Category: nannyism

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Accountability education and schooling folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Eternally Postponing Responsibility

responsibility, Denmark, education, welfare, socialism, Bernie Sanders, freedom

There is a common sense element to economics. We ignore it at our peril. So let’s take a cue from the Democratic Party’s current and de facto leader, Bernie Sanders.

Turn to Denmark for a model.

The Nordic state has what Bernie wants: higher education “free for all.” But there are . . . costs involved.

It turns out that “some Danes, especially older citizens already in the labor force,” explains Business Insider, “say the extra freedom can eliminate a crucial sense of urgency for 20-somethings to become adults. The country now deals with ‘eternity students’ — people who stick around at college for six years or more [not to mention advanced degree work] without any plans of graduating, solely because they don’t have any financial incentive to leave.”

Hardly a shock. Young Danes would not be the first to see in college life what satirist Tom Lehrer identified as the prolongation of “adolescence beyond all previous limits.”

Give young people an incentive to suck up resources year after year, and some will certainly take you up on that.

It’s hard to counter, too. The Danish “eternity student” problem remains even after taking policy steps to discourage it.

Business Insider ends its report by quoting an expert who insists that “motivation to succeed in your studies is in no way linked to whether you’re paying for your tuition or not.”

Yup, that’s what proponents of “free” education keep telling us. But there is more at play here.

Responsibility is on the line. Adulthood is about responsibility. Free tuition is about postponing responsibility.

Do we really want to go further in that direction?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

The Good vs. Freedom?

Second Amendment, gun control, freedom, Washington Post, Elizabeth Bruenig, pope, Middle Ages

Politicians regularly argue for new “gun control” laws, even while ignoring the execution and enforcement of laws already on the books.

Exhibit A, as I wrote at Townhall.com yesterday, is the failure of the military to provide the FBI with the information that would have blocked the Sutherland Springs church shooter from getting his guns.

Meanwhile, in the Washington Post’s Outlook section, Elizabeth Bruenig takes a more . . . philosophical perspective. She contends that “Western thought moved from seeing freedom as a means to an end — what philosophers call ‘the good’ — to seeing freedom as an end in itself. Thanks to our liberal heritage, we regard freedom as an intrinsic good, perhaps the highest one of all. The more of it we can get, the better off we are. Right?”

Right!

But Bruenig’s answer isn’t in the affirmative.

Instead, she points to Vatican elections during the Middle Ages in which “canon law enshrined the right of eligible individuals to cast their votes. But their choices . . . could simply be overturned [by church officials]. Freedom mattered, in other words, but was always subordinate to the highest good, which could sometimes place limits on liberty.”

Ah, the Post advises us to embrace the Middle Ages . . . just so our freedom doesn’t get out-of-hand.

Bruenig also thinks that “we largely lack the framework to ask what gun ownership is for. . . .”

Huh? The Second Amendment answers that gun ownership is “necessary to the security of a free state.”

In terms of both scholarship and insight, the Founders’ constitutionalism far outshines the Post’s shiny new neo-medievalism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Government Control

gun control, shooting, church, government, violence, 2nd Amendment, rights

“When do we say enough is enough?” asked California Senator Kamala Harris after Devon Patrick Kelley murdered 26 churchgoing Texans in cold blood, last Sunday.

“The terrifying fact is that no one is safe so long as Congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic,” argued Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.

President Trump, on the other hand, not only pointed out that criminals will violate gun laws to acquire weapons, he speculated that had Stephen Willeford, the former National Rifle Association instructor, not come upon the scene, armed, “instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead.”

After previous mass shootings, Democrats pushed legislation that, even if it had been the law, would not have prevented that particular killer from obtaining the weapons. This time it’s different, since the killer should not, by current law, have been allowed to purchase the firearms he used. Kelley’s conviction for domestic violence, while serving in the Air Force, disqualified him.*

But the Air Force did not do its job, failing to report his record to the FBI. So the background check found . . . nothing.

“The Pentagon has known for at least two decades about failures to give military criminal history information to the FBI,” the Associated Press informed, “including the type of information the Air Force didn’t report about the Texas church gunman.  . . .”

The Obama administration, through its command of the military, failed to execute the law designed to keep guns out of dangerous hands. And it sounds like this failure dates back to Bush and Clinton days.

Where does the buck stop?

We don’t need gun control; we need government control.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Note also that the murderer, as Ben Shapiro recounted at National Review: “escaped from a mental institution in 2012, threatened his superior officers and attempted to smuggle weapons onto a military base to carry out those threats, cracked the skull of his infant stepson, beat his wife, abused a dog.”

