“Owners of 24 gas stations in New Jersey will have to pay attendants more than $2 million in back compensation for failing to pay workers minimum wage and overtime since January 2017,” reported Caitlyn Stulpin for NJ.com on May 2, 2018.
I left these comments:
So these workers broke the law by agreeing to work for an outlawed wage--that is, a wage below what the politicians say they should have been paid.
If it’s true that these business owners broke the law, then by definition so did the workers. Yet the employees get rewarded with “back pay” to compensate for being paid what they agreed to work for. There certainly is a double standard here. You have two parties mutually conspiring to skirt the wage laws, and one gets punished while the other gets rewarded. It looks like its the 5th and 14th Amendments that are being skirted *.
I suggest levying the fine equally between the employers and employees. Better yet, let’s demand that our government protect the rights of employers and employees to forge voluntary compensation agreements without any government interference.
* [According to the Legal Information Institute,
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from denying any person within its territory the equal protection of the laws. This means that a state must treat an individual in the same manner as others in similar conditions and circumstances. The Federal Government must do the same, but this is required by the Fifth Amendment Due Process.
The point of the equal protection clause is to force a state to govern impartially—not draw distinctions between individuals solely on differences that are irrelevant to a legitimate governmental objective. Thus, the equal protection clause is crucial to the protection of civil rights.
I think a convincing constitutional case can be made to challenge minimum wage laws on equal protection and due process grounds. I wonder if its ever been attempted.]
Related Reading:
If We’re to Have Labor Laws, Should They Work Both Ways?
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
On Marx’s 200th Birthday
May 2018—the 5th, to be precise—marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the architect of humanity’s most deadly ideology, Karl Marx. It is incredible that, despite its record, people still preach Marxism.
Nobody denies Marxism’s deadly record--not even its supporters. Writing in the New York Times, under the heading Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!, professor Jason Barker writes:
On “Their disasters,” David Horowitz observed in 1998, 150 years after The Communist Manifesto was published,
No one disputes this record. Yet, Barker has the nerve to write,
Translation: “No matter how much blood is spilled or how much economic devastation it takes, we Marxists will keep trying to overturn human nature by force and violence until our egalitarian fantasies are realized.”
Marxism is thoroughly utopian. It proposes to restructure “selfish” human nature into a “selfless” altruistic society where everyone “contributes” according to his ability, but receives only according to his needs. Marx was under no illusion as to what this will take, which is why he openly advocated violence and terror and destruction on whatever scale necessary.
Yet, Marxism’s appeal continues. Why? Because the type of people Marxism appeals to always exist in any society. Marxism is a rejection of the human mind, of reason, of rational thought, and of free will. It is thoroughly materialistic. As Barker approvingly observes, “It was,” according to Marx, “the material world that determined all thinking.” In order to reform humanity, the old order (capitalism) has to be destroyed, so that the material world can create a new kind of thinking--a new type of human being, even though “the material world”—i.e., the facts of reality—are totally divorced from Marxian ideology. If this seems like a contradiction, it’s because it is (See Tracinski @ The Federalist; Yes, Communism Is Definitely Idealist, And That’s Why It Leads To Mass Murder). Marxism is as divorced from the reality of experience as it is evil.
Thus, Marxism has appeal to the lowest human creatures: the lazy; the entitlement mentalities; the jealous; the envious; the haters of individual achievement—or worse, those who deny individual achievement outright ("You didn't build that"); those who think the world owes them a living; those who see themselves as “victims,” always looking to blame others for their failures; those who resent the responsibility of using their minds, and thus of living; those who hate life.
And so Marxism lives on. Will it win again, bringing more bloodshed and misery than ever?
Keep in mind one simple fact; the battle between communism (or any form of socialism) and capitalism is a moral battle--a battle between force and voluntarism--between altruism and selfishness.
Capitalism naturally results from individual freedom, in which force is banished from society by a government that protects individual rights and people deal with each other only by voluntary consent, each in pursuit of his own selfish interests. Capitalism is not imposed. It is the natural result of a free society.
Communism begins with the initiation of force by government against the people, with the goal of an altruistic society of strict economic equality in which everyone selflessly lives for others without any selfish interests. Such a society requires force because the only way to get people to renounce their own self-interest is to initiate force against them. Communism is imposed from the top: Politics - an unfettered state - is required because, as Mao observed, all politics grows out of the barrel of a gun. As C. Bradley Thompson observes:
So, the fundamental battle is moral. Since capitalism unleashes selfishness, and socialism embodies altruistic selflessness, the battle is between selfishness and altruism. The problem for most of capitalism’s defenders is that they side with altruism as the moral ideal. Thus, you get statements like this one from Horowitz: “Marx was a brilliant mind and a seductive stylist, and many of his insights look reasonable enough on paper.” [My emphasis]. It’s a twist on an old adage about communism: “It’s good in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice.” Horowitz says this, even as he urges “[F]uture generations [to] put Karl Marx’s manifesto on the same sinister shelf as Mein Kampf and other destructive products of the human soul.”
But we need not qualify our criticisms of Marxism with some kind of moral credits. From an altruistic standpoint, Marxism is good. But altruism, which holds self-sacrificial service to others as the ideal, is not good. It is inhumane and evil to its core. Marxian communism doesn’t fail in spite of altruism, or “good intentions”; it fails because it is the full realization of altruism. The 100 million+ lives Marxists sacrificed on the altar of “the kind of society that he struggled to bring about” is not an unfortunate side effect or the result of some communist gang that did it wrong. The failures of communism cited by Barker are not philosophically irrelevant. They are proof of Marxist philosophy’s true nature.
Rational selfishness is required to live, since to live means to pursue, achieve, and hold on to the values each of our lives depend upon, as determined by our own individual judgement. Selfishness is not, as Christianity teaches, a necessary evil or Original Sin. Selfishness, properly understood, is a necessary good, which means capitalism is not just a practical good, but a moral ideal.
Since Ayn Rand is the leading advocate of The Virtue of Selfishness, she is the most effective defender of capitalism. Thus, the battle between communist enslavement and capitalist freedom comes down to Karl Marx vs. Ayn Rand, or Marxism vs. Objectivism.
Related Reading:
Can There be an "After Socialism"?--Alan Charles Kors for The Atlas Society
Capitalism and the Moral High Ground--Craig Biddle for The Objective Standard
Why Marxism—Evil Laid Bare--C. Bradley Thompson for The Objective Standard
Ayn Rand: Tea Party Voice of the Founding Fathers
Related Viewing:
Nobody denies Marxism’s deadly record--not even its supporters. Writing in the New York Times, under the heading Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!, professor Jason Barker writes:
The idea of the classless and stateless society would come to define both Marx’s and Engels’s idea of communism, and of course the subsequent and troubled history of the Communist “states” (ironically enough!) that materialized during the 20th century. There is still a great deal to be learned from their disasters, but their philosophical relevance remains doubtful, to say the least.
On “Their disasters,” David Horowitz observed in 1998, 150 years after The Communist Manifesto was published,
This idea of Marx has proven to be as wrong as any idea ever conceived, more destructive in its consequences then any intellectual fallacy in history. Since the Manifesto was written 150 years ago, more than a hundred million people have been killed in its name. Between ten and twenty times that number have been condemned to lives of unnecessary misery and human squalor, deprived of the life-chances afforded the most humble citizens of the industrial democracies that Marxists set out to destroy.
No one disputes this record. Yet, Barker has the nerve to write,
The transition to a new [Marxian] society . . . is arguably proving to be quite a task. Marx, as I have said, does not offer a one-size-fits-all formula for enacting social change. [W]e are destined to keep citing him and testing his ideas until the kind of society that he struggled to bring about, and that increasing numbers of us now desire, is finally realized.
Translation: “No matter how much blood is spilled or how much economic devastation it takes, we Marxists will keep trying to overturn human nature by force and violence until our egalitarian fantasies are realized.”
Marxism is thoroughly utopian. It proposes to restructure “selfish” human nature into a “selfless” altruistic society where everyone “contributes” according to his ability, but receives only according to his needs. Marx was under no illusion as to what this will take, which is why he openly advocated violence and terror and destruction on whatever scale necessary.
Yet, Marxism’s appeal continues. Why? Because the type of people Marxism appeals to always exist in any society. Marxism is a rejection of the human mind, of reason, of rational thought, and of free will. It is thoroughly materialistic. As Barker approvingly observes, “It was,” according to Marx, “the material world that determined all thinking.” In order to reform humanity, the old order (capitalism) has to be destroyed, so that the material world can create a new kind of thinking--a new type of human being, even though “the material world”—i.e., the facts of reality—are totally divorced from Marxian ideology. If this seems like a contradiction, it’s because it is (See Tracinski @ The Federalist; Yes, Communism Is Definitely Idealist, And That’s Why It Leads To Mass Murder). Marxism is as divorced from the reality of experience as it is evil.
Thus, Marxism has appeal to the lowest human creatures: the lazy; the entitlement mentalities; the jealous; the envious; the haters of individual achievement—or worse, those who deny individual achievement outright ("You didn't build that"); those who think the world owes them a living; those who see themselves as “victims,” always looking to blame others for their failures; those who resent the responsibility of using their minds, and thus of living; those who hate life.
And so Marxism lives on. Will it win again, bringing more bloodshed and misery than ever?
Keep in mind one simple fact; the battle between communism (or any form of socialism) and capitalism is a moral battle--a battle between force and voluntarism--between altruism and selfishness.
Capitalism naturally results from individual freedom, in which force is banished from society by a government that protects individual rights and people deal with each other only by voluntary consent, each in pursuit of his own selfish interests. Capitalism is not imposed. It is the natural result of a free society.
Communism begins with the initiation of force by government against the people, with the goal of an altruistic society of strict economic equality in which everyone selflessly lives for others without any selfish interests. Such a society requires force because the only way to get people to renounce their own self-interest is to initiate force against them. Communism is imposed from the top: Politics - an unfettered state - is required because, as Mao observed, all politics grows out of the barrel of a gun. As C. Bradley Thompson observes:
Marxism is by definition totalitarian and genocidal by motive, design, practice, and result. The political goal of communism is to annihilate freedom in all realms of life, economic, social, and intellectual. By philosophical design, Marxism in power must always use force to achieve its ends. . . .If you doubt this, then I challenge any socialist/communist to give me an example of any Marxist initiative that doesn’t begin with the initiation of force by government against private citizens.
So, the fundamental battle is moral. Since capitalism unleashes selfishness, and socialism embodies altruistic selflessness, the battle is between selfishness and altruism. The problem for most of capitalism’s defenders is that they side with altruism as the moral ideal. Thus, you get statements like this one from Horowitz: “Marx was a brilliant mind and a seductive stylist, and many of his insights look reasonable enough on paper.” [My emphasis]. It’s a twist on an old adage about communism: “It’s good in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice.” Horowitz says this, even as he urges “[F]uture generations [to] put Karl Marx’s manifesto on the same sinister shelf as Mein Kampf and other destructive products of the human soul.”
