On Jan. 4, 1642, King Charles I of England sent soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, beginning England’s slide into civil war.
On Jan. 4, 1649, the English “Rump Parliament,” having purged those members willing to restore Charles I to the throne, voted to put Charles I on trial for high treason. Before the month was over, the king had been executed.
In the winter issue of Cato Institute’s Regulation, economist Pierre Lemieux acknowledges H.L. Mencken’s famous line — “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard” — and sympathizes with “disappointed voters” following last November’s election.
“The common person does know what he wants,” argues Lemieux, explaining that “he succeeds so well in his private life.”
Of course, our economic marketplace and our political marketplace are markedly different.
“The electoral choices presented to voters are typically a confused mix of unreliable promises and obscure policies,” Lemieux writes. “Contrast that with the clarity and variety of market choices.”
He notes the ways regular folks are being politically disempowered: “The value of lying as an electoral asset seems to be on the rise. The public education system appears to have not had much success in encouraging the quest for truth. And the common people have been infantilized by their own governments . . .”
Lemieux worries that “when the common person is given the power to decide what his fellow humans should want . . . things can go very wrong.”
He’s correct, of course. But it isn’t a problem unique to democracy or the participation of regular folks. When any government has such enormous power over “fellow humans,” yes, things go wrong. Enormously wrong.
Yet, in democracies, the problem of political tyranny is far less pronounced than in anti-democratic regimes, and more effectively remedied. Democratic government is messy, woefully imperfect and can lead to awful policies and real tyranny. Still, it lacks a superior alternative.
Until then, give me democracy.
Good and hard? Preferably good.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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I heartily approve of her campaign to beautify America. It would be greatly improved if the First Family were kept out of sight.
Oscar Levant, The Unimportance of Being Oscar (1968).
On January 3, 1848, Joseph Jenkins Roberts was sworn in as the first president of the African state of Liberia. Born as a free black in Norfolk, Virginia, he was an American merchant who emigrated to Liberia in 1829, where he became a politician. He served as the first (1848–1856) and seventh (1872–1876) president of Liberia.
That’s not what happened in 2005 when, by a 5-4 majority, the court determined that governments in this country could enjoy an almost unlimited power of eminent domain. The mere prospect of a more taxable commercial entity or mere desire to appease some constituency would suffice to legally justify violating the rights of innocent property owners.
This Kelo v. New London decision was applauded by abusers of power, derided by defenders of property rights. The latter leapt into action, fighting for legislation in 47 states to give property owners firmer protection.
One exception was New York State, where the town of Utica recently used the power of eminent domain against Bryan Bowers and Mike Licata.
These business partners had established a cardiology service to compete with that of CNY Cardiology group, right next door. CNY begged the city to let it turn the Bowers Development building into a parking lot. We need a parking lot there, said CNY; right where our lower-priced competitor is sitting.
The city said okay.
Enough, says Institute for Justice, which is representing Bowers Development and all of us by petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit Kelo.
IJ President Scott Bullock believes that it’s “high time for the Supreme Court itself to . . . remove this blot on its jurisprudence and restore constitutional guardrails to the use of eminent domain.”
Please resolve to give America a favorable outcome, justices.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.
Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? (1938).
On January 2, 1921, in a theater in Hradec Králové, Czech writer Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. received its world premiere. The initials stood for “Rossum’s Universal Robots,” a fictional company that created a line of intelligent workers, and from which the word “robot” was coined. In Czech, robota means forced labour of the kind that serfs were once required to perform on their masters’ lands; it is derived from rab, meaning “slave.”
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months. The reflection is awful, and in this point of view, how trifling, how ridiculous, do the little paltry cavilings of a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world.”
—Thomas Paine
When I used to speak of the lunatic fringe, I didn’t know I was going to be head of it.
Oscar Levant, The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965).
On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was banned.
This was not a ban on the slave trade as such, of course, but of the buying of slaves from sources overseas.