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Accountability crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

The Owners of Twitter Have Rights

Twitter, freedom, social media, bluebird, government, internet, speech

Roger Stone is suing Twitter for kicking him out.

Without saying exactly why they booted him, Twitter implies that the reason is abusive language. For his part, Stone accuses the social media giant of targeting right-wing tweeters while letting left-wing tweeters off the hook for the same or worse alleged wrongdoing.

I’ll stipulate that Stone is justified in accusing Twitter of rank, ideologically motivated hypocrisy in applying its micro-blog policies. But he’s wrong to sue.

As I have argued before — indeed, just yesterday — government should not regulate Internet forums and should not compel Twitter or other firms to provide a soapbox for anybody else. The only relevant legal issue here is whether Twitter has violated a contract. But Twitter does not agree to let anyone use its services unconditionally. And I don’t think that Stone is alleging any violation of contract.

Our right to freedom of speech does not include the right to force others to give us access to their property in order to exercise that freedom. Nor do the rights of any individuals to use and dispose of their own property disappear if they happen to create a very big and successful enterprise. There are many ways to try to make Twitter pay for bad policies without using force against the company, including boycott and direct competition.

I agree with the guy who said that one’s right to freedom is not contingent upon a guarantee “that one will always do the right thing as others see it.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo by Nigel on Flickr

 

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crime and punishment folly general freedom nannyism privacy property rights responsibility

The New Ortho-Doxing

Halloween, Southern Poverty Law Center, lynching, doxing, racism, hate speech

“What a nice Halloween,” my wife remarked as we turned out the lights. 

Well, not in nearby Oakton, Virginia, where Jamie Stevenson walked past her neighbor’s home last Saturday and saw “a racist display.”

“She knew it was a Halloween decoration,” the Washington Post reported.

Heedless, she contacted her homeowners association, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the perpetrator: “What you appear to be displaying is an effigy of a black person being lynched. As your neighbor and a person of color [Stevenson is Asian], I find this racist . . . deeply offensive. I’m sure this is not your intent.”

“It is not my intent to offend anyone,” was her neighbor’s immediate and predictable response to her email. Shockingly, he had never noticed that his “Monster in the tree had darker skin.”

So, on a rainy Sunday, he took it down.

One might think that, with Stevenson’s sensitivity, she wouldn’t perform her own social media lynching — or doxing — against her neighbor. But on Monday, acknowledging that no offense had been intended and with the offending display removed, Stevenson still posted “a flier” on Facebook with a photo of an actual 1889 lynching next to the picture she had snapped of her neighbor’s Halloween display, declaring: “RACISM and HATE have no place in our neighborhood.”

She called for a boycott of her neighbor’s free Halloween candy . . . and handily provided his home address.

“[W]hen you point out racism, people have a choice to make,” she insisted. “They either acknowledge it and have to do something about it, or they deny it and are complicit in it.”

Or then again, neighbor, maybe you’ve got racism on the noggin and folks are only complicit in sharing a traditional joy with the neighborhood kids.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability Common Sense folly general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility term limits too much government

It’s the Stupid Spending

debt, spending, Congress, term limits

These United States are approaching a crisis. Mounting debt seems increasingly unpayable. Sovereign default and financial chaos are “in the offing” — drifting from the (future) horizon to the (present) shore.

The costs of our debt load have been accommodated as astute economists predicted, with the weakest recovery in American history.

Seven years ago I wrote:

According to increasing numbers of Americans, it’s the level of spending by government that must decrease. We must balance budgets. Soon.

One could play sloganeer and say “It’s the spending, stupid”; or, twist that, to say “It’s the stupid spending.” But however you formulate the problem, what the new Republican House must do is find a way to cut spending.

They haven’t. Is there any reason, even with super-duper businessman Donald Trump riding herd, that they will make net cuts?

We can expect gross spending to increase and the debt to balloon even bigger.

Why?

Well, we are trapped.

Even the politicians themselves feel trapped.

You see, once the government begins a program, a constituency comes to depend upon it, and resists being “betrayed.” And the media supplies a steady stream of sob stories about the brutality of “austerity.” Politicians fear the passion of voters reacting to a specific hyped human need more than the general desire for less spending. So politicians increase the stupid spending.

Well, if the politicians are trapped, release them. Free them.

How? Term limits.

Congressional term limits would un-trap not just the pols — it’d free the voters, too. Let’s end the pretense that sending the same politicians to Washington term after term can produce local prosperity. Oh, the power of incumbency may lavish benefits on career congressmen, but it doesn’t pay off for the rest if us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was President Harry Truman who said that term limits would “help to cure senility and seniority — both terrible legislative diseases.”

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Illustration: Gustave Doré, “Avaricious and Prodigal”