But we need not qualify our criticisms of Marxism with some kind of moral credits. From an altruistic standpoint, Marxism is good. But altruism, which holds self-sacrificial service to others as the ideal, is not good. It is inhumane and evil to its core. Marxian communism doesn’t fail in spite of altruism, or “good intentions”; it fails because it is the full realization of altruism. The 100 million+ lives Marxists sacrificed on the altar of “the kind of society that he struggled to bring about” is not an unfortunate side effect or the result of some communist gang that did it wrong. The failures of communism cited by Barker are not philosophically irrelevant. They are proof of Marxist philosophy’s true nature.
Rational selfishness is required to live, since to live means to pursue, achieve, and hold on to the values each of our lives depend upon, as determined by our own individual judgement. Selfishness is not, as Christianity teaches, a necessary evil or Original Sin. Selfishness, properly understood, is a necessary good, which means capitalism is not just a practical good, but a moral ideal.
Since Ayn Rand is the leading advocate of The Virtue of Selfishness, she is the most effective defender of capitalism. Thus, the battle between communist enslavement and capitalist freedom comes down to Karl Marx vs. Ayn Rand, or Marxism vs. Objectivism.
Related Reading:
Can There be an "After Socialism"?--Alan Charles Kors for The Atlas Society
Capitalism and the Moral High Ground--Craig Biddle for The Objective Standard
Why Marxism—Evil Laid Bare--C. Bradley Thompson for The Objective Standard
Ayn Rand: Tea Party Voice of the Founding Fathers
Related Viewing:
Marxism “Begins with Theft and Ends with Murder,” Shows C. Bradley Thompson--Ari Armstrong for The Objective Standard
Sunday, May 27, 2018
A Memorial day Tribute
Throughout history, armies have fought to protect kings, theocrats, and other kinds of dictators from their own people; for imperialistic conquest and/or looting; even to satisfy the “honor” of some sundry rulers—all manned by average people who rarely had any interest in the military adventures.
America’s military is unique. It fights to protect the borders of a country established by a set of ideas…the most radical set of ideas in man’s history. America is the first and only country founded explicitly and philosophically on the principle that an individual’s life is his to live, by unalienable right. America is the first and only country founded on the explicit principle that the government exists as servant for and by permission of the people, with the solemn duty to protect those rights; or, as Ronald Reagan put it in his first inaugural address:
As established in the Declaration of Independence, individual rights come before government—rights being understood as guarantees to freedom of action to pursue personal advancement, not automatic claims on economic rewards that others must be forced to provide against their will. Then, as stated in the document that initiated the United States of America as a politically autonomous entity, the Declaration states, "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men." That is America. Even the British Empire from which America won independence, then the freest society the world had ever known, was based on the premise that rights are privileges granted by the Crown. Englishmen were subjects, not truly free.
Sadly, the knowledge of what this country stands for is steadily slipping away…and along with it, our rights. Fortunately, we’re still free to speak out. So the best way to honor the military fighter who died in the line of duty, for those of us who still retain that knowledge, is to remind our fellow Americans in any small way that we can about America’s unique, noble, and radical Founding ideals.
We can still prevent “the other way around”. But we must rediscover the knowledge of, and think about, what it means to be an American. So, let us reflect on what really made this country possible.
This Memorial Day weekend, we will hear a lot about the “sacrifices” made by those who served and died defending America.
It is said that this nation, our freedom, and our way of life are a gift bestowed upon us by the grace of the “sacrifices” of the Founding Fathers and the fighters of America’s wars from the Revolutionary War on. But, was it? Is it even possible that so magnificent an achievement – the United States of America – could be the product of sacrifice? As the closing words of this country’s Founding philosophical document – the Declaration of Independence – attest, the Founding Fathers risked everything to make their ideals a reality:
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
Some point to those words, and bestow on the signatories of that document the “honor” of having sacrificed for us, the "future generations." Nothing can be further from the truth. Sacrifice--properly understood--is the giving up, rather than the achievement, of values. America was achieved.
What is any human being’s highest attribute and value? It is his mind and his independent judgment. To use one’s mind – to think – is an exclusively personal, individualistic, self-motivated, self-chosen, selfish effort. All else in a person's life is a consequence of the use, or lack of use, of his mind – for better or for worse. One’s convictions about what one believes is right, one’s passionate concern for ideas, is the product of the independent use of one’s mind. The man who places nothing above the judgment of his own mind, even at the risk of his own physical well-being, is not engaging in self-sacrifice. To fight for one’s own fundamental beliefs is the noblest, most egoistic endeavor one can strive for. Integrity is not selfless. It is not sacrificial
The Founders were thinkers and fighters. They were egoists, in the noblest sense, which is the only valid sense. They believed in a world, not as it was, but as it could be and should be. They took action – pledging their “sacred honor” at great risk to their personal wealth and physical well-being – to that end. They would accept no substitute. They would take no middle road. They would not compromise. They would succeed or perish.
Such was the extraordinary character of the Founders of this nation.
To call the achievement of the Founders a sacrifice is to say that they did not deem the ideals set forth in the Declaration as worthy of their fighting for; that the idea that the individual’s life belongs to him and not to any collective and not to any ruler was less of a value to them than what they pledged in defense of it; that they did what they did anyway without personal conviction or passion; that the Declaration of Independence is a fraud. To say that America was born out of sacrifice is a grave injustice and, in fact, a logical impossibility.
World history produced a steady parade of human sacrifices, and the overwhelming result was a steady stream of blood, tears,and tyranny. The Founders stood up not merely to the British Crown, but to the whole brutal sacrificial history of mankind to turn the most radical set of political ideas ever conceived into history’s greatest nation. It is no accident that the United States of America was born at the apex of the philosophical movement that introduced the concept of the Rights of Man to his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, the Enlightenment.
Only the most extraordinary men of the most ferocious personal strength and courage could have so uncompromisingly upheld, against overwhelming odds and hostility and personal risk, so passionate a belief in their own independently held convictions so as to have established the American Founding. The American Revolution was history’s brightest demonstration of the rationally selfish pursuit of a noble goal by any group of people, ever. It was a monumental human testament to the dedication these men had to their cause – the refusal to live any longer under any social condition except full, genuine freedom, and to "pledge eternal hostility against every form of tyranny."
The highest tribute I can pay to those Americans who died in the line of military duty, on this Memorial Day, is not that they selflessly sacrificed for their country. Self-sacrifice is not a virtue in my value system. It is an insult, because that would mean that their country and what it stands for was irrelevant to them; that they had no personal, selfish interest in it; that they were not passionate about their service; that they were indifferent toward America's enemies; that it made no difference to them whether they returned to live in freedom or to live in slavery.
This, of course, is not the case.
Freedom is thoroughly egoistic, because it leaves all individuals free to pursue their own goals, values, and happiness—by inalienable right and with the full protection of his government. It follows that to fight for a free nation is thoroughly egoistic. If American soldiers fight for their freedom, then the highest tribute I can pay to those who perished in that cause is to say that they were cut from the mold of the Founding Fathers; that they did not set out to die for their country but rather that they set out to fight, often at great personal risk, for the only values under which they desired to live—that radical set of ideals that is the United States of America.
A military, of course, is not the first line of defense for freedom, nor an unmitigated good. As stated at the outset, militaries fight to protect borders—more often than not borders of unfree countries. Not so America’s military, which does protect a free nation’s borders. America has not faced an existential threat to its sovereignty in 30 years, and has not fought a war to protect its borders since the 1940s. Today, thankfully, America is militarily untouchable. The technological supremacy of our military power could instantly crush any power around the world that dared pose a threat to our borders.
Yet today, nearly three decades after the fall of the Soviet Communist menace—the last true existential threat to America—we are less free than we were then, thanks to the growth of the regulatory welfare state. Our freedom, once protected by our Constitution, has actually been eroding for a century.
The fight for freedom based on individual rights is fundamentally a philosophical fight. Today, America’s military might is greater than ever before, and yet freedom is today at its lowest ebb since the end of the Civil War. If America continues losing the knowledge of what freedom is, where it comes from, and why we deserve it as an inalienable right, all of that incredible military power won’t save us. If We the People, each as sovereign individuals—we who have allowed a regulatory welfare state to grow into the monstrosity it has become—want to honor the military that protects us from foreign enemies, we must come to grips with this simple, observable fact: The primary threat to Americans’ freedom today is not external—any foreign power that threatens America as a sovereign nation will be crushed like a bug in short order. The primary threat to America today is internal, in the form of the ideas of collectivism, statism and democratic socialism eroding the ideals of individualism and constitutional republicanism. It is not enough to put some number of years into a military career. It is not enough to pay taxes to support the military. We must fight with words and pen for our freedom every day.
This is not to diminish the role of the U.S. military; only to put it in proper perspective. We can’t win the internal philosophical battle against the enemies of freedom without keeping the external enemies of freedom at bay. We need our military, and it is fitting that we recognize American soldiers lost in battle. It is fitting not just because of the importance of the military, but as a reminder that “war is hell”; that the cost of war to actual living human beings is horrendous; and that Americans should never be pushed into battle for altruistic causes or with rules of engagement that hamper their ability to protect themselves and win as quickly as possible, as has too often been the case over the past century (think “making the world safe for democracy,” or the “domino theory,” or the “forward strategy for freedom”). If we deployed our military more to actually defend our borders and less as the world’s policeman and do-gooder, we’d have fewer dead soldiers to memorialize.
Related Reading:
On This Veterans Day, Remember the Productive Americans Who Support the Greatest Military in History
Related Viewing:
Friday, May 25, 2018
1776: Reality, the Principal, and the Principle
The Associated Press reported on an incident in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, New Jersey principal apologizes for 'insensitive' prom ticket language:
The Principal, Dennis Perry, was lauded for handling the situation well. Perry pledged, in the future, "to ensure that a diverse group of people view all information before it is distributed from the school" and thanked “members of our school community for their caring and thoughtful conversation while discussing this sensitive issue.”
I’m not a member of the Cherry Hill school community. But I’d like to contribute my thoughts to the conversation.
It’s true that, as Principal Perry acknowledged, life was not very good for all Americans, most obviously those blacks who were enslaved.
But something else happened in 1776—the signing of the most anti-oppression document ever written, The Declaration of Independence. For the first time in history, it was declared that every individual is sovereign and possessing of unalienable rights to his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness—and that the government’s job is to protect those rights equally and at all times, for all men, regardless of race, or gender, or creed, or national origin, or family ties, or wealth, or sexual orientation, or any other group affiliation.
In practice, these principles were obviously not applied to all individuals in 1776. As Presidential candidate Barack Obama would say in a 2008 speech in front of the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia:
Obama was, of course, referring to the Declaration of Independence and the completion of the United states Constitution. He observed that the document was unfinished, stained by the compromise that allowed the slave trade to continue for 20 more years, and which would “leave any final resolution to future generations.” “Of course,” Obama observed:
Although I have a deep disagreement with Obama on many issues, including his philosophical understandings of “equality” and “justice,” the basic thrust of what he said then is true. Americans didn’t always live up to its ideals. Blacks, women, American Indians, gays, and others all had to wait for those ideals of equality to catch up to them. But as Obama clearly implies, it’s not American ideals that are at fault. It is the failure to fully apply them to all people that is.
