Each man has the sole right to dispose of his own life. The recognition that the rights of each individual have priority over the demands of the state is an honored and traditional American concept.
Tonie Nathan, from her proposed preamble for the first Libertarian Party platform (On Libertarianism: Historical Notes & Articles, 1981).
“Sargon of Akkad,” a videoblogger on YouTube who is most famous for his weekly series “This Week in Stupid,” makes an eloquent and commonsense case for the traditional meaning of “equality of opportunity,” against a Vox.com egalitarian who thinks the idea is unworkable (and who prefers straight equality of outcomes):
https://youtu.be/TkVwYOYrxWM
Note: “Sargon” has named himself after history’s first emperor (the YouTuber’s extra-net name is Carl Benjamin), and argues from what he calls the “liberal” position, of what might be specified more accurately as Limited Transfer State Liberalism. It is a position very similar to F. A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom. Sargon, in this video, continues his ongoing attacks upon progressivism and socialism of the “Social Justice Warrior” left. He also, interestingly, uses the word “libertarian” as a general designator of a tendency, as philosopher Benedetto Croce used his coinage “liberist” — a general term to replace a once well-understood “liberalism.” Sargon is not a modern libertarian.
Sargon’s online enemies often refer to him as “alt-right” and “ultra-conservative,” to which Mr. Benjamin rightly objects, and on good grounds.
Sargon’s case, here, is strikingly like the standard, moderate Democrat/moderate Republican standpoint of America and Britain, fifty years ago.
How times have changed!
On August 6, 1962, Jamaica became independent of Great Britain. In 1991, on this date, Tim Berners-Lee released files describing his idea for the World Wide Web, and puts up the first website, running on a NeXT computer at CERN, in France.
Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn’t make sense not to use both.
Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, was the only American politician to have voted against America’s involvement in both World War I and World War II.
There’s no accounting for taste, especially regarding humor.
For instance, the 1966 film “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” is, to me, a classic. And I think Donald Trump’s recent sarcasm — “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” — was funny.
And surprisingly appropriate to the situation.
Did the Russians give WikiLeaks the hacked DNC emails? We don’t know.
Was Trump malevolently, traitorously standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue inviting a foreign adversary to criminally cyber-attack his political opponent, as hyped? No.
Still, I’m not copasetic with Trump’s apparent buddy-fest with Russian President — and thug — Vladimir Putin. Yet, Trump is hardly the first American politician to act the fool before Putin.
Republican President George W. Bush bizarrely claimed to have looked into Putin’s soul. It was cloudy that day.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton jetted over to the Kremlin with a silly “Reset” button. Still, friendly Russian interests have been financially generous to the Clintons.
Russia bailed out President Obama (and Assad) after Syria crossed Obama’s apparently evanescent red line. Recall that open microphone that caught Obama telling outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to let Putin know, “After my election, I have more flexibility.”
Vladimir Putin must wonder how his Soviet forebears could have possibly lost the Cold War to a country led by such ninnies.
In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney called Russia our number one geopolitical foe . . . only to be ridiculed by Obama and mocked in the media. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” scoffed a contemptuous Obama. Current Secretary of State John Kerry called it a “preposterous notion.”
Since then, Russia has annexed Crimea, made war in eastern Ukraine and occasionally bombed U.S. forces in Syria.
The Baltic nations, some of which have significant Russian minorities, understandably feel threatened. America has pledged to militarily defend these tiny countries bordering Russia.
But no discussion of that on the campaign trail.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On August 5, 1861, the U.S. Army abolished flogging. The same day 23 years later, Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor received the foundation stone for the Statue of Liberty (which was featured in the rousing conclusion to Alfred Hitchcock’s wartime picture, Saboteur). The island was later renamed Liberty Island.
President Ronald Reagan fired 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers (who had ignored his order for them to return to work) on August 5, 1981.
I am a contributing creator of American civilization; it does not create me. I control the stem of this civilization that is within my reach; it does not control me. It can not even make me read Spengler, if I’d rather read a pulp magazine.
Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom (1943).
The persistence of the issue of raising the minimum wage is an indictment of public education, for at least two reasons:
Bernie Sanders wanted a 15-buck minimum. Hillary went on record supporting a 12-buck rate. Donald Trump would prefer that the minimum wage regulations be enacted by the states, though he says a hike to ten dollars per hour would really help the less fortunate.
It wouldn’t.
That is the tacit theme in a Wall Street Journal piece on the recent minimum wage rate hikes in 14 American cities, including the nation’s capital. A classic, succinct article on BET makes the point even more stark: a duo of economists from Trinity University “report that when a state, or the federal government, increases the minimum wage, Black teens are more likely to be laid off. The duo analyzed 600,000 data points, which the Employment Policies Institute says included ‘a robust sample of minority young adults unprecedented in previous studies on the minimum wage.’”
Just as theory predicts.
Could it be that politicians promise a raise because they believe government-schooled Americans too miseducated to know better?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Bureaucracies established by prohibition are inherently inefficient and unable to discover the knowledge required to solve social problems. Prohibition also suppresses the market’s ability to solve social problems, so that little or no progress is made while prohibitions are in effect. And finally, prohibitions create profit opportunities which add to the problems prohibition is intended to solve.
Dr. Mark Thornton, The Economics of Prohibition (1991).
On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.