QUORA: 'What is one constitutional amendment that should be added to the U.S. Constitution that does not exist today? Why does it need to be added?'

 QUORA: What is one constitutional amendment that should be added to the U.S. Constitution that does not exist today? Why does it need to be added?

I posted this answer:

The U.S. Constitution is an individual liberty-protecting document. Individual rights is the practical implementation of liberty. The principle of individual rights defines the scope and limits of the individual’s liberty in a social context. Among the most important of these liberty rights is the right to intellectual freedom. The importance of intellectual freedom is the reason for the First Amendment. Freedom from and of religion (aka separation of church and state), of speech and press, of peaceable assembly (or association), and to petition the government are all subcategories of intellectual freedom.

But there is a huge hole in the First Amendment. Education certainly is integral to rights-oriented intellectual freedom, worthy of being protected from government infringement. The failure to protect individual rights in education is a shocking omission for an amendment dedicated to intellectual freedom. Government funding and control of education should thus be the target of the amendment process. Contrary to dogma, government schools are run by the government, primarily for the government. Not for the children. Not for the parents. Not for the taxpayers. They are meant for government jobs. Even worse, they are means to indoctrination in what the state decides is important. Public control has always meant government control.

Look around. The massive battles over school curriculum are a manifestation of the government's near monopoly over the schools. The current battles over gender issues in the schools is just the latest example of a long-running problem. What else would you expect in a socialized, centrally planned, government imposed scheme? 

We need to protect educational freedom. The individual right to hold and practice educational ideas without government infringement or abridgement, whether in regard to taxing,  funding, administration, or anything else, should be protected as thoroughly as religion. Therefore, we need the separation of education and state in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of religion and state—to preclude any faction from the use of political power to impose its educational ideas on everyone else. 

It’s true that the Constitution, which is theoretically a limitation on government power, should have been enough to guarantee educational freedom. After all, the Constitution does not grant the government the power to fund or administer public schools. But given the reality of the government's overpowering role in the schools, despite being technically unconstitutional, we must establish freedom of education explicitly. For the reasons cited above, the amendment I would add to the U.S. Constitution, either separately or folded into the First Amendment, is as simple as the opening lines of the First Amendment:

Neither Congress nor any other governmental entity shall make any law respecting an establishment of education, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

This simple clause would explicitly separate education and state, and establish freedom of education as thoroughly as freedom of religion.

Of course, that is the ideal. It’s realistic and worth fighting for over the long term. In the meantime, I fight for school choice, through such vehicles as tax credits or education savings accounts (ESAs). Tax credits, such as I advocated in The Objective Standard in Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?, are superior to things like ESAs or vouchers, because tax credits eliminate the redistribution of wealth and minimize the chance of government infringement on free school choice. 

But I don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So, I support reforms that lead to more parental school choice. ESAs, for example, allow the established education tax dollars to follow the student. I support ESAs because they are the simplest and most politically feasable way to expand educational freedom and rights available today. Vouchers are more problematic, as the experience in Louisiana demonstrates. Charter schools are also a step in the rights direction, albeit a very limited one.

Related Reading:

Parents’ School Choice Rights Shouldn't Depend on Winning Elections

Add Freedom of Education, not Prayer, to the First Amendment

Separation of Church (or Education) and State

Are Parents Capable of Properly Educating Their Children in a Free Market?

Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits? My article for The Objective Standard

Education in a Free Society—C. Bradley Thompson for The Objective Standard

Why We Need the Separation of Education and State

11,000 Political Science Hacks Declare Socialism the Solution to a ‘Climate Emergency’

It’s getting to be a broken record. Begin with climate catastrophism, attack prosperity, proceed to utopianism, end with socialism. Below are four excerpts from More than 11,000 scientists from around the world declare a ‘climate emergency’. Andrew Freedman reports for Washington Post on November 5, 2019 Pay attention to the emphasized portions:

In a move that backs a term used to date mainly by climate activists and left-leaning politicians, a new study by 11,258 scientists in 153 countries from a broad range of disciplines warns that the planet ‘‘clearly and unequivocally faces a climate emergency,’’ and provides six broad policy goals that must be met to address it.

On the economy, the study states that improving long-term sustainability and reducing inequality should be prioritized over growing wealth, as measured using gross domestic product. 

‘‘We’re asking for a transformative change for humanity,’’ Ripple said in an interview. Many of the signatories to the warning do not list themselves as climate scientists but, instead, as biologists, ecologists, and other science specialists. Ripple says that is intentional, as the authors sought to assemble the broadest support possible.

‘‘The situation we’re in today with climate change,’’ he says, ‘‘shows that this is an issue that needs to move beyond climate scientists only.’’

