BrianGarst.com

Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem.

Friday

6

July 2012

The Unspoken Cause of Destructive Forest Fires

Written by , Posted in Energy and the Environment, The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

In the wake of the catastrophic Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado, the usual suspects are gleefully rubbing their hands at the prospect of using the tragedy to advance the cult of Global Warming. But while the doom-mongers are quick to blame global warming, while only begrudgingly acknowledging that anecdotes are not scientific data, the real man-made problem goes largely ignored: litigious environmentalists.

Fires are part of our natural environment, and have been long before there were any humans to burn fossil fuels. Fires clear out old, dead plants and make way for new life. But humans quite understandably don’t like uncontrolled natural fires, because they also kill us. But we simply fight to reduce the regular natural fires in order to protect ourselves, we actually make major, catastrophic fires more likely. Without the clearing of dead plants, fuel for major fires builds up over time to dangerous levels. Man’s solution to this unintended consequence of our domestication of nature is to engage in our own efforts to prevent the accumulation of such kindling. At least, some of us do. Unfortunately, environmentalists fight to thwart these efforts at every turn, with disastrous consequences.

Scientists with the U.S. Forest Service found in a recent study that unnatural overgrowth in trees is responsible for most wildfires in the U.S:

Thinning overgrown forests to a more natural rate of between 50 and 100 trees per acre would be the most effective way of reducing the number and severity of intense wildfires, the study concludes.

The Forest Service study is the largest ever conducted on fuel treatment effectiveness. The study provides a scientific basis for establishing quantitative guidelines for reducing stand densities and surface fuels. The total number of optimal trees per acre in any given forest will depend on species, terrain, and other factors, according to Forest Service researchers.

David L. Peterson, a researcher with the U.S. Forest Service‘s Pacific Northwest Research Station and one of the coauthors of the study, reports there are two reasons to engage in forest thinning. Removing smaller trees from a forest stand promotes the growth and vigor of the remaining larger trees. Forest thinning also reduces the continuity of live and dead plant material (fuels) from the soil surface into the forest canopy. The latter practice reduces the likelihood a wildfire will propagate into a crown fire.

Yet efforts to engage in this life-saving practices face significant opposition from environmentalist and anti-logging groups. A GAO study in 2003 found that, of the thinning projects open to appeal, 59% were challenged by environmentalists. Even more appalling, “Forest Service officials estimate they spend nearly half their time, and $250 million each year, preparing for the appeals and procedural challenges launched by activists.”

In all likelihood these challenges have only increased since 2003. Just scanning recent news reveals a number of such frivolous suits being filed across the country. Just last month the Forest Service was calling for more natural fires. AP described the current state of U.S. forests thusly: “A combination of decades of vigorous fire suppression and the waning of the timber industry over environmental concerns has left many forests a tangled, overgrown mess, subject to the kind of superfires that are now regularly consuming hundreds of homes and millions of acres.”

So the next time an environmentalist tries to blame man for causing a fire by burning fossil fuels, tell him that he’s right, people are indeed to blame. Namely, it’s the environmentalists who routinely oppose and obstruct anything – whether it be logging, controlled fires or other thinning initiatives – that could reduce the risk of superfires.

Wednesday

4

July 2012

Medicaid and Federalism

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements, Liberty & Limited Government, The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

The less talked about, though hardly ignored, aspect of the Supreme Court’s recent Obamacare decision is the fact that the court struck down the requirement that state’s expand Medicaid coverage up to 133 percent above the federal poverty line (some states do so already), or lose their federal Medicaid funding.  The court ruled that while the federal government can provide strings for accepting new federal dollars, it cannot threaten to revoke already granted dollars if new strings are not adhered to.  The latter is deemed coercive on the part of the federal government, and thus an unconstitutional violation of state sovereignty. The ruling essentially cuts in half the number of uninsured which the law was supposedly going to give coverage.

While the court was right to strike the provision, the scope of the decision was insufficient and the distinction offered is strained and unworkable. Congress must retain the power to revisit the law creating Medicaid, as one Congress cannot legally bind a future Congress, which means there is no real mechanism to prevent them from changing the requirements on states to receive Medicaid dollars. The error of the court is in not acknowledging that all federal dollars to states are coercive, whether they come with only carrots or include an explicit stick. All federal carrots eventually turn to sticks.

