Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Why I Declined to Wear My ‘I Voted’ Sticker




Yes. These lapel stickers were handed out at New Jersey polling stations. In fact, my poll worker went a step further; she peeled off the backing and stuck the sticker on my shirt as I was about to enter the voting booth. But I removed it from my shirt before I was even out the door. Why? To protest the vote--specifically, the outsized importance that voting has come to acquire.


In its Founding principles, America is a nation based on the primacy of liberty--the inalienable individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Rights are regarded as guarantees to freedom to take the actions the individual deems necessary to achieve one’s goals and values. Rights are not an automatic claim on goods or services that others must be forced to provide. America’s government was instituted to secure these rights. Importantly, the right to vote is not among these fundamental rights. It is a secondary right derived from the need for free people to manage its government, and therefore strictly limited in scope. Voters could make certain political choices, such as choosing their political representatives. But the inalienable rights of individuals were outside the scope of electoral power.


But beginning around 1900, this republican orientation of government--first come rights, then comes limited government, then comes the vote--came under severe attack by the Progressive Movement. Instead of its primary function to protect individual rights, so-called Progressive ideology asserted that the government would represent “the will of the people” as determined by electoral victors. Thus began the radical transformation of America from a republic to a democracy, which increasingly subjected individual rights to the mercy of victorious electoral factions. As the Progressives’ democracy gained ground, more and more of our freedom gave way to electoral tyranny. 


Today, the radical transformation of our individual rights-oriented republican constitution into a “will-of-the-people” democratic constitution is close to complete. The result is that elections now are pitched battles between opposing factions eager to force their values on everyone else. In this “cold” civil war, defenders of individual rights and limited government are caught in the crossfire.


Case in point: Consider Amy Goldstein’s Three deep red states vote to expand Medicaid, published in The Washington Post after the 2018 midterm elections. She “reports”:


Citizen power propelled the biggest expansion of Medicaid in heavily Republican states since the early years of the Affordable Care Act, with hundreds of thousands of poor and vulnerable residents standing to gain health coverage as a result of Tuesday’s elections.


Voters in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah approved ballot initiatives to include in their Medicaid programs adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line. The results accomplish a broadening of the safety-net insurance that the states’ legislatures had balked at for years. [My Emphasis]


Notice the generalization. “Citizen power propelled. . .” “Voters approved. . .” Which citizens? Which voters? Not all citizens. Not all voters. “Citizen power. . .” What is the nature of that power? The power of government; which means, the power of law; which means, the power of physical force--i.e., the gun. Which means, the majority of voters get to force their values on the minority who did not vote to expand Medicaid. Medicaid is a wealth redistribution program. Expanding Medicaid imposes additional costs on taxpayers--the citizens who actually pay taxes--whether they want to pay the additional cost or not. Medicaid is government-enforced “charity,” and the citizens who voted no are deprived of their moral right to judge for themselves whether to give. Why? Because other individuals voted differently, and their voting bloc outnumbered those who voted against.


These three “deep red states” did not “vote to expand Medicaid.” The simple, brutal fact is that a majority of citizens voted to impose, by force, their values on those who disagreed.


It’s not just about money. Forcing people to pay for something against their will can violate their freedom of conscience, as well. By forcing people to pay for public schools, you are not just imposing monetary costs of thousands of dollars a year. You are forcing people to support educational philosophies and curricula they may not agree with. There is no room for conscientious objectors.


These are a few examples. But the areas of voter coercion are expanding, especially considering the increasingly influential Democratic Socialist wing of the Democratic Party, which is now openly calling for the full enslavement of the healthcare profession (single payer, or Medicare-for-All), “free’ college, “guaranteed” employment, and a host of other encroachments on our freedom.


What feeds this frenzy of statism? A hideous political philosophy that constitutes the ideological heart of democracy--the idea that society is above the moral law, meaning that citizens in their capacity as government officials are not bound by the same laws or moral restraints that private individuals must adhere to. This premise means that morality is determined by society, by way of elections, which means that morality is determined by government. This means, in principle, that whatever the politicians choose to do is moral because they chose to do it. It’s a modern reincarnation of the “Divine Right of Kings”--the idea that the King is representative of God’s will, who is the sole arbiter of moral action. The modern version might be called the “Divine Right of Majorities,” with “society” replacing God as the sole arbiter of moral action. Thus, if your neighbor robs you at gunpoint to pay for some poor person’s healthcare, hers or someone else’s, the neighbor would rightfully be arrested, charged with theft, prosecuted, and sentenced by government officials. But if that same neighbor votes for politicians who pass laws to rob you at gunpoint to pay for some poor person’s healthcare, it is right because of . . . an election. Instead of law protecting you from the criminal, the law protects the criminal.


