Abortion Rights and Majority Rule

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

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

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

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

I posted this comment:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reading:

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

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

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

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

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

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

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

Right to Abortion, Not Others' Wallets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reading:

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

QUORA: ‘Is fascism a form of capitalism?’

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

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

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

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

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

Related Listening:

"The Fascist New Frontier" by Ayn Rand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reading:

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

The Dem's Jim Crow 2.0

Biden’s Racist Education Trial Balloon

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

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Inspiring Climb to Supreme Court Nominee

The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’

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

A meme going around Facebook about Kamala Harris’s proposed tax on unrealized capital gains reads “Home Owner Do you realize that the Harris plan to tax unrecognized Capital Gains mean if your house goes up in value you will have to pay that Tax Even if you don’t sell your House!”

The meme drew widespread criticism for it’s falsity. On the face of it, this is factually wrong—but only on the face of it. Harris specifically states that she would limit the tax to those with $100 million in assets, and only to those who don’t pay their “fair share,” defined as 25% at minimum.

But in engaging the skeptics, I argued that, properly analyzed, the meme is in fact correct. Below is a summary of the postings I made on Facebook.

Properly understood, the meme is exactly correct—“Harris's plan to tax unrecognized capital gains MEANS” your home. No, it’s not in her published plan. She's running a campaign. Of course she’s not stupid enough to SPECIFY it for middle class homes. Not now. Politicians regularly sneak in their schemes first for the rich. But once in place, the logic of the principle opens the door to widening the scope of the tax to more and more taxpayers, ultimately snaring the vast middle class. Even AXIOS, which was cited by one fact-checking correspondent challenging that meme, understood this:

There's also a slippery slope concern; the big mental and legislative hurdle is taxing unrealized capital gains — after that, lowering the threshold below $100 million would be easier, EVEN IF NOT CURRENTLY ON THE TABLE.

In other words, once you accept the principle, and set the precedent, it will be easy for politicians to expand the power. James Madison, referring to the increasingly tyrannical British laws that led to the American Revolution, said  

The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. [My emphasis]

Fortunately, the Founders understood the slippery slope. That’s why America exists. 

We, too, should understand the consequences in the principle Harris and the Democrats are trying to sneak in. 

Many people believe Harris’s tax on unrealized capital gains, also known as wealth taxes, will always apply to the miniscule centi-millionaire group. But when we start sliding down the slippery slope, and it hits middle class homes, they’ll say “But I didn’t mean this!” Yes, you did. The total value of Americans’ homes tops $50 trillion. How long does anyone think the political class will ignore that pot of gold? If we don’t see the consequences in the principle of taxing unrealized capital gains, and deny the consequences by denying the principle, we will be opening the door to taxing our homes—and virtually every non-liquid asset Americans own, like 401ks, IRAs, brokerage accounts, collectables, the values of pensions, and on and on to the unrealized capital gains of any asset the politicians can discover. 

Personally, my main reason for opposing unrealized capital gains taxes is that it is immoral. It’s wrong for the middle class. And just as wrong for mega-millionaires. It’s also grossly  impracticable, as many countries found out by hard experience. As CATO reports:

More than a dozen European countries used to have wealth taxes, but nearly all of these countries repealed them, including Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Sweden. Wealth taxes survive only in Norway, Spain, and Switzerland.

For both moral and practical reasons; for our own financial well being; and on principle, we should reject Harris’s hideous wealth tax scheme. This is a really big deal. It is something entirely new, and would open up a whole new target on Americans’ financial health. We should not give our tax-hungary political class that target. Let’s deny the consequences of the principle. Reject Harris’s scheme to tax our homes!

Related Reading:

Unrealized Capital Gains Taxes Will Trickle Down to the Middle Class by Peter Jacobsen for FEE

Joe Manchin on Biden's Wealth Tax: 'You Can't Tax Something That's Not Earned.' by Peter Suderman for Reason

Plans to Tax Unrealized Capital Gains Are Beyond Radical. They’re Ridiculous by Jack Salmon for National Review

Biden Is Trying To Pass a Wealth Tax—Again. It Could Be Unconstitutional by Ira Stoll for Reason

Why We Should Celebrate Christopher Columbus Day

Columbus Day has become controversial. Critics, mostly on the Left, point to Christopher Columbus's brutal treatment of New World natives and support for slavery, which they claim override his exploratory achievements that set in motion the train of events that led to the Enlightenment and ultimately the birth of America. Which holds sway; Columbus's undeniable bad aspects or his positives, which led to the such monumental turning points such as the abolition of slavery throughout most of the world?

History is messy. There are very few total heroes or total villains. Historical context is crucial, and the ultimate evaluation of any achievement must be weighed against this context and the totality of the person. On balance, from a humanitarian perspective, was Columbus a positive or negative force in the overall sweep of history? 

Count me on the positive side. As my tribute to Christopher Columbus on this, his day, I present selected excerpts from selected articles by other writers:

Columbus Day Celebrates Western Civilization By Thomas Bowden

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.

