Categories
folly ideological culture

Wrong Lesson Learned

Last week’s interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman brought a rare admission from President Barack Obama.

Friedman asked, “What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned doing foreign policy?”

“I’ll give you an example of a lesson I had to learn that still has, you know, ramifications to this day,” Obama replied, “and that is our participation in the coalition that overthrew Gaddafi in Libya.”

The president was quick to defend the “lead from behind” 2011 intervention, itself, as “the right thing to do,” because “had we not intervened, it’s likely that Libya would be Syria, right?”

Or Iraq, perhaps?

He decided to attack Libya militarily, Mr. Obama went on to explain, precisely “because Gaddafi was not going to be able to contain what had been unleashed there” (via the Arab Spring) and thus, “there would be more death, more disruption, more destruction.”

Does that make any sense? Was Gaddafi’s inability to wield more complete and total power over his rivals within the country plausibly be the rationale behind the NATO intervention?

In acknowledging his error, the president said, “What is also true is, I think we underestimated . . . the need to come in full force — if you’re going to do this. Then it’s the day after Gaddafi’s gone, when everyone’s feeling good, everybody’s holding up posters saying ‘Thank You, America!’ At that moment, there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that don’t have any civic traditions.”

Of course, it isn’t possible to “re-build” that which you admit never existed.

And it isn’t the role of the U.S. Government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Herbert Spencer

Every cause produces more than one effect.

Categories
links

Townhall: Time for a Rethink

This weekend at Townhall.com, the problems of relevance that the Republican Party faces, especially vis-à-vis the libertarian wing. Click on over, then come back here:

Categories
video

Video: Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

It is important to ask questions.

Categories
Thought

Herbert Spencer

Strong as it looks at the outset, State-agency perpetually disappoints every one. Puny as are its first stages, private efforts daily achieve results that astound the world.

Categories
crime and punishment judiciary

A Right to Hide Wrongs?

Are public officials entitled to a right to privacy that must be “balanced against” our right to protect ourselves from their misconduct?

Too often, how to adjudicate rights is regarded as a matter of juggling competing interests, whatever those interests may be, rather than of specifying

  • the nature of the relevant right,
  • whether it is fundamental or derivative, and
  • when it does and does not properly apply.

The right to life, for example, entails the right to peaceably earn a living and to acquire and exchange property — but not to steal somebody else’s property.

Thus there’s no call for judges to furrow their brows over how to “balance” your right to your wallet with a mugger’s “right” to it. Whatever rights a thief has, he has never had a right to your wallet. Nor to immunity to the consequences of stealing.

Similar considerations apply to the “right to privacy” of government officials guilty of misconduct in their official capacity.

Whatever information about themselves which, even so, officials may be entitled to withhold from us, this right-to-keep-stuff-about-me-confidential can’t encompass evidence of abuse of power. We are entitled to that information for the sake of combating such abuse and protecting our own rights.

So Eugene Volokh is right to conclude, with respect to the June 11 Chasnoff v. Mokwa decision — a case originating in what certain cops did with tickets taken from scalpers — that it “should be obvious” that “Police officers have no constitutional ‘right of privacy’ in records” of misconduct.

This is really little more than basic law.

Indeed, this is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Today

August 7

On August 7, 1782, George Washington instituted the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle, an award later renamed “the Purple Heart.”

Categories
ideological culture local leaders

An Epic Rebuke

The Good Ol’ Boy Network is under attack. And there’s no nicey face, kiss-and-make-up from its enemy, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich), to his just-defeated primary opponent, Brian Ellis.

Ellis called Amash to congratulate his opponent on election night, after Amash defeated Ellis by a rather large margin. Amash refused to answer Ellis’s call.

No wonder. During the campaign, Ellis sure didn’t play nicey-nice, calling Amash “Al-Qaida’s best friend.”

Amash is well known as a Tea Party candidate, someone who fairly consistently opposes crony capitalism. Ellis was heavily funded by the Chamber of Commerce, local and national . . . and you know what that means.

Or should. The Chamber, “while claiming to be ‘pro-free-market,’” Ryan McMaken explains at The Circle Bastiat, “has gone after him for not spending enough government money. This is not surprising. Business groups like Chambers of Commerce are not free-market organizations at all, but rent-seeking lobbying groups looking for government favors.

There’s nothing new here. When Ron Paul was in Congress, the US Chamber ranked him as one of the worst members, giving him the lowest score of any Republican. In Chamber-speak, being “free-market” means voting for things like TARP and various bailouts and No Child Left Behind.

Are you for the freedom principle, or a mere insider free-for-all?

That principle may be why Amash rebuked not only Ellis but Ellis’s major backer, former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, as well. “You are a disgrace,” Amash lambasted Hoekstra. “And I’m glad we could hand you one more loss before you fade into total obscurity and irrelevance.”

Harsh. Though refreshing candor. In a fight over principle, nicey-nice may not suffice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Herbert Spencer

The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.

Categories
crime and punishment

Cold War Casualty

The Cold War never quite ended. At least two countries still sport that old-fashioned “Second World” status of ostensibly communist, definitely totalitarian, and utterly crazed leadership: North Korea and Cuba.

Alan Gross, age 65, was convicted of un-Cuban activities in 2011, and has since been serving a 15-year prison sentence. He was a subcontractor, working in Cuba, for the U.S. Agency for International Development. What, precisely, did he do “wrong”?

U.S. officials said Gross was merely trying to help Cubans bypass the island’s stringent restrictions on Internet access. But Cuban authorities say Gross was part of a plot to create “a Cuban spring” and destabilize the island’s single-party communist government.

The two interpretations are not exactly at odds with one another. Sure, he was trying to bring the Internet to Cuba. And that’s why the communist government was suspicious: free information would likely bolster opposition to the commie way of stasis.

Which just goes to show how awful single-party states are, how mind-crushingly awful communism is: restrictive; vindictive; paranoid; cowardly.

These qualities are supposed to be absent from New Socialist Man, of course, qualities found only — at least, in ultra-left theory — under capitalism and democracy.

But, instead, they serve as hallmarks of governments that cannot trust their subjects with even a smidgeon of freedom.

Gross is now reportedly weak, and has given up on life. Prison life in a prison society is not worth it, he says.

We can hope for a prisoner exchange. But really, what’s needed is a change of government in Cuba.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.