Transferring federal dollars to states erodes state sovereignty, undermines one of the primary benefits of federalism (competition and innovation in policy approaches) and reduces democratic accountability. No such grants should be allowed, period.

As I previously wrote on the subject:

A fifty-five mph speed limit, promptly ignored by most motorists, was dictated to the states by passage of the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act.  Although the national speed limit was later repealed in 1995, numerous federal standards remain, such as the minimum ages for drinking and smoking. The federal government has largely accomplished this power grab by opening the spigot of federal dollars, then threatening to cut off any state that doesn’t kowtow to Washington’s demands.

So when a number of governors of both parties balked at taking federal money for unemployment insurance, knowing that they would be stuck with the bill of an expanded government welfare mandate when the federal funds expired, it should come as no surprise that the beltway response was to attempt to denigrate and browbeat the rogue states into compliance. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer responded to their rejection of federal funds by admonishing governors for playing “political games,” then boldly declared, “whether the governors want to or not, they can be forced to take the whole thing.” This astonishing declaration strikes at the heart of our federalist system.

…Aside from the eventual subjugation of state authority, funneling federal dollars into the states also leads to significant waste. No longer dependent on their constituents for financial support, the states become rent-seekers looking to game the federal system. This is why 250,000 Washington State residents recently received a $1 check in the mail.  As a reward for this wasteful spending, the federal government will pump into the state millions in new welfare funds. This seemingly irrational and grossly wasteful spending is encouraged by the present system, where states have financial incentives to meet federal bureaucratic rules that allow them to qualify for more funding.  The impact on the taxpayer is simply not important to the state in this calculus.

When states are offered federal dollars, it’s a lose-lose situation. Their citizens are already paying the taxes, and if one state refuses while another accepts, it means tax money is being redistributed from the more fiscally prudent state to big spending states. States, moreover, are only ever offered bribes to increase spending and regulation, but never to reduce either. In other words, it is a taxpayer funded incentive for bigger government. States that accept federal money, meanwhile, are then placed at the mercy of a federal government which can cut off funds at any time, leaving local politicians to either pick up the slack (by reducing other spending or racing taxes) or face the consequences at the polls.

Which leads to my next point. Collecting funds through federal mechanisms to be spent by states reduces politically accountability. Who do voters blame for poor results, the federal taxers or the state administrators? And what keeps either focused on the interests of voters? The goal of state lawmakers is to please the federal lawmakers that keep the money flowing, while the federal lawmakers just point to state government’s as the source of any mismanagement.

This is completely backwards from the concept of America at its founding. Taxes should be collected as locally as possible and sent up, rather than down, the political ladder. If state and local governments collected the bulk of taxes, for instance, and then had to “buy in” to the federal government, federal lawmakers would be held accountable by state governments that are closer to – and thus more easily held accountable by – the people.

States cannot be counted on to refuse the offer of federal dollars, and the mere fact that other states might and will accept penalizes them for refusing if they do. Nor is there hope that the federal government might decide on its own to stop engaging in the practice. Politicians will always seek to expand their power, which for the federal government means encroaching upon the sovereignty of the states. The cash spigot is simply too useful a tool in the pursuit of federal power to ever be turned off, and explains why the prevalence of such programs has exploded in recent decades.

The fact that the federal government can offer it at all is the problem, and the ideal solution is thus to prohibit all federal grants to states. But unless the Court can be convinced that any federal dollars are necessarily and inherently coercive to states, its Obamacare ruling will have minimal impact on the practice. A Constitutional amendment is the only real solution I see available.

For more on this issue, see this great summary by Cato’s Downsizing the Federal  Government, and related blog posts here and here.

Thursday

28

June 2012

The World Has Not Ended

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

I know many liberty advocates are greatly disappointed in today’s Supreme Court ruling, where Chief Justice John Roberts joined the four liberal justices in upholding the individual mandate through the taxing power. But the world has not ended today. The truth of the matter is that not much has changed for our longterm fiscal outlook. It’s still decidedly negative, and would have been no matter what today’s decision held. Because of this, there’s still going to have be another political bite at the health care apple.