In a sense, we can say there are two 1776s--the ideal and the reality. A statement of ideals is a crucial starting point, as ideas drive human history. But it’s a hard fight to bring them to reality. There is a reason why freedom fighters from Frederick Douglass to Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther king to Harvey Milk and many, many others have rooted their struggles to close the gap between the ideals and reality in the principles of the Declaration of Independence. The ideals of political equality and equal protection of every individual’s rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness under the law has been the philosophic fuel for closing the gap throughout American history. 1776 didn’t give us equal freedom and justice for all that was promised. But it did give us the means for achieving it. That’s the 1776 we can all celebrate.
Related Reading:
July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased
When the Constitution Was 'At War With Itself,' Frederick Douglass Fought on the Side of Freedom—Damon Root
The Colorblind Constitution: Frederick Douglass on Race and America’s Founding—Hannah Sternberg
Lincoln and Race—Alexander V. Marriott
Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. For His Moral Ideals Rather Than His Politics
On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence
We Need to Reassert the Declaration Before We 'Rewrite the Constitution'
The principal of a New Jersey high school has apologized for what he called "insensitive" language on tickets for the upcoming senior prom.
The Courier Post reported the Cherry Hill High School East senior prom tickets urged students to "party like it's 1776" during the event at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center.
Principal Dennis Perry said in a letter to the community posted on his Twitter account Friday that some people were offended, and he wanted to apologize "for the hurt feelings this reference caused for members of our school family."
"It was insensitive and irresponsible not to appreciate that not all communities can celebrate what life was like in 1776," Perry said.
The Principal, Dennis Perry, was lauded for handling the situation well. Perry pledged, in the future, "to ensure that a diverse group of people view all information before it is distributed from the school" and thanked “members of our school community for their caring and thoughtful conversation while discussing this sensitive issue.”
I’m not a member of the Cherry Hill school community. But I’d like to contribute my thoughts to the conversation.
It’s true that, as Principal Perry acknowledged, life was not very good for all Americans, most obviously those blacks who were enslaved.
But something else happened in 1776—the signing of the most anti-oppression document ever written, The Declaration of Independence. For the first time in history, it was declared that every individual is sovereign and possessing of unalienable rights to his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness—and that the government’s job is to protect those rights equally and at all times, for all men, regardless of race, or gender, or creed, or national origin, or family ties, or wealth, or sexual orientation, or any other group affiliation.
In practice, these principles were obviously not applied to all individuals in 1776. As Presidential candidate Barack Obama would say in a 2008 speech in front of the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia:
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and . . . launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence [sic] at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
Obama was, of course, referring to the Declaration of Independence and the completion of the United states Constitution. He observed that the document was unfinished, stained by the compromise that allowed the slave trade to continue for 20 more years, and which would “leave any final resolution to future generations.” “Of course,” Obama observed:
the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution — a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
Although I have a deep disagreement with Obama on many issues, including his philosophical understandings of “equality” and “justice,” the basic thrust of what he said then is true. Americans didn’t always live up to its ideals. Blacks, women, American Indians, gays, and others all had to wait for those ideals of equality to catch up to them. But as Obama clearly implies, it’s not American ideals that are at fault. It is the failure to fully apply them to all people that is.
In a sense, we can say there are two 1776s--the ideal and the reality. A statement of ideals is a crucial starting point, as ideas drive human history. But it’s a hard fight to bring them to reality. There is a reason why freedom fighters from Frederick Douglass to Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther king to Harvey Milk and many, many others have rooted their struggles to close the gap between the ideals and reality in the principles of the Declaration of Independence. The ideals of political equality and equal protection of every individual’s rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness under the law has been the philosophic fuel for closing the gap throughout American history. 1776 didn’t give us equal freedom and justice for all that was promised. But it did give us the means for achieving it. That’s the 1776 we can all celebrate.
Related Reading:
July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased
When the Constitution Was 'At War With Itself,' Frederick Douglass Fought on the Side of Freedom—Damon Root
The Colorblind Constitution: Frederick Douglass on Race and America’s Founding—Hannah Sternberg
Lincoln and Race—Alexander V. Marriott
Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. For His Moral Ideals Rather Than His Politics
On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
We Need to Reassert the Declaration Before We 'Rewrite the Constitution'
Apparently confident that their statist philosophy has won the hearts and minds of a majority of the American people, some on the Left are calling for a new Constitutional Convention. On July 4th, 2016, the New Jersey Star-Ledger posted a call to rewrite the Constitution.
I left these comments:
The first thing we have to rewrite is the first sentence of this editorial, to clarify what the term “self-govern” means in American terms.
Jefferson’s first concern as he drafted the Declaration of Independence—of which the signing and adoption by the colonies marked the starting point of the United States of America as an independent political entity—was not self-government; i.e., democracy. His first concern was unalienable individual rights protected equally under the law at all times—Rights being understood to be guarantees to freedom of action in support of our own individual lives, not automatic guarantees to material values that others must be forced to provide; the pursuit, not the guarantee, of happiness. In the American concept, self-govern means the individual’s right to govern his own life and affairs while respecting the same rights of others. It does not mean choosing a government to rule our lives, democratic or otherwise. America was never about ballot box mob rule of others’ lives, but individual self-rule.
Before we “rewrite” anything, we need to rediscover the Declaration of Independence, which is the philosophic blueprint for the constitution. As Jefferson full well understood when he wrote it, rights come before government. “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” Our rights as individuals to govern our own lives are beyond the scope of government to limit or violate, so long as we as individuals do not violate the same rights of others.
Having understood that, we can proceed, because the constitution does need work—to restore those principles. I have many suggestions. But here are my top two:
First, I’d add an education clause to the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of education, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The First Amendment is not a hodgepodge thrown together by chance of convenience. It is an integrated statement ensuring intellectual freedom. The separation of education and state certainly belongs there.
Second, I’d clarify the Commerce Clause—"Congress shall have power . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."—by adding “but neither Congress nor the States shall make any law that abridges the freedom of production, contract, and trade. The term ‘to regulate’ shall not be construed to authorize the violation of these rights.”
There are plenty more fixes needed to restore the principles upon which America was Founded. But we need to reaffirm those principles first. Otherwise, we might as well reinstate the King of England, and all become subjects again. As our Founders understood, “we didn’t trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants one mile away. An elected legislature can trample a man’s rights as easily as a king can.” John Adams said; “It is … as necessary to defend an individual against the majority in a democracy as against the king in a monarchy.”
The Declaration can never be “fossilized.” Those principles are eternal truths. That’s the nature of principles. Principles are universal truths derived from the facts of nature, including human nature. As long as nature doesn’t change, principles are forever applicable regardless of “changing times.” By definition, principles can be applied to an unlimited number of concrete circumstances. As Harvey Milk, one of the early leaders in the fight for equal rights for gays, said at a 1978 speech,
The Founders left open the opportunity and right of the American people to amend and alter the constitution—and properly so. That’s not in question. The thing that doesn’t need a rewrite is the Declaration of Independence. Without the principle that the individual is free and sovereign, and the government is servant, there is no America. Any rewrite of the Constitution should focus on stronger protections for individual rights, not more power to the government or the electorate. Otherwise, leave well enough alone.
Our freedoms are being rapidly eroded as it is, thanks to certain unfortunate contradictions in, and misrepresentations or evasions of, the existing constitution. The Left is probably correct that statism would be the winner in any constitutional convention held today. We the American people have largely lost sight of what the “free” in free society actually means. The erosion of our freedoms doesn’t need help from any constitutional rewrite.
As another correspondent observed, “A document designed to ‘constitute’ an extremely limited government, empowered to do but a very few things, has been perverted by leftists since at least WWI,”
So true. The statists would like nothing better than the chance to essentially repeal the First Amendment (“campaign finance” regulation), trash the governmental balance of power (ending 2 senators per state), and make it easier for the majority to run roughshod over the minority (ending the filibuster). We warriors for liberty must make the case that Americanist principles are timeless. True, new circumstances will always present us with the necessity of applying those principles in new ways. But the principles are just as valid in the era of instant worldwide communication, space travel, and biotechnology as in the “era of powdered wigs and silk breeches.” The American Revolution was not merely about throwing off “the yoke of political bondage to the King of England.” It was a rebellion against, in Jefferson’s own words, the yoke of political bondage to “every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Personally, I think that, given the state of “education” regarding America’s and the Enlightenment’s principles, a constitutional convention would be a major catastrophe, ending in an Imperial State of unlimited power. Statists have been rebelling against the principles of individual sovereignty that undergirds America since the Founding. The Star-Ledger is one of the reactionaries. It wants to transform the American Republic based on individual rights and a government of limited powers into a democratic tyranny complete with economic bondage to the state and political prisons for dissenters. It’ll likely get its wish if we allow a constitutional convention at this time.
Related Reading:
July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased
On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence
The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur
When Thomas Jefferson threw off the yoke of political bondage to the King of England in 1776, he did it to assert his right to self-govern.
Clearly, it was not Jefferson's wish that we fossilize the Constitution; he expected us to occasionally revisit our sacred but imperfect manifesto to keep pace with the progress he cherished above all.
Yet here we are, still guided by the same piece of parchment left over from an era of powdered wigs and silk breeches.
So while it seems like sacrilege on this reverent day, it's time to agree with Jefferson that this 4,000-word document could use a makeover.
By now, the reasons should be obvious: If the Constitution is impervious to change, so too is our sclerotic and dysfunctional government. If everything progressed as Jefferson had wished, our system would not be constipated by gridlock, majorities that no longer can rule, and even shutdowns.
So hard though it may be, we need another Constitutional convention.
Campaign finance, drawing voting districts, banning the filibuster? Those would be landslides. Urban dwellers would want to address the representative imbalance in Congress: It is absurd that California would have the same number of Senators as Wyoming, despite having 65 times the population.
I left these comments:
The first thing we have to rewrite is the first sentence of this editorial, to clarify what the term “self-govern” means in American terms.
Jefferson’s first concern as he drafted the Declaration of Independence—of which the signing and adoption by the colonies marked the starting point of the United States of America as an independent political entity—was not self-government; i.e., democracy. His first concern was unalienable individual rights protected equally under the law at all times—Rights being understood to be guarantees to freedom of action in support of our own individual lives, not automatic guarantees to material values that others must be forced to provide; the pursuit, not the guarantee, of happiness. In the American concept, self-govern means the individual’s right to govern his own life and affairs while respecting the same rights of others. It does not mean choosing a government to rule our lives, democratic or otherwise. America was never about ballot box mob rule of others’ lives, but individual self-rule.
Before we “rewrite” anything, we need to rediscover the Declaration of Independence, which is the philosophic blueprint for the constitution. As Jefferson full well understood when he wrote it, rights come before government. “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” Our rights as individuals to govern our own lives are beyond the scope of government to limit or violate, so long as we as individuals do not violate the same rights of others.