We need not evade or excuse Columbus’s flaws--his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives--to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose philosophers and mathematicians, men such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid, displaced otherworldly mysticism by discovering the laws of logic and mathematical relationships, demonstrating to mankind that reality is a single realm accessible to human understanding.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose scientists, men such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, banished primitive superstitions by discovering natural laws through the scientific method, demonstrating to mankind that the universe is both knowable and predictable.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose political geniuses, men such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers, defined the principles by which bloody tribal warfare, religious strife, and, ultimately, slavery could be eradicated by constitutional republics devoted to protecting life, liberty, property, and the selfish pursuit of individual happiness.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose entrepreneurs, men such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, transformed an inhospitable wilderness populated by frightened savages into a wealthy nation of self-confident producers served by highways, power plants, computers, and thousands of other life-enhancing products.

On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization as history’s greatest cultural achievement. What better reason could there be for a holiday?

In another op-ed on Fox News.com, Let's Take Back Columbus Day, Bowden said this:

We’ve been taught that Columbus opened the way for rapacious European settlers to unleash a stream of horrors on a virgin continent: slavery, racism, warfare, epidemic, and the cruel oppression of Indians.

This modern view of Columbus represents an unjust attack upon both our country and the civilization that made it possible. Western civilization did not originate slavery, racism, warfare, or disease--but with America as its exemplar, that civilization created the antidotes. How? By means of a set of core ideas that set Western civilization apart from all others: reason and individualism.

Excerpts from an op-ed in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, October 10, 2008, Columbus was a hero [No longer available online]

By Dimitri Vassilaros

Christopher Columbus could not have discovered a better spokesman than Thomas A. Bowden.

The accomplishments of Columbus should speak for themselves. But thanks to political correctness, the moronic multicultural mob keeps talking them down. Mr. Bowden has been speaking passionately and forcefully about Columbus for years.

"My ancestors were savages," says Bowden matter-of-factly. Everyone can say the same, depending on how far back one is willing to look at lineage. "It's nothing racial or ethnic; it's historical fact."

"Columbus critics have a disguised criticism of Western civilization because Europeans replaced Stone Age Indians. They believe that this continent would have been better off without Europeans, that industrial civilization is an evil that is to be lamented and regretted.

"That is the real criticism of Columbus. I reject it completely."

Indians typically were widely scattered Stone Age tribes, he says. "They had little agriculture and lived in poverty, fear, ignorance and superstition. They had no concept of government, ownership or private property rights.

"Slavery was perfectly common.

Well, didn't Indians at least live in harmony with nature?

"No," says Bowden. "Man should not live in harmony with nature in the sense of simply keeping it pristine. We live by impacting the environment. The environment has no intrinsic value. Our civilization is more in harmony with nature by making it serve our ends."

Well, what about all the land supposedly stolen from the Indians by European settlers?

Indians did not own the vast reaches of land that they traveled on, Bowden says. Ownership of land is deserved, he says. By that, he means a settler can acquire property rights by making the land more valuable by, say, digging it up for farming. Or to build his homestead or business.

Columbus essentially was an explorer and discoverer bringing Western civilization's cures, science and technology, he says. The philosophical legal process was another gift the Europeans gave to the Indians, he says. "Indians got all that for free."

Columbus' critics should fall down on their knees and thank the Founding Fathers for creating a nation based on the moral principle of the individual's right to life, liberty and, Bowden stresses, the selfish pursuit of happiness.

"It's the only nation that came about in such a way. Anyone who has humanity's interest at heart should love America," he says.

Excerpts from Man's Best Came With Columbus—Michael S. Berliner

Did Columbus “discover” America? Yes, in every important respect. This does not mean that no human eye had been cast on America before Columbus arrived. It does mean that Columbus brought America to the attention of the civilized world, i.e., the developing scientific civilizations of Western Europe. The result, ultimately, was the United States of America. It was Columbus’s discovery for Western Europe that led to the influx of ideas and people on which this nation was founded and on which it still rests. The opening of America brought the ideas and achievements of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and the thousands of thinkers, writers, and inventors who followed. What they replaced was a way of life dominated by fatalism, passivity, superstition, and magic.

There is a movement to replace Columbus Day with something called Indigenous Peoples Day, which is "a holiday that celebrates and honors the Native Americans and commemorates their shared history and culture."  "Native Americans" are no more native or indigenous than anyone else born in America. Their ancestors may have arrived in North America before others' ancestors. But so what? No race of people actually emerged in North America. By all accounts so far, human life first evolved in Africa, before spreading around the globe. That said, if anyone wants to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, fine. But why replace Columbus Day? American Indian tribes, had practices that were at least as vicious as Columbus, including wars of conquest and plunder, slavery, torture among each other and the slaughter of innocent settlers including women and children. But just as American Indians may have done some good things worth commemorating, so did Columbus, in spades. It was Columbus, not American Indians, who changed the course of history for the better, landing him ninth on historian Michael H. Hart’s ranking of the 100 most influential persons in history, and 30th, next to Ferdinand Magellan, on Time’s list. 

Like other great individuals, it's the good of Columbus that we celebrate, not the bad. Celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, if you like. But there's no reason for either/or. Celebrate both.

Happy Columbus Day

Related Video:

Progressive or Oppressive? Balancing the History of Manifest Destiny -- A panel discussion with Tom Clavin, Stephen Hicks Ph.D., John Prevas in Progressive or Oppressive? Balancing the History of Manifest Destiny.

Related Reading:

The enemies of Christopher Columbus—Thomas A. Bowden

Opposing Views:

On Christopher Columbus, the Far Left Is Correct—Bryan Caplan