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liberty Archive

Tuesday

12

March 2013

0

COMMENTS

Is There a Fundamental or Unalienable Right to Homeschool?

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Education, Liberty & Limited Government

Do parents have the rights to educate their own children? That’s the question at the heart of an ongoing legal battle between the Obama administration and a German couple who sought, and were originally granted, political asylum in the US on the grounds that Germany’s ban on homeschooling was a violation of their rights, and that being forced to return home would subject them to persecution. Reason covered the issue rather thoroughly in this video:

After a judge originally granted the couple’s request, noting that Germany’s policy was “utterly repellent to everything we believe as Americans,” the Obama administration naturally stepped up to defend the indefensible, claiming that homeschooling is “not a fundamental right.”

This is an outrageous assertion. There are few rights more fundamental than that of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. The US Supreme Court has afforded parental rights the respect they deserve, noting in Pierce v. Society of Sisters that “the child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right and the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

Given its views on power in general, I suppose it shouldn’t be all that surprising to see the Obama administration disagree. Parental authority is, after all, in direct competition with that of the state, and is an important and necessary check against the growth of tyranny. It’s no coincidence that a Nazi-era German law is at issue here. Affording the state the unique power to indoctrinate the next generation with its own propaganda, without competition or recourse, is a serious threat to basic human liberty, and is also why we need to do a lot more than the basic minimum of allowing home or private schooling in the US. We need to end government monopoly schooling across the country and replace it with a system of choice, not only to improve educational outcomes, but also in defense of our liberty.

Wednesday

20

June 2012

1

COMMENTS

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.

Friday

8

June 2012

0

COMMENTS

"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.

Monday

4

June 2012

3

COMMENTS

Obama Continues Cynical Campaign of Division, Trots Out Unequal Gender Pay Myth

Written by , Posted in Economics & the Economy, Free Markets, The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

In a cynical, dishonest and divisive effort to boost his flailing campaign and distract from the latest jobs report reflecting his dismal economic record, President Obama is trumping the Paycheck Fairness Act (or as I like to call it, the Trial Lawyer Payout Enhancement Act), a new onerous regulatory regime which will benefit trial lawyers at the expense of businesses and the economy, and which is based on the discredited premise that women earn less than men for equal work.

The administration propaganda machine is now offering e-cards that you can send to annoy your friends and remind everyone you know that America is still an awful, sexist country. Here is an example:

Notice the fundamental dishonesty here. A “typical 25-year-old woman” is not the same as “a typical 25-year-old man.” Women are more risk-averse, make different career choices, work different hours and value different rewards. So why should they be expected to earn the same?

Individuals draw paychecks, not identity groups, and it is their individual choices which determine what that pay check is. Men, for instance, work in more dangerous jobs and, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010 (the most recent year for which data is available) were 12 times more likely to die from work-related injuries than women. Should we also create a new government agency to randomly kill enough female workers each year until this grisly inequality is eliminated? The BLS American Time Use Survey also reveals that men work more hours, even when only looking at those with full-time jobs, averaging 8.2 hours per workday for men compared to 7.8 for women.

When actually looking at the facts, it is rather ridiculous to look just at average pay for full-time men and women and conclude that any difference is necessarily the result of discrimination, as the feminists do whenever they trot out the context-less “pay gap.” Even the White House has in the past acknowledged these facts by observing that men choose to work in higher paying fields than women (many of which are higher paying because they are deadly, as evidenced above).

In fact, when comparing apples to apples, women often come out ahead:

When you compare apples to apples, the so-called wage gap disappears. Young, childless, single urban women earn 8 percent more than their male counterparts. Women who have never had a child earn 113 percent of what men earn. Unmarried college-educated males between the ages of 40 and 64 earn nearly 15 percent less than their female counterparts.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, in other words, is based on a faulty premise. Men earn more on average because they choose, on average, to work in riskier jobs, work longer hours, and are also more likely to negotiate salaries and ask for raises. That’s not discrimination; It’s individuals making free choices in a free society. This is not jut my own conclusion, but also that of Obama’s own Deparment of Labor:

“This study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.”

