was startlingly effective, in the long run — though the immediate effect was a rocketing of prices. These high prices presented profit opportunities, and (lo and behold!) domestic production greatly increased, allowing for many, many years of lower prices. Those high prices would have worked better as market signals had not Carter and Congress also established “windfall profits” taxes, to take away those temporary gains to existing business.
Had Carter deregulated prices earlier, he would probably have been re-elected president. Had he emphasized deregulation, he probably would have beat back Ronald Reagan’s free market rhetoric — with actual action.
The price controls had been put in place earlier in the decade by the Republican president at the time, Richard M. Nixon, with the great help of his aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
When President Obama said, “[W]e ask the police to do too much,” at the memorial service for the five slain Dallas policemen, he was echoing an idea previously expressed.
“We’re asking cops to do too much in this country,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown told reporters a day earlier. “Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve,” he added, noting such problems as a lack of mental healthcare, rampant drug abuse, substandard schools and even roaming dogs.
So, what should police stop doing?
Plenty. But I’ll save that answer for tomorrow. Today, let’s pose another: Why so much crime, poverty, and violence in these communities?
Mr. Obama fingered not taxing-and-spending enough on benefits for the poor, including for “decent schools,” “gainful employment,” and “mental health programs.” Yet, after decades of expensive wars on poverty, illiteracy, drug abuse, etc., things have only gotten worse.
“We flood communities with so many guns,” the president intoned, “that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock, than get his hands on a computer or even a book.”
He’s playing fast and furious with the truth. Books are free at the library. Glocks cost money.
And who is this “we” he keeps bringing up?
Chief Brown mentioned a critical problem Obama did not: “Seventy percent of the African American community is being raised by single women.”
Police cannot solve all our problems, sure, but they especially cannot fix problems exacerbated by the welfare state and the educational system. Big government is no substitute for Mom and Dad.
Even freedom merely offers the opportunity to fix our own problems.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Liberty can alone teach nations the industry for which they are fitted, and determine national vocations.
Edmond About, Handbook of Social Economy; or, The Worker’s A B C, (New York: D. Appleton & Co., translated from the final French edition, 1873), p. 155.
On July 14, 1789, Paris citizens stormed the Bastille. On the same date nine years later, in America, the Sedition Act prohibited the writing, publishing, or speaking false or malicious statements about the United States government. The passage of this repressive law spurred the formation of the first opposition party in the United States, with Thomas Jefferson [above] as its leader and figurehead.
Donald Trump is MoveOn.org’s worst nightmare.
The decades-old “left-leaning” organization is still very much a live concern.
The group’s original mission was to urge then-President Bill Clinton’s censure, rather than his impeachment . . . and then “move on” to normal governmental business.
Over the years, the organization has backed “progressive” candidates, and promoted causes like campaign finance reform.
Trump annoys MoveOn folks doubly, I gather. Though he’s super-rich, he parlayed social media to leverage major media to gain billions in free coverage — which is precisely what MoveOn attempts to do.
Trump also sports a tongue that flouts all past decorum, thus making Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal itself seem . . . almost . . . quaint.
Oh, and this: Trump seems to stand for everything MoveOn supporters are against. That is, if you can figure what, precisely, Trump stands for on most issues.
Robert Reich wrote an email, the other day, reveling in his role as a video propagandist for the organization for over a year, but fearing that isn’t enough to defeat Trump. So, he explains, “instead of just producing an online video every few weeks, MoveOn’s gearing up to produce one practically every day.” He writes to pitch for money.
MoveOn’s videos may be very effective — at getting progressive types to hate Trump all the more, and to vote against him.
Less certain is their reach. Can the new professional videographers preach beyond the eager choir?
Oh, and it’s worth noting that this is precisely the kind of thing campaign finance reform is designed to squelch.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