Having understood that, we can proceed, because the constitution does need work—to restore those principles. I have many suggestions. But here are my top two:
First, I’d add an education clause to the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of education, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The First Amendment is not a hodgepodge thrown together by chance of convenience. It is an integrated statement ensuring intellectual freedom. The separation of education and state certainly belongs there.
Second, I’d clarify the Commerce Clause—"Congress shall have power . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."—by adding “but neither Congress nor the States shall make any law that abridges the freedom of production, contract, and trade. The term ‘to regulate’ shall not be construed to authorize the violation of these rights.”
There are plenty more fixes needed to restore the principles upon which America was Founded. But we need to reaffirm those principles first. Otherwise, we might as well reinstate the King of England, and all become subjects again. As our Founders understood, “we didn’t trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants one mile away. An elected legislature can trample a man’s rights as easily as a king can.” John Adams said; “It is … as necessary to defend an individual against the majority in a democracy as against the king in a monarchy.”
The Declaration can never be “fossilized.” Those principles are eternal truths. That’s the nature of principles. Principles are universal truths derived from the facts of nature, including human nature. As long as nature doesn’t change, principles are forever applicable regardless of “changing times.” By definition, principles can be applied to an unlimited number of concrete circumstances. As Harvey Milk, one of the early leaders in the fight for equal rights for gays, said at a 1978 speech,
In the Declaration of Independence it is written “All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights . . . .” That’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence.
The Founders left open the opportunity and right of the American people to amend and alter the constitution—and properly so. That’s not in question. The thing that doesn’t need a rewrite is the Declaration of Independence. Without the principle that the individual is free and sovereign, and the government is servant, there is no America. Any rewrite of the Constitution should focus on stronger protections for individual rights, not more power to the government or the electorate. Otherwise, leave well enough alone.
Our freedoms are being rapidly eroded as it is, thanks to certain unfortunate contradictions in, and misrepresentations or evasions of, the existing constitution. The Left is probably correct that statism would be the winner in any constitutional convention held today. We the American people have largely lost sight of what the “free” in free society actually means. The erosion of our freedoms doesn’t need help from any constitutional rewrite.
As another correspondent observed, “A document designed to ‘constitute’ an extremely limited government, empowered to do but a very few things, has been perverted by leftists since at least WWI,”
So true. The statists would like nothing better than the chance to essentially repeal the First Amendment (“campaign finance” regulation), trash the governmental balance of power (ending 2 senators per state), and make it easier for the majority to run roughshod over the minority (ending the filibuster). We warriors for liberty must make the case that Americanist principles are timeless. True, new circumstances will always present us with the necessity of applying those principles in new ways. But the principles are just as valid in the era of instant worldwide communication, space travel, and biotechnology as in the “era of powdered wigs and silk breeches.” The American Revolution was not merely about throwing off “the yoke of political bondage to the King of England.” It was a rebellion against, in Jefferson’s own words, the yoke of political bondage to “every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Personally, I think that, given the state of “education” regarding America’s and the Enlightenment’s principles, a constitutional convention would be a major catastrophe, ending in an Imperial State of unlimited power. Statists have been rebelling against the principles of individual sovereignty that undergirds America since the Founding. The Star-Ledger is one of the reactionaries. It wants to transform the American Republic based on individual rights and a government of limited powers into a democratic tyranny complete with economic bondage to the state and political prisons for dissenters. It’ll likely get its wish if we allow a constitutional convention at this time.
Related Reading:
July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased
On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence
Monday, May 21, 2018
Jeff Tittel’s Dishonest Package Dealing
Leading up to Earth Day 2017 New Jersey Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel opined in the Star-Ledger to Stand up to Trump's war on the environment this Earth Day. It’s full of hollow climate religionist sloganeering, such as condemning “climate deniers” in the name of science and accusing “Trump and EPA chief Scott Pruitt [of] siding with corporate polluters instead of our health and climate.”
Embedded in Tittel’s rage against Trump’s energy and Environmental Protection Agency policies is a simultaneous lauding of efforts to clean up polluted rivers and calls to stop construction of future energy infrastructure projects.
I left these comments:
Don’t fall for Tittel’s dishonest package-dealing.
It’s one thing to clean up actual harmful pollution by, for example, banning dumping of raw, untreated waste into rivers. It’s quite another to wage war on industrial development, like seeking to ban reliable, increasingly clean fossil fuel energy by stopping drilling and pipelines. The first is cleaner industrialization intended to benefit man. That’s good. The second is anti-industrialism that harms man. That’s bad. They are two entirely different things lumped together into one package deal, so that if you oppose Tittlel’s war on reliable fossil fuel energy, you automatically favor pollution. It is utterly dishonest.
Earth Day is the symbol of anti-industrial anti-humanism. They hate fossil fuels not because it’s “dirty.” They hate it because it provides cheap, reliable, clean energy. Fossil fuels keep us safe from the climate and other dangers that plagued mankind through all of preindustrial history. And if wind and solar can ever become as reliable as fossil fuels, environmentalists would find a reason to ban them, too. After all, reliable nuclear and hydro power emit no CO2, yet are also opposed by environmentalists. Earth Day anti-humanists oppose reliable, economical energy of any kind, because energy is the industry that drives every other industry—the very industrialization human beings need to live on Earth.
It’s important to understand that environmentalism [that is, ideological Environmentalism, upper case “E”] is driven by non-impact on nature, not human well-being, as the moral standard of value. Hence, environmentalists will never be satisfied. They will always seek more and more restrictions on productive human activity. Yet humans can only survive and thrive by impacting nature. Earth Day should celebrate the human ingenuity and the enabling individual freedom of capitalism, which together unleashed entrepreneurs to transform the planet from the danger-filled environment nature imposed on us to the safe, prosperous, clean industrial environment that allows each of us the opportunity to pursue flourishing and happiness. The Earth that the Earth Day environmentalists seek is no place for man.
------------------------------
There’s an interesting twist to this year’s [2017] Earth Day—the inclusion of a March for Science on Earth Day. What’s interesting is that scientific progress is the prerequisite to the Industrial Revolution that environmentalists and their Earth Day is fundamentally, on principle, opposed to.
What are they up too?
There is no doubt that science is indispensable to human progress, including progress toward the development of technologies to alleviate and minimize negative side effects from industrialization, such as cleaner burning fossil fuels.
What I believe is the environmentalist movement seek to use science in the same way that Marxian communism uses to promote socialism and Nazisim and Progressivism used to promote eugenics. Following in the footsteps of the communists and the Nazis, the environmentalists peddle climate catastrophism to promote a statist agenda—all in the name of and under cover of science. Science ceases to be a source of knowledge in service to human progress, and is instead converted into a tool against human flourishing. As Tittel concludes:
We need to stand up for science at the March for Science on Saturday in Trenton and Washington. We need to protest against climate-deniers in Washington D.C. on April 29 at the People's Climate March. We need to stand together for clean air, clean water, and to protect our planet from climate change.
What we need is to protect humans from Environmentalism. Environmentalism invokes science the way religionists invoke God—as an infallible authority that people who claim to speak for the authority say must be unquestioningly obeyed. I for one won’t ever let them get away with this quasi-religious gimmick.
Related Reading:
Earth Day: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
Embedded in Tittel’s rage against Trump’s energy and Environmental Protection Agency policies is a simultaneous lauding of efforts to clean up polluted rivers and calls to stop construction of future energy infrastructure projects.
I left these comments:
Don’t fall for Tittel’s dishonest package-dealing.
It’s one thing to clean up actual harmful pollution by, for example, banning dumping of raw, untreated waste into rivers. It’s quite another to wage war on industrial development, like seeking to ban reliable, increasingly clean fossil fuel energy by stopping drilling and pipelines. The first is cleaner industrialization intended to benefit man. That’s good. The second is anti-industrialism that harms man. That’s bad. They are two entirely different things lumped together into one package deal, so that if you oppose Tittlel’s war on reliable fossil fuel energy, you automatically favor pollution. It is utterly dishonest.
Earth Day is the symbol of anti-industrial anti-humanism. They hate fossil fuels not because it’s “dirty.” They hate it because it provides cheap, reliable, clean energy. Fossil fuels keep us safe from the climate and other dangers that plagued mankind through all of preindustrial history. And if wind and solar can ever become as reliable as fossil fuels, environmentalists would find a reason to ban them, too. After all, reliable nuclear and hydro power emit no CO2, yet are also opposed by environmentalists. Earth Day anti-humanists oppose reliable, economical energy of any kind, because energy is the industry that drives every other industry—the very industrialization human beings need to live on Earth.
It’s important to understand that environmentalism [that is, ideological Environmentalism, upper case “E”] is driven by non-impact on nature, not human well-being, as the moral standard of value. Hence, environmentalists will never be satisfied. They will always seek more and more restrictions on productive human activity. Yet humans can only survive and thrive by impacting nature. Earth Day should celebrate the human ingenuity and the enabling individual freedom of capitalism, which together unleashed entrepreneurs to transform the planet from the danger-filled environment nature imposed on us to the safe, prosperous, clean industrial environment that allows each of us the opportunity to pursue flourishing and happiness. The Earth that the Earth Day environmentalists seek is no place for man.
------------------------------
There’s an interesting twist to this year’s [2017] Earth Day—the inclusion of a March for Science on Earth Day. What’s interesting is that scientific progress is the prerequisite to the Industrial Revolution that environmentalists and their Earth Day is fundamentally, on principle, opposed to.
What are they up too?
There is no doubt that science is indispensable to human progress, including progress toward the development of technologies to alleviate and minimize negative side effects from industrialization, such as cleaner burning fossil fuels.
What I believe is the environmentalist movement seek to use science in the same way that Marxian communism uses to promote socialism and Nazisim and Progressivism used to promote eugenics. Following in the footsteps of the communists and the Nazis, the environmentalists peddle climate catastrophism to promote a statist agenda—all in the name of and under cover of science. Science ceases to be a source of knowledge in service to human progress, and is instead converted into a tool against human flourishing. As Tittel concludes:
We need to stand up for science at the March for Science on Saturday in Trenton and Washington. We need to protest against climate-deniers in Washington D.C. on April 29 at the People's Climate March. We need to stand together for clean air, clean water, and to protect our planet from climate change.
What we need is to protect humans from Environmentalism. Environmentalism invokes science the way religionists invoke God—as an infallible authority that people who claim to speak for the authority say must be unquestioningly obeyed. I for one won’t ever let them get away with this quasi-religious gimmick.
