Categories
Thought

Equal Rights Party, 1837

Man’s natural rights of person are, his right to exist, and to enjoy his existence; and the right to exercise those physical and mental faculties with which nature has endowed him. Man’s natural rights in relation to things are, his right to the things produced by the exercise of his personal endowments, and his right to participate in those bounties which nature has equally given to all. Right, as relates to action, is that principle of equality which teaches man to do to others as he would that others should do to him. Those acts are naturally, politically, and morally right, which may be done by all without injury to any.

Categories
Thought

Thomas Paine

The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights.

Categories
individual achievement video

Video: A Truly Great Olympian

A great sports event held greater-than-usual significance:

Categories
Thought

C. S. Lewis

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Spice Trade

“Who knows how this got out,” one scientist mused, trying to account for how a synthetic marijuana substitute leaked out of his lab and onto . . . the black market.

I’ll echo that “who knows?” and raise it a “par for the course.”

The War on Drugs backfires all the time.

Take all the lying drug warriors have done (and continue to do) about illegal substances. Their job is to discourage drug use, so they engage in hype. However, once a drug user figures out that the government regularly lies to them about the dangers, they distrust everything the government says.

Our drug use educators also rarely admit that a key factor in all drug use is hormesis, the principle whereby the effectiveness (and lethality) of a drug varies by dosage. No doubt the “zero tolerance”/”just say ‘no’ rap” is easier to communicate, and sports a superficies of sense. But the downside of making drugs illegal (and thereby putting them in the black market) has a consequence: drug purity becomes almost impossible to maintain, rendering drug users unable to manage their doses — and, by long-term adaptation, making them more and more reckless, less and less responsible.

Not a good result.

Also bad is today’s trendy (and reportedly dangerous) marijuana substitute known as “Spice.” And yes, this — along with a cabinet filled with new synthetic substances — was invented by government-funded chemists.

To aid the War on Drugs.

No one knows who leaked the recipe onto the Net, allowing enterprising folks overseas to synthesize it and transport it here. It’s another case of outsourcing caused by an allegedly “well-meaning” government program.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

The Solon of Smear

If political dishonesty were an Olympic sport, Missouri State Rep. Scott Largent would qualify for the medal round.

In a campaign mailer sent to voters in Missouri’s 31st state senate district just ahead of the August 7th GOP primary, Largent’s campaign attacks opponent Ed Emery for “Standing With Barack Obama and Missouri Democrats.”

How specifically did constitutional conservative Republican Ed Emery “stand” with the opposition?

Emery voted for a non-binding resolution condemning Obamacare, sure, but on one amendment to that resolution he sided against fellow Republicans. As an analysis on the Missouri First website puts it: “Emery voted against” that particular amendment because it “urged Congress to replace Obamacare with another federal scheme.”

Apparently no more fond of “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it” legislation when proposed by Republicans rather than Democrats, Emery refused to blindly endorse a new, undefined nationalized “solution.”

A badge of honor.

But Scott Largent, the Solon of Smear, sent voters a copy of a letter on White House stationary purportedly from President Barack Obama to Ed Emery:

I wanted to personally thank you for your “no” vote yesterday on the amendment to HCR 18 regarding Obamacare. . . . The fact that you stood against every one of your Republican colleagues to support Democrats really impressed me. I truly hope you will be as willing to stand against your party in your future elected positions.

Only thing is, the letter is a fake.

There is no Olympic medal for political dishonesty. Let’s hope Show-Me State voters show Largent the agony of defeat.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Thomas Jefferson

Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known & seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men. Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper & sufficient antagonist to error.

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Thought

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy and socialism are not interdependent concepts. They are not only different, but opposing philosophies. Is it consistent with democracy to institute the most meddlesome, all-encompassing and restrictive government, provided that it be publicly chosen and that it act in the name of the people? Would the result not be tyranny, under the guise of legitimate government and, by appropriating this legitimacy assuring to itself the power and omnipotence which it would otherwise assuredly lack? Democracy extends the sphere of personal independence; socialism confines it. Democracy values each man at his highest; socialism makes of each man an agent, an instrument, a number. Democracy and socialism have but one thing in common—equality. But note well the difference. Democracy aims at equality in liberty. Socialism desires equality in constraint and in servitude.

Categories
government transparency

Forward the Fed Audit

Will Ron Paul get his audit of the Federal Reserve?

The U.S. House has just approved it. Now it’s up to the Senate. That the proposal has gotten this far is a credit to Congressman Paul’s determination to give Americans a better idea of how their money is being misspent.

The central bank’s actions are often secret. During the 2008 bailouts, the Fed concealed which banks were getting how much of the trillions it doled out. We now have specific info — for example, $86 billion to a Bank of America that at the time touted its stability — mostly because Bloomberg LLC sued in court.

Fed defenders can be transparent about this government agency’s need for opacity. Isn’t it better, some burble, to let the Fed help dupe depositors at troubled banks about the condition of those banks so that depositors will be less likely to rescue their money? (I paraphrase.)

Some Fed champions declare that the Fed must not be “politicized” by any audit or other check on its abuses. Fine, fine, let’s stop the politicization right now. Privatize the money system, return to a gold standard, shutter the Fed and — oh, that’s not what they mean? They just want the Fed’s politically constituted and politically maneuvering officers to be able to fiscally frolic at will, a process that could be hindered if citizens knew in high-dpi detail what it’s up to?

Oops. Okay. Now I understand. . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

Philosophic Anti-Fanaticism

Popular French philosopher Pascal Bruckner is in hot water with fellow left-leaning French intellectuals.

Bruckner doesn’t hate humanity and doesn’t want to unplug all the life-promoting conveniences of industrial civilization. He intimates as much in a controversial new book entitled The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings, available only in French for now, but soon in English translation as well.

The book assails ludicrous and nihilistic environmentalist pronouncements of the Left. As the title suggests, the author believes that these are based more in religious fervor than in carefully reasoned science. He stipulates that he does not object to ecology as such but rather to the “greenwashing” notions that the “planet is sick. Man is guilty of having destroyed it. He must pay.”

After all, what is the “carbon footprint that we all leave behind us [but] the gaseous equivalent of original sin, of the stain that we inflict on our Mother Gaia by the simple fact of being present and breathing?” A baleful implication of such views is that peoples in developing countries should forget about improving their economic and technological circumstances. The earth has suffered enough, n’est-ce pas?

Bruckner’s observations underscore how radical environmentalism is largely a convenient hook for anti-capitalism. Long before anybody fretted about our chronic exhaling of carbon dioxide, certain anti-capitalists urged the extinguishing of industrial civilization and a return to the blissful Tupperware-free, iPhone-free, hunting-and-gathering way of life.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.