We have reached the point where whatever the government chooses to do is moral, for no other reason than that its elected officials chose to do it. This is wrong, with dangerous ramifications--and the reason for my symbolic refusal to wear the sticker. I don’t mean to say that the vote is not an important procedure. I haven’t missed a midterm or presidential election in decades, if ever. But it is just that--a procedure for free people to select the political leaders and decide certain kinds of public issues. I protest what is essentially the weaponization of the vote, which placed our liberty and property rights at the mercy of elections. 


It’s noteworthy to observe that the one major area of our lives that is electorily out of bounds is religion. No one can force their religious beliefs on you, or force you to pay for others’ religious observances. Why? Because we have an explicit doctrine, laid out in the First Amendment--the separation of religion and state. If government is to be pushed back within its proper bounds, we need more separations--the separation of economics and state; of education and state; of science and state; of healthcare and state; of charity and state--so no one can force their values in these and other areas of life on us, and force us to pay for them. Freedom is not the right to vote. Freedom is the right to live your life by your own judgement and values regardless of anyone else’s vote.


Related Reading:


What does it Mean to Say: "We'll Have to Agree to Disagree?"


Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right


F.A. Harper: The Greatest Threat to Liberty Is the Idea That Democracy Guarantees Freedom


[D]emocracy is not the defining characteristic of the idea that became America—liberty is. Democracy is important only insofar as it serves and defends liberty.



Are We Now a Nation of Moochers and Thieves?


Our Pick-Pocket Nation


Related Viewing:


What Are Rights and Where Do They Come From? by Harry Binswanger


RELATED INTEREST:


The Purpose of Politics: No More Politics!--HURD


The more involved a government becomes in the everyday lives of people, the more it matters who will run that government. Because, after all, the people in politics and government are the ones who will dominate most of what goes on in your daily life.


Do Partisans Hate Each Other More Than Ever?: Scholars try to explain today's political warfare.


"Social sorting of the American electorate has been, on balance, normatively bad for American democracy," Mason concludes. "The voting booths are increasingly occupied by those who fiercely want their side to win and consider the other party to be disastrous.…As long as a social divide is maintained between the parties, the electorate will behave more like a pair of warring tribes than like the people of a single nation, caring for their shared future."


Tuesday, November 5, 2024

On this Election Day 2024, One Final Election Note

Even if you cannot vote for Trump, I urge you NOT to vote for Kamala Harris. Better to abstain. Also, vote Republican for Senate and House races. If Harris wins, as I predict (although with much less confidence than I had a month ago), a Republican Senate and/or House can blunt some of Harris's worst policies, of which she undoubtedly will propose plenty. At this point, a divided government is the best outcome to expect, in my view.

Related: 

Anti-Trumpites for Trump (Adapted from Ayn Rand's 1972 Political ID of Herself as an "Anti-Nixonite for Nixon")
By Leonard Peikoff

--Thanks,

Mike LaFerrara

PS: As I've been saying, on policy Donald Trump is far and away beats Kamala Harris. Worse, Harris embodies the totalitarian ideological heart of the Democratic Party, especially its far Left. Her program largely dovetails with the fascist doctrines of Benito Mussolini, the father of modern fascism. But I also cannot bring myself to vote for Trump because of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, which was a frontal assault on our Constitution and a slap in the face to George Washington and every prsident since who honored the peaceful transfer of power in America.

Monday, November 4, 2024

The Incredible Small-Mindedness of the Biden/Harris Administration

The recent port strike featured this Washington Post report: Biden may face tough choices as port strike continues. The subtitle read “The White House has firmly backed the union, but Democrats are eager to avoid economic disruptions weeks before Election Day.”

My emphasis.


But should the president be taking any side in a private contractual dispute? A statesman wouldn’t. But America has few real statesmen these days. And Joe Biden is as far from a statesman as you will ever see. I analyzed this issue in a Facebook post:


“Biden on Tuesday urged the port employers to produce an offer to the striking workers that includes a “meaningful increase” in their wages, citing the dangerous work they did during the pandemic.”


I find it an absolute obscenity the way the Biden Administration has reacted to the dockworkers strike. It’s true that America has long been short on political statesmen—politicians who recognize that, once in office, they put their fiduciary responsibilities to represent the entire nation before their personal political interests.


But this administration, in brazenly throwing the weight of the federal government behind the dockworkers and against the shipping companies, has sunk to an unbelievable low point. This is a private contractual dispute, and the government should not be pressuring one side or the other on the issues. True statesmen would maintain strict neutrality unless laws are being broken, which for now I don’t think is the case. 