First, the way the case was decided shouldn’t be overlooked. The limit that was placed, such that it is, on the reach of the Commerce Clause is not insignificant. With a five member majority believing that Congress has reached the bounds on how far they can stretch the clause, they may begin to chip away at some past Commerce Clause decisions. We can certainly hope so, anyway.

But from a policy perspective, health care remains a mess just as it would have been had the law been struck down. It’s a worse mess now, for sure, but all the central problems with health care are the same regardless of either decision the court could have made: the third party payer problem, the excessive coverage mandates by the state (and now federal) governments, the limitations on interstate insurance purchases. Eventually, these problems will have to be addressed. Obamacare will inevitably fail to reduce the explosive growth in the cost of health care because it does not address these fundamental causes, and that will force the hand of politicians. That is assuming that Obamacare even survives before the mandate takes effect in 2014, which based upon today’s reactions may very well not happen.

Tuesday

26

June 2012

Technology Does Not Invalidate Free Speech

Written by , Posted in Big Government, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

In a good piece at Big Government, Seton Motley highlights a recent effort by Obama administration advisor Tim Wu to expand the reach of government by arguing that the first amendment doesn’t apply to computers.

Wu’s argument is basically that computers are not people, therefore the First Amendment does not apply to anything they do.

In today’s world, we have delegated many of our daily decisions to computers. On the drive to work, a GPS device suggests the best route; at your desk, Microsoft Word guesses at your misspellings, and Facebook recommends new friends.

In the past few years, the suggestion has been made that when computers make such choices they are “speaking,” and enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.

This is a bad idea that threatens the government’s ability to oversee companies and protect consumers…

No, this is a good idea that prevents the government’s ability to infringe upon liberty. To say that computers don’t speak is as insightful as saying that paintings don’t speak, or ink doesn’t speak. In other words, it’s stupid.

Computers are tools. Like books, paintings, billboards, newspapers, etc. etc., they are a tool that can serve as a medium for speech. And just as the paint on the brush goes only where the painter tells it, the computer does ultimately what a real, breathing person programs it to do. How is the result, then, not the programmers speech?

Tim Wu is right. The First Amendment is an obstacle to expanded government regulation in control. It is one of the last obstacles remaining, which is why Tim Wu is just one of many on the left seeking to knock it down.

Tuesday

26

June 2012

Uninformed Government

Written by , Posted in Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements, Waste & Government Reform

How people imagine government works and how it actually works are often two very different pictures. Many people like to believe, for instance, that government is run by deliberative lawmakers and interested technocrats who careful consider policies before implementing them, and then later consider the data to evaluate their progress.

Little could be further from the truth.

Government is better thought of as children. Politicians jump from issue to issue seemingly at random, showing at first the kind of intense interest similar to a youngster discovering a new hobby only then to see it abandoned a week later when something newer and shinier comes along.

Laws already on the books are yesterday’s news, of no more interest than the half-finished, abandoned tree fort in the backyard. Government, it turns out, doesn’t care enough to know any details about how its policies are doing:

Americans spend $80 billion each year financing food stamps for the poor, but the country has no idea where or how the money is spent.

…Coinciding with lobbying by convenience stores, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program in conjunction with states, contends that disclosing how much each store authorized to accept benefits, known as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), receives in taxpayer funds would amount to revealing trade secrets.

As a result, fraud is hard to track and the efficacy of the massive program is impossible to evaluate.

This is no way to govern. And it’s not just lawmakers lacking information. As Gene Healy explains, this administration has taken keeping the public in the dark to a whole new level.

Government as it turns out is not a thoughtful, deliberative process, or a place where smart people get together to solve all our problems. It’s more like a dark, dank back-alley full of drunks stumbling around to find their footing.

Monday

25

June 2012

Scalia on State Sovereignty

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

Today’s immigration decision in Arizona v. United States amounted to another nail in the coffin of federalism. Scalia, in his dissent, explained how the decision has abrogated state sovereignty (citations removed for readability):

The United States is an indivisible “Union of sovereign States.” … Today’s opinion, approving virtually all of the Ninth Circuit’s injunction against enforcement of the four challenged provisions of Arizona’s law, deprives States of what most would consider the defining characteristic of sovereignty: the power to exclude from the sovereign’s territory people who have no right to be there. Neither the Constitution itself nor even any law passed by Congress supports this result. I dissent.

