Tag: force

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general freedom national politics & policies The Draft

Draft Winds Blowing

draft, conscription, slavery, registration, force,

A month ago, the U.S. drone strike against an Iranian commander in Baghdad sparked enough public concern over military conscription to overwhelm the Selective Service System’s website. 

“With the ongoing military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan unlikely to end any time soon,” former Congressman Ron Paul writes, people are “right to be concerned about a return of the draft.”

“There is not going to be a draft,” SSS Director Don Benton emphatically declared. “At least, we don’t think so.”

The current context? Last February, a federal judge ruled male-only draft registration unconstitutional. On March 3, the Fifth Circuit will hear the government’s appeal of that ruling.*

A few weeks later, the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service will release their report to Congress on what to do with draft registration — jettison or keep and expand to young women — as well as the advisability of a year or two of compulsory government service after young people graduate from high school.

The issue is really very old unfinished business. “The U.S. draft proposal that no one supported,” reads the headline of a February 8, 1980, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation article on then-President Jimmy Carter’s proposal to register both men and women.

Back then, women were not permitted in combat units, and Carter’s proposal did not propose putting women into such positions. Still, as the CBC’s Washington correspondent at the time explained, “On Capitol Hill, the reaction was overwhelmingly negative.”

Especially because of a Catch-22. “Those who are for the draft are mostly against women being included,” he found. “Those who favor equal treatment for women are mostly against the draft.”

Nowadays, support for the draft is, if anything, even less enthusiastic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* See National Organization for Men v. Selective Service System.

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draft, conscription, slavery, registration, force,

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ideological culture political economy too much government

Socialism Doesn’t Work, But…

socialism, force, incentive, Occassio-Cortez

“Socialism” — we all want to be sociable, right?

Last week’s anti-socialist moment was not limited to the president’s promise that America would never go socialist, as I noted this weekend there was also Panera Bread’s abandonment of its quasi-charitable Panera Cares (“pay-what-you-want”) fast food chain.

Isn’t that a bit of a strange connection? Socialism is not charity. It’s bad because it is force through and through, not because it seeks to help people. 

Well, note that while Panera’s notion was the same as many socialists’, to help the poor. Panera’s method was to cajole, or “nudge,” the better-off to pay enough more to cover the costs of paying less. 

Kinda like ObamaCare, but without the force.

And without the force, it failed.

What Panera management discovered is that not only is it very hard to get the message across, it is almost impossible to set up coherent incentives to successfully alter consumer behavior. 

Getting incentives right is something that plagues all sorts of socialistic experiments, voluntary or coercive, within a capitalist society. 

Take Finland’s recent experiment with a Universal Basic Income (UBI). 

The idea of that nation’s centrist party was to take care of the unemployed beneficiaries’ basic needs so they could get back to work.

Well, those who received the basic income were happy enough receiving the moolah. Sure. But “there was no evidence from the first year of the experiment,” a report in Huffington Post admits, “that the scheme incentivized work.” Despite that, socialists in England are pushing for the UBI.

Socialism doesn’t work, and socialists would rather not work — except to advance socialism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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socialism, force, incentive, Occassio-Cortez

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Categories
crime and punishment First Amendment rights judiciary

Church Not Forced to Encourage Sin

compelled speech, censorship, force,

In Hawaii, those who would compel others to promote abortion have suffered a well-deserved setback.

A U.S. District Court tossed a law requiring pregnancy centers to post ads for abortion clinics. Among the centers that would have been affected was one run by a church opposed to abortion. Of course, whether we’re religious or non-religious, we have the same rights. 

The president of National Institute of Family & Life Advocates (NIFLA), Thomas Glessner, hails the decision as a “major victory for free speech and freedom of religion.” For its reasoning, the district court relied on a Supreme Court decision, NIFLA v. Becerra.

“In NIFLA v. Becerra, the Supreme Court affirmed that we don’t force people to say things they don’t believe,” says Kevin Theriot, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom who argued that case before the Supreme Court. Thus, “the district court was correct to permanently halt Hawaii’s enforcement of Act 200’s compelled speech requirement.”

You shouldn’t be forced in any way to abet any conduct that you regard as morally wrong — not if the rest of us respect your rights as a moral agent. And it is worth remembering that a lot of people have moral qualms about all sorts of issues, and that many of the people running Hawaii’s non-church-sponsored centers doubtless also oppose abortion.

Obvious? To you and me, maybe. But some people disagree. They appear eager to compel others to join their various causes. 

The noble cause of leaving other people alone isn’t on the list.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
Common Sense

The Not-Saint Timothy

violence, force, hate speech, law, crime, libertarian

Some people believe that aggression is physical force and nothing else. From this they derive the notion that only physical violence should be prosecuted — or, more generally, retaliated against with force.

But it is obvious that some invasions of private property or personal space, with malice and anger and alarming unhinged-ness, are aggressive.

And should be prosecuted in law.

Take the current case of Timothy Trybus, who is testing a further point of law that especially concerns those of us strongly motivated to focus on initiated force.*

“It is pretty clear,” writes Jacob Sullum in Reason, that the man “broke the law when he harassed Mia Irizarry for wearing a T-shirt featuring the Puerto Rican flag at a park in Chicago last month.”

Mr. Trybus was drunk, and he “got in her face,” so to speak, challenging her in a not-unusual nationalistic/pseudo-patriotic/jingoistic fashion that seems old-fashioned and up-to-date Trumpian:

  • “Why are you wearing that?”
  • “This is America!”
  • “If you’re an American citizen, you should not be wearing that shirt in America.”

Puerto Rico may not be a state, but . . . the proper reaction might have been to challenge the not-Saint Timothy to a bit of patriotic one-upmanship: “How can you be so un-American as to object to an American commonwealth flag?”

He’s now being prosecuted for a hate crime as well as assault. Though he may never have touched the woman, his aggressiveness is legally regarded as a threat of force.

Understandably. But if the hate crime thing sticks, will antifa and other obvious anti-American thugs be given that extra legal consideration in similar situations?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Which, I confess, I like to think of as “all civilized people.” But I may be optimistic. Reducing violence is an almost universal desire, and the question of who started violence is nearly universal. But the focus is, well, in our times called “libertarian.”

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Photo from Max Pixel

 

Categories
meme too much government

Freedom, not Force

meme, freedom, force, liberty, coercion
Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies property rights Regulating Protest

Union Dues, Don’ts

labor unions, Membership Renewal, Supreme Court, force, coercion, signing, scab, membership

You may soon be able to shred your union card — if you are careful.

By “you” I mean You, the reluctant union member.

If you’re not one, though, perhaps you know somebody who is, someone who’d be happy to learn that the Supreme Court is on the verge of dealing a huge setback to coercive unionism.

John Hinderaker explains at Power Line. The Supreme Court is expected to soon decide a major case in a way that “bar[s] public employees from being forced into unions, or from being required to support unions via the fiction of ‘fair share contributions.’ ” (Much of that money goes straight to Democratic Party coffers.) With Neil Gorsuch now on the bench, a 4-4 holding pattern is expected to become a 5-4 decision in favor of plaintiffs suing for freedom from mandatory union membership.

Sounds good.

Problem is, though, that union officials are working to trick members into paying dues in perpetuity. For example, Education Minnesota is trying to con its 86,000 teachers into signing “Membership Renewal” forms assenting to automatic renewal of fees – unless the signatory makes a special effort to opt out.

The union hopes members will sign the cards and forget about them, continuing to fund the unions, and Democratic politics, indefinitely — even if the high court rescues everyone from mandatory membership.

So, if you happen to be trapped in a union at the moment — watch what you sign. And watch the news.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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