On January 9, 1788, Connecticut became the fifth state to be admitted to the United States.
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We value our privacy.
No wonder we’re nervous. The National Security Agency, in blithe disregard of our constitutional right against unwarranted search and seizure, has been indiscriminately scooping up data (“meta” data) about our communications (among other covert acts that have compromised the security of our transactions).
However the controversies triggered by the scandals play out, it’s clearer than ever that you can’t trust the government to respect your right to privacy. Your line of first defense has to be you.
Even before the NSA scandal broke, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was on the case, explaining how to reduce your risk when saving data to your computer, sending the data elsewhere, and entrusting it to third parties. Their Surveillance Self-Defense site spells out what the government can legally do to spy on you and what you can legally do to protect yourself. The discussion includes nitty-gritty stuff like advice on the proper use of passwords and encryption, protecting yourself against malware, and lowering the risk of eavesdropping on confidential conversations.
That’s right, SSD talks about “what the government can legally do” to breach your data or listen in on your life, not so much about what it can do illegally. A banner atop the home page notes that the site “has not yet been updated to reflect the 2013 revelations about the NSA. . . .”
Updates are coming. Meanwhile, we can fill in some of the blanks ourselves. . . .
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration by ocularinvasion used under a Creative Commons license.
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George Washington
The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.
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Memes to Shun
Wasn’t Rolling Stone once a clever and trendy magazine? Now it’s descended into history’s dustbin to publish a listicle showing just how low it can go. Jesse Myerson’s “Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For” scrapes the bottom of the memetic barrel, almost all the way down to Communism.
- Public Works über alles. Can’t find a job? Work for the government, thus fulfilling the notion of “Guaranteed work for everybody . . . who wants to” sit around and look busy.
- Guarantee an income, or “Social Security for All.” Hoary. But the higher that guaranteed level is, the more it would nullify the make-work schemes of proposal no. 1, above. That’s only the most obvious problem.
- Seize the land. Yup, land communism. How 19th century. Because landlords, we’re informed, “don’t really do anything to earn their money.” For some reason, the author of this ignorant list of proposals doesn’t mention the most obvious problem with this old tradition: the tragedy of the commons. If mass poverty won’t convince you, what about environmental degradation?
- State Socialism, pure and simple, advertised as “Make Everything Owned by Everybody.” Yes, a major American magazine has now endorsed the very system that was tried by the worst totalitarian regimes in the modern world, the Soviet Union, Communist China, etc. No mention of Ludwig von Mises’ explanation as to why this cannot work.
At least Myerson’s fifth “reform” isn’t to eradicate money. It’s to
- Set up state banks.
Not as goofy as the other ideas, but hey: in a world where the government owns all the land and all the capital, and people don’t have to work — but can earn extra bucks in government “jobs” — what, exactly, will his beloved state banks be loaning us to accomplish?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On January 8, 1790, George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York, New York.
In 1835, on this date, the United States federal government achieved a zero debt for the first and only time.
In 1867, African American men were first allowed to vote in Washington, D.C.
Connor Boyack, founder of Utah’s Libertas Institute, has earned a reputation combating the dangerous no-knock raids characteristic of the War on Drugs/People. The point of these raids is not to defuse a violent situation, but to hunt for drugs or arrest a slumbering, peaceful home-dweller. Sometimes people die as a result.
Now Boyack is fighting to reverse a stealthier assault on Utahans — the latest legislative weakening of protections against wrongful seizure of property passed in 2000 by citizen initiative.
The changes, put over as a minor “recodification” of civil forfeiture law, make it almost impossible for an innocent victim of a property grab by police to recover legal costs. For one thing, compensation is now optional. For another, any compensation awarded is now limited to a mere fifth of the value of the property taken. Yet the cost of litigating such takings is often much greater than the property value.
Boyack hopes to persuade Utah officials who do care about individual liberty to pay more attention to close-to-home hazards.
“One thing I noticed at the Tenth Amendment Center is that while liberty-minded Utah legislators could join arms to [oppose] the federal government, they weren’t nearly as skeptical of the government here in Utah,” he says, quoted in a profile by Rise of the Warrior Cop author Radley Balko.
Boyack champions greater consistency. After all, when your rights are violated, the injustice and the harm are the same whether the perpetrator is local, state or federal.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Delphine de Girardin
Instinct is the nose of the mind.
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Jan 7, Rothbard
On January 7, 1940, the Finnish 9th Division completely destroyed the much-larger Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road, in a crucial battle during Finland’s Winter War.
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Jan 6 Montessori
On January 6, 1907, Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome, Italy. In 1912 on this date, New Mexico became the 47th state of America’s United States.
In 1941, on January 6, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his “Four Freedoms” State of the Union speech, emphasizing vague “freedoms” that enabled government to usurp definable freedoms.
Perhaps Hermine Ricketts should be glad that a SWAT team didn’t descend upon on her front-yard garden. After all, in blatant if ignorant violation of a new zoning law, the former architect had been growing vegetables there.
Yes. Vegetables!
Several months ago, a Miami Shores zoning inspector happened by (doubtless alerted by a troublemaking neighbor) and told Ricketts that she must uproot the vegetables, now illegal because the village council is okay with seeing fruits and flowers in a front-yard garden but has a thing about veggies.
Hermine Ricketts complained to the code enforcement board but was rebuffed. She therefore obeyed the order to uproot vegetables from the garden that she had been tending without controversy for 17 years. But she and her husband Tom Carroll are also taking their case to court with the help of the Institute for Justice, the ubiquitous champion of property rights.
“You can plant fruit, you can have flowers, you can adorn your property with pink flamingos— but you cannot have vegetables!” exclaims Ari Bargill, a lawyer with the Institute. “That is almost the definition of irrationality.”
The couple’s back yard is mostly in the shade because of the way the house is positioned, so relegating the vegetables to the rear isn’t really an alternative. However, that’s irrelevant. Front yard or back, it’s their own property from which their own kale and cabbage are being banned. The city doesn’t own the plot; Tom and Hermine do.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.