Tag: government

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general freedom ideological culture

Winning Through Identification

Javier Milei, Argentina, freedom, government

Argentina’s libertarian president, Javier Milei, perceives that many political battles amount to a clash between producers and thieves. Between those who work for living (using what sociologist Franz Oppenheimer called the “economic means”) and those who steal for a living (using the “political means”).

Politics can’t always be reduced to this conflict, of course. But it can pretty often — certainly in a country where socialists have been pulverizing the economy.

Now, this knowledge is not kept by Milei as a dark secret, about which he would be embarrassed to be caught mentioning to a select few supporters.

Milei is not coy! That we learned during his campaign for president; and, no matter what his ups and downs in office, he still seems to be just as candid, just as willing to blast his opponents, to their faces, for —

Well: “Listen up, you ignorant fools! ‘Social justice’ is theft. It implies unequal treatment before the law and is preceded by theft. You bunch of thieves! Criminals!”

Also: “The world has only two kinds of people: those who live off what others produce — that is, the parasites, that is, you — and those who produce everything that is possible in modern life.

“The true battle of our time is cultural, philosophical, and moral. It is about choosing the system that lifted millions out of poverty. It is about ceasing to be an immature nation that squanders the future to distribute benefits in the present. . . .”

Probably even better in the original Spanish.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

Deliciously Dead

Washington, initiative, citizen, government, democracy

The bill died. Had it lived, it would have — in the words of Tim Eyman — taken away Washington State voters’ “right to initiative, they would stop all dissent.” 

Who’s the “they”? Democrats running the State legislature, who had, Eyman says, been “pushing this thing really hard this session.”

But they gave up. The opposition to the bill was just too strong. Democrats let it die before the scheduled vote on the Senate floor. 

So what was wrong with the bill? 

“SB 5973 would have required a minimum of 1,000 signatures to be submitted to the Secretary of State from those who support the measure, before the issue is given an official title and signature gathering can begin to ensure ‘viability’ of the issue,” explains Carleen Johnson of The Center Square. It would “also have banned the practice of paying signature gatherers for the number of signatures they acquire.”

It was, as opponents called it, an “initiative killer.” You can see why fighting the bill was so important. 

And remember, “initiative killers” are everywhere — at least everywhere initiative and referendum rights are in place. 

Politicians, who allegedly serve citizens, don’t like it when citizens work around their machinations. So they regularly throw up roadblocks to the initiative process — anything to make it harder for citizens to limit their incessant lust for more taxes, terms of office, etc.

Citizen activists all across the country have their work cut out for them. But, until the next major legislative attack (tomorrow): celebrate!

And don’t forget to thank Tim Eyman and other Washington activists for stepping up to defend everyone’s rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people tax policy

Post California Soaking

California, taxes, wealth, government

Rumors that Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has been pushing the Post in a more commonsensical editorial direction could very well be true.

A recent Post editorial slams progressives who “think of taxation the way teenage boys think about cologne: if some is good, more must be great.”

I’m no fan of even a moderate amount of that brand of cologne. But anyway. The Post is discussing a proposed ballot measure backed by the ultra-lefty Service Employees International Union.

SEIU troops are currently collecting signatures. And before they’ve even gotten enough to post it to ballot, the people being targeted have started moving. 

Out of state.

The measure would impose a new 5 percent tax on billionaires. Some of the state’s billionaires, including Google cofounder Larry Page and Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, aren’t willing to wait and see whether it actually reaches the ballot and passes in November. Why? The measure would apply retroactively “to those who were California residents on January 1, 2026.”

Some Democratic lawmakers are saying “good riddance,” as if it’s possible to loot billionaires who don’t wait around to be looted. Or that it’s good for state coffers to lose their billionaire entrepreneur “contributors.”

The Post says the retroactivity would open the measure to legal challenges, but that if it gets passed and survives litigation, “it’s a safe bet this won’t be a one-off. Funding ongoing expenses like health care with one-time taxes isn’t sustainable. Progressives will want to return to the well until they’ve sucked it dry.”

And no one should know better than Californians how dangerous dry wells are.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

California, taxes, wealth, government

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Two Ways of Walking Away

free speech, censorship, tolerance, mob, 1st Amendment, government

“The First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting free speech,” explained Michael J. Reitz in The Detroit News. But what about individuals and non-government groups? 

“Free speech doesn’t compel you to listen. You can walk away,” Mr. Reitz goes on to say.

In the piece, reprinted by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Reitz wonders, however, whether this “agree to disagree” attitude is enough to keep free speech alive. He believes that “as a society, we show our commitment to free speech through our willingness to listen, discuss and debate. It’s not consistent to say I value another person’s right to speak if I refuse to engage.”

A liberal attitude — in a social, perhaps non-political sense — is what Reitz advises: tolerant of differences; not prone to anger at hearing an opposing view; engaging logically and fairly with differing opinions; but free to take it or leave it without fearing recrimination, retribution or retaliation.