As a sovereign, Arizona has the inherent power to exclude persons from its territory, subject only to those limitations expressed in the Constitution or constitutionally imposed by Congress. That power to exclude has long been recognized as inherent in sovereignty…

…There is no doubt that “before the adoption of the constitution of the United States” each State had the authority to “prevent [itself] from being burdened by an influx of persons.” … And the Constitution did not strip the States of that authority. To the contrary, two of the Constitution’s provisions were designed to enable the States to prevent “the intrusion of obnoxious aliens through other States.” …The Articles of Confederation had provided that “the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.”… This meant that  an unwelcome alien could obtain all the rights of a citizen of one State simply by first becoming an inhabitant of another. To remedy this, the Constitution’s Privileges and  Immunities Clause provided that “[t]he Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” … But if one State had particularly lax citizenship standards, it might still serve as a gateway for the entry of “obnoxious aliens” into other States. This problem was  solved “by authorizing the general government to establish a uniform rule of naturalization throughout the United States.” … In other words, the naturalization power was given to Congress not to abrogate States’ power to exclude those they did not want, but to vindicate it.

Scalia goes on to explain how opposition to the Sedition Act demonstrated doubt on the federal government’s role, but none whatever regarding the State power to control immigration, before offering:

In light of the predominance of federal immigration restrictions in modern times, it is easy to lose sight of the States’ traditional role in regulating immigration—and to over look their sovereign prerogative to do so. I accept as a given that State regulation is excluded by the Constitution when (1) it has been prohibited by a valid federal law, or (2) it conflicts with federal regulation—when, for example, it admits those whom federal regulation would exclude, or excludes those whom federal regulation would admit.

Possibility (1) need not be considered here: there is no federal law prohibiting the States’ sovereign power to exclude (assuming federal authority to enact such a law). The mere existence of federal action in the immigration area—and the so-called field preemption arising from that action, upon which the Court’s opinion so heavily relies, ante, at 9–11—cannot be regarded as such a prohibition.We are not talking here about a federal law prohibiting the States from regulating bubble-gum advertising, or even the construction of nuclear plants. We are talking about a federal law going to the core of state sovereignty: the power to exclude. Like elimination of the States’ other inherent sovereign power, immunity from suit, elimination of the States’ sovereign power to exclude requires that “Congress . . . unequivocally expres[s] its intent to abrogate,” …Implicit “field preemption” will not do.

…And it is an assault on logic to say that identifying a removable alien and holding him for federal determination of whether he should be removed “violates the principle that the removal process is entrusted to the discretion of the Federal Government,” … The State’s detention does not represent commencement of the removal process unless the Federal Government makes it so.

But that is not the most important point. The most important point is that, as we have discussed, Arizona is entitled to have “its own immigration policy”—including a more rigorous enforcement policy—so long as that does not conflict with federal law. The Court says, as though the point is utterly dispositive, that “it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain present in the United States,” … It is not a federal crime, to be sure. But there is no reason Arizona cannot make it a state crime for a removable alien (or any illegal alien, for that matter) to remain present in Arizona.

…The State’s whole complaint—the reason this law was passed and this case has arisen—is that the citizens of Arizona believe federal priorities are too lax. The State has the sovereign power to protect its borders more rigorously if it wishes, absent any valid federal prohibition. The Executive’s policy choice of lax federal enforcement does not constitute such a prohibition.

He  then concludes powerfully (emphasis mine):

…The President said at a news conference that the new program is “the right thing to do” in light of Congress’s failure to pass the Administration’s
proposed revision of the Immigration Act.7 Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of the Immigration Act that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.

…As is often the case, discussion of the dry legalities that are the proper object of our attention suppresses the very human realities that gave rise to the suit. Arizona bears the brunt of the country’s illegal immigration problem. Its citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants who invade their property, strain their social services, and even place their lives in jeopardy. Federal officials have been unable to remedy the problem,and indeed have recently shown that they are unwilling to do so. Thousands of Arizona’s estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants—including not just children but men and women under 30—are now assured immunity from enforcement, and will be able to compete openly with Arizona citizens for employment.

