It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradation we surmount the force of local prejudice as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world.
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Americans eager to weaken various limits on political power here at home should pay closer attention to news from abroad.
Around the globe, killing presidential term limits is high on the to-do list of aspiring presidents-for-life.
Autocrats also dislike the right of citizen initiative. Even when they abstain from trying to kill initiative rights altogether, they often seek outrageous restrictions on them, or even stoop to harassing petitioners and voters.
One such enemy of the people was Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, now dead. Chávez was an equal-opportunity attacker of citizen rights. He expropriated businesses, bullied media, once even ordered soldiers to fire on anti-Chávez protesters (they refused). He also succeeded in eliminating presidential term limits.
In 2003, his government arranged for the public release of the names of Venezuelans who had signed a petition to recall Chávez. The names were stolen from the office charged with overseeing the petition drive and leaked to a pro-Chávez legislator, who then published them on his website. Many signers lost jobs, loans, and other opportunities controlled by the state.
American foes of term limits, initiative rights, and other constraints on concentrated power may think there’s no comparison. But every chipping away at protections against tyranny is dangerous.
While it is true that no single limit on power can substitute for all the cultural values and ideas that underlie our rights as free citizens, it is also the case that institutions and culture reinforce each other. The foundation of a building has more than one cornerstone.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Thomas Paine
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
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Murray N. Rothbard
Shameless sponging on friends and relatives … [Karl] Marx affected a hatred and contempt for the very material resource he was too anxious to cadge and use so recklessly. Marx created an entire philosophy around his own corrupt attitudes toward money.
For my birthday, Sen. Rand Paul started a filibuster.
I jest. The junior senator from Kentucky had something more important than my big day on his mind: the U.S. Constitution.
At 11:47AM, Sen. Paul took the floor: “I rise today to begin to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination for the CIA. I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes.”
I didn’t watch all of his endeavor (yet). What I did catch was amazingly eloquent.
It was also very specific. The Kentucky senator had asked candidate Brennan not one but two substantial lists of questions regarding the drone strike program. He also asked the Obama Administration whether the president thinks he has the constitutional right to use drone strikes against non-combatant Americans on American soil. Brennan had answered well enough, but left the administration to answer for itself. Attorney General Eric Holder responded, later, evasively.
And so Rand Paul took to the floor. And spoke at length — without teleprompter. He was joined, later, by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. And then some Republicans, including Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio.
Though Rand Paul’s office had started a Twitter hashtag, #filiblizzard. It didn’t take off. Instead, #StandWithRand became the international trending topic.
The world watched.
But filibusters have to end. About 13 hours in, Rand Paul did end it, though not before insisting that, with regard to our rights, compromise is very, very bad: “The Fifth Amendment is not optional.”
If this filibuster solidified that constitutional principle, what a present that would be — and not just to me, but to all Americans. And the world.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Murray N. Rothbard
It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright.
Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit blogger, is often sensible, always indispensable.
But his idea for slowing “the revolving door between government and business” would encourage government to do more of the bad things freedom lovers loathe.
Glenn says: “Political appointees in the executive branch should pay an extra income tax when they leave for high-paying jobs.” He wants a surtax of 50 to 75 percent, for five years, on all income greater than what the victims of the surtax had earned as government officials.
Even if lobbying were the biggest cause of outsized government — dubious — expanding government’s ability to impose strangling taxation ain’t the answer.
The tax would, first of all, be unjust in itself, among other things treating persons unequally under the law. It would massively penalize select taxpayers simply for having worked at a certain level in a certain branch of government. Penalize them not only for unapproved-but-legal conduct (lobbying), but for unapproved-but-legal conduct in which they might engage.
The tax would also be a horrific precedent. For one thing, why apply it only to executive appointees and not also lawmakers, judges, the president?
Indeed, such a tax would foster the notion that it’s okay to confiscatorily target the income of members of any group, not just former government officials, in hopes of preventing other disapproved-but-legal conduct. After all, lawmakers wouldn’t be calling up Instapundit to get approval of the next proposed application of his idea.
Back to the drawing board, Glenn.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
One way marijuana legalization was pushed, politically, in Colorado and Washington, was with the “let’s tax this weed!” agenda. Indeed, the “tax and regulate” approach proved a convenient way for marijuana users to get non-marijuana users “on board” the legalization bandwagon, basically buying off those who were most sympathetic to the prohibitionist status quo.
And it’s the dominant way of thinking, today.
This frustrates many who wanted to return marijuana growth, distribution and usage to its pre-1937 legality, for they saw the prohibitionist program as inherently illiberal, nasty, inhumane. To these legalizers, “taxing and regulating” appears as just a ramped-down version of today’s policy.
Think Genghis Khan, who wanted to kill all Manchurians and turn northern China into a vast grazing land for horses. He was convinced not to do so for reasons of the “Laffer Curve”: he’d get more revenue by taxing Manchurians than killing them.
While taxing and regulating Manchurians was certainly better than genocide, it was still a tyrant’s prerogative.
Apply the same logic to cannabis.
Marijuana has been grown and used for eons. Trying to control or eradicate it as a noxious weed rather than tolerate it as a plant with many uses, seems unjust, not merely inadvisable. The whole “tax and regulate” notion rubs up against the home growing of the plant. Marijuana is easy to grow, but many folks want to prohibit people from growing it out-of-doors — the better to keep it out of the hands of thieving youngsters.
Call me old-fashioned, but it seems to me that thieving youngsters should be nabbed and dealt with in Andy Griffith-style justice.
But then, I missed the marijuana episode of the Andy Griffith Show.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Penn Jillette
The First Amendment says nothing about your getting paid for saying anything. It just says you can say it. I don’t believe that if a corporation pulls all the money out of you or a network pulls their money away or you get fired, you’re being censored.
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Market Power vs. Political Power
Critics of term limits on elected officials sometimes say: “You wouldn’t term-limit a neurosurgeon/fireman/[other indispensable professional] just because he’s experienced, wouldja?”
No. But I am capable of distinguishing between economic power and political power — between voluntary trade and policies imposed by force. It’s all about “opting out”: we are free to decline the iPad, but not Obamacare.
A study reported in Harvard Business Review suggests that CEOs who start out as dynamic entrepreneurs, responsive to market conditions, often grow more conservative over time. Commentators debate whether such waning of entrepreneurial vitality is inevitable. Sure, the Steve-Jobs-like exceptions loom large. Nevertheless, we can readily imagine a CEO stuck in the strategies of yesteryear.
My point, though, is that customers, shareholders and/or other company officers working within a market context can fix the situation when evidence piles up that the formerly right guy for the job is now the wrong one. Every day we hear of failed CEOs being ousted, failed companies closing their doors.
Au contraire when it comes to political incumbents. They often snag re-election despite widespread and intense discontent with their performance. (See the 2012 presidential and congressional election.)
I don’t worry when good persons must leave an elective office before doing all the good they can there. They can do good elsewhere too. I worry when politicians become entrenched in a seat of power for decades, becoming more and more inured to the consequences of their actions — and more and more brazen about assailing our wallets and freedom.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.