This right to walk away may define free speech, but Reitz argues that we mustn’t all walk to our bubbles in anger.

An old saw, recently popularized, insists that “we have freedom of speech, but we don’t have freedom from the consequences of speech.” In a free society, you may say what you like on your property, on your dime, but some people may shun you. Or fire you. And that’s OK.

What’s not an acceptable “consequence” of freedom of speech? Being silenced by the government, or the mob, either with petty violence or maximum force. Too many people use the “no freedom from consequences” cliché as an excuse to harass people at their work. Or bank. This is where it gets difficult. 

Since one neither has a right to a specific job nor to force a bank to accept one’s money on account, purely social pressure to de-bank, de-platform, or get someone fired, fits in a free society. But is Reitz correct that, legality aside, when such social pressure is common, and one-sided, free speech is doomed?

Perhaps society is doomed, in multi-lateral wars of us vs. them. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies

Timothy Tendentious

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine — most noted, till now, for being the first Timothy to run for the U.S. vice presidency — said something interesting last week.

And that may indeed be a significant first.

Sen. Kaine expressed his shock at something said by Riley Barnes, nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Mr. Barnes had confessed to the belief that “all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our Creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.”

Horrifying!

“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator,” said the Virginia senator, aghast, “that’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shi’a law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities. . . .”

Our First Failed Tim* is trying to advance an argument: the Iranians, believing “that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator” do bad things, so the idea must be wrong.

Presumably, however, Tim Kaine would not argue that Thomas Jefferson, when he wrote the famous words “We hold these truths to be self‑evident, that all Men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” was hell-bent on persecuting religious minorities. The senator surely knows that Jefferson was a daring proponent of religious freedom. 

Generally, the idea of natural rights was used in the West to extend religious freedom.

Kaine must also know that folks like him who hold to legal positivism — thinking that rights only come from governments — include some of the worst persecutors of religious people in human history.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Our Second Failed Tim is of course Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who unsuccessfully ran alongside Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. 

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international affairs political economy

Out of Poverty

China, farmers, agriculture, communism, government, freedom

“So, who brought who out of poverty?” asks Frank Dikötter about China’s economic rise.

The Dutch historian and author of four excellent books on Chinese history — Mao’s Great Famine; The Tragedy of Liberation; The Cultural Revolution; and China After Mao — Dikötter recently spoke at length with Peter Robinson, host of the Hoover Institution’s “Uncommon Knowledge” podcast.

Calling it “conventional wisdom,” Robinson offers that “the number that I found over and over again was eight to 900 million people lifted out of poverty since Deng Xiaoping announce[d] his reforms in ’78.”

“That’s all propaganda,” declares Dr. Dikötter. “The people in the countryside have lifted themselves out of poverty.”

Even before Mao’s death in 1976, the Cultural Revolution ended and the “army, which was deployed in every farm, every factory, every office from 1968 onwards, that army goes back to the barracks and is purged in turn,” he explains. “People in the countryside realize there’s nobody there to supervise them. There’s nobody there to tell them, go and work in the collective fields.”

Mr. Robinson chimes in: “The boot is off their neck.”

“So,” Dikötter expounds “they start operating underground factories; they open black markets; they trade among themselves.”

Deng “merely [put] the stamp of approval on something that escapes them altogether, namely the drive of ordinary villagers to claim back the freedoms they had before 1949.

“Allow ordinary people to get on with it,” he says, “they will!

“But this is not a party,” concludes Dikötter, “that will allow ordinary people to get on with it.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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general freedom international affairs media and media people

Europe, Land of the Free?

Europe, censorship, mind control, freedom, government

The Economist has declared Europe the Land of the Free.

One proof is that in Europe, no tech oligarchs are “spending their weekends feeding bits of the state ‘into the wood chipper.’”

This is an ill-considered allusion to the efforts of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to reduce the bloat and fraud in U.S. government spending. And the trillions in U.S. federal debt. Which are unsustainable. Because magic doesn’t work.

“Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice.” 

In Britain you can be arrested or jailed for praying, tweeting a wrong-thinking tweet, reading from the Bible, holding up street signs.

Nor is freedom of speech safe in Germany. To prove the continent’s theoretical and practical freedom of speech, The Economist piles up carefully unelucidated half-truths but declines to cite, for example, the conviction of German journalist David Bendels.

In February, Bendels, the editor in chief of Deutschland-Kurier, published a satirical post slamming a German minister, Nancy Faeser, for opposing freedom of speech. An obviously doctored photo showed Faeser with a sign saying “I hate freedom of speech.” Faeser, who loves freedom of speech, filed a criminal complaint after being alerted by German police, who also love freedom of speech.

Bendels has been fined 1,500 pounds, given a suspended prison sentence of seven months, and ordered to apologize. 

