If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence.
Categories
Categories
Francis Hutcheson
The ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one’s acting in a certain manner has this tendency he has a right thus to act.
Categories
The Left Discriminates
The political “left” dominates a number of institutions, including, most famously, Hollywood entertainment and up-market journalism. But perhaps even more striking is the heavily “liberal-progressive” bent observed in many academic fields, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, far in excess of the leftist percentage in America at large.
And this certainly deserves an explanation.
Could it be the result of bias and discrimination?
It’s long been fun to listen to academics defend their heavily leftist cut of the higher ed pie using arguments that have nothing to do with bias. Why “fun”? Because similar arguments trotted out in other fields receive nothing but scorn from academics.
Now there’s a study showing that social psychologists, at least, self-admit to an anti-conservative bias in grading papers, awarding grant proposals, inviting symposium speakers, and accepting job applicants. And here’s the kicker: “The more liberal the survey respondents identified as being, the more likely they were to say that they would discriminate.”
Those who are already sharpening their ad hominem retorts should note that the study was not conducted by folks on “the right.” Co-author Yoel Inbar described himself to Inside Higher Ed as “‘a pretty doctrinaire liberal,’ who volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008 and who votes Democrat. His co-author, Joris Lammers of Tilburg, is to Inbar’s left, he said.”
The most interesting aspect of bias uncovered in the study, however, is that interviewed academics estimated that their colleagues were twice as likely as themselves to discriminate on ideological grounds.
The “other guy” is always worse than oneself.
Which is where bias and prejudice begin, perhaps.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
If you’re like me, you often rub up against common opinion and find little sense in it — or, as I like to put it, popular opinion with the common sense bled out of it.
On Monday I reported on an anti-Obamacare lawsuit against the federal government for mandating the purchase of medical insurance that included “free” contraceptive drugs (including “morning after pills”). I took on the obvious problems, but neglected to mention that it’s not insurance.
I guess you can call turnips “rainbows” and politicians “angels,” but, based on accepted meanings of terms, it is not “insurance” when benefits include regular maintenance or common preventive (“prophylactic”) products.
One doesn’t insure against dandruff by buying a policy that provides you with “free” shampoo or against sunburn by purchasing a policy that offers free SPF50 sunscreen. One doesn’t insure against obesity with insurance that provides “free” healthy foods according to This Diet or That Diet.
For instance, it would be absurd to have an insurance policy to pay for one’s vitamins.
In a sense, the vitamins are the insurance. Think of them as a separate, medicinal form of insurance, which you pay for at purchase.
Same for contraception.
One buys insurance for unexpected and irregular needs. Calling Obamacare’s “contraception benefit” mandate “insurance” is a fib.
Much of what we think of as insurance actually amounts to confused (and confusing) methods of savings (at best) or a confidence game to get some people to pay for the regular goods and services other folks use (at worst). By force and fraud.
The force is the government mandate. The fraud is calling this whole program “insurance.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.
Categories
Hidden Taxpayer Treasure
If I found $54 million I didn’t know I had, I’d be ecstatic. Yet, when California taxpayers discovered $54 million stuck in secret state parks system bank accounts, they were miffed.
California parks, constrained by the state’s multi-year budget crunch, were facing closure. Meanwhile, these funds went unreported to the Department of Finance. Ruth Coleman, who has led the parks system for the last decade, resigned. Her second-in-command was fired.
A spokesperson for California’s finance department admitted that, historically, the department had relied upon “accurate and correct accounting being reported to us by the relevant departments.” The San Jose Mercury News called it, “The little-known practice of trusting — and not verifying . . .”
Seems there are 500 “special funds” accounting for supposedly $37 billion about which California’s Department of Finance doesn’t have any real clue.
Jonathan Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, says this is hardly “an isolated incident,” and points out that it must be piled “on top of the High Speed Rail fiasco, pay hikes for legislative employees, having to pay $34 million in penalties for overdue bills, raids on special funds to pay for Legislative malfeasance, etc.”
Meanwhile, Governor Jerry Brown continues to push a tax increase. One of his arguments for the tax hike has been that parks were being closed due to the budget crunch — er, well, rather, due to state officials hiding $54 million dollars.
The Governor’s tax initiative is in trouble. Coupal notes that fiscally prudent Californians have defeated the last eight tax increases on the ballot.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
F. Byrdsall
The great object of a constitution is, to prevent the officers of government from assuming powers incompatible with the natural rights of man; and it is certain that our present constitution does not accomplish this paramount design. If the powers of public agents under it are distinctly limited and clearly defined, why should their political principles be a matter of such solicitude at elections? If the constitution contains a plain guarantee of the rights of the people, whence the necessity of pledging legislators not to violate those rights? The plain truth is, that constitutions in these United States have been constructed in the spirit of compromise. . . .
The First Amendment isn’t enough.
Because its provisions have stronger teeth than most other amendments in the Bill of Rights, it gets put into service quite a lot, to bolster other freedoms. It’s a pity there’s no general “right to freedom” — or even “freedom of contract” — amendment.
A Western Pennsylvania Christian higher education outfit, Geneva College, joined by Seneca Hardware Lumber Co. in Cranberry, has sued the federal government over the new “Obamacare” requirement to provide morning-after “contraception” to employees, saying that the provision violates their religious freedom. The Justice Department argues that the case should be thrown out, on grounds that public entities like the college and the lumber company do not possess the legal right to “impose” their religious values on others.
As noted at reason.com, this is a weird misreading of the crucial negative right/positive right distinction: Under the “negative right” to freedom, an employer not providing a benefit to employees imposes nothing. Quite literally. The imposition lies entirely with the government forcing its way into contracts between businesses and employees.
One could construe a positive right to contraception, I guess, but that positive right would also be an imposition. “Imposition” belongs to the language of positive rights.
The government’s lawyers also object to the hardware company seeking sanctuary (so to speak) in the First Amendment to oppose the contraception mandate. If just anyone can appeal to the First Amendment’s freedom of religious exercise clause, then the government could hardly enforce conformity.
Well, yes.
That’s the idea of limited government. The problem, today, is that we citizens don’t have enough legal oomph to protect ourselves (either as employers or employees) from the federal government’s vast overreach.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Equal Rights Party, 1837
Government is but an agent to exercise such powers as are expressly delegated to it by the people.
Categories
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.