Category: national politics & policies

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ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

The Great Diversion

Nazi, Civil War, soldiers, dead soldiers, Charlottesville, antifa

Though the breakdown of civil debate seems new, the subjects are old. We are actually talking about Nazis, again. Nazi death counts. And the Confederacy. The former defeated by my father’s generation, the latter defeated several generations earlier.

Why?

Because talking about the future would require actual thought. It’s easier to fight over the past, over symbols of the past.

That is why there was a Charlottesville debacle. It is about a statue, a monument to dead soldiers featuring the Confederacy’s General Robert E. Lee. And what it means. The “Unite the Right” rally was set in Charlottesville because of the city council’s decision to remove it.

It is interesting, though, that the event did not unite “the Right.” Conservative and even many alleged “alt-right” groups refused to participate.

But “the Left” seems more united than before. If you focus on past racism and the persistence of Nazi and Confederate symbology, it’s pretty easy to agree. I agree.

And yet, I take a step back, and remember that those monuments do not have the univocal racist meaning attributed to them. They were intended to heal wounds.*

Now they open up old ones.

And yet this is all a diversion. We are facing a major set of crises that could lead to war, depression, chaos, and (possibly) worse. But we are not now handling them because we are fighting over symbols of the past.

This may be a very human thing to do.

But it is not smart.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* At least 350,000 young American men died wearing Confederate uniforms in the Civil War, and half a million Union soldiers are believed to have died directly from their war wounds. Today’s population is ten times greater, so adjusted for today it would be eight million deaths. That is a lot of searing wounds.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility U.S. Constitution

Saturday’s Violence

police, violence, Charlottesville, white supremacist, Nazi, protest, counter protest, law and order

After delivering the final address at the Liberty International World Conference in Puerto Rico, Friday night, I learned that there had been violent clashes between white nationalists and counter-demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A dozen people required medical treatment after being sprayed with mace.

Then, after traveling to the airport with new friends from Kazakhstan, China, and socialist-torn Venezuela, I began my eight-hour trek home. I had the subject for my weekend column, I decided: the lack of reports of even one arrest.

Last I checked, dousing folks with a chemical agent was a crime.

“Men in combat gear, some waring [sic] bicycle and motorcycle helmets and carrying clubs and sticks and makeshift shields,” the Washington Post reported as I landed for my connecting flight home, “fought each other on the downtown streets, with little police interference.”

By the time I touched down in Washington, DC, James Field had driven his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and seriously wounding many others. A searing and sobering event.

My column, mostly written in transit, focused on the police response to political violence. From Trump rallies last year to the events at UC-Berkeley that “shut down” planned speeches . . . to attacks on Charles Murray and others at Middlebury College . . . to this Saturday’s events in Charlottesville, policing has been tepid at best.

People have a right to speak, to assemble, to protest, to let out a primal political scream. Our governments must protect that right, without regard to viewpoint, by preventing and policing against acts of violence.

When violence succeeds without consequences — garnering tons of attention for its perpetrators — we are likely to see more violence.

Government is not doing job one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Excepting Responsibility

Google, memo, sexism, discrimination, responsibility, guilt, justice, crime

Responsibility: demand it of others, expect it demanded of you.

So you might think that those who try to redress old grievances with compensatory (“reverse”) discrimination would be a bit more careful.

Yesterday I wrote about the bizarre Google Memo case, wherein an employee was fired for (basically) warning of a groupthink ideological monoculture at Google . . . thus proving him right.*

Last weekend I wrote about racial quotas in college entrance.

In both cases, there’s this idea that moderns in general and white males in particular must “accept responsibility” for the past.

And the evidence is undeniable: Our pale-faced ancestors — or more likely a very small percentage of other white people’s ancestors — held human beings in bondage. So, too, did almost all peoples around the world; slavery’s old. Here in these United States, after our bloodiest war, our forebears ended that ancient crime. Then there was another century of Jim Crow discrimination, with systemic violence committed against blacks in many areas of the country, often with government acquiescence or involvement.

Harvard and other educational institutions are trying to right those wrongs.

But there’s a problem: the principle behind their affirmative action schemes is lunatic: Each person of one race bears responsibility for the crimes committed by any person of that same race.

Far better is individual responsibility. Individuals have every right to compensation for any harm another has caused them, certainly. But folks have no right to create new harms against innocent people who happen merely to be of the same race or gender as those who have caused them past harm.

Justice is supposed to be blind, not crazy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The author, it is worth noting, addressed this monoculture in his title, “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” I wonder if being proven right by one’s enemies compensates for job loss.

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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Google Has the Memo

Google, memo, sexism, discrimination, James Damore, affirmative action

A Google employee, James Damore, internally distributed a memo, reprinted by Gizmodo* to widespread (if inch-deep) horror. The memo controversially takes apart Google’s efforts to increase its number of female employees.

