Tag: freedom

Jefferson’s Achievements

Thomas Jefferson, birthday, slavery, freedom

In 1743, on April 2, Thomas Jefferson was born. But the old Julian calendar was superseded in 1752, so we now mark his birthday as April 13.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the United States’ Declaration of Independence. He authored the State of Virginia’s Statue of Religious Freedom, which disestablished the Episcopalian Church, thus officially beginning the long process of what he referred to as “building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

He followed Patrick Henry as Governor of Virginia, and was in that position when it was attacked by British forces (led by Benedict Arnold and Gen. Cornwallis). He later served as the first Secretary of State of the new union, and then as its second Vice President and third President. He wrote one book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), and translated several others, including Volney’s Ruins of Empires (1802) and Destutt de Tracy’s A Treatise on Political Economy (1817). He designed the first campus of the University of Virginia, and managed its founding.

Thomas Jefferson was a man of achievement, yes; but mostly he is associated with the idea of freedom.

Yet, he was also a slave-owner. His several attempts to limit the severity and extent of slavery were mostly beaten back. And his personal involvement with slaves (he likely sired several children with his late wife’s half sister, a slave) was even more tangled.

Some people say this disqualifies Jefferson from current praise.

I’m not in that camp. It seems to me less than honest not to esteem him for helping us declare that “all men are created equal” . . . and outright foolish to ignore Mr. Jefferson’s lifelong agitation for a more equal freedom under law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags birthday, Declaration of Independence, freedom, slavery, Thomas Jefferson

free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Socialist Stasis, Disturbed

Post author By CS Admin
Post date March 21, 2016
3 Comments on Socialist Stasis, Disturbed

Cuba, stasis, Obama, visit, illustration

As the President of the United States treads ground previously trod by such a personage nearly ninety years ago — Calvin Coolidge was the last U. S. Commander in Chief to make the trip to Cuba — we are understandably inundated with coverage.

Obama’s Cuba trip is Big News.

We see that Cuba is backwards — it is socialist, after all, so no surprise there — but slowly opening up to American travel and trade. The nation’s voluntary sector squirms under the omnipresent, oppressive feet of its regulators.

What we see now is the result of socialist repression. Cuba shows, perhaps, socialism’s best-case-scenario result, stasis. The island dystopia is in many ways a time capsule. Some of its current charm is that stuck-in-timed-ness.

But there is also endemic hopelessness in the country. The people are held back. Infantilized. Ruled.

And there is no disputing the fact that this is all the result of an excess of socialism. As I have argued before, the old standby, the Blame the US Embargo ploy, is one that socialists wield with devastating results — to their own ideology. Socialism is the suppression of free trade; pure socialism abolishes all trade, along with all private property. Blaming an embargo shows how important private property and capitalism itself are to socialism’s few successes.

Barack Obama is, right now, demonstrating the best case against socialists in his own party, by opening up Cuba to the wonderfully corrosive processes of the market.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Cuba, freedom, Havana, Obama, socialism

ballot access Common Sense general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies responsibility term limits U.S. Constitution

The Quadrennial Distraction

Post author By CS Admin
Post date August 19, 2015
3 Comments on The Quadrennial Distraction

As the leading Republican candidate for the presidency ascends into the air in a helicopter filled with kids, and makes his most astute declaration yet — “I am Batman” — it becomes clearer than ever how distracting these presidential campaigns are.

Much of American Big League politics is theatrics, with some pandering for good measure. Of course, all people running for the presidency are by definition over their heads, at best . . . posturing attention-seekers at worst. Fretting about what they believe and “would do” if voted in as President of these United States is mostly a waste of time. Experience tells us that what they promise is perhaps the least likely outcome of all.

What is more effective? Affecting the political environment by getting together with like-minded folk to advance principled causes closer to home. As a side effect of your activism, a successful issue in a single city or region — especially one that spreads — can have a dramatic influence on present and future presidential wannabes.

With organization and consistent activity at the local level, your voice can be heard. But you have to do something. That activity doesn’t have to be to “run for office”; you can turn up the volume by proposing (and sometimes opposing) ballot initiatives, constitutional and charter amendments in the state, county and city where you live.

There is so much to be done at this level that could create political climate change, which in turn would invariably make federal-level candidates better, that it seems a shame to see us so focused on long shot bets.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, activism, democracy, elections, freedom, presidency, vote

free trade & free markets general freedom individual achievement

Call for Great Communicators

Post author By CS Admin
Post date August 4, 2015
No Comments on Call for Great Communicators

Money can’t buy me love. So, the $10,000 first prize in the Second Annual Great Communicators Tournament doesn’t matter to me at all. Nor does the $5,000 second prize entice me, and certainly not the $2,500 for third place.

You, however, may be fond of money.

And if you can effectively communicate the freedom message, this contest is well worth joining. But the deadline — THIS FRIDAY, August 7 — is fast approaching.

The tournament’s “goal is to identify . . . and promote individuals who can effectively and persuasively discuss and defend the free market and the founding principles.”

It’s the brainchild of the folks at Think Freely Media — the good souls who sponsor this Common Sense program. They know that liberty advocates must take the moral high-ground in making the case for freedom, and not merely argue by empirical analysis.

The competition is easy to enter. No later than midnight this Friday provide a 1-3 minute video of yourself addressing one of several issues listed on the contest website.

“Videos should be . . . clear and concise, make sure . . . that you use moral, not material, arguments,” contestants are informed. “We’re looking for solid arguments and messages, not flashy production value.”

Your video will be posted, so a combination of public voting and deliberations by the Think Freely staff and judges will identify twelve semi-finalists. These twelve will then compete in person for the top prizes at the State Policy Network’s Annual Meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in September.