He is appealing the verdict, and others are fighting the law under which he was prosecuted.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

The Libertarian Path?

Donald Trump, libertarian, libertarianism, anti government

Donald Trump is launching so many initiatives to curtail government power and its abuse that even students of policy find it hard to keep up. I don’t always agree with what he’s doing, but I often do. Sometimes, a hundred percent.

In his second term, President Trump is following what Glenn Reynolds calls a libertarian path. 

Say, what?

There has long been a libertarian streak in the Republican Party — from even before Goldwater’s 1964 presidential run — but once in power, Republican politicians rarely did any streaking.

Trump was different at the start, more immune to many of the left’s vicious tactics. But Trump 2 (2025- ) is still different from Trump 1 (2017-2021).

One difference between 2017 and now is that in the intervening years, Trump’s ideological enemies have slugged him with impeachments, every possible kind of bogus investigation and lawsuit, rigged various parts of the 2020 election, robbed him of many millions of dollars, and threatened him with imprisonment.

“Trump saw firsthand, to a degree greater than probably any American citizen ever, just how far the resources and lack of principles or moral fiber of the federal government go,” writes Reynolds. “It would be very difficult to remain a believer in Big Government . . . after that.” 

Reynolds echoes Trump’s declaration at the Libertarian Party convention last May about the consequence of his persecution: “If I wasn’t a libertarian before, I sure as hell am a libertarian now.”

One Trump foe complains that his second term “is all about curtailing government’s power and reach.”

Yes. We know. Feature, not a bug.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets regulation too much government

Unplugging the EV Mandate

gas engine, electric cars, global warming, climate, government, regulations

Under the Biden administration, gas-powered vehicles were on a government-impelled road to decline.

In March 2024, the EPA finalized Biden’s “crackdown on gas cars” by issuing absurdly stringent emission standards. The idea was to advance the administration’s “climate agenda” by sending gas-powered modes of transportation to the junkyard.

Leaders of the petroleum industry were among those who saw that the scheme would “make new gas-powered vehicles unavailable or prohibitively expensive for most Americans.” The policy would “feel and function like a ban.”

This was just one of many examples of Biden-oppression pushing American voters who value at least their own freedom into the Trump camp.

Electric vehicles have pluses and minuses. In past columns, I’ve expressed much enthusiasm for the technology, but recognized that it must develop naturally, in a free market, rather than unnaturally, out of ideological hope and fear-ridden “need,” forced by government regulation and subsidy.

As James Roth has noted over at StoptheCCP.org, we’ve had a century and a half to fine-tune gas-powered vehicles, a mature technology that is “beloved by the public.” Why not let electric and gas cars compete fair and square in the market? And why give an artificial boost to totalitarian China’s heavily subsidized and promoted EV industry by crippling the gas-car industry here at home?

President Trump has heard the cry of those who prefer to step on the gas.

Section 2(e) of his sweeping executive order on “Unleashing American Energy” states that it is the policy of the United States to “eliminate the electric vehicle mandate . . . by removing regulatory barriers to motor vehicle access” and other thumb-on-scale interventions in the market.

Is the future of gas cars going to be great again?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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deficits and debt national politics & policies too much government

The Biggest

Congress, US Capitol, debt, government, inflation

Trump’s riding high, in the first week of his second term — but not regarding the biggest problem he faces, inflation and economic instability.

“When bondholders don’t see a credible fiscal path to be repaid for current and future government debt,” writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason, “they expect that eventually the central bank will create new money to buy those government bonds, leading to higher inflation.

“Recent inflation wasn’t just about money supply; it reflected the market’s adjustment to unsustainable fiscal policy.”

Winning, for Trump, cannot equate to Spending.

While Ms. de Rugy tries to explain this all in terms of a big-picture economic analysis, she does not quite reach back in time far enough. We had stagflation way back when I was young. It was cured then not by decreased spending but by Paul Volcker of the Federal Reserve putting the brakes on money-and-credit expansion. He stopped inflation. 

A pure recession immediately followed, followed by recovery in the new administration, Ronald Reagan’s, who helped reduce the rate of growth of government (and not much else).

Inflation could, theoretically, be handled by the Fed alone, now, as then.

Except — the federal government can hardly now afford to service existing debt, which would skyrocket with the nitty-gritty of the Fed’s cure, higher interest rates. 

Today, debt service (paying just the interest) approaches One Trillion Per Annum. 

“A crucial tipping point was reached in 2024 when the interest expense on the federal debt exceeded the defense budget for the first time,” Nick Giambruno summarizes at The International Man. “It’s on track to exceed Social Security and become the BIGGEST item in the federal budget.” 

Increasing it yet more would cripple the government.

The only way out, if there is one, is a radical decrease in spending and deficits, as de Rugy advises. Trump’s path to success is somehow accomplishing that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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