On April 8, 1913, the 17th amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, was ratified.
Categories
17th amendment
Government’s job is to protect our lives and liberties. But how best to accomplish this? Should books be banned? Websites blocked?
Diane Feinstein thinks so.
Sen. Feinstein (D-California) wants to ban The Anarchist Cookbook from the Internet. The book, which came out in 1971 with lots of radical ideas, including notoriously unreliable instructions for making bombs, is now a website. Perhaps the quality of the “cookbook” has helped us survive against the anarchist threat these last five decades.
Today, the threat is not anarchist but Islamist terrorism. So of course Sen. Feinstein also wants the Al Qaida magazine Inspire “off the Internet.”
Government censorship, anyone? Free speech, Senator?
Now, I don’t approve of the bombing and murdering of innocents for any cause. So I am not at one with deadly anarchists or deadly jihadists. Count me as among their enemies.
But, at the risk of being called a “liberal,” I don’t think we should defend ourselves against anarchists or jihadists or other terrorists just any old way. For both moral and strategic reasons, we ought not be killing innocents by drone strike, along with those simply declared guilty, without any lawful process at all.
Likewise, we ought not abridge our own cherished principles and the rule of law.
Including the First Amendment.
After all, that’s what government is supposed to be protecting in the first place.
The fact that Feinstein seems so comfortable with simply “banning” books and magazines and websites suggests an illiberal, unAmerican attitude. An attitude that threatens to do more damage to the homeland than any “cookbook” or pro-terrorist magazine or website ever will.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
The Logic of Angry Crowds
“Inclusion in civil society” is an admirable goal, but what if we destroy civility in the process?
Shared ideas matter. Please pass this along to friends.
Get a high-resolution screensaver by clicking on the image below:
Categories
Mohandas K. Gandhi
“That State is the best governed which is governed the least.”
Mohandas K. Gandhi, August 15, 1940
Categories
Beer legal April 7, 1933
On April 7, 1933, Prohibition in the United States was repealed for beer of no more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of the XXI amendment.
Say a mugger robs Ed instead of you. Has the mugger given you a present of your stuff by not taking it? Is his non-taking a “giveaway”?
No. If you possess something you have honestly earned, it is yours by right, not as a special gift from each person who abstains from relieving you of it.
Why is this not just as true when the prospective stuff-taker is a government?
Whatever case may be made for taxing you to fund a governmental goal, the state is not “giving” you whatever part of your wealth it lets you keep.
Yet this is the claim that partisans of big government repeatedly make. They apparently aim to undermine any hint of willingness to let us keep more of what belongs to us.
We see it again in the context of President Obama’s recent attacks on the plan of some Republicans to do away with estate taxes, the notorious “death taxes.” This tax relief would allegedly be a “giveaway” to those who have worked most successfully to earn something worth leaving to people they care about. It would also allegedly “deprive” non-recipients of some government handout no longer fundable because of the tax cut.
Being taxed less is always about keeping more of your own money and being able to spend it as you wish, including on heirs.
That’s a feature of tax cuts — not a bug.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Salt Rebels
On April 6, 1930, Mohandes Gandhi raised a lump of mud and salt, declaring, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.” Thus began the Salt Satyagraha.
Categories
Mohandas K. Gandhi
“In the democracy which I have envisaged, a democracy established by non-violence, there will be equal freedom for all. Everybody will be his own master. It is to join a struggle for such democracy that I invite you today.”
Mohandas K. Gandhi, August 8, 1942
Categories
Townhall: Out Like a Lamb?
This weekend at Townhall, I expand my thoughts from Thursday, on the whole Indiana RFRL controversy. Click on over to Townhall. But then back here, for I have by no means written the last word on the subject. Here is a wide variety of opinion:
- LewRockwell.com: “I Don’t Believe in Religious Freedom,” by Rev. Larry Beane
- Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (as originally passed)
- Changes to Indiana’s RFRA
- US News: “Religious freedom laws, now divisive, weren’t used in past to allow anti-gay discrimination”
- FindLaw.com: “Texas restaurant tells gay couple not to come back”
- FindLaw.com explains Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act
- USA Today: “Bakery risks large fine for anti-gay discrimination”
- Deseret News: “Religious liberty and gay marriage collide as New Mexico photographer loses case”
- Los Angeles Times: “Florist broke no Washington law”
- Denver NBC 9-News: “Baker refused to write anti-gay words on cake”
Categories
Presidential Veto
On April 5, 1792, U.S. President George Washington exercised his authority to veto a bill, the first time this power was used in the United States.