Per the memo, it is surely unjust to discriminate against members of some groups in the cause of opposing alleged discrimination against members of other groups.**

But Damore (who has now been fired for his temerity) undermines this case. In the opening gambit we hear a note of appeasement: “I value diversity and inclusion. . . .”

Sounds harmless. Yet . . .

I don’t know about you, but when hiring somebody to do a job, I don’t rationally pursue “diversity and inclusion” in addition to the goal of hiring someone skillful, punctual, cooperative, bottom-line-enhancing. Not if I’m free to use my best judgment. I’d only also consider impacts on “diversity and inclusion” to avoid suffering politically-induced legal costs if I don’t.

The memo has other problems, but surely we can all agree: discriminating against members of particular groups is an unjust way to enhance workforce “diversity” . . . even if racial-sexual-age-height-width “diversity” were a legitimate goal for a company with the purpose of selling technology.

I’ve argued elsewhere against affirmative action in universities. Quotas based on group characteristics are always unjust when the qualifications for achieving a reasonable purpose have nothing to do with those group characteristics. That’s true whether we’re talking about students or workers, and whether the persons being sacrificed to serve “diversity” are white, black or Asian, male or female, gay or straight.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Conveniently, Gizmodo neglected to include Damore’s extensive links to research that backed up his points, or his killer graph — even in its update.

** It is also far from self-evident that the disproportionately high number of male technology workers finds its root cause in sexual discrimination.

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Accountability ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders national politics & policies political challengers U.S. Constitution

Free to Choose

Milton Friedman, democracy, initiative, referendum, Free to Choose, public interest,

“I think that the most effective way one could possibly move toward greater freedom in the United States, toward a smaller role of government, would be if we could only have a more democratic society.”

Who said that? A Democrat?

No.

The speaker quickly added, “I don’t mean a capital-D, I mean a small-d.”

“That is, I mean if we could have referenda,” the late Milton Friedman explained back in 1987.

The Nobel Prize winning economist — and co-author with wife Rose of the bestselling Free to Choose* — was referring to the initiative and referendum process, whereby citizens vote on laws, and in the case of initiatives directly place measures onto the ballot.

Citizens enjoy initiative and referendum rights in twenty-four states and roughly 60 percent of cities throughout the country.

“The public at large has always shown itself,” Dr. Friedman observed, correcting himself, “has almost always shown itself to be more libertarian in its views than have their elected representatives.”**

Friedman was not suggesting that a bad law becomes good because it was passed at the ballot box. He simply weighed the odds between two distinct sets of voters. Legislators are a small group, the personal power of each one so closely tied to government that politicians’ personal interests often compete against the public’s. Conversely, the much larger group of voting citizens almost defines the public interest.

Perhaps I was channeling the great doctor of economics when I was once asked, “Do you trust the people?”

My reply?

“No. But I trust the people a whole lot more than I trust the politicians.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul of Jacob.

 

* The book was first published in January 1980, in tandem with PBS’s airing of the popular “Free to Choose” series.

** He spoke this at a California Libertarian Party conference. Tough crowd.

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Categories
Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest

Gatekeeping 2.0

gate keeper, Jordan Peterson, censor, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, censorship, new media,

There once was opinion hegemony, almost a monopoly. Official gatekeepers kept unwanted ideas — including some of mine, including many I strongly oppose — out of public consideration.

Then came the online media revolution, which switched influence from corporate, academic-approved media outlets to truly new media, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

And now? The counter-revolution.

We saw it obviously in the downgrade and then banning of Milo Yiannopoulis’s Twitter, last year. Since then, new measures surface on a regular basis.

We helots, we commonfolk, must not be allowed actually to affect an election!

Or the hearts and inquiring minds of Americans, Europeans, and others worldwide.

Unless that opinion has received the imprimatur of the Center-Left.

I’ve written about this return of the Gatekeeper mentality before. The latest malefactor is YouTube, which locked Dr. Jordan Peterson out of his account this week* as well as put in place new policies to hobble the social sharing elements of YouTube.**

A week or so earlier, Patreon, an online crowdfunding patronage web service I’ve been thinking about trying out, cancelled independent journalist Lauren Southern’s account. Patreon managers charged that her most recent endeavor might cause “loss of life,” but, tellingly, “showed no evidence or proof, are allowing no appeal and have acted as judge, jury and executioner” — as one concerned netizen not inaccurately summarized.

The company’s CEO calmly explained himself to Dave Rubin on YouTube. Does he convince you?

I catch a whiff of panic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Dr. Peterson’s account has since been reinstated, no explanation given.

** You can learn all this and more on YouTube itself — so the platform hasn’t been shut down as such. Instead, a new Artificial Intelligence will restrict videos that do not even break YouTube terms of service, removing Likes, Comments, and Search features.

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