This administration, from the President on down, is a gang of small-minded political hacks who can’t distinguish between a political campaign and the heavy responsibility of actually governing a great country. By taking sides, Biden and his ilk are likely lengthening the strike and its cascading hardships, likely inflaming the situation, and in the process throwing industries, businesses, employees, and consumers across the economy under the bus. They are a disgrace to this nation.


The Post also reported:


Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, said in a statement Wednesday that “this strike is about fairness,” calling for “a fair share” of shipping profits for union workers and blasting her Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump, for his overall record on labor issues when he was in the White House.


So everything I said about Biden also applies to Kamala Harris. And why should the shipping companies share their profits with the workers? Those profits legitimately belong to the companies’ shareholders, just as the workers’ wages legitimately belong to the workers. If, in hard times when their profits are low or non-existent, someone suggested that the workers “share” their wages with the shipping companies, Harris and her ilk would no doubt scream bloody murder.  


Related Reading:


2018 SCOTUS ‘Agency Fee’ Ruling a Victory for the Rights of Working People


NLRB ‘Grants’ Students ‘Right to Unionize,’ Which Really Means Power to Coerce


The Future of Organized Labor Should Be Volunterism


End “Collective Bargaining Rights” and “Right-to-Work” Laws, my article in The Objective Standard


End Government Intrusion into Labor-Management Contracts


Law-Favored Unions are Quasi-Criminal Organizations


Saturday, November 2, 2024

Should 16 year-olds vote in school board elections?

In Murphy pushes lower voting age for school elections, David Cruz reports on the push in New Jersey to allow 16 year-olds to vote in school board elections. This is only a wedge issue—part of a broader push to lower the voting age below 18. 


But school board elections are particularly concerning given that the public schools, being government schools, are dominated by a public sector union. “Advocates want to get younger people more engaged,” say the proponents. NJ Spotlight News doesn’t allow comments on its articles, one reason why I’m not a paid subscriber. So I did a Facebook post instead:


“Advocates want to get younger people more engaged.”


Yes—engaged in voting for the teachers union’s anti-liberty, taxpayer-exploiting agenda. The election-corrupting conflict of interest is obvious. The  teachers union is a government-empowered political action organization that massively engages in advocacy for political candidates who favor its agenda at public expense.* The union's political allies reliably push for more taxpayer funding “for public schools,” while at the same time denying those same taxpaying parents the right to school choice for their children with those same education tax dollars.


There are good arguments for NOT lowering the voting age—in fact, for RAISING it to 21 or higher. But this is the worst proposal I’ve seen. The teachers union’s members are in charge of the classrooms, and would be in a position of influencing the children they have under their authority toward the candidates they favor. It is corruption writ large. As long as the teachers union exists (it shouldn’t), the children under their authority for hours a day should never vote.


* [According to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) topped special interest spending from 2000 to 2022, with $52 million, which is more than four times the second biggest spender, AARP, @ $16.5 million, and third, Verizon, @ 16.3.] 


Related Reading:


16 Year Old Voters? How About 21?


The Inherent Corruption of Public Sector Unionization


School Choice is About Freedom, not "Union-Busting"


Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right


Why It’s Time To Raise The Voting Age Back To 21—Robert Tracinski

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Abortion Rights and Majority Rule

A Washington Post op-ed, Women are not ‘community property,’ a Georgia judge rules, echoes a fundamental American principle: individual rights to life, liberty, and property are inalienable and precede government. Ruth Marcus, quoting extensively from Judge Robert McBurney’s decision overturning a Georgia abortion law that prohibits abortion once there is a “detectable human heartbeat,” writes:


“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” McBurney wrote. “Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.” 


Bravo! This is exactly the point. It’s why the blather about leaving this decision up to individual states gets things wrong. The choice is for the woman to make, not the government, at any level. [My emphasis]


Marcus is a solid Leftist on most issues. As such, she is not a consistent defender of inalienable  individual rights (to put it mildly). 


I posted this comment:


“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.”


Absolutely! Protecting our liberties from democracy is fundamental to Americanism. And it goes for all of our fundamental individual rights, including rights to free speech, property, and free trade. But the Democratic Party was founded on the primacy of majority vote, and has held that reactionary position since 1828, when it held that the enslavement of a racial minority should be determined not by reference to the principle of inalienable individual rights promised in Declaration of Independence, but to popular vote in each state.


To this day the Democratic Party still adheres to its horrifying anti-American roots. To wit:


President Joe Biden: “The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.”