Again, my emphasis. “Beyond climate scientists” has long been the goal of New Left socialists. Yes, terms like “climate emergency” has long been a political tactic of Left-leaning politicians. Contrary to the study’s claim of “broadest support possible”, it still is. The Left has been claiming science as the basis for their catastrophism scare mongering--a classic appeal to authority tactic. The tactic may not be working as well as hoped. So they dredged up as many Left-leaning scientists as possible to help stamp the prestige of science onto their socialist political designs. As Freedman reports:

The report is a stark departure from recent scientific assessments of global warming, such as those of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in that it does not couch its conclusions in the wishy-washy language of uncertainties, and it does prescribe policies.

Yes, policies--which can only mean government enforced policies to engineer “a transformative change for humanity.” Sound familiar? It does to me . . . a lot like the global communist goal of Marxism-Leninism. 

The convergence of science and politics is just as poisonous to liberty as the union of religion and politics. In fact, the climate emergency movement is a manifestation of the politics/religion union, masquerading under the banner of science. It was once declared by defenders of the Confederate slavocracy that black people have been scientifically proven to be incapable of supporting themselves and so would be better off remaining slaves where they can be taken care of. Marx advanced “scientific socialism” as a utopian ideal, resulting in 100 million deaths. American Progressives incorporated the science of eugenics into their political agenda, leading to racists, sexist policies and, when copied by National Socialist (NAZI) Germany, led to racial purity policies, including genocide and war. 

I believe we are witnessing a new and even more dangerous science/politics convergence. When by the middle of the 20th Century it became clear that socialism leads to widespread misery and terror and capitalism leads to widespread prosperity, the socialists faced a choice--abandon socialism or find a new way to discredit capitalism. Stephen Hicks calls the “the crisis of socialism”. Hence, the New Left arose in the 1960s to forge a new alliance between socialism and the emerging Ecology movement, the precursor to today’s Environmentalism. The new line for socialists: Capitalism fails because it produces too much prosperity, which is ruining the Earth through the exploitation of nature. Importantly, as Hicks notes, the socialists engineered a switch in its core “ethical standard from need to equality”—which explains why their climate crisis talk is always coupled with a war on economic inequality. This is manifested by Thunbergism and now with these scientists.

Related Reading:

The Anti-human Tyrade of an Ungrateful 16-Year-old

New U.N. Study Shows Climate Catastrophists Getting More Open About their Totalitarian Designs

The 'Watermelon' Analogy is Real, and it is Dangerous

‘Climate Crisis’: The Dem’s Path to Totalitarian Socialism

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels—Alex Epstein

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the 21st Century—Ronald Bailey

QUORA: ‘What are the arguments for and against direct democracy?'

QUORA: ‘What are the arguments for and against direct democracy? What are the arguments for and against representative democracy? What do you think is more effective in practice, direct or representative democracy?’

I posted this answer:

This question presupposes the question, “Effective, by what standard?” To answer that question, one must first answer the question, “What is the proper purpose of government?”

The proper purpose of government is to protect individual rights. As the Declaration of Independence states, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

This applies to any government, including democratically elected governments, whether direct or representative. In order to protect individual rights, a government’s powers must be constitutionally limited to only those powers necessary and proper to achieve that purpose--in other words, a constitutional republic. 

In a democracy, properly understood, there are no constraints on government powers. President Biden captured the essence of democracy when he said, “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.” This means all of our rights are subject to a vote, and that government can strip us of any right because it is elected. This contradicts the fundamental premise of America, that all individuals possess certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and property, which governments are instituted to protect, but can never violate (which is what “inalienable” means).

In a constitutional republic, some form of democratic process is crucial to effective governance. The right to vote is an important derivative of our fundamental inalienable rights. I would say representative democracy is not only best, but in all but the tiniest societies, the only form of democracy that can work. The idea that every issue can be decided by popular vote of millions of voters is utopian nonsense. It would be chaos. The popular election of a small number of representatives who then gather to institute laws allows for thoughtful, contemplative face-to-face debate and argumentation, where all aspects and nuances and perspectives can be fleshed out rationally and objectively, makes effective government much easier to achieve, as long as it occurs in the context of a constitutionally limited republic. This level of deliberation is something that mass popular voting leaves little room for. I believe that direct democracy in most cases is not only ineffective, but ultimately chaotic, unworkable, and the path to despotism and societal collapse.

Related Reading:

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

Democracy is Democracy

Democracy in Action in Egypt

Rights and Democracy

Constitutional Republicanism: A Counter-Argument to Barbara Rank’s Ode to Democracy

Mesmerized by Elections, the NJ Star-Ledger Forgot that Tyranny is Tyranny

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

 

QUORA: ‘How did Reaganomics get the country back on track?’

