Categories
crime and punishment general freedom media and media people moral hazard too much government

Governments Gone Wilding

I was late to the story, and had a hard time finding information on the anti-​white violence in South Africa — farm families raped, pillaged, slaughtered, beheaded.

And I wasn’t at all aware of the “land reform” that South Africa’s Congress is voting on, the explicit aim of which is to expropriate white farmers without compensation.

Every day, I read through The Washington Post but noticed no articles there. Or elsewhere — until a fleeting Facebook post sent me to Lauren Southern’s video documentary, “Farmlands.”

The Wall Street Journal did cover the farm expropriation story — on its editorial pages. “No country ever became rich through its government’s seizure of private property (exhibit A: the Soviet Union), but politicians in South Africa want to give it another go.” 

Zimbabwe on repeat.

Worse yet, it is being argued for on racial grounds, and some of its proponents are notoriously … genocidal?

Quartz takes a different approach, in an article charmingly titled “South Africa’s much needed land debate is being turned into an international racist rant.” The Leftwing publication appears to be gearing up to defend mass theft as “land reform,” heedless of its long, violent, destructive history. 

Meanwhile, Ms. Southern, the “gonzo journalist” who detailed the ongoing race-​based murder spree in South Africa* that Quartz failed to mention, found herself detained in Calais, France, prevented from entering Britain. Why? In part for “being racist.”

Southern had once engaged in a stunt pitching the provocation that “Allah is a gay god” — to seek reactions from people after a major news source produced an article claiming Jesus was gay.

Islam is a religion, not a race, of course, but it’s racial collectivism that still unhinges minds.

To what extent? Socialist expropriation, at least.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “According to the best available statistics,” the BBC relates, “farm murders are at their highest level since 2010-​11.


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Categories
property rights

Into Each Life…

Government is the chief social institution to regularly reduce itself to absurdity.

And by “reduce itself” I do not mean “diminish in size.” I mean “descend the moral ladder.”

Today’s absurdity has been building up for some time. An increasing number of states regulate and even outlaw the collection of rainwater for personal and industrial use:

As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from “diverting” water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.

Mike Adams, writing in Natural News, explains the rationale (very weak, even nonsensical) and rightly extrapolates the real meaning of such regulation: “It’s all about control, really.”

Yes. The “governmental mindset” is what you get in when you run for office, and run and run and run for re-​election. Just as, if you have a hammer, problems tend to look like nails, for legislators (and their aides and allied bureaucrats) everything looks increasingly like a “government issue” demanding more government, and certainly more laws.

And so it is with rainwater. Politicians want every scarce good that they “provide” to belong to the government from start (clouds and rain, in the case of water) to finish (your kitchen sink, perhaps your gullet). So of course they want to prohibit you from collecting rainwater. That rain must dribble into public drains, enter creek and river, seep into the watershed, and be siphoned off in municipal wells and sold back to you.

Collecting rainwater is like not paying taxes! It’s unthinkable. For a politician.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.