Related Reading:
Earth Day: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
Reflections on “Earth Day” 2012: Americans Begin to Wake Up—Ari Armstrong for The Objective Standard
Saturday, May 19, 2018
A Leftist Acknowledges the Un-American Premise Behind the Welfare State
It’s no secret that the Democrats hate the Republicans’ drive to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare. But rarely does anybody on the Left exhibit such blatant nerve as former Democratic U.S. Congressman Steven R. Rothman of New Jersey. Last March (2017) Rothman authored a NJ Star-Ledger guest column asserting that Paul Ryan wants to destroy America's social safety net, not just Obamacare. The hyperbole of that patently false statement—modern Republicans are welfare statists—is nothing new. What is unusual (though not unheard of) is this statement from Rothman:
Where does the money for these programs come from? You got it, the very Americans—the productive Americans themselves—whose earnings are confiscated to fund the programs. Most Americans don’t need these programs so long as they could keep their own money. (For those who do need them, there is always private charity.) Rothman twists things around: It is the government that relies on Americans to support its programs, not the other way around.
I left these comments, slightly edited for clarity:
A more morally inverted and un-American—in fact, anti-American—statement can not possibly be uttered, revisionist decisions of the Supreme Court notwithstanding.
America is the first country to be founded on the principle that each individual possesses inalienable individual rights to live by his own judgement in pursuit of his own goals, values, and happiness, free from coercive interference from others, including others in their capacity as government officials. That’s what limited government means—a government limited to protecting individual rights, not mob “rights.” This—the principles that leave Americans free to deal with each other on a voluntary basis, or not at all—is what makes America the moral country; a country of rationally selfish individualists, not sacrificial altruists each forced into unwanted dependence on and subservience to each other with no hope of escaping the mob’s iron grip.
Yet Rothman completely inverts the American system. He falsely claims that the “general welfare” clause stands, not for the protection of individual rights equally and at all times for all people, but for mob “rights,” in which the group, not the individual, is the standard of moral value. On this blatantly un-American collectivist premise, society can, through the all-powerful state as its representative, chain everybody into government programs in violation of the rights of any individuals who might otherwise choose not to join.
A socialist government program is not about the general welfare. It is about the welfare of some at the expense of others, and the power of the few over the lives of the many. The only thing “general” about socialist welfare state programs is the chains that bind all together and leave none with their rights. After all, rights can be boiled down to this: the freedom to say no, and go one’s separate way if one chooses. This freedom doesn’t protect the rich and powerful. It primarily protects the weakest among us—each of us as individuals. Under the American system, the rich have no power to coerce even the poorest individual, until and unless the government hands them that power by failing to protect the individual’s inalienable rights. In Rothman’s reactionary conception, no one has the right to say “no” to his neighbor or his government.
The American system embodied in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which has come to be known as laissez-faire, or “let us alone”, capitalism, is designed to protect the life and liberty of the common person from mob and government alike. Rothman responds “Wrong! The American System is not about individualism. It is about collectivism, in which all are chained and enslaved to all, and dependent on all, via omnipotent government.” The fact that most of us are already partially chained via one government program or another shows how far the social statists—who disingenuously label themselves “Progressives”—have repudiated everything America stands for.
To wrap the rise of socialist tyranny in the American Flag: What can be more disingenuous than that! Rothman apparently believes that Americans have become so ignorant of the political, intellectual, and moral exceptionalism of American history and its Founding principles that he can get away with uttering such anti-American trash. But, he’d be wrong. Many of us see his rhetoric for what it is—a counter Revolution against America. Support the welfare state if you want to. But don’t pretend there is anything American about it. The Founders and Framers of the Constitution established a system for people from the world over to escape chains—to seek genuine freedom, not the chance to submit to a new form of tyranny. Rothman’s statement should be a wake-up call to all who have any remaining reverence for America.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The “General Welfare” clause refers to the maintenance of the social conditions of liberty that enables people to flourish by their own efforts and voluntary interactions with others, within the scope of the enumerated powers granted to the government by the Constitution. As CATO’s Roger Pilon explains, “Article I, section 8, grants the Congress only 18 powers. Nothing for education, or retirement security, or health care: Those responsibilities were left to the states or to the people, as the Tenth Amendment makes clear.” It is a sanction for the state to promote the freedom of each individual to pursue and provide, by his own effort, his own welfare. The General Welfare Clause is not a sanction for the government to provide specific welfare benefits.
Related Reading:
The "Right to Be Left Alone" Applies to More than Religion
Constitutional Distortions- the "General Welfare" Clause
Minimum Wage Doesn't Belong in the Constitution--or Law
Obama's "Bridge": 21st Century Tyranny Cloaked in America's Founding Ideals
[A]ll Americans of good will and conscience must stop our Congressional representatives from taking the un-American and immoral step of hurting the programs that 99 percent of Americans rely on to live a decent life.
After all, the provision of the U.S. Constitution that sets the righteous goal for our government to "promote the general welfare," has come to be interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Congress' broad authority to tax and spend for the general welfare of all Americans, not just the rich.
Where does the money for these programs come from? You got it, the very Americans—the productive Americans themselves—whose earnings are confiscated to fund the programs. Most Americans don’t need these programs so long as they could keep their own money. (For those who do need them, there is always private charity.) Rothman twists things around: It is the government that relies on Americans to support its programs, not the other way around.
I left these comments, slightly edited for clarity:
A more morally inverted and un-American—in fact, anti-American—statement can not possibly be uttered, revisionist decisions of the Supreme Court notwithstanding.
America is the first country to be founded on the principle that each individual possesses inalienable individual rights to live by his own judgement in pursuit of his own goals, values, and happiness, free from coercive interference from others, including others in their capacity as government officials. That’s what limited government means—a government limited to protecting individual rights, not mob “rights.” This—the principles that leave Americans free to deal with each other on a voluntary basis, or not at all—is what makes America the moral country; a country of rationally selfish individualists, not sacrificial altruists each forced into unwanted dependence on and subservience to each other with no hope of escaping the mob’s iron grip.
Yet Rothman completely inverts the American system. He falsely claims that the “general welfare” clause stands, not for the protection of individual rights equally and at all times for all people, but for mob “rights,” in which the group, not the individual, is the standard of moral value. On this blatantly un-American collectivist premise, society can, through the all-powerful state as its representative, chain everybody into government programs in violation of the rights of any individuals who might otherwise choose not to join.
A socialist government program is not about the general welfare. It is about the welfare of some at the expense of others, and the power of the few over the lives of the many. The only thing “general” about socialist welfare state programs is the chains that bind all together and leave none with their rights. After all, rights can be boiled down to this: the freedom to say no, and go one’s separate way if one chooses. This freedom doesn’t protect the rich and powerful. It primarily protects the weakest among us—each of us as individuals. Under the American system, the rich have no power to coerce even the poorest individual, until and unless the government hands them that power by failing to protect the individual’s inalienable rights. In Rothman’s reactionary conception, no one has the right to say “no” to his neighbor or his government.
The American system embodied in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which has come to be known as laissez-faire, or “let us alone”, capitalism, is designed to protect the life and liberty of the common person from mob and government alike. Rothman responds “Wrong! The American System is not about individualism. It is about collectivism, in which all are chained and enslaved to all, and dependent on all, via omnipotent government.” The fact that most of us are already partially chained via one government program or another shows how far the social statists—who disingenuously label themselves “Progressives”—have repudiated everything America stands for.
To wrap the rise of socialist tyranny in the American Flag: What can be more disingenuous than that! Rothman apparently believes that Americans have become so ignorant of the political, intellectual, and moral exceptionalism of American history and its Founding principles that he can get away with uttering such anti-American trash. But, he’d be wrong. Many of us see his rhetoric for what it is—a counter Revolution against America. Support the welfare state if you want to. But don’t pretend there is anything American about it. The Founders and Framers of the Constitution established a system for people from the world over to escape chains—to seek genuine freedom, not the chance to submit to a new form of tyranny. Rothman’s statement should be a wake-up call to all who have any remaining reverence for America.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The “General Welfare” clause refers to the maintenance of the social conditions of liberty that enables people to flourish by their own efforts and voluntary interactions with others, within the scope of the enumerated powers granted to the government by the Constitution. As CATO’s Roger Pilon explains, “Article I, section 8, grants the Congress only 18 powers. Nothing for education, or retirement security, or health care: Those responsibilities were left to the states or to the people, as the Tenth Amendment makes clear.” It is a sanction for the state to promote the freedom of each individual to pursue and provide, by his own effort, his own welfare. The General Welfare Clause is not a sanction for the government to provide specific welfare benefits.
Related Reading:
The "Right to Be Left Alone" Applies to More than Religion
Constitutional Distortions- the "General Welfare" Clause
Minimum Wage Doesn't Belong in the Constitution--or Law
Obama's "Bridge": 21st Century Tyranny Cloaked in America's Founding Ideals
Thursday, May 17, 2018
S-L Letter’s Anti-Industry Bigotry is Wrong Across the Board
The following letter appeared in the 4/19/17 edition of the New Jersey Star-Ledger. I think it deserves a strong rebuttal. Since the Star-Ledger no longer publishes letters online, I copied it here for the sake of my commentary:
I want to focus on the underlying message of this letter.
The first premise is that, unlike employees, neighbors, and people who comprise “the country,” industrialists have no moral right to work for their own good. This is of course altruism, and Skovronek apparently believes that the world owes him whatever he happens to want. The second premise is that whatever the government does in terms of regulating industry is good because it chooses to do it, and that industry will run roughshod over everyone and the environment if it is not regulated by government bureaucrats.
Skovronek has it exactly backwards.
Unregulated industry—that is, industry to the extent it is free to operate—has made the world an immensely better place since the dawn of capitalism as an organized social system some two hundred plus years ago. It is the role of business—especially the entrepreneurial “cream-of-the-crop” of business—to bring the knowledge of the scientist and the ideas of the inventor to the general public at all economic levels, in the form of mass-market products and services that allow even the poorest inhabitants of industrial countries to live better than kings and even early industrial “one-percenters” in the relatively recent past. And industry has done that splendidly. Our lives are saturated with the life-enhancing benefits of industry, to which we owe our flourishing lives
Historically, government unconstrained by proper constitutional limits has been by far the greatest bane to mankind, being responsible for endless wars of aggression, conquest and plunder, slavery, genocide, and redistribution of wealth on a scale private criminals couldn’t even fathom—all under cover of law.
Time has indeed proven that industry will not work for the good of its employees, neighbors or country. That is the moral beauty of capitalism—and we should be thankful for that. Business—the voluntary organization of human, financial, and material capital under a focused productive goal—does and should work for its own good in pursuit of its creative goal. The greatness of capitalism—the basic essentials of which are outlined in the Declaration of Independence—is that personal profit and gain is achieved, and can only be achieved, by providing willing customers with economic values that, in the consumer's’ own judgement, betters their lives. The means is voluntary trade, the win-win basis of any civil, enlightened society. The greatest of unregulated capitalism, to the extent it is unregulated, is that as industry grows, so grows the general standard of living. (Note: “unregulated” does not mean no rule of law. See my Objective Standard article Where Does Valid Law End and Regulation Begin?.)
Skovronek’s knee jerk condemnation of “industry” as some kind of exploiter who must be kept under the thumb of government regulators as beasts of burden—a mindset that springs from the same collectivist generalization that gives birth to racism—is morally abhorrent. We should be joining industry representatives in questioning the regulations coming out of the EPA, especially given that environmentalism is rooted in a standard of moral value that puts non-impact on nature above human flourishing. Business is by far humanity’s greatest benefactor of all time, and yet is the most persecuted minority around today. It’s time we recognized the former and corrected the injustice of the latter.