Attorney General Merrick Garland: "The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.” 


Vice President Kamala Harris: “And the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote.”


Well, by its own long-held totalitarian democratic principles, the Left should be cheering the end of Roe. Leaving a woman’s fundamental right to her own body to the whims of state voters is exactly what “The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow” looks like.


And, what about a woman’s, or anybody’s, other property? I couldn’t address this point explicitly due to word limitations. But, as John Locke understood, “every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.” The Founders concurred. The fundamental right to property begins, but does not end, with the functions of one's body. Property rights extend open-endedly to encompass the results of the work of one's mind and body. A woman's body is not subject to majority vote. Neither is the money I earn or the house I buy with that money, or a businessman's pricing policies. All of these rights are linked. You violate one, and you violate all.


In other words, rights to material and intellectual property extend from right to person. Of course, the Left routinely violates property rights in the economic realm, and increasingly threatens rights in the intellectual realm. Where is their outrage when Kamala Harris proposes price controls and wealth taxes, or the Biden Administration creates a “Disinformation Governance Board?”


Memo to the Democrats: Be careful what you wish for. You’ve long preached the supremacy of democracy over inalienable individual rights. The overturning of Roe v. Wade, which returned the right to reproductive freedom to state voters, is exactly what your democracy worship means. You can’t cancel the foundational principles of the Declaration of Independence in your quest for your statist Progressive policies, and then call on them when it’s convenient. Either you adhere to them or you pay the price.


I have long ago decided that I would never vote for a Democrat, at least on the national and state levels. The Democratic Party’s historical support for slavery, democracy fundamentalism (in direct opposition to our constitutionally limited republic), white supremacy, the KKK and lynching, Jim Crow, and socialism. That, to this day, it has not changed its ideological and philosophical stripes compels me to write off the party as the central focus of anti-Americanism. I don’t expect that to change in my lifetime.


Related Reading:


In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed


On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence


The Dangerous Totalitarian Premise Underpinning the Justice Department’s Suit Against Georgia’s New Election Law


The Truth about Harris’s Proposed Tax on Unrealized Capital Gains


On the Candidates’ Disastrous Price Policies—and Harris’s Moral Obscenity


Senator Mike Lee is Right: America ‘is not a Democracy’


America; Democracy or Republic or Both--Why it Matters


Right to Abortion, Not Others' Wallets


Friday, October 25, 2024

From Benito Mussolini to . . . Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

George Will’s Washington Post column notes, Between Harris and Trump, it’s hard to tell who’s worse on economic matters


But lately, Democrats and the Harris campaign have taken it further, labeling Donald Trump a fascist. Trump definitely exhibits fascist tendencies, mostly rhetorically. But this begs the question: Who in reality is more fascist, Harris and the Democratic Party or Trump?


I posted these comments on Will’s op-ed:


To me, Harris is the most dangerous because . . . 


“Harris . . . says she will ‘seek practical solutions to problems’ based on ‘realistic assessments’ and apply ‘metrics’ and ‘facts’ and stay ‘focused. Clear enough? She also says: ‘I will engage in what Franklin D. Roosevelt called ‘bold, persistent experimentation.’” 


It’s very clear. This is a tacit admission of her belief that our lives, wealth, and economic activities belong to the state, to be disposed of as she sees fit. In her worldview, we, the governed, will be her lab rats. 


The Democratic Party is often portrayed as sympathetic to communism. Maybe at heart, but it’s agenda most closely resembles that of Benito Mussolini, the originator and author of The Doctrine of Fascism. His conception of fascism means . . .


“No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State. Fascism is . . . opposed to trade unionism as a class weapon. But when brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State.”


Exactly how does Harris’s vow to “seek practical solutions to problems” through FDR-style “bold, persistent experimentation” with our lives differ from Mussolini’s totalitarian vision of a state “in which divergent interests . . . [of all] individuals or groups . . . are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State?” It doesn’t, in any essential sense—we all exist “within the orbit of the State.” Like for Mussolini, the center of Harris’s worldview is The State—only, for now, a softer version focussed mostly on the economy. But the direction she would lead us is clear.


In a recent CNN town hall meeting, Harris dramatized her fascist bonafides. She explicitly affirmed her belief that Donald Trump is a fascist, while in the same meeting proposed a federal anti-price gouging law, vowing to hold “price gougers” “accountable” by law--i.e, to the state. This is a tacit acknowledgement that business owners are under the control of the state, and have no inalienable right to price their own property for sale. This is classic fascism, in which ownership is superficially vested in private hands, but control rests with the state.


