On December 12, 1939, Finnish forces defeated those of the Soviet Union in the first major victory of what became known as the Winter War, in the Battle of Tolvajärvi.
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Tolvajärvi Victory
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G. Poulett Scrope
Interference of any kind . . . in the spontaneous direction of industry, and the free employment by their owners of the great agents in production, labour, land, and capital, has the certain effect of benumbing their power and lessening the sum of production, and consequently the shares, of the producing parties; as well as of needlessly, and therefore unjustly, curtailing their freedom of action.
G. Poulett Scrope, M.P., Principles of Political Economy, Deduced from the Natural Laws of Social Welfare, and Applied to the Present State of Britain (1833), p. 231.
When an assault on individual rights achieves a certain depth of irrationality, the Supreme Court is capable of common sense. Even unanimous common sense.
The 8-0 ruling in Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pertains to the desire of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate over 1500 acres of Louisiana land a “critical habitat” of the dusky gopher frog. The designation means that owners may not develop the land that they own in even the simplest ways without consulting with/begging permission from bureaucrats.
If a property owner has an actual right to his own property, the government cannot properly commandeer even one square inch of it to appease Lithobates sevosus. Give the creature a YouTube video and leave it at that.
But sevosus doesn’t even inhabit the so-called “critical habitat.”
The frog is not on the property!
This fact enabled Chief Justice John Roberts (not always clear on the meaning of words) the chance to emphasize that words have meaning. “According to the ordinary understanding of how adjectives work, ‘critical habitat’ must also be ‘habitat,’” Roberts clarified. “Only the ‘habitat’ of the endangered species is eligible for designation as critical habitat.”
Concurring, pundit George Will says that the decision represents “a recuperative moment for the court” and delivers “a chastisement of the administrative state, the government’s fourth branch, which is one too many.”
Is this ruling as thoroughgoing as it should be? No. Nevertheless, the decision is surely a victory for minimal common sense. Of which we could use more.
And more, also, of maximal common sense.
I’m Paul Jacob.
Photo credit: US Department of Agriculture
» See popular posts from Common Sense with Paul Jacob HERE.
On December 11, 1957, American cartoonist and Reason magazine contributor Peter Bagge was born.
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as ‘we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology.’ The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in Joseph Pearce, “An Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn,” St. Austin Review 2 no. 2 (February, 2003).
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Hating the Senate
The longest-serving politician in Congress — ever — thinks he has the perfect reform to put American government back on track.
Former House Democrat John Dingell wants to abolish the Senate.
According to him, the United States should go unicameral.
The ancient bicameral tradition — which goes back to Sumer — is so old hat. He thinks that, these days, “in a nation of more than 325 million and 37 additional states, not only is that structure antiquated, it’s downright dangerous.”
Dangerous? Well, he has always hated the Senate. He sees it as a place where “good bills go to die.”
His new book explains this at length, but I confess: it would go against my principles to put any money into that man’s pocket by buying The Dean: The Best Seat in the House (2018). He almost personifies everything I’m against. His very career is an atrocity. In 1955, John Jr. took over the House seat from his father, a 22-year incumbent, and then six decades later, in 2015, basically bestowed it on his wife.
That’s 86 years and counting.
How many times did he swear to uphold the Constitution? And yet he doesn’t seem to understand that Article V, governing the amendment process, establishes one specific limitation: “no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”
Jettisoning the U.S. Senate would seem to be such a deprivation.
The opposite of this Dingelldorf reform would be more in keeping with the spirit of our system: term limits.
To keep anything like a John Dingell Sixty-year Stretch from ever occurring again.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photo credit: University of Michigan
» See popular posts from Common Sense with Paul Jacob HERE.
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Passy, Dunant and Huck
On December 10, 1884, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published. This novel, narrated in the first person by the title character, is a dark comedy of the antebellum South and slavery, and has been considered by many American critics and writers to qualify as the “Great American Novel.”
On this date in 1901, the first Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded — to economist Frédéric Passy (pictured above), co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Union; and to Henry Dunant the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Passy was an admirer of Richard Cobden and an active member in the French Liberal School of Political Economy that developed in the tradition of J.B. Say, Destutt de Tracy, and Frédéric Bastiat. His published works include Leçons d’économie politique (1860-61); La Démocratie et l’Instruction (1864); L’Histoire du Travail (1873); Malthus et sa Doctrine (1868); and La Solidarité du Travail et du Capital (1875).
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Destutt de Tracy
It is manifest that, to banish bad sentiments born of oppression and insolence, it is necessary that laws be equal for everyone, and even for everyplace.
Destutt de Tracy, as quoted by Mme. Victor de Tracy, Death Notice on Destutt de Tracy
(translated by Iris Hartman, 1852)
Turnstile-hopping just went legit — or nearly so — in DC Metro. For reasons, we kid you not, of race. Read this weekend’s column for details and perspective. Then come back here for more bizarre details from the nation’s bizarro capital.
- Washington Post: D.C. Council decriminalizes Metro fare evasion
- Washington Times: Metro derailed by culture of complacence, incompetence, lack of diversity
- Washington Post: A woman who alleged harassment at Metro was fired. Now, there’s an internal inquiry into its handling of the case.
- Wikipedia: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
- Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (website)
- Lexology: D.C. Court Certifies Three Classes In Race Discrimination Class Action Involving Criminal Background
- The American Public Transportation Association:Who Rides Public Transportation?
This column is an expansion of Friday’s Common Sense.
Image courtesy of Adam , Creative Commons license.
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Mutual Aid & the Areopagitica
On December 9, 1958, the John Birch Society was founded in the United States. December 9 also marks the birthdays of
- Poet and anti-censorship advocate John Milton (1608), author of the masterpiece of blank verse narrative, Paradise Lost (1667) and a classic prose defense of free speech and the press, Areopagitica (1644).
- Russian prince and anarchist theoretician Peter Kropotkin (1842), author of Mutual Aid and other books and pamphlets.
- John Malkovich (1953), who directed The Dancer Upstairs (2002) and starred in the odd eponymous film Being John Malkovich (1999) . . . and many other movies.