I often wonder about anti-business bigots: Why do they buy products made by business? Why don’t they try living without business products, even for just a little while?
Related Reading:
Elizabeth Warren's Flawed Understanding of the Source of Worker Productivity
Businessmen—Ayn Rand
The Left’s Insatiable Lust to Soak American Business
On Bigotry: America’s Undefended Minority—Businessmen
Gladwell & Co.’s Monstrous Injustice Against Businessmen—Ari Armstrong for The Objective Standard
Why Businessmen Need Philosophy: The Capitalist's Guide to the Ideas Behind Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged – Edited by Debi Ghate and Richard E. Ralston
Regulations protect AmericansThe “Star-Ledger article” in question is EPA emerges as major target after Trump solicits policy advice from industry, republished from the Washington Post of 4/16/17.
A Star-Ledger article (April 17) relates how industry is complaining about EPA’s restrictions. Time has proven that industry will not work for the good of its employees, neighbors or country without oversight by good government. Great examples by the Washington Post: BP oil wants less restriction on drilling in Gulf of Mexico. Isn’t this the company responsible for that huge leak? Also, a trade association opposes USGS efforts to study coal tar emissions from parking lot paving. Coal tar is known (and accepted by real science) as loaded with carcinogens. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants the government to eliminate publication of industrial injuries and illnesses now reported to the Labor Department. I guess the public really shouldn’t want to know about accidents, emissions, diseases related to money-making industries in the U.S. And so it goes under President Donald Trump. Stand up and fight. [emphasis added]
Herb Skovronek of Morris Plains
I want to focus on the underlying message of this letter.
The first premise is that, unlike employees, neighbors, and people who comprise “the country,” industrialists have no moral right to work for their own good. This is of course altruism, and Skovronek apparently believes that the world owes him whatever he happens to want. The second premise is that whatever the government does in terms of regulating industry is good because it chooses to do it, and that industry will run roughshod over everyone and the environment if it is not regulated by government bureaucrats.
Skovronek has it exactly backwards.
Unregulated industry—that is, industry to the extent it is free to operate—has made the world an immensely better place since the dawn of capitalism as an organized social system some two hundred plus years ago. It is the role of business—especially the entrepreneurial “cream-of-the-crop” of business—to bring the knowledge of the scientist and the ideas of the inventor to the general public at all economic levels, in the form of mass-market products and services that allow even the poorest inhabitants of industrial countries to live better than kings and even early industrial “one-percenters” in the relatively recent past. And industry has done that splendidly. Our lives are saturated with the life-enhancing benefits of industry, to which we owe our flourishing lives
Historically, government unconstrained by proper constitutional limits has been by far the greatest bane to mankind, being responsible for endless wars of aggression, conquest and plunder, slavery, genocide, and redistribution of wealth on a scale private criminals couldn’t even fathom—all under cover of law.
Time has indeed proven that industry will not work for the good of its employees, neighbors or country. That is the moral beauty of capitalism—and we should be thankful for that. Business—the voluntary organization of human, financial, and material capital under a focused productive goal—does and should work for its own good in pursuit of its creative goal. The greatness of capitalism—the basic essentials of which are outlined in the Declaration of Independence—is that personal profit and gain is achieved, and can only be achieved, by providing willing customers with economic values that, in the consumer's’ own judgement, betters their lives. The means is voluntary trade, the win-win basis of any civil, enlightened society. The greatest of unregulated capitalism, to the extent it is unregulated, is that as industry grows, so grows the general standard of living. (Note: “unregulated” does not mean no rule of law. See my Objective Standard article Where Does Valid Law End and Regulation Begin?.)
Skovronek’s knee jerk condemnation of “industry” as some kind of exploiter who must be kept under the thumb of government regulators as beasts of burden—a mindset that springs from the same collectivist generalization that gives birth to racism—is morally abhorrent. We should be joining industry representatives in questioning the regulations coming out of the EPA, especially given that environmentalism is rooted in a standard of moral value that puts non-impact on nature above human flourishing. Business is by far humanity’s greatest benefactor of all time, and yet is the most persecuted minority around today. It’s time we recognized the former and corrected the injustice of the latter.
I often wonder about anti-business bigots: Why do they buy products made by business? Why don’t they try living without business products, even for just a little while?
Related Reading:
Elizabeth Warren's Flawed Understanding of the Source of Worker Productivity
Businessmen—Ayn Rand
The Left’s Insatiable Lust to Soak American Business
On Bigotry: America’s Undefended Minority—Businessmen
Gladwell & Co.’s Monstrous Injustice Against Businessmen—Ari Armstrong for The Objective Standard
Why Businessmen Need Philosophy: The Capitalist's Guide to the Ideas Behind Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged – Edited by Debi Ghate and Richard E. Ralston
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Iran Deal Pullout or Not, American Interests Come Before Internationalism
In Trump and Iran: Has he traded peace for bloodshed?, New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialist Tom Moran argues against President Trump’s pullout of Barack Obama’s Iran deal:
My emphasis. Moran repeated the isolation charge in the last paragraph:
I left these comments:
There may be valid reasons to criticize Trump’s move. Treaties are complex. The U.S. probably should not have signed the agreement in the first place. However, once in it, one must be concerned with America’s future credibility and reliability that it will honor previous commitments across different Administrations when considering whether to pull out.
That said, whatever the arguments for or against pulling out of prior American commitments like the Iran deal--I believe Trump’s pullout from Paris was right, but from the Pacific Partnership was wrong--fear of being “isolated” should not be one of the concerns. The American government’s job is to protect Americans’ rights and security, regardless of how unpopular the policies may be in the world. Cooperation is valuable: Americans have a lot to gain from freedom of trade and migration or from multi-nation security agreements. But this cooperation is only valuable up to a point. It is not an intrinsic good. Agreements are not good simply because they are agreements. Don’t confuse mutually beneficial cooperation with national self-sacrifice. Sometimes the right thing to do is to go it alone. American interests should never be sacrificed on the altar of Internationalism.
----------------------------------------
It should also be remembered that Obama refused to submit the treaty to Congress for formal ratification. This may be strictly legal, constitutionally (although I have my doubts). But when Obama made an end run around Congress, he made it as easy for future Administrations to arbitrarily alter or scuttle the deal as he had committing the U.S. to the deal. The same thing happened with Obama’s Paris Climate deal--no Congressional ratification, Trump pulls out without Congressional approval. When you rob the American people of a full and open debate through the ratification process--in effect, ruling more like a King than serving as president--you get what you asked for.
Related Reading:
"Tear Down This Wall": Reagan’s “Isolated” but Successful Drive to “Win” the Cold War
Trump’s Leadership on Paris Withdrawal versus Obama’s Delusions of Unearned Greatness
Buchanan’s Anti-Free Trade Tirade Under Cover of TPP ‘Fast Track’ Debate
NAFTA, Whatever its Flaws, Was a Good Thing
It's not clear what will happen next, except that the United States will be more isolated than ever on the world stage. It follows Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, his abandonment of the Pacific Trade Partnership, and the new steel tariffs imposed on some of our close allies.
My emphasis. Moran repeated the isolation charge in the last paragraph:
We have a dangerously ignorant and impulsive president who is listening to poisonous advice from extremists. We are increasingly isolated, in a day when nearly every challenge, from climate to terrorism, requires international cooperation.
I left these comments:
There may be valid reasons to criticize Trump’s move. Treaties are complex. The U.S. probably should not have signed the agreement in the first place. However, once in it, one must be concerned with America’s future credibility and reliability that it will honor previous commitments across different Administrations when considering whether to pull out.
That said, whatever the arguments for or against pulling out of prior American commitments like the Iran deal--I believe Trump’s pullout from Paris was right, but from the Pacific Partnership was wrong--fear of being “isolated” should not be one of the concerns. The American government’s job is to protect Americans’ rights and security, regardless of how unpopular the policies may be in the world. Cooperation is valuable: Americans have a lot to gain from freedom of trade and migration or from multi-nation security agreements. But this cooperation is only valuable up to a point. It is not an intrinsic good. Agreements are not good simply because they are agreements. Don’t confuse mutually beneficial cooperation with national self-sacrifice. Sometimes the right thing to do is to go it alone. American interests should never be sacrificed on the altar of Internationalism.
----------------------------------------
It should also be remembered that Obama refused to submit the treaty to Congress for formal ratification. This may be strictly legal, constitutionally (although I have my doubts). But when Obama made an end run around Congress, he made it as easy for future Administrations to arbitrarily alter or scuttle the deal as he had committing the U.S. to the deal. The same thing happened with Obama’s Paris Climate deal--no Congressional ratification, Trump pulls out without Congressional approval. When you rob the American people of a full and open debate through the ratification process--in effect, ruling more like a King than serving as president--you get what you asked for.
Related Reading:
"Tear Down This Wall": Reagan’s “Isolated” but Successful Drive to “Win” the Cold War
Trump’s Leadership on Paris Withdrawal versus Obama’s Delusions of Unearned Greatness
Buchanan’s Anti-Free Trade Tirade Under Cover of TPP ‘Fast Track’ Debate
NAFTA, Whatever its Flaws, Was a Good Thing
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Energy Subsidies: Cronyism Breeds Cronyism
Nuclear plant owners expand search for rescue to more states, the Associated Press reports;
New Jersey is in on the act. Public Service Electric and Gas (PSEG) succeeded in getting a nuclear “bailout” bill through the legislature and sent to Governor Murphy. The same bill required a compromise, via a companion bill, creating massive new subsidies--labeled “incentives,” not bailouts) for unreliables solar and wind.
As usual, cronyism breeds cronyism. “That guy’s getting a subsidy, so why not me.” How about eliminating the "preferential treatment and premium payments" throughout the energy industry, and letting market forces—the cumulative individual voluntary choices of producers and consumers—determine energy sources?
Related Reading:
Free the Market to Sort Out the Future Course of the Energy Industry
If ‘Renewable Energy’ Technology Has Truly ‘Proven Itself,’ Why Does the Renewable Industry Need NJ’s 80% 'Renewable' Mandate?
Climate Change Catastrophists Who Oppose Nuclear have Anti-Humanist Premises
The natural gas boom that has hammered coal mines and driven down utility bills is hitting nuclear power plants, sending multi-billion-dollar energy companies in search of a financial rescue in states where competitive electricity markets have compounded the effect.
The plant owners' strategy is similar to that in Illinois and New York: give nuclear power megawatts the kind of preferential treatment and premium payments that are given to renewable energies, such as wind and solar.
New Jersey is in on the act. Public Service Electric and Gas (PSEG) succeeded in getting a nuclear “bailout” bill through the legislature and sent to Governor Murphy. The same bill required a compromise, via a companion bill, creating massive new subsidies--labeled “incentives,” not bailouts) for unreliables solar and wind.