Unfortunately, the faulty premise behind the Paycheck Fairness Act is not its only problem.  Aside from being unnecessary, the law would have significant negative consequences if enacted. The Wall Street Journal explains:

The law automatically lists women as plaintiffs in class actions when lawyers sue employers, thereby requiring female employees to opt-out of litigation with which they don’t agree. Businesses would be treated as guilty until shown to be innocent, having to prove in court that their pay practices aren’t the result of workplace bias. The legislation contains no caps on damage awards, allowing plaintiffs to claim unlimited punitive damages even in cases of unintentional discrimination.

The bill is also a first step toward federal pay mandates. It requires the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to collect data from employers about how they compensate on the basis of sex, race and national origin. Government rarely collects data merely to put it in a vault. These numbers will form the basis of class-action suits and will invite regulators to issue federal compensation guidelines.

This is a bad law to treat a non-existent problem. Worse, it is being advanced solely for the purpose of further dividing Americans in order to elevate President Obama’s reelection campaign. Because he has no record worth running on, the President will continue dredging up every myth, fable and scare-story imaginable in order to hit on every perceived identity grievance in existence.

Friday

11

February 2011

0

COMMENTS

Egypt: Now Comes the Hard Part

Written by , Posted in Foreign Affairs & Policy

With news that Egyptian President Mubarak has finally stepped down after 30 years in power, freedom loving people the world over rejoiced. As a vociferous proponent of human liberty wherever humans may reside, I share in that joy. However, it’s important to realize that this is but a first, tiny step down the path to liberty, one which may well be followed by two steps back. The question the Egyptian people now face is this: What government do we wish to make for ourselves?

The last shot in the Revolutionary War, where Americans similarly decided they had been ruled by the same tyrant long enough, was not the end of our struggle but the beginning. What came next, while not as costly in terms of human lives, was arguably far more difficult; I’m talking about the task of establishing a lasting government of the people, and which would be their servant instead of their master.

Representative governments are hard work. Tyranny, oppression and poverty are the natural state of human affairs and not easily overcome. It takes more, much more, than just an election. Despotic countries the world over hold elections all the time. True representative government requires democratic institutions and civic culture. The people have to  live, breath and feel freedom not just for a few days or weeks, but for every moment of every day. As Ronald Reagan observed, even in the U.S., “freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction.”

The American Founding Fathers proved uniquely positioned in both place and time to capture a moment for freedom. They exhaustively debated the form of their new government, drawing upon centuries of wisdom, and carefully crafted a tapestry of freedom from the innumerable threads of knowledge spun over the centuries in the wheel of human history.  They then took their ideas to the people, recognizing that no government, however well designed, can be legitimate without the consent of the governed.

Are the Egyptian protesters prepared to make this long slog? Is their society ready for more than just elections, but the real cornerstones of democracy, like  tolerance and respect for the rights of fellow citizens, and civic participation? Or will they quietly fall back into old routines, accepting the authority of whatever figure emerges to fill the power void? They, like the American Founders, have a moment. What are they prepared to do with it?

Friday

14

January 2011

1

COMMENTS

A Shocking Poll!

Written by , Posted in Culture & Society

[A]ll experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Declaration of Independence

A CBS poll has found shocking results. It seems that 16% of the public thinks it is sometimes justified “to take violent action against the government,” including a full 28% of Republicans!

Wait, that’s not the shocking part. What’s shocking is that 76% of the public, and 64% of the dangerous, far-right, radical Republican party, thinks it is never justified to take violent action against the government.

This is absolutely amazing. Seventy-six percent of the citizens in a country that only exists due to the violent overthrow of an oppressive government thinks such action is never justified. Never.

I suppose they must think the Declaration of Independence reads thusly, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to complain nonviolently about such government.” Inspiring stuff.

The poll result would be understandable if the question premised that the government remained representative and the democratic process continued untarnished. Certainly violent action against the government is not justified just because one particular party won an election over another. But to say that violent action is never justified, with no qualification whatsoever, is ridiculously naive. Or maybe a cabal of Loyalists have remained active all these years, secretly growing their ranks and plotting their revenge.

Hat-tip: NRO