We all know what the problems are: it’s tax and spend. One party will tax and spend, the other party won’t tax but will spend. It’s both of them together.
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On July 16, 1931, Ethiopia’s Emperor Haille Selassie I signed a new Constitution. Not exactly a model of classical liberal limitations on government, the new document proved that the emperor was in keeping with the time, which was a period of weakening constitutional limits in America, Europe, and Britain. A flavor of the document can be gained by its most “rights-oriented” measures:
Art. 22. Within the limits laid down by the law, Ethiopian subjects have the right to pass freely from one place to the other.
Art. 23. No Ethiopian subject may be arrested, sentenced, or imprisoned except in pursuance of the law.
Art. 24. No Ethiopian subject may, against his will, be deprived of his right to be tried by a legally established court.
Art. 25. Except in cases provided for by law, no domiciliary searches may be made.
Art. 26. Except in cases provided by the law, no one shall have the right to violate the secrecy of the correspondence of Ethiopian subjects.
Art. 27. Except in cases of public necessity determined by the law, no one shall have the right to deprive an Ethiopian subject of any movable or landed property which he owns.Art. 28. All Ethiopian subjects have the right to present to the Government petitions in legal form.
Art. 29. The provisions of the present chapter shall in no way limit the measures which the Emperor, by virtue of his supreme power, may take in the event of war or public misfortunes menacing the interests of the nation.
The cause of immigration reform hit a huge speed bump in recent weeks, with the arrival at the border of thousands upon thousands of children from war-torn Central America.
War-torn? Yes. Gangs — micro-governments in the olden style — fed by drug money have turned the Latin American states to our south into war zones, alas not too dissimilar to the gang warfare that beset some of our great American cities.
Only worse.
No wonder the people in those countries are scared, and desperate. “Coyotes” are taking advantage of U.S. politicians’ inability to secure the border, or even cook up a coherent immigration policy, and charge large amounts of money to transport children to “safety” in the U.S.
Where they are gathered and detained.
In the midst of all the partisan bickering — a legitimate clash of ideologies, really — stands one hero: Glenn Beck. While President Obama avoids the border crisis as if avoidance solves problems, radio/TV/Internet sensation Beck is taking his trucks and buses and volunteers directly to the area Obama avoids, the detention centers and surrounding cities and churches.
He’s taking food, clothing, and comforts for the children.
Last night on The O’Reilly Factor he explained that governments are instituted to provide justice. He laments the lack of justice on immigration coming from Washington. But the business of the people — of caring Americans — is not primarily justice.
It’s mercy, Beck says. He’s raised millions, and he’s personally taking aid to where it’s needed.
Heroic. And very neighborly.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Andrew Dixon White
Oratory prevailed over science and experience.
Bill Maher began the panel segment of his latest Real Time with Bill Maher episode taking on the “children at the border” problem. He identified the underlying cause: drug cartels.
His solution? Legalize all psychoactive drugs, particularly cocaine.
Wait a minute. The best response to a border crisis is to legalize drugs?
Seems orthogonal to the issue. “Out of left field.”
Which is not to say I don’t support legalizing drugs. But I try not to bring it up every discussion. Could Maher have drugs a tad too much on his brain?
Be that as it may or may not, for the facts I then turned to . . . Cato Institute.
Only to have the good folks at Cato back up Maher’s assertions.
On July 8, Ted Galen Carpenter, a Cato senior fellow, pinpointed the growth in drug cartels’ power in Central America as central to the whole issue. The drug cartels are “driving vulnerable populations northward to the United States to enhance their own profits.”
But the whole picture is more complicated.
A month earlier, Alex Nowrasteh, Cato’s immigration policy analyst, focused on two American border policies that “likely” and “unintentionally” incentivized “some of the migration and the smugglers that carry many of the migrants,” leading to the current debacle of thousands of unaccompanied minors now being housed — in poor conditions — in detainee centers.
True to form, Nowrasteh notes that “some American politicians who blame American law for the surge actually voted for that American law in the past.”
Which is more horrifying: The idea that politicians make things worse? Or that comedians make more sense than our elected representatives?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On July 14, 1789, Paris citizens storm the Bastille. On the same date nine years later, in America, the Sedition Act prohibited the writing, publishing, or speaking false or malicious statements about the United States government. The passage of this repressive law spurred the formation of the first opposition party in the United States, with Thomas Jefferson as its leader and figurehead.
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Andrew Dixon White
The decline in the purchasing power of paper money was in obedience to the simplest laws in economics, but France had now gone beyond her thoughtful statesmen and taken refuge in unwavering optimism, giving any explanation of the new difficulties rather than the right one.
On Townhall.com, the honor of politicians is called into question — by their very own action. Specifics? We’ve got specifics! Judgment? That’s up to you, this time.
(But you know on whose side Paul Jacob serves.)
Relevant references for the column:
- Phoenix Pension Reform Act
- Arizona Central, Robert Robb on the ballot title
- Save Term Limits
- Ethics-term limit proposal not popular with Arkansas voters
- Townhall: Let’s Repeal Freedom of Speech (Paul Jacob)
- Cache Valley Daily: Senate committee approves amendment to limit campaign spending (Troy Wilde)
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Video: How and Why Millennials Vote
They aren’t voting Republican. For a reason.
Read the poll results here.
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Mr. Majesty
Are American presidents becoming (or have they long since become) tantamount to elected kings?
Cato Institute scholar Gene Healy has penned volumes about the super-sized presidency (The Cult of the Presidency and False Idol: Barack Obama and the Continuing Cult of the Presidency, for two). So he’s well-qualified to assess conservative law professor F.H. Buckley’s Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America.
Buckley both credits our Constitution for protecting our liberty and indicts it for fostering the modern assaults on that liberty.
Our government has lapsed into an “elective monarchy,” which also afflicts parliamentary systems but to which presidential systems are especially susceptible. For “presidentialism fosters the rise of Crown government.” It “encourages messianism by making the head of government the head of state,” insulating him from legislative accountability and making it harder to remove him.
Though Healy finds the argument well-defended in many respects, he isn’t entirely convinced. He’d like more evidence, for example, that parliamentary systems are as better equipped to reverse big and bad policies as they are at imposing them.
I’ll let these two argue the nuances regarding which form of out-of-control national government is most dangerously constituted. We can be grateful, at least, that our own elected king is curbed by term limits much less easily shucked than has proved the case in other presidentially governed countries.
Like these others, we may have an elected monarch. But, pre- and post-FDR, he is not a monarch-for-life. Not yet.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.