On the question, who is more fascist, Harris and the Democrats are the clear “winner.” In fact, the Democrats’ turn toward fascism extends back more than a century to the Progressive Era, and is ongoing.


Related Reading:


Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change by Jonah Goldberg


QUORA: ‘Is fascism a form of capitalism?’


“The Doctrine of Fascism” (1932) by Benito Mussolini


Fascism: Back Door to Socialism that Obama and the Left Well Understand


The Democrat Party Platform Committee’s Call to ‘Investigate’ Climate Dissenters is Undisguised Fascism


The Democrats’ Fascist Fangs Exposed in Crusade Against ‘Catastrophic’ Climate Change


Correcting Michael Coburn: Fascism and Marxian Socialism are Not, Fundamentally, Opposites



Related Listening:


"The Fascist New Frontier" by Ayn Rand


Friday, October 18, 2024

Kamala re-Affirms Democrats’ Long-Held Racist, White Supremacist Ideological Core

Harris announces a new plan to empower Black men as she tries to energize them to vote for her, reported the Associated Press. Her scheme includes  [Youtube]


Vice President Kamala Harris announced a plan on Monday to give Black men more economic opportunities and other chances to thrive as she works to energize a key voting bloc that has Democrats concerned about a lack of enthusiasm.


Harris’ plan includes providing forgivable business loans for Black entrepreneurs, creating more apprenticeships and studying sickle cell and other diseases that disproportionately affect African American men.


Harris already has said she supports legalizing marijuana and her plan calls for working to ensure that Black men have opportunities to participate as a “national cannabis industry takes shape.” She also is calling for better regulating cryptocurrency to protect Black men and others who invest in digital assets.


Harris’s Opportunity Agenda for Black Men, according to her campaign website, is to "provide black men with the tools to achieve financial freedom, lower costs to better provide for themselves and their families, and protect their rights. This pathbreaking agenda includes: 


(1) Providing 1 million loans that are fully forgivable to Black entrepreneurs and others to start a business. 

(2) Championing education, training, and mentorship programs that help Black men get good-paying jobs in high-demand industries and lead their communities, including pathways to become teachers. 

(3) Supporting a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and other digital assets so Black men who invest in and own these assets are protected. 

(4) Launching a National Health Equity Initiative focused on Black Men that addresses sickle cell disease, diabetes, mental health, prostate cancer, and other health challenges that disproportionately impact them. 

(5) Legalizing recreational marijuana and creating opportunities for Black Americans to succeed in this new industry. 


Her so-called  “opportunity agenda for Black men” has rightly been tagged as a desperate vote-buying scheme. But there is a deeper meaning here. 


A desperate Kamala Harris, following Biden, re-affirms the Democratic Party's 196 year-old racist, white supremacist orientation. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision  declared that “African Americans were 'beings of an inferior order.


The Democratic Party, in its 1856 and 1860 Party Platforms, fully endorsed Dred Scott and its assertion of blacks as “beings of an inferior order.” Then, the prevailing pro-slavery position—of which the Democratic Party officially embraced—held that Africans were like children who needed to be taken care of by plantation masters.The Party hasn’t changed its ideological stripes. Blacks still need that special help to succeed; only today, the state replaces the plantation master as the parent in the role of taking care of African-Americans. Harris’s plan, which follows on the heels of Biden’s racist schemes for black farmers and restaurateurs, makes this clear.


There is no room for equivocation here. It’s plain as day. How else to explain Harris’s regressive, explicitly racist anti-14th Amendment, anti-1964 Civil Rights Act policy. The Democratic Party continues to be, as it has been since its founding in 1828, the party of racism and white supremacy. Its policies and rationalizations have changed, but its fundamental values have not. 


[Supplemental: The Harris campaign apparently went swiftly into damage control. The Wall Street Journal reports that “Vice President Kamala Harris’s ‘Opportunity Agenda for Black Men’ . . . will be open to all Americans on a race-neutral basis.” Apparently, her loud, obvious rhetoric doesn’t mean what she says, based on two words, “and others.”  See point (1) above. Give me a break!This vague reference to race neutrality is likely inserted as a way of possibly getting around a Supreme Court, and the American public at large, that has largely lost its tolerance for racist policies, like Affirmative Action. But the intent is clear.]


Related Reading:


The Fight Against Biden’s Racist Policies is Having Some Success


The Dem's Jim Crow 2.0


Biden’s Racist Education Trial Balloon


‘Anti-Racism’, or the re-Mainstreaming of Racism


Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Inspiring Climb to Supreme Court Nominee


The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’