Arizona has moved to protect its sovereignty—not in contradiction of federal law, but in complete compliance with it. The laws under challenge here do not extend or revise federal immigration restrictions, but merely enforce those restrictions more effectively. If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State. I dissent.

Wednesday

20

June 2012

Overgovernment: Brown Thumb Edition

Written by , Posted in Big Government, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

Who knew that wanna-be tyrants bureaucrats hate plants?

Last August, Morrison’s front and back yards were filled with flowers in bloom, lemon, stevia, garlic chives, grapes, strawberries, apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, an apple tree, walnut tree, pecan trees and much more.

She got a letter from the city saying there had been a complaint about her yard.

She said she took pictures to meet with city inspectors, but they wouldn’t listen, so she invited them to her home so they could point out the problem areas.

“Everything, everything needs to go,” Morrison said they told her.

…She said she went to court on August 15, and the judge told them to come back in October. But the very next day, men were cutting down most of her plants.

They even cut down some of her trees -– ones that bore fruit and nuts -– and went up next to her house and basically removed everything in her front flower bed.

…Morrison said she had a problem at her last property with code enforcement, so this time, she read the ordinance, which says plants can’t be over 12-inches tall unless they’re used for human consumption. She made sure everything she grew could be eaten, which she told the inspectors.

“Every word out of their mouth was, ‘we don’t care,'” Morrison said.

…Morrison said she used many of the plants that were destroyed to treat her diabetes, high-blood pressure and arthritis.

“Not only are the plants my livelihood, they’re my food and I was unemployed at the time and had no food left, no medicine left, and I didn’t have insurance,” Morrison said. “They took away my life and livelihood.”

But government protects the little guy! Government is so good, in fact, that we should hand it control over our personal health care. What could go wrong?

Less flippantly, this sort of tyranny is only possible because earlier governments have succeeded in devaluing economic and property rights. The New Deal era sold a scared public on the idea that economic liberty stood in the way of economic security. After some bullying, the Supreme Court then provided its rubber stamp. And so we’ve handed government control over the economy and anything that might rationally or irrationally be said to impact it in exchange for handouts and the illusion of fiscal security.

Economic and property rights, as this case demonstrates, are truly at the heart of all liberty. What manner of liberty can we be said to have if a citizen cannot grow sustenance from his or her own land? Other than life, I can think of no more basic liberty in all of human history than that of providing sustenance for oneself.

Thursday

14

June 2012

About Those Smartest Guys in the Room

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Culture & Society, Liberty & Limited Government, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

The left always seems to salivate at the idea of setting a lot of really smart people loose on society’s problems. And don’t get me wrong, a lot of them are indeed really smart people. Yet no matter how many times the top-down central planning approach is tried, it fails. Some interesting research might shed light, in part, on why that is:

When people face an uncertain situation, they don’t carefully evaluate the information or look up relevant statistics. Instead, their decisions depend on a long list of mental shortcuts, which often lead them to make foolish decisions.

…A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology led by Richard West at James Madison University and Keith Stanovich at the University of Toronto suggests that, in many instances, smarter people are more vulnerable to these thinking errors. Although we assume that intelligence is a buffer against bias—that’s why those with higher S.A.T. scores think they are less prone to these universal thinking mistakes—it can actually be a subtle curse.

…The results were quite disturbing. For one thing, self-awareness was not particularly useful: as the scientists note, “people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.” This finding wouldn’t surprise Kahneman, who admits in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” that his decades of groundbreaking research have failed to significantly improve his own mental performance. “My intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy”—a tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task—“as it was before I made a study of these issues,” he writes.

Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves. Although the bias blind spot itself isn’t a new concept, West’s latest paper demonstrates that it applies to every single bias under consideration, from anchoring to so-called “framing effects.” In each instance, we readily forgive our own minds but look harshly upon the minds of other people.

And here’s the upsetting punch line: intelligence seems to make things worse. The scientists gave the students four measures of “cognitive sophistication.” As they report in the paper, all four of the measures showed positive correlations, “indicating that more cognitively sophisticated participants showed larger bias blind spots.” This trend held for many of the specific biases, indicating that smarter people (at least as measured by S.A.T. scores) and those more likely to engage in deliberation were slightly more vulnerable to common mental mistakes.

