Tag Archives: freedom

Some Thoughts on Conservatism

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Jennifer Rubin has some.  For instance,

The old guard has become convinced that Reagan’s solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism—not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era.

And

The Republican Party may survive, but only if its politicians, activists, donors and intellectuals rethink modern conservatism and find new issues to defend and new arguments with which to defend them.

There is nothing at all temporal about conservative values.  Nor is there need to “rethink modern conservatism—” which is simply a figment of her imagination—or to find “new issues to defend.”  Conservative principles of limited government, low taxes and government spending, and personal freedom and responsibility, which are the principles Reagan espoused (they were not “Reagan’s solutions” are timeless.  Rubin managed to pack two false premises into those remarks.

Then there’s this:

Even after Obama’s reelection, Reagan-era conservatives have scorned any challenge to the party’s status quo, conducting search-and-destroy missions against ideological deviations from the Reagan playbook.

And

After the top sliver of the Bush-era tax cuts expired, tax increases could not be part of a budget because, as we know, Republicans are opposed to taxes.  Same-sex marriage must be opposed, because Republicans defend “traditional marriage.”  And despite Reagan’s spearheading of immigration reform in 1986, Republicans have to oppose that, too, because theirs is the party of law and order.

These are Rubin’s straw men; it’s her responsibility to defend them, no one else’s.  Except the no more tax increases part: limited government—which demands shrinking the one we have—is, as noted above, a rather timeless Conservative principle.

…principles that voters had rejected in two national elections.

Really?  Voters voted them up in the last two elections in which I participated.  Conservatives made serious gains in Congress and in state legislatures and governor’s houses in both, and they lost fewer Congressional seats than normal in a Presidential election in the last one.  I’d say Conservatives are continuing to gain ground—on our timeless principles.

The rest of Rubin’s piece is just more of this.

Conservative principles of small, limited government, low taxes and tax rates, limited Federal spending, and an emphasis on personal freedom and responsibility—with that limited government as a last resort, not a first—are as valid today as they were in 1790.

Rubin is arguing from straw men and false premises.  As long as she insists on doing this, she isn’t just wrong, she’s irrelevant.

The Convenience of Government

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President Barack Obama has decided to appeal last fall’s ruling of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that invalidated his “recess” appointments of three people to the NLRB.  The Court ruled that since the Senate wasn’t in recess, the appointments were unconstitutional and so invalid.

Obama’s grounds for appeal would be laughable if the matter weren’t so serious.  He

urged the Supreme Court to rule that presidents have broad authority to make certain appointments without Senate approval.

This from a Lecturer in Constitutional law.  Presidents have the authority to “make certain appointments” that the Constitution gives them, and not a particle more.

He, through his Solicitor General Donald Verrilli,

defended the recess appointment powers of the president, disputing the court’s conclusion that it can only be used in the period between formal sessions of the Senate.

Sorry, Ace, “in recess” means in recess, not on lunch break, and not any period a president finds convenient.  What part of the DC Circuit’s writing on this is unclear to you?  After all, it was written in plain language with simple words:

…the inescapable conclusion that the Framers intended something specific by the term “the Recess,” and that it was something different than a generic break in proceedings [an adjournment].
…
The natural interpretation of the [Recess Appointments] Clause is that the Constitution is noting a difference between “the Recess” and the “Session.”  Either the Senate is in session, or it is in the recess.  If it has broken for three days within an ongoing session, it is not in “the Recess.”

Then ObamaVerilli included in his brief this gem:

If the appeals court ruling was left to stand, it would “dramatically curtail” the president’s authority[.]

Well, yeah.  That’s sort of the point, given how far you’ve overstepped your authority.

Finally, this laugher:

The ruling “threatens a significant disruption of the federal government’s operations[.]”

You just don’t seem to get it, Ace.  The convenience of government does not take precedence over the Constitution.

Some Remarks on Terrorism

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Congressman Tom Cotton (R, AR) had some on the House floor earlier this week.

