Fascinating topic . . . how well-intended programs backfire.
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Video: Hurting Those We Aim To Aid
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Tom Lehrer
Things I once thought were funny are scary now. I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava.
Tom Lehrer, Tom Lehrer, People (1982).
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A Banned Book
On March 5, 1616, Nicolaus Copernicus’s book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was placed on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books. This censorship notwithstanding, the Earth continued to revolve around the Sun. The book had been first published in 1543 in Nuremberg.
| In 1770, the Boston Massacre took place on March 5.
| March 5 is magician Penn Jillette’s birthday. He turns 61 today, beginning his 62nd year of life.
We could call our time The Age of Teflon, but that conjures up memory of Ronald Reagan — “the Teflon President” is what Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) called the 40th Commander in Chief — and, please recall, Reagan had nothing on Bill Clinton.
Nicknamed “Slick Willie,” Clinton was the politician who really demonstrated what slipperiness is all about. Prez 42 had what it takes to get out of any scandal whatsoever, even criminal:
- Bluster (never admit anything);
- Lexical tomfoolery (convolve the epistemics with feints to metaphysics, say, about the meaning of “is”);
- Distraction (bomb a foreign country to deflect attention):
- Ad hominem (deny the charges because of the nefarious conspiracy of opponents); and
- Relying upon followers, especially in the media, to deny all substance outright.
We have lived in the Age of Clinton ever since. Even the grossest enormities fail to fall heavily upon a politician who is, somehow (usually because of partisanship, but not always), impervious to the blemish of a crime. The accusations (even charges) don’t stick.
Now that American voters have the chance to anoint another Clinton to office, making a dynasty out of a done deal, we sort of just assume — by political inertia — that the Age of Clinton will continue, with invulnerability the only thing adhering to the most corrupt politician of our time, the Mrs. of the Age.
Yet, the FBI is investigating former Secretary of State Hillary “Smart Power” Clinton’s email server scandal. One of her subordinates, a tech guy, has been given immunity after extensive pleadings of the Fifth Amendment.
Could the Age of Clinton end with her prosecution?
Unlikely, given how partisanship now routinely trumps the rule of law.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Deirdre N. McCloskey
The vices of modernism come from the master vice of Pride, the vice so characteristic of an actual or wannabe aristocracy. It is prideful overreaching to think that social engineering can work, that a smart lad at a blackboard can outwit the wisdom of the world or the ages, that a piece of machinery like statistical significance can tell you how big or small a number is.
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The Constitutional Congress
On March 4, 1789, the first bicameral Congress of the United States met in New York, New York, in accordance with the new Constitution.
Two years later on the same date, Vermont was admitted as the fourteenth state of the union.
In a twist in World War II allegiances, Finland declared war on Nazi Germany on March 4, 1945, beginning the Lapland War.
As we tromp repeatedly to the polling booth this year, we should wonder: are we being played?
The answer: yes . . . at least on the issue of Apple’s iPhone security.
I’ve written about this before. Our politicians and government officials are playing demagogue, trying to convert (too successfully?) the electorate into a mob bent on destroying privacy and private property — out of unwarranted fear.
The case for terrorist worries in this case is not even plausible: the FBI waited too long to be convincing, and the NSA supposedly has the metadata anyway. The government doesn’t need the info. It’s after something else.
As former congressman Bob Barr put it, the government’s case is “pure applesauce . . . simply the latest chapter in a decades-long push by Uncle Sam to gain access to Americans’ digital technology and place this booming sector of our economy under its thumb.” He goes on:
[T]he government is for the first time demanding that a company actually invent a way to defeat the very encryption safeguards it builds into the devices it sells. Attorney General Lynch has taken to citing an obscure law, the All Writs Act of 1789, to justify this unprecedented exercise of power to compel companies to do the government’s work for it.
To my knowledge, the government has never demanded that Allied Safe and Vault, or any of its competitors, go out of its way to cook up “a way in” to its security systems.
Government is just trying to retain its old relevance. Folks in power see it slipping. And it is, as Americans outsource their privacy and security not to governments, but, increasingly, to private providers.
That’s a good thing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
A healthy democracy depends on the spreading of good ideas. If you found this article useful, please share it with friends by clicking on any of the social media icons below.
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Abraham Lincoln
When men take it in their heads to-day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded.
Abraham Lincoln, address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838).
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25th Anniversary
On March 3, 1991, an amateur videographer captured the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers, thus ushering in the age of citizen surveillance of the state.
Had I ever heard of the zoopraxiscope before, I’d forgotten it by the time I read Randal O’Toole’s recent critique of the latest Washington, D. C., public transit debacle, the new streetcar system. So I had to look it up.
It was an early “motion picture” projector.
In other words, an “atavism.”
According to O’Toole, “Streetcars were technologically perfected in the 1880s, so for Washington to subsidize the construction of a streetcar line today is roughly equal to . . . Los Angeles subsidizing the manufacture of zoopraxiscopes.”
O’Toole, a transportation specialist, argues that the new system, barely in place, but already on the hook for more subsidy to build more lines, is grossly inefficient.
As well as atavistic.
“Rather than build five more miles of obsolete line,” he concludes, “the best thing Washington can do is shut down its new line and fill the gaps between the rails with tar.”
Drastic?
Well, is it any more drastic or extreme than debuting a mass system without a fare system in place? That is, without even having decided on which payment system to use?
Unfortunately, the inefficient clunkers are unaccountably contagious. “Following Portland’s example, Atlanta, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and several other cities have opened or are building streetcar lines,” O’Toole explains. “Most of these lines are about two miles long, are no faster than walking, and cost $50 million or more per mile while buying the same number of buses would cost a couple million, at most.”
Politicians idolize such schemes so much that we, the taxpayers, are forced to be iconoclastic.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
A healthy democracy depends on the spreading of good ideas. If you found this article useful, please share it with friends by clicking on any of the social media icons below.
Common Sense Needs Your Help!
Also, please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money. Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!