And this is just part of the reason why getting a bunch of smart people into a room to direct the affairs of everyone else has never worked. But even without these mental errors, the truth is that there is just too much information for any person or group of people to consume to properly make such decisions. Decentralized decision making simply works better.

But what really galls me is how questioning the get-the-smartest-people-in-a-room approach always solicits accusations of being anti-intellectual. I am a smart person according to various objective measures conducted over the years, and more importantly in my opinion, I constantly seek to learn and acquire out new information. But unlike some of my peers, I don’t believe my intelligence makes me qualified to tell everyone else how to live, nor able to solve all of the nation’s problems if only I were given the kind of broad power desired by those on the left.

The people who try to control us for our own good may be smart, but they are not wise enough to realize their own limitations. This is why it is so important to limit their powers and ensure that individuals retain as much freedom as possible to make their own decisions.

Sunday

10

June 2012

Justice Should Be the Priority

Written by , Posted in The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

The Florida Innocence Commission was established in 2009 by the State Supreme Court “to conduct a comprehensive study of the causes of wrongful convictions and of measures to prevent such convictions.” Seem like a reasonable objective to me. The Commission cost $200,000, a more than reasonable price for checking a potential source of government abuse. But Florida’s Governor Rick Scott disagrees, and has defunded the commission.

Providing for criminal justice is an legitimate and vital function of government, and states spend a lot of money doing just that. Many conservatives believe that it is enough to be “tough on crime,” and the stance seems to appeal to most voters. But conservatives should do better than just taking a simplistic, populist approach if it means creating new problems, and if better approaches exist. It’s good to be tough on crime as a general matter, but that can’t involve just taking a blindly aggressive approach to all things criminal justice, otherwise you end up with a system full of abuses and which is tough on both criminals and non-criminals alike.

Since 1973, there have been 23 Florida death row inmates released after evidence emerged to call their guilt into question. It costs a lot of money to process, house and exhaust the legal appeals of a death row inmate, never minding the impact on their civil liberties, and someone truly interested in leading a small, fiscally responsible government should welcome the opportunity to make a tiny investment if it means identifying sources of injustice in the justice system, so that future wrongful convictions can be avoided.

Police, prosecutors and judges are agents of the state. They posses tremendous power over the lives of citizens, and like any state power there is significant potential for abuse. Spending $200,000 to look at whether that power is being applied accurately shouldn’t be too much to ask, and is as smart an investment fiscally as it is the moral and right thing to do.

Friday

8

June 2012

"Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others"

Written by , Posted in Culture & Society, Identity Politics, The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

Americans like to believe that we are all equal before the law. It wasn’t always that way. White landowners once had special privileges. But slavery has been eliminated and suffrage extended to all citizens. Sure, some folks find exceptions and room for impreovement, but by and large we think the law gives us all the same status – that protections granted to one are granted to all.

That is not the case.

From those old days of slavery and limited voting rights, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. You see, there are such things as “protected classes” which receive special rights and considerations vis-à-vis the rest of society. If you belong to such a class, the law gives you additional protections. Sound unAmerican? You betcha.

Consider this story about a professional photographer forced to provide their services for a gay couple’s commitment ceremony, even though they didn’t want to (making a lie of the voluntary part of the voluntary exchange we typically think resides at the heart of a free society). I could easily go on about how this is a fundamental violation of private property rights and a form of enslavement to compel such use of another’s labor against their will. I could. But what really struck me was this passage:

The Alliance Defense Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based legal alliance of Christian attorneys and others that represented the studio, plans to appeal. Elane Photography argued that it provided discretionary, unique and expressive services that aren’t a public accommodation under the Human Rights Act.

The studio asked hypothetically whether an African-American photographer would be required to photograph a Ku Klux Klan rally.

The court responded: “The Ku Klux Klan is not a protected class. Sexual orientation, however, is protected.”

There you have it. It’s bad enough that you can be forced into service for anyone, but that you can for some and not others seems to make it much worse.

I bet you didn’t know that the Declaration really said that ” all men are created equal, except for gays, women and minorities, who belong to protected classes.” According to this court, some Americans get more rights than others. Four legs are good, you see, but two legs are better.

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About Me

profileI serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.

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