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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies privacy property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Guilty of Innocence

Spencer Byrd, crime, asset forfeiture, police, Chicago, law enforcement, theft, stealing, government

If you are innocent of a crime, should you be punished as if guilty? Despite no arrest, no trial, no conviction?

If you say “Yes,” raise your hand.

I see no raised hands among my regular readers. But my readers don’t include the wicked Chicago officials who impounded the automobile of Spencer Byrd.

Byrd’s case is reported in a Reason article by C.J. Ciaramella. The author relates how Chicago extracts money by grabbing the vehicles of innocent people. The drug war and asset forfeiture laws help make it possible.

Byrd is a carpenter and auto mechanic who sometimes gives rides to clients stuck without their cars. One night, when he was stopped on the road for an allegedly broken turn signal, police discovered that a new client riding with him was carrying heroin. Byrd was questioned but quickly released. He was never charged with a crime.

But his car was impounded; it’s been impounded for years. This has hurt his business. For one thing, he has $3,500 worth of tools in the trunk.

Byrd persuaded a judge to order that his car be returned to him. But the city still wouldn’t release it unless Byrd paid $8,790 in fees and fines (later reduced to $2,000). He is still struggling to retrieve his car, within a labyrinth the injustices of which I’ve barely touched on.

May I suggest . . . ? If you do ever recover your Cadillac, Mr. Byrd, put pedal to the floor and get the heck out of Dodge.

I mean, Chicago.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Today

Anti-Fascist Manifesto

The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, written by philosopher Benedetto Croce [pictured, above] in response to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals by Giovanni Gentile, sanctioned the unreconcilable split between the philosopher and the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, to which he had previously given a vote of confidence on October 31, 1922.

The manifesto was published by Il Mondo on May 1, 1925, which was Workers’ Day, symbolically responding to the publication of the Fascist manifesto on the Natale di Roma, the founding of Rome (celebrated on April 21). The Fascist press claimed that the Crocian manifesto was “more authoritarian” than its Fascist counterpart — a typical leftist dismissal of what used to be called “liberalism” — in Italian, liberismo — but which Croce dubbed liberism, to distinguish it from the dirigiste quasi-socialisms of self-described “liberals” of the time.

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Thought

John Norman

[W]e did not invent the biotruths of human nature, no more than we invented vision, speech, the circulation of blood, the beating of the heart.

We did not invent men and women.

They are what they are, and what they are not is hollow vessels to be filled with whatever sugars and syrups their betters, the anointed cooks of humanity, the intolerant coveters of power and would-be imposers of values, see fit to pour into receptive, neutral containers to be labeled from the outside by strangers who do not know them, or themselves, and to be filled with whatever contents these outsiders might deem in their own best interests!

John Norman, GorChronicles.com

Categories
folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies

Include/Exclude

Milo Yiannopoulis, Democratic Socialists of America, Churchill Tavern, New York, Nazi

The right of free assembly is central to a free society. Not everyone understands this.

Last week, conservative/“cultural libertarian” provocateur Milo Yiannopoulis went into the Churchill Tavern in New York to dine with fellow gay journalist Chadwick Moore.

Also in the establishment? The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. When the socialists noticed Milo they stood up, faced him, and shouted at him, chanting “Nazi scum, get out!”

Milo is not a Nazi, but his past gentle treatment of the alt-right counts as “Nazi” on the left.*

The left has been pushing for an inclusivist** reading of the right of free assembly for decades. You see, state laws in the South, prior to 1964’s Civil Rights Act, allowed and enforced white business discrimination against African-Americans, such as refusing service and accommodations. Leftists argue that there is no right to refuse service or exclude customers; they strenuously criticize those libertarians and conservatives who argue that a right to associate implies a right not to associate . . . giving them no credit for long opposing laws requiring discrimination.

Yet now we see many on the left banding together to deny others their free association rights by exclusionary tactics.

This was a group of customers, of course, so this is more similar to antifa violence than business discrimination. But Brooklyn politicians echo the logic, now proudly denying free assembly rights to NRA members — on ideological grounds.

Mob action for exclusion? Politicians siding with the mob?

There’s a word for this — fascismo.

Or, in the vulgar tongue, “Nazi scum.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks articulates this point — Milo’s insistence that he is not alt-right carrying no weight, apparently.

** Rather than rule-of-law liberal, or libertarian.

 

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Thought

George Santayana

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.

George Santayana, “Why I Am Not a Marxist” Modern Monthly: Volume: 9 (April 1935); Page: 77-79.

Categories
Today

Nobel Laureate Economist

On April 30, 1902, economist Theodore W. Schultz was born. His work studying the quick post-war recovery in Germany and Japan led to his development of “human capital theory,” explicated in many books, including Investing in People (1981). He was co-winner (with William Arthur Lewis) of the 1979 Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Schultz died in 1998.

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links

Townhall: Indefensible Human Beings

In the late 19th century, with the rise of union rioting, socialist agitation, and the anarchists’ “propaganda by the deed,” politics got ugly. Perhaps the reason Progressives came into power through both major parties was as a relief valve to civilize the tide of leftist violence.

We are witnessing this again. The left against resorts to direct action, violence — and so far the right has not been as violent in reaction as one might fear.

Perhaps because of the recent political turn of events, where the progressive cultural hegemony has been shaken and the party most sympathetic to the far left, the Democratic Party, has taken huge hits around the country — losing the majorities in both houses, the Presidency, and many state governorships. They are getting desperate.

Click on over to Townhall. Then come back here for more proof of the left’s dangerous swerve into insurrection and lynch-mob protest.

And then there is the general problem of radicals preaching revolution on the taxpayer dime.

Caution: you may not consider this NSFW, or church, or the ears and eyes of youngsters:

https://youtu.be/dJ2ojjgTEh4

This column will appear on this site on Wednesday.

Categories
Today

Dachau

On April 29, 1945, U.S. troops of the Seventh Army liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

Categories
Thought

Thomas Jefferson

Man was created for social intercourse; but social intercourse cannot be maintained without a sense of justice; then man must have been created with a sense of justice.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis W. Gilmer, June 7, 1816.
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video

A Historic Moment, Minimum Snark

The Young Turks is a leftist-progressive YouTube news commentary outfit whose main commentators are Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. They are resolutely anti-Trump. But here we see a second-string panel handle the Korea unification story, and it is droll to note that they have so little occasion to attack the U.S. President — whom South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in has identified as the person that enabled the recent (and perhaps pivotal) ceremonial meeting between North and South.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in met North Korean President Kim Jong-un in South Korea, on the border at the demilitarized zone, on April 27, 2018. The meeting was the first time a North Korean ruler stepped onto South Korean territory.