As usual, cronyism breeds cronyism. “That guy’s getting a subsidy, so why not me.” How about eliminating the "preferential treatment and premium payments" throughout the energy industry, and letting market forces—the cumulative individual voluntary choices of producers and consumers—determine energy sources?
Related Reading:
Free the Market to Sort Out the Future Course of the Energy Industry
If ‘Renewable Energy’ Technology Has Truly ‘Proven Itself,’ Why Does the Renewable Industry Need NJ’s 80% 'Renewable' Mandate?
Climate Change Catastrophists Who Oppose Nuclear have Anti-Humanist Premises
Friday, May 11, 2018
Drug Advertising: New Zealand and the USA are Right, and the Rest of the World is Wrong
A New Jersey Star-Ledger letter, Drug advertising dangerous, argues against prescription drug advertising, concluding
The implication—the author doesn’t answer his own question—is that Pharmaceutical companies engage in deceptive advertising because they “put profits over people.” But who is really putting dollars over patient health?
I left these comments:
“There are only two countries in the world that allow direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising: New Zealand and the USA. I wonder why?”
Because New Zealand and the USA are the only two countries that respect pharma companies’ freedom of speech and consumers’ right to take the responsibility to rationally judge for themselves what medical options there are. Other countries—all of whom have some form of socialized, government-funded healthcare—would rather put cost above healthcare needs. They’d rather let people suffer and die needlessly rather than spend the money, as their systems go broke. It’s easier to get away with their blood savings when people are less likely to be informed of all of the options available.
False advertising can be dealt with through criminal fraud laws. Otherwise, government should protect the rights of the pharmaceutical companies to advertise the life-enhancing, life-saving prescription drugs they produce and of consumers who want to be informed. Anyone is free to ignore the advertisements, or to refuse to buy the drugs. But, for Levin and his ilk to demand to use the government’s guns to outlaw the advertisements is just plain thuggery. We should prefer live-and-let-live. It is immoral, not to mention unconstitutional, to legally ban drug advertising. It inhibits free trade and free speech, two inalienable individual rights.
-------------------------------------
When governments pay, they have a vested incentive to control the treatment narrative. Another important question to ask is, “All but two countries in the world, New Zealand and the USA, legally ban prescription drug advertising. Why is that?” Maybe it’s because state bureaucrats don't want to be bothered by more informed consumers asking about other treatment options or learning about new advanced drug options that are more costly than the state wants to spend. Can there be any other reason?
Related Reading:
Pharmaphobia—Thomas P. Stossel
On Mylan’s EpiPen Pricing Controversy
There are only two countries in the world that allow direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising: New Zealand and the USA. I wonder why?
The implication—the author doesn’t answer his own question—is that Pharmaceutical companies engage in deceptive advertising because they “put profits over people.” But who is really putting dollars over patient health?
I left these comments:
“There are only two countries in the world that allow direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising: New Zealand and the USA. I wonder why?”
Because New Zealand and the USA are the only two countries that respect pharma companies’ freedom of speech and consumers’ right to take the responsibility to rationally judge for themselves what medical options there are. Other countries—all of whom have some form of socialized, government-funded healthcare—would rather put cost above healthcare needs. They’d rather let people suffer and die needlessly rather than spend the money, as their systems go broke. It’s easier to get away with their blood savings when people are less likely to be informed of all of the options available.
False advertising can be dealt with through criminal fraud laws. Otherwise, government should protect the rights of the pharmaceutical companies to advertise the life-enhancing, life-saving prescription drugs they produce and of consumers who want to be informed. Anyone is free to ignore the advertisements, or to refuse to buy the drugs. But, for Levin and his ilk to demand to use the government’s guns to outlaw the advertisements is just plain thuggery. We should prefer live-and-let-live. It is immoral, not to mention unconstitutional, to legally ban drug advertising. It inhibits free trade and free speech, two inalienable individual rights.
-------------------------------------
When governments pay, they have a vested incentive to control the treatment narrative. Another important question to ask is, “All but two countries in the world, New Zealand and the USA, legally ban prescription drug advertising. Why is that?” Maybe it’s because state bureaucrats don't want to be bothered by more informed consumers asking about other treatment options or learning about new advanced drug options that are more costly than the state wants to spend. Can there be any other reason?
Related Reading:
Pharmaphobia—Thomas P. Stossel
On Mylan’s EpiPen Pricing Controversy
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Challenge the ‘100% Renewables” Fanatics on their Underlying anti-Humanism
In a New Jersey Star-Ledger column, After outages, Phil Murphy needs to take a look at where electricity comes from, Paul Mulshine once again takes on the anti-pipeliners. He points out the energy disaster now unfolding in another state where Environmentalists have been getting their way, Mulshine believes that “[NJ Governor Phil] Murphy could learn a lot more if he focused his attention on what's been going on this winter in his native state of Massachusetts”:
In labeling the anti-pipeliners “luddites”, Mulshine undoubtedly refers to their opposition to superior energy technologies, like fracking and pipelines. Nonetheless, I left this comment:
“Unfortunately, the anti-pipeline people are Luddites.”
I think “Luddite” gives them too much credit. The Luddites opposed labor saving machines because they displaced some jobs, which they saw as bad for human well-being. They were wrong. But at least their motive was pro-human.
The anti-pipeline movement is not pro-human. The movement is rooted in Environmentalist ideology that values undisturbed nature over human industrial progress. Why do Environmentalists oppose every reliable economical energy technology? Reliable energy drives industrial progress, so opposing reliables while increasing reliance on unreliable so-called “renewable” energy—they couldn’t get away with opposing all energy—will inhibit further human-caused “environmental destruction”. Since altering nature to human benefit is what industry is all about, the Environmentalists are anti-human well-being, the opposite of the Luddites.
As to [another point Mulshine makes], tree-clearing around power line rights-of-way, I doubt Environmentalists would allow the destruction of trees if they could stop it.
----------------------------------------------------
Even bigger problems could be in store for Massachusetts. As Michael Bastasch reports for The Daily Caller, Rolling Blackouts Could Become A Fact Of Life In New England as new natural gas pipelines are kept from being built and existing coal and nuclear plants—two more reliable energy sources hated by Environmentalists—are slated to be shut down. Unlike the bratty “100% renewables now!” whim-worshipers, energy industrialists look years down the road. We ignore them at our peril. A “100% renewable energy” future is a bleak place for human life.
Related Reading:
Mulshine on the ‘National Anti-Pipeline Movement’
The ‘Jihad on Pipelines,’ New Jersey Front
The Risks of the Pilgrim Pipeline—and the Risks of Not Having Pipelines
Are Pipelines a Threat to Water?
Our Russian ‘pipeline,’ and its ugly toll--the Boston Globe Editorial Board
The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century—Ronald Bailey
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels Hardcover—Alex Epstein
There, environmental extremists prevailed upon state legislators to prevent the construction of pipeline capacity that could give the state access to the cheap and plentiful natural gas from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.
A win for the environment? Not exactly. A recent editorial in the Boston Globe [Our Russian ‘pipeline,’ and its ugly toll] noted that instead of using fracked gas from Pennsylvania, some of the utilities switched to liquefied natural gas from Russia that came in on a tanker.
The editorial noted that the production of imported LNG is both more expensive and more carbon-intensive than domestic gas.
"As a result, to a greater extent than anywhere else in the United States, the Commonwealth now expects people in places like Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Yemen to shoulder the environmental burdens of providing natural gas that state policy makers have showily rejected here," it said.
Then there were the utilities that replaced the clean-burning gas with oil and coal, both of which are much dirtier. But so what? The anti-pipeline crowd was appeased.
Unfortunately, the anti-pipeline people are Luddites. You can determine that by going to the website of 350.org, the leading anti-pipeline group.
"Stop Fossil Fuels: Build 100% Renewables," it reads.
In labeling the anti-pipeliners “luddites”, Mulshine undoubtedly refers to their opposition to superior energy technologies, like fracking and pipelines. Nonetheless, I left this comment:
“Unfortunately, the anti-pipeline people are Luddites.”
I think “Luddite” gives them too much credit. The Luddites opposed labor saving machines because they displaced some jobs, which they saw as bad for human well-being. They were wrong. But at least their motive was pro-human.
The anti-pipeline movement is not pro-human. The movement is rooted in Environmentalist ideology that values undisturbed nature over human industrial progress. Why do Environmentalists oppose every reliable economical energy technology? Reliable energy drives industrial progress, so opposing reliables while increasing reliance on unreliable so-called “renewable” energy—they couldn’t get away with opposing all energy—will inhibit further human-caused “environmental destruction”. Since altering nature to human benefit is what industry is all about, the Environmentalists are anti-human well-being, the opposite of the Luddites.
As to [another point Mulshine makes], tree-clearing around power line rights-of-way, I doubt Environmentalists would allow the destruction of trees if they could stop it.
----------------------------------------------------
Even bigger problems could be in store for Massachusetts. As Michael Bastasch reports for The Daily Caller, Rolling Blackouts Could Become A Fact Of Life In New England as new natural gas pipelines are kept from being built and existing coal and nuclear plants—two more reliable energy sources hated by Environmentalists—are slated to be shut down. Unlike the bratty “100% renewables now!” whim-worshipers, energy industrialists look years down the road. We ignore them at our peril. A “100% renewable energy” future is a bleak place for human life.
Related Reading:
Mulshine on the ‘National Anti-Pipeline Movement’
The ‘Jihad on Pipelines,’ New Jersey Front
The Risks of the Pilgrim Pipeline—and the Risks of Not Having Pipelines
Are Pipelines a Threat to Water?
Our Russian ‘pipeline,’ and its ugly toll--the Boston Globe Editorial Board
The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century—Ronald Bailey
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels Hardcover—Alex Epstein
Monday, May 7, 2018
The American Dream
At the height of the immigration debate early in 2017, an op-ed published in the Hunterdon County Democrat opined that The promise of the American Dream is in jeopardy. Kira T. Lawrence opens with;
Though a little vague, I agree with the basic sentiment. Trump’s hostility toward immigration is fundamentally opposed to America’s bedrock values. Lawrence goes on;
This needs clarification. Yes. A hope for a better life based on freedom and respect for the unalienable rights of the individual to his life, liberty, and pursuit of personal happiness is the essence of the American Dream. I have a problem with the last part . . . the “and opportunity.” There is no and opportunity: The freedom is the opportunity. Critically—and though it is implicit in the right to life—one must explicitly add the right to property. Earned property—the material product of one’s own mental and physical labor.
Adam Mossoff puts it succinctly in a Townhall piece, Patents Are Property Rights, Not A “Bizarre Regulatory Lobby”;
Mossoff’s piece was focussed on intellectual property rights. But as he understood, the basic principle of rights extends to all earned property.
