But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.
On February 28, 1646, Roger Scott, of Lynn, Massachusetts, was tried for sleeping in church. Awakened in church by a tithingman’s long, knobbed staff hitting him on the head, he struck back at the man, and garnered a whipping as punishment, as well as the dark designation as “a common sleeper at the publick exercise.”
Squelching the speech of those you disagree with, how it is done — a cultural artifact of the present age:
In this video, the valiant Ben Shapiro gives a scheduled talk, but is harassed by protestors and his talk sabotaged by those seeking to “no-platform” him.
On February 27, 1830, American economist and free trade advocate Arthur Latham Perry was born.
The Twenty-second Amendment (Amendment XXII) of the United States Constitution, which sets a term limit for election and overall time of service to the office of President of the United States, was ratified by the requisite 36 of the then-48 states on February 27, 1951.
Congress had passed the amendment on March 21, 1947.
[T]his commonwealth is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men on earth: that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the general government, being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but, where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, (casus non fœderis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them. . . .
Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions (November 1798).
The “gender pay gap” is a big deal for some folks, who worry about women earning less than men.
Democrats, for example, often talk as if the issue were about women doing the same jobs as men but getting paid less. But that’s not what the stats about wage differences by sex (that women earn, in America, 78 percent of what men earn) actually track.
Women en masse tend to earn less because it just so happens that women, in general, work in the paid labor market fewer days and hours (often taking more time off to birth and raise children) — as well as choose lower-paying careers — than men.
It’s about time and productivity. And the choices we make.
Melinda Gates is concerned about something similar to this “wage gap.” She is interested in task dissimilarities between men and women. She’s not a nut about the subject, though. In her contribution to the annual letter of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she notes that America is the most equal regarding a statistical paid/unpaid “gender gap.” Women work more time in unpaid labor elsewhere, globally (including Europe) than do men elsewhere, globally.
Funny, I’ve never heard any “We’re No. 1” chants, congratulating Americans on the tiniest gender gap on the planet.
Certainly, we don’t need a new program to help women catch up with men . . . but for all to be equally free to catch up with their own dreams. Around the world workers need more innovation and, well, free-market capitalism — to free women (and men) from drudgery.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Photo credit: Riveting machine operator by Alfred T. Palmer
A theory that does not work well in practice is a bad theory. The way to tell whether a theory is good or bad is to test it by practice. Everything that is done at all, unless by mere chance, is done on some theory; and it is certainly better that things should be done on a good theory than on a bad one. What makes a theory good? Simply because it corresponds with and explains the facts.
Arthur Latham Perry, Elements of Political Economy (1869).
February 26 marks the Dominican Republic’s Independence Day.
Legislators aren’t honest.
Or maybe in Colorado and Oregon they just don’t understand the meaning of words . . . like “safety” and “emergency.” (Heck, there was once a politician unsure of what the meaning of the word “is” is.)
“The state constitution gives Coloradans the power to challenge news laws through citizen initiative,” explains the Independence Institute’s Mike Krause in a recent Freedom Minute video.
In order to force a popular vote, the referendum process requires citizens to submit petitions before the “effective date” of the new law. If a law is deemed truly “vital to public peace, health and safety,” however, the legislature may add what’s known as a “safety clause.” That puts the law into immediate effect . . . thereby blocking the people’s referendum power to petition that new law to the ballot.
Krause discloses that a majority of 2015 bills passed in Colorado contained so-called safety clauses — 68 percent in the Senate and 55 percent in the House.
In Oregon, the tactic is referred to as an “emergency clause.” There, too, most bills are passed as emergencies to block any citizen response.
Tired of legislators using fake emergencies to disenfranchise voters, attorney Eric Winters drafted an initiative mandating a two-thirds vote of both House and Senate for legislation with an emergency clause. Now a grassroots coalition has formed to petition his “No More Fake Emergencies Act” onto the ballot.
Last year, The Oregonian warned that by “abusing the emergency clause” and “attacking the prerogatives of voters,” legislators were inviting “a backlash.”
Taking the initiative, citizens will stop fake emergencies with genuine democracy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Resolved, That alien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are: that no power over them has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual States, distinct from their power over citizens.
Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions (November 1798).