 QUORA: ‘How did Reaganomics get the country back on track?’

I posted this answer:

It’s a bit simplistic to say Reaganomics got the country back on track. It’s largely true, but there's more to the story. Reaganomics was part of a larger trend toward freer markets and globalization of trade. Reagan’s policies can’t get all of the credit. But they deserve a lion’s share of the credit, because he accelerated the deregulation trend of the Carter Administration and his radical restructuring of income tax rates—cutting top rates from 70% to 39% and ultimately to 28%—refocused the economic incentives from stagnation to growth.* 

Reagan’s policies corresponded to an amazing resurgence in American economic power, which in turn corresponded to dramatic global economic improvements. Reagan would avoid taking credit, instead placing credit with “We the People''—the “men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we're sick -- professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truckdrivers.” The result was a predictable outcome of freer markets—the economy took off, with a job and innovation-filled expansion that many did not expect, except of course Reagan himself. Reagan understood that people working and trading for personal benefit is the fountainhead of economic prosperity, and that more freedom and minimal government obstructionism was all they needed.

Let’s examine the record.

As the economic expansion took hold, after the 1980 - 82 “double dip recession”—the third and fourth in 14 years— GDP growth surged 8% growth out of the box, and averaged 4% from 1983 through the end of the century (compare that to today’s “new normal” of 2% growth). And that powerful expansion was accompanied by a phenomenon that was thought impossible by the prevailing 1970s logic of Phillips Curve economics: The strong expansion was accompanied simultaneously by falling inflation (12.5% to 3,4%), falling interest rates (19% to 8%), and falling unemployment (10.8% to 3.9%). 

Thanks to Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and other world leaders, such as Red China’s Deng Xiaoping, the successor to madman Mao Zedong, free market-oriented policies spread around the world, igniting a surging global trend of prosperity. Global extreme poverty plummeted from more than 40% in 1980 to less than 10% today. At the same time, the share of the world population living middle class (or higher) lives has passed 50%. How much Reaganonmomics inspired the global free market trend, as opposed to following it, is a matter of debate. But either way, Reaganomics played a significant role in advancing it, not least of which by giving voice to free markets and individualism.

All of this astounding progress now faces multiple threats, especially the growing attacks on global free trade, the resurgence of central planning ideologies, and the Environmentalists' war on reliable energy, especially fossil fuels. But as to the question, How did Reaganomics get this country back on track? Simple. He recognized that “In this present [1970s] crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” and pursued policies to reduce government interference and thus give private individuals more freedom and incentive to work, innovate, take risks, and trade for their own personal betterment.

* [I emphasize rate, rather than tax, cuts. Between 1983, when Reagan’s first round of tax rate cuts were fully implemented, and 1989, Reagan’s last year in office, individual federal income tax revenues rose 55% as the economy soared, rising every year in that period. A tax policy that leads to strong increases in federal income tax revenues can hardly be called a tax cut.] 

Related Reading:

There's a Hole in the Middle of Doughnut Economics by Steven Horwitz

"Trickle-Down Economics": Anti-Capitalists' Insulting Portrayal of the "Common Man"

Global Poverty Decline Denialism: An anti-market ideologue tortures the data at The Guardian. By Ronald Bailey for Reason

The Growth of the World’s Middle Class May Be the Greatest Story of Our Age

Did the New York Times Just Vindicate Reaganomics?

We now have a Biden Doctrine. It makes me nervous.

EXCERPTS:

First, it is a fundamentally pessimistic view of America’s recent history. Sullivan recalls the glory days of American economic power after 1945, but then notes that in “the last few decades” that strength has waned. He talks about the hollowing-out of the country’s industrial base, the export of American jobs and the atrophying of industries. We “stopped really focusing on building,” Sullivan said, as he summarized the subsidies, tariffs, bans and investments that are at the heart of Biden’s new approach.

Ironically, only a couple of weeks before Sullivan made his speech, the Economist had a cover story on “America’s astonishing economic record.” It begins with 1990 — often used as the start of the rot in the narrative of decline — and points out that despite the rise of huge new economies such as China and India, the United States’ share of global gross domestic product has stayed roughly the same since then: around 25 percent. During that same period, America’s share of the Group of Seven’s economic output increased substantially, from 40 percent to 58 percent. Today, eight of the world’s 10 biggest companies are American. In 1989, only four were American (and six were Japanese). As for building, during these decades, the United States created and built the information economy, surely one of the greatest transformations and advances in human history.

