Thanksgiving Message 2024

My special thanks this year go to business, both large and small. Business is the mainstay of the free Capitalist economy. What amazes me is how innovative and productive business continues to be given how much the Capitalist—i.e. free—portion of the economy has shrunk under the weight of the massive, and still growing, regulatory welfare state. Add to that that business, especially the most successful, is the most persecuted minority in America today. It is under attack, not for its vices, but for its virtues. By whom? By egalitarians, who label their money-earning success as "greed." With all of the Woke claptrap about “oppressed” groups, business is somehow not among them. Yet business gets blamed for every societal ill, even as it manages to keep us all alive and somehow moving forward under the meager remnants of Capitalistic economic freedom—and still make a profit. So, here’s a shout out to American business: THANK YOU for your profit-seeking service. 

RELATED:

ARI: TURN #GIVINGTUESDAY INTO TRADING TUESDAY

ON THIS HOLIDAY, GIVE THANKS TO THE PRODUCERS

Democracy Wouldn’t Be a Gamble if American Principles are Adhered to.

Theodore R. Johnson posted a thoughtful pre-election op-ed in the Washington Post titled Black voters are joining a coalition. It’s always a gamble. “Black voters,” Johnson writes, “must always wonder whether their partners at the ballot box will remain partners after a victory” :

Black voters keep a watchful eye for these signs. Their trust in democracy — both the system and the people who operate it — is hard-earned. For them, choosing the right coalition partners has not been just a question of policy wins but a matter of life and death. The same system that legislated slavery and Jim Crow became the tool that secured rights and opportunity. This checkered past gives their politics a pronounced pragmatism, rooted in an understanding that Black people in America fare best when the federal government makes civil rights a priority. Their numbers and political solidarity give them electoral power — valuable even to those who might despise them.

My emphasis highlights a crucial philosophical observation that begs the question: “Is the American system both the ‘system that legislated slavery and Jim Crow’ and the system that protects civil rights the same?” Are they even compatible? Put differently, did the Founders create a Democracy, which means unlimited majority rule with our individual rights determined by vote? Or did they create a constitutionally limited republic that limits democratic power and prioritizes individual rights, which means rights are unalienable and thus outside the authority for any electoral majority to infringe? 

I posted these comments:

Democracy wouldn’t have to be a gamble if American principles are adhered to. Yes, democracy can enslave people or subjugate them under segregation. Or it can liberate them, all based on the vagaries of electoral outcomes. Democracy unconstrained by constitutional protections for individual rights is fundamentally totalitarian. That’s democracy. 

But it’s not America. 

America is the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes that fundamental intellectual, political, and economic individual rights to life, liberty, and property are equal and universal, are unalienable, and precede government. A constitution based on these principles protects us from the three basic governmental manifestations of tyranny identified by James Madison; the tyranny of the one (autocracy), of the few (aristocracy), or of the many (democracy). The U.S. Constitution, despite its flaws, is intended to implement these principles and thus secure our liberties by limiting the powers of the government.

That’s why it’s crucial to recognize that America is a constitutionally limited republic, not a democracy. Slavery and Jim Crow—and, now, the steadily encroaching “soft” tyranny of the regulatory welfare state—result when people calling themselves Americans abandon the Founding principles, and declare that America is a democracy. But no one’s rights should ever be determined by majority vote. We must recommit to the principles of the Declaration and the legislative power-limiting intent of the Constitution so that elections no longer have to be a gamble on our civil liberties. 

Related Reading:

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

Abortion Rights and Majority Rule

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: Why does the Pledge of Allegiance say the USA is Republican not Democratic?

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

On This Veterans Day, Remember the Productive Americans Who Support the Greatest Military in History

This is the time of year that America rightly salutes, and gives thanks to, our military veterans who have protected this nation from foreign enemies for more than two centuries. I join in that celebration. My thoughts about them are conveyed in my Memorial Day tribute, and need no restatement here, except to reiterate the essence of that post:

The highest tribute I can pay to our veterans 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 for that radical set of ideals that is the United States of America.

But America’s veterans are not the whole story. So, I’d like to use this Veterans Day post to acknowledge the unsung hero of America’s military prowess, the productive American citizen. No military as strong and as competent as America’s can exist in a vacuum. It requires something else - something indispensable – a great economy.

America's economy, historically the most productive the world has ever seen, is the foundation that supports our military personnel. American taxpayers pay trillions of dollars. American defense contractors invest in and produce the most advanced weaponry in the world, weaponry that American soldiers rely upon to do their jobs and stay alive. American technology produces the high tech means for our intelligence community to gather the information our soldiers need to keep track of the enemy.

What enabled the creation of the economic powerhouse that enabled the creation of our military powerhouse? What is the foundation of that foundation?

In 1776, the Founders of this nation signed the Declaration of Independence, which sanctioned the individual to egoistically pursue his happiness in support of his life, by guaranteeing him a government that protected his unalienable individual rights – his liberty – to act upon his own reasoning mind. That short document unleashed the power of the human mind, possessed individually by every person. The result was an unprecedented explosion of productiveness leading to exploding general prosperity and a standard of living unimaginable by the wealthiest noblemen of centuries past. The cause of that progress is simple: the unleashing of every individual to self-interestedly strive to make his own life the best it can be, by his own effort, in voluntary trade with others, free from the coercive interference of his fellow man, including the government. Another name for this social statement—free market capitalism. America was built not by sacrifice, as it is fashionable to assume, but by personal achievement, fueled by the personal pursuit of happiness, unleashed by individual liberty.