I rise today to express grave doubts about the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism policies and programs.  Counterterrorism is often shrouded in secrecy, as it should be, so let us judge by the results.  In barely four years in office, five jihadists have reached their targets in the United States under Barack Obama: the Boston Marathon bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square Bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and in my own state—the Little Rock recruiting office shooter.  In the over seven years after 9/11 under George W Bush, how many terrorists reached their target in the United States?  Zero!  We need to ask, “Why is the Obama Administration failing in its mission to stop terrorism before it reaches its targets in the United States?”

Indeed.

Now couple this with Obama’s decision on Thursday, through his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to intervene in an FBI terrorist investigation by marching a Federal Magistrate into the surviving Boston Marathon terrorist’s hospital room, mid-questioning by the FBI, to Mirandize that terrorist.  Which terminated the FBI’s questioning of the terrorist.

Be Careful what you Wish For

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As the Wall Street Journal notes,

Video cameras played a critical role in helping authorities track suspects in this week’s Boston bombings.  Now calls for increased camera surveillance in the US are putting a spotlight on the technology and the debate about its use.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg bragged about that city’s surveillance system.  It can

alert police to abnormalities it detects on the street, such as an abandoned package that is left on a corner.

Charles Ramsey, Philadelphia Police Commissioner, said on Fox News Sunday:

It gives you that historical record.

But such a ubiquitous government-run surveillance system also can alert government to abnormalities of which it disapproves—like individual citizens taking part in “right-wing extremist” peaceful rallies and meetings.  And there’s that government record on us private citizens thing, again.

In the present case, though, the matter of the Boston Marathon bombing, whose cameras were they?  The government’s cameras were involved in the data collection and subsequent hunt, certainly.  However, so were thousands of privately owned still and video cameras—all those smart phone cameras in the hands of Marathon fans and other ordinary citizens just out taking care of their own business in the area.

It was private citizens’ imagery and private citizens’ eye witness reports (one injured witness: “he looked right at me” and the boat owner’s sighting and 911 call) that generated the imagery, descriptions, and location data that so thoroughly supported the hunt, the tracking, and the capture.

Does government, today, really need such a widespread surveillance system?  No doubt the government’s surveillance cameras were highly useful, too, in this incident.  A tool for keeping track of the citizenry that’s in government hands, though, is subject to misuse, even if the tracking is for the best of reasons, as our government might assure us.  A tool for tracking one’s neighbors—or strangers—in private hands is subject to misuse, also, certainly.

Think, though, about which misuse is capable of the greater damage.

Think, also, about the extant government abuse of its surveillance capability.  Already, for instance, the present administration (and both national political parties) are scraping social media for personally identifying data for government (and party) purposes.  The IRS already is asserting its authority to read, without a court’s order, private email as part of its investigations (while denying it actually does so).  Do we need government actively tracking us private citizens?

Hmm….

The Boston Lockdown

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While the second terrorist in the Boston Marathon bombing still was being hunted, Boston and a number of surrounding suburbs were put on lockdown, as police recommended (strongly) that everyone should stay indoors while they searched for the terrorist, a terrorist who, as it turns out, had escaped the perimeter the police had set up to enclose a small part of the city.

During that lockdown, Boston took a number of hits, and so I have some thoughts about the pros and cons of the matter.

  • Pros:
    • easier to spot the terrorist on the move (which the police never did)
    • clearer lines of fire should they need to engage
  • Cons:
    • citizens were unable to participate in the manhunt, even though part of a citizen’s duty is to aid the police
    • citizens were unable to go about their own business, except at government behest
    • economic activity in the city came to a halt for the duration
    • a “go inside and hide” mentality makes it easier for a government to dominate its people

The city and people of Boston took hits from the impairment of their individual freedoms (this time, brief) and to their economic activity (this time, both brief and local).  In the end, too, the lockdown contributed very little to the actual tracking and capture of the remaining terrorist.

There are a couple of things about this: for one, these now are tools for subsequent terrorists in their subsequent activities.  On an individual basis, the loss to Boston and to Bostonians