Why not see just how talented a communicator you are? And perhaps get even better . . . at growing liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul McCart . . . er, Paul Jacob.

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Tags contest, freedom, great communicators

Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom

Ultra Anti-Civilization

The stabbing event at a Thursday “Gay Pride” march in Jerusalem reveals an element of the much-talked-about “clash of civilizations” not often discussed any longer. But it used to dominate the conversation.

Why? It was not a Muslim jihadist who stabbed six people and ultimately killed one of them, a 16-year-old girl (she died in the hospital this weekend).

It was an Orthodox Jew.

That is, the man arrested at the event, identified as Yishai Schlissel, certainly looked Orthodox, when I saw him on TV, briefly, in an early report. The BBC now refers to him an “ultra-Orthodox Jew” (“ultra” theirs; emphasis, mine). He had previously carried out a similar attack in 2005.

“Israel’s government would have ‘zero tolerance’ for Jewish extremists, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a security cabinet meeting on Sunday,” according to a BBC report.

What suspect Schlissel shares with other terrorists is not merely a rock-hard belief that certain other people are sinful and corrupt, etc. He somehow also believes that he may assume the role of judge and executioner . . . of people he only knows by their differences.

This is beyond “ultra.” Schlissel repudiates not only the rule of law (since he acts outside it), but a basic idea that has grown in Western civilization — from roots found in his own religion.

Liberty.

The essence of liberty? Leaving peaceful people you disagree with alone.

It is more than possible for the religiously orthodox to get along with the un-orthodox. We can all get along if we respect each others’ rights, regardless of our differences.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags civilization, freedom, gay, hate, liberty, tolerance

general freedom individual achievement meme national politics & policies responsibility

NOT the Impossible Dream

The American Dream is dead.

Has been for at least a year . . . or so we’re told:

“American Dream Dead,” said the Huffington Post
“The American Dream is out of reach,” CNN Money
“The American Dream is Dead, and Good Riddance,” according to a column by Keli Goff at the Daily Beast.

Golly. Have a great July 4th holiday . . . I guess.

That 2014 CNN Money poll found 59 percent of Americans agreed with the statement: “The American dream has become impossible for most people to achieve.”

What is “the American Dream”? What do folks mean when they speak of it?

Historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase in his 1931 book, The Epic of America:

The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

Note that Adams wrote of “opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” He didn’t say “from each according to ability, to each according to need.”

He didn’t suggest a dream world wherein government would wave a magic wand to bestow financial success upon everyone, program by program. In fact, Adams embraced a land of capitalism, but without the cronyism — thus, with some significant measure of equality of opportunity.

President Obama also addressed the American Dream in his 2014 State of the Union speech, only with a different tone. It had “suffered some serious blows,” he summarized. “Over more than three decades, even before the Great Recession hit, massive shifts in technology and global competition had eliminated a lot of good, middle-class jobs, and weakened the economic foundations that families depend on.”

Surely Mr. Obama isn’t so economically brain-dead as to think that the computer revolution, the information revolution, and the communications revolution were terrible scourges on mankind that cost jobs. Mr. Progressive-in-Chief, these “shifts in technology” amount to what’s commonly called “progress.”

Yet, Mr. Obama, like most politicians, has only one thought: how to turn talk of the American Dream into snake oil he can sell politically — to achieve his own dreams.

He believes our dreams depend on him, on bigger and bigger government. There are those who want a government big enough to somehow make all our dreams come true.

And those of us who simply want the freedom to try to fulfill our own dreams. Meaning, usually, we want government out of our way.

America is about individual freedom, all people created equal, pursuing happiness in their own personal ways, so every dream is accordingly different.

But what runs through them all is something to note as this country’s 239th Independence Day approaches:

I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-C-E.

The United States of America was a world-historic innovation in government — it offered an “asylum for mankind,” as Thomas Paine wrote. We declared our independence as a nation so that every man and woman walking this parcel of the earth could likewise declare his or her independence.

The American Dream isn’t, as Adams wrote, “a dream of motor cars and high wages merely,” but of standing on one’s own two feet, making one’s own way in the world, being self-reliant, independent, doing it one’s own way.

Makes me miss Frank Sinatra.

Put another way or three:

If your dream is to start a company like Solyndra, taking over $5oo million in subsidies from the taxpayers, it’s just not the American Dream.
If you want to live off government programs, rather than your own smarts and achievement, you may have a dream, but it ain’t the American Dream.
If you’re just sitting in your boat waiting for the tide to lift you up, you may indeed be dreaming, but it’s not the American Dream.

One doesn’t have to be as successful in business as Bill Gates to achieve it. You could take a vow of poverty and still grasp the American Dream in full.

Life is short. It’s not about amassing the most toys. It’s about freedom, the freedom to pursue your own happiness. And the courage to use that freedom to go for it.

That’s the American Dream.

I have a Common Sense American Dream that my commentaries and the memes and videos we post at ThisisCommonSense.com 365 days a year — and send to tens of thousands by email — will rally the spirit of independence that triumphed more than two centuries ago and is still alive and strong in us today.

We cannot do it without your help. I need your support now, on this Independence Day. Please take a moment to make a generous and tax-deductible gift to keep this Common Sense coming to you and a growing audience of active, interested and independent Americans.

Happy Independence Day!

The Dream lives on in you. Now please help us grow our voice and our movement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

P.S. A recent poll now shows that asked a slightly different way, nearly two-thirds of us believe the American Dream is achievable for those that are willing to work for it. Should it be achievable for those unwilling to work for it?