America’s response to the threat of the Axis powers at the onset of World War II demonstrates this incredible power behind America’s military power—American free, private enterprise. If you’ve ever visited the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, you’d be struck—I know I was—by the section that displays the array of private, profit-seeking companies that rose to meet the threat posed by Germany, Italy, and Japan. Companies from Boeing and Caterpillar to Harley Davidson and the Mars Candy Company converted their consumer-oriented production facilities to produce for the war to defend America. Dozens of household names are profiled in the display, and undoubtedly far more smaller companies labored anonymously in support of the war effort.

Germany’s Hitler was said to have ridiculed America as soft, because America was good at making consumer goods like razor blades and washing machines, but not military hardware like aircraft. This was mentioned in a fantastic film narrated by Tom Hanks titled Beyond All Boundaries, presented by the museum. Indeed, charts on display at the museum showed that, in 1939, America’s military was utterly dwarfed not only by the cumulative size of the Axis powers Germany, Italy, and Japan, but in comparison to those countries individually as well. But just a few short years later, America’s military dwarfed all three combined, as America’s industrial might turned its focus from producing consumer goods to producing for the American military. Hitler obviously underestimated what can happen when a free enterprise nation, which only wants to live in peace, freedom and prosperity, is threatened by tyrannical aggression.

Tyranny, as the history of WW II demonstrates—and as Germany, Italy, and Japan learned the hard way— is no match for a free market capitalist nation when that nation is aroused to turn its industrial might to self-defense. America won not only because of the bravery and skill of its soldiers, but in no small measure because America simply out-produced—in quantity and technological might—the enemy. Not only did America rearm amazingly fast, it did so even while rearming Britain and supplying arms to Russia, China, and other nations battling against the Axis powers. As the museum’s website explains:

Total war meant that all levels of the economy and all segments of society dedicated themselves to victory. FDR urged Americans to join the war effort by “out-producing and overwhelming the enemy.” While scarcity, rationing, and shortages became regular topics of conversation, so too did talk of duty, patriotism, unity, and victory. The United States, which had the world’s 18th largest military in 1939, mobilized itself for total war production almost overnight once the nation entered the war. The immediate conversion of peacetime industries into war production facilities involved companies of all sizes and types. Toy companies began to manufacture compasses. Typewriter companies made rifles and piano factories produced airplane motors. The Ford Motor Company ceased producing cars and began turning out tanks and bombers. And behind each soldier stood hundreds of civilian workers making everything an army needs to fight around the globe. The Depression was over. Full employment was a reality and confidence in victory was strong.

From 1940 until the Japanese surrender, the United States produced more than 300,000 aircraft, 86,000 tanks, and 12.5 million rifles. Its shipyards were just as productive, building 107 aircraft carriers, 352 destroyers, and 35 million tons of merchant shipping. The US also supplied a majority of war materials for its Allied partners. By 1945, the U.S. had produced more than twice the war supplies of Germany, Italy, and Japan combined.

If Hitler underestimated America, some in Japan, it seems, were more trepidatious. As Japan’s political leadership confidently prepared for war with America, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto soberly warned:

Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it would not be enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians (who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war) have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.

After his nation's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto was said to have uttered, “I fear all we have done today is to awaken a great, sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

Indeed, from a starting point of 18th largest military, America had, as FDR envisioned and as Yamamoto feared, out-produced and overwhelmed the enemy. So, let’s celebrate, along with the brave contributions of our vets, the productive American of all income levels—the CEOs, entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists and inventors, workers, investors—and the resultant industrial powerhouse upon whose shoulders our military might stands. Let’s celebrate the individual pursuit of happiness that is the fuel for that American strength. Let’s celebrate productive Americans’ willingness to pay for, build, and support the military whose job it is to protect the borders of a country that guarantees his right to the pursuit of the good life.

Today, the foundation of America’s economic and military might is under intense attack by those who would “fundamentally change America”—a change that, in actuality, has been going on for decades. Let’s stand up and reject that “change” from liberty to tyranny, and from economic freedom to central planning, from capitalism to socialism, and instead renew our allegiance to the Founding Fathers, who engineered a change from tyranny to liberty. The best tribute one can give to our military veterans is to vow to fight for the rediscovery and reinstatement of the ideals that this country stands for: the supreme value of the individual human being, his freedom, and a government whose sole duty is to protect his right to live and prosper for his own sake.

Because that is what American veterans fought for.

Happy Veterans Day!!

-Mike LaFerrara

Related:

Atlas Shrugged – America's Second Declaration of Independence

Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II by Arthur Herman

The Military Protects Our Borders. Defending Freedom is up to We, the People--as Activist Individuals

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Why a Free Man Fights—Lt. Col. Scott McDonald, USMC

Why I Declined to Wear My ‘I Voted’ Sticker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reading:

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

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

Abortion Rights and Majority Rule

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

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

Are We Now a Nation of Moochers and Thieves?

Our Pick-Pocket Nation

Related Viewing:

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

RELATED INTEREST:

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

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

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

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

On this Election Day 2024, One Final Election Note

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

Related: 

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

--Thanks,

Mike LaFerrara

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

The Incredible Small-Mindedness of the Biden/Harris Administration

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

My emphasis.

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

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

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

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

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

The Post also reported:

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

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

Related Reading:

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

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

The Future of Organized Labor Should Be Volunterism

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

End Government Intrusion into Labor-Management Contracts

Law-Favored Unions are Quasi-Criminal Organizations

Should 16 year-olds vote in school board elections?

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

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

“Advocates want to get younger people more engaged.”

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

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

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

Related Reading:

16 Year Old Voters? How About 21?

The Inherent Corruption of Public Sector Unionization

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

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

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