Back to lawrence, she cites specific personal experiences of people coming to America to escape political and religious oppression or crippling economic destitution—all for the opportunity that freedom and a protective government offered in the way of hope. But;
Why exclude Native Americans, aka American Indians? True, they didn’t literally “come to our shores.” They were already here. And true, the treatment of the Indians by European immigrants was often brutally inhumane. But the Indians didn’t enjoy individual freedom, either. They lived in a tribal “society” that also included “the nightmares of war, violence, famine, and religious persecution.” Yes, it took until the 1920s before American Indians received their full rightful American citizenship. History is messy. But can anyone truly say that life for everyone, including American Indians, is not superior in individual rights-guaranteed America than in any oppressive tribal existence, wherever and however it is manifested?
Lawrence concludes;
And we must remember that the American Dream is not some guarantee of prosperity or happiness. It is not the promise of the proverbial house with the white picket fence in the suburbs. It is simply the freedom of all individuals, working and trading, freely expressing themselves, living by their own conscientious beliefs, to pursue prosperity and happiness guaranteed by the unalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of one’s own chosen values and goals--the unimpeded pursuit of happiness. It is the guarantee of political equality--that is, equality for all, rich and poor, young and old, of whatever race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, etc.--that is only possible through equality before the law. It is intellectual, economic, and political freedom all wrapped up into one social system.
That, and only that--the hope and opportunity afforded by freedom based on individual rights--is the American Dream.
Related Reading:
The Declaration of Independence
President Donald Trump administration's xenophobic attacks on refugees and immigrants are antithetical to the bedrock values of our nation. They erode our moral standing. They encourage and embolden our enemies and thereby threaten our national security. This is not who we are as a people.
Though a little vague, I agree with the basic sentiment. Trump’s hostility toward immigration is fundamentally opposed to America’s bedrock values. Lawrence goes on;
I grew up learning about an America history defined by the principles of hope, freedom, respect, and opportunity.
This needs clarification. Yes. A hope for a better life based on freedom and respect for the unalienable rights of the individual to his life, liberty, and pursuit of personal happiness is the essence of the American Dream. I have a problem with the last part . . . the “and opportunity.” There is no and opportunity: The freedom is the opportunity. Critically—and though it is implicit in the right to life—one must explicitly add the right to property. Earned property—the material product of one’s own mental and physical labor.
Adam Mossoff puts it succinctly in a Townhall piece, Patents Are Property Rights, Not A “Bizarre Regulatory Lobby”;
On the basis of this classic moral justification for all property rights — that people should have the fruits of their productive labors secured to them as their property — early American legislators and judges secured stable and effective property rights to innovators and creators.
This was part-and-parcel of American exceptionalism.
Mossoff’s piece was focussed on intellectual property rights. But as he understood, the basic principle of rights extends to all earned property.
Back to lawrence, she cites specific personal experiences of people coming to America to escape political and religious oppression or crippling economic destitution—all for the opportunity that freedom and a protective government offered in the way of hope. But;
All of us Americans, save our fellow citizens who are Native Americans, have similar stories. The dates, names, and countries of origin may differ, but the reasons for seeking our shores -- to escape the nightmares of war, violence, famine, and religious persecution and to chase the American Dream -- have not changed.
Why exclude Native Americans, aka American Indians? True, they didn’t literally “come to our shores.” They were already here. And true, the treatment of the Indians by European immigrants was often brutally inhumane. But the Indians didn’t enjoy individual freedom, either. They lived in a tribal “society” that also included “the nightmares of war, violence, famine, and religious persecution.” Yes, it took until the 1920s before American Indians received their full rightful American citizenship. History is messy. But can anyone truly say that life for everyone, including American Indians, is not superior in individual rights-guaranteed America than in any oppressive tribal existence, wherever and however it is manifested?
Lawrence concludes;
If we fail to honor our history, we betray the legacy of our ancestors. If we fail to defend and uphold our core values of freedom, respect, and opportunity, which have made our country a beacon of hope and prosperity around the world, we fundamentally jeopardize the enduring promise of the American Dream.
And we must remember that the American Dream is not some guarantee of prosperity or happiness. It is not the promise of the proverbial house with the white picket fence in the suburbs. It is simply the freedom of all individuals, working and trading, freely expressing themselves, living by their own conscientious beliefs, to pursue prosperity and happiness guaranteed by the unalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of one’s own chosen values and goals--the unimpeded pursuit of happiness. It is the guarantee of political equality--that is, equality for all, rich and poor, young and old, of whatever race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, etc.--that is only possible through equality before the law. It is intellectual, economic, and political freedom all wrapped up into one social system.
That, and only that--the hope and opportunity afforded by freedom based on individual rights--is the American Dream.
Related Reading:
The Declaration of Independence
Saturday, May 5, 2018
QUORA: 'Can certain forms of capitalism be made to work for the people instead of just the elite?'
QUORA: Can certain forms of capitalism be made to work for the people instead of just the elite?: The questioner provided the following link as a subtitle--https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/31/1477596/-Enjoying-a-better-quality-of
I left this answer:
Capitalism liberates the “common man” to work and trade for his own benefit; to earn and keep property; to worship a God--or not--according to his own conscience; to speak his mind. In other words, capitalism frees the individual from control by elites by recognizing and protecting the unalienable individual rights of all people to live by their own judgement, values, and goals, equally and at all times. Prior to capitalism, aristocratic elites got rich by looting the peasants. Under capitalism, people get rich by trade that enriches others and only with the consent of those they trade with. Capitalism, properly understood, doesn’t “work for” anyone. It comes in only one “form”: It frees people to work for themselves. That is the only “form” capitalism can have.
As to the Daily Kos article Enjoying a better quality of life with Democratic Socialism linked to above, “Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public roads, bridges, schools, parks, water treatment facilities, and more”; yes, they are “all socialism”. And all dependent on exploiting capitalism—that is, on exploiting productive, self-responsible individuals.
Every dime that funds those (and like) government programs is taken by force of taxation from private individuals who earned it. Just look at your paycheck. You can see it. And more is taken stealthily, through corporate and business taxation, or by inflationary central bank money expansion. That money collected by government from private producers is then paid out to private individuals and companies to build and maintain the roads and parks, etc.; or paid out in the form of “government benefits” for retirement, old age healthcare, or “charity” healthcare for the poor.
All of this can be provided privately, if the rights of individuals are respected and as people choose—a choice that, to the extent government steps in, is denied to the “common man” by the socialist elites. It makes no difference whether the elites are elected, appointed by elected officials, or seize power by force: They are still elites who claim the authority to supercede the rights of the “common man”.
It is only capitalism, to the extent it is allowed to flourish, that makes these socialist programs possible. If you doubt that, then consider that every society that has ever existed has had some form of government; a king, a feudal lord, a tribal chief, a church, a dictator, or what have you. Yet through all the centuries, grinding poverty was the norm for “the masses”. Where was the “better quality of life?” Why do we have poverty-ridden so-called “third world countries” today? They have governments, too. Why is it that only countries that have a substantial degree of capitalist freedom can have generous socialist/welfare state programs?
This does not mean that government is, as the Daily Kos charges the political right with claiming, “a bad word.” Properly understood as the liberty rights-protecting, security and order providing institution it should be, government is a necessary good—until and unless it crosses the line into statism. The fact is, so-called democratic socialism—really just the socialist part of a mixed economy—cannot create “a better quality of life” in any general sense. It can, at best, benefit some at the unwilling expense of others. It can make people’s quality of life dependent on government (socialist elites). Governments under democratic socialism are redistributive entities—in effect, money laundering operations, that start with seizing private wealth, cycling it through bureaucratic government mechanisms, and returning it under legitimate-sounding labels like “Medicare” or “public schools”. Democratic socialism only appears to “work” as long as enough capitalism exists to produce the necessary material, financial, and human resources for government officials to seize and exploit. One may argue for any socialist program to be mixed in to the economy by government force. But one cannot argue that, at root, democratic socialism is a parasite on capitalism.
Related Reading:
Mazzucato’s Fantasy: The “Courageous, Entrepreneurial State”
Democratic Socialism: If the Pigs Take Over
Capitalism .org
I left this answer:
Capitalism liberates the “common man” to work and trade for his own benefit; to earn and keep property; to worship a God--or not--according to his own conscience; to speak his mind. In other words, capitalism frees the individual from control by elites by recognizing and protecting the unalienable individual rights of all people to live by their own judgement, values, and goals, equally and at all times. Prior to capitalism, aristocratic elites got rich by looting the peasants. Under capitalism, people get rich by trade that enriches others and only with the consent of those they trade with. Capitalism, properly understood, doesn’t “work for” anyone. It comes in only one “form”: It frees people to work for themselves. That is the only “form” capitalism can have.
As to the Daily Kos article Enjoying a better quality of life with Democratic Socialism linked to above, “Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public roads, bridges, schools, parks, water treatment facilities, and more”; yes, they are “all socialism”. And all dependent on exploiting capitalism—that is, on exploiting productive, self-responsible individuals.
Every dime that funds those (and like) government programs is taken by force of taxation from private individuals who earned it. Just look at your paycheck. You can see it. And more is taken stealthily, through corporate and business taxation, or by inflationary central bank money expansion. That money collected by government from private producers is then paid out to private individuals and companies to build and maintain the roads and parks, etc.; or paid out in the form of “government benefits” for retirement, old age healthcare, or “charity” healthcare for the poor.
All of this can be provided privately, if the rights of individuals are respected and as people choose—a choice that, to the extent government steps in, is denied to the “common man” by the socialist elites. It makes no difference whether the elites are elected, appointed by elected officials, or seize power by force: They are still elites who claim the authority to supercede the rights of the “common man”.
It is only capitalism, to the extent it is allowed to flourish, that makes these socialist programs possible. If you doubt that, then consider that every society that has ever existed has had some form of government; a king, a feudal lord, a tribal chief, a church, a dictator, or what have you. Yet through all the centuries, grinding poverty was the norm for “the masses”. Where was the “better quality of life?” Why do we have poverty-ridden so-called “third world countries” today? They have governments, too. Why is it that only countries that have a substantial degree of capitalist freedom can have generous socialist/welfare state programs?
This does not mean that government is, as the Daily Kos charges the political right with claiming, “a bad word.” Properly understood as the liberty rights-protecting, security and order providing institution it should be, government is a necessary good—until and unless it crosses the line into statism. The fact is, so-called democratic socialism—really just the socialist part of a mixed economy—cannot create “a better quality of life” in any general sense. It can, at best, benefit some at the unwilling expense of others. It can make people’s quality of life dependent on government (socialist elites). Governments under democratic socialism are redistributive entities—in effect, money laundering operations, that start with seizing private wealth, cycling it through bureaucratic government mechanisms, and returning it under legitimate-sounding labels like “Medicare” or “public schools”. Democratic socialism only appears to “work” as long as enough capitalism exists to produce the necessary material, financial, and human resources for government officials to seize and exploit. One may argue for any socialist program to be mixed in to the economy by government force. But one cannot argue that, at root, democratic socialism is a parasite on capitalism.
Related Reading:
Mazzucato’s Fantasy: The “Courageous, Entrepreneurial State”
Democratic Socialism: If the Pigs Take Over
Capitalism .org
What is Capitalism—Ayn Rand
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