In 1990, the great fear in the United States was of being overtaken by Japan, then seen as the predatory economic power that was eating our lunch. But, as the Economist notes in the same edition, in 1990, the income per person in the United States was just 17 percent higher than in Japan; today it is a staggering 54 percent higher. Look at demographics or energy or leading technology companies, and everywhere you see the United States in a dominant position. Perhaps we got something right.

It's Time to Bury the "Trickle-Down" Myth

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal—Ayn Rand

Three Cheers for "Trickle-Down!"

Related Listening:

Carter Trumps Reagan on Deregulation [CATO, 14 minutes]

Slavery is Not America's Original Sin. Rather, it’s Principles Are Its Original Virtue

This is a followup to my post of 7/16/2019, which dealt with the New Jersey Star-Ledger article Cory Booker demands study on reparations for slavery, decries ‘hideous legacy’ during historic House hearing. The article reports:

“Slavery is the original sin,” [Rep. Sheila] Jackson Lee said Wednesday. “Slavery has never received an apology."

The idea of slavery being America’s Original Sin is absurd on its face. But it is persistent, and must be countered, for it strikes at the very heart of Americanism. America is the Declaration of Independence. How is slavery consistent with 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . 

Margaret Thatcher once famously said: “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” Did the slaves consent to being enslaved? No. Properly understood, America is a set of ideals. In fact America inherited slavery, humanity’s age-old scourge. America, in fact, abolished slavery. 

The American Revolution was radically unique in history. Typically, revolutions involved the overthrow of one government and replacement by another, typically replacing one form of statism with another. America was different. Margaret Thatcher correctly observed: “America was created by philosophy." America was born amidst a titanic clash of ideas, the ancient ideas of statism and collectivism versus the new Enlightenment ideals of liberty and individualism. 

The American Revolution was a victory for liberty and individualism on the battlefield of arms. But it was a battle, not the war. The wider war was on the battlefield of ideas--the philosophical battlefield. You can change a government overnight. But you can’t win a war of ideas overnight. Ideas are about changing minds. The mind is an individual attribute. So you win the war of ideas one mind at a time. Therefore, ideas take time to penetrate a culture. The American Revolution, being a philosophical revolution, was a huge step forward. But it was a battle, not the final victory of the overarching war. The Philosophical war predated America, and continued after. From the start of America, the forces of statism/collectivism have been pushing back. The current attempt to recast America as a slave state is part of that statist/collectivist reaction against freedom/individualism. 

This longrunning war of ideas is the context by which the current debate about slavery’s place in American history must be understood. The abolition of slavery and the defeat of racist Jim Crow law is what defines America, because they represent the victory of American ideals of individual rights and political equality. Of course, those ideals don’t always win. Sometimes, the reactionaries regroup. More progress needs to be achieved. But American ideals are key to finishing the job. 

Slavery is not America’s Original Sin. Yes, slavery is a sin. But it is not America’s Original Sin. Original Sin, Christianity’s vicious “gift” to humanity, tars every human as irredeemably guilty, for which penance must be perpetually paid, with no chance of ever paying off the debt of guilt for a sin committed long ago, and reaching moral redemption. Applied to America, Original Sin condemns this great nation as irredeemably corrupt and evil, perpetually made to atone for that guilt by paying endlessly with its freedom and wealth through whatever socialist schemes the peddlers of Original sin deem needed for atonement. Thank you Christianity.

None of this is true. Yes, America’s promise of universal individual rights, equality, and justice was an unfinished promise. Nevertheless, America is a nation of original virtue. It’s principles are the death warrant for slavery and tyranny of man over man. The revolutionary ideology that grew in the American British colonies in the years that led up to America’s 1776 Declaration of Independence triggered the first ever systematic moral opposition to slavery, as the anti-slavery implications of their revolutionary ideals of equality and liberty became increasingly evident throughout the colonies and beyond (p. 232-246). Martin Luther King put it brilliantly. In his commemoration of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation on its 100th birthday, King said:

If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable. The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is that which we are here to honor tonight, the Emancipation Proclamation. All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations, no matter how extensive their legions, how vast their power and how malignant their evil.

King was not describing a nation of Original Sin. A nation Founded on these truths, no matter its flaws in practice, is a nation of irreplaceable, Original Virtue.  

Related Reading:

On New Jersey’s Proposed Bill to Study Racial Reparations

‘Reparations’; Another Leftist Path to Socialism

SUPPLEMENTAL TO ‘New Jersey’s Proposed Bill to Study Racial Reparations’: The ‘Slavery is Good Economics’ Argument

Obama's Collectivist Manifesto-Part 1...the "Original Sin" gambit

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson

How the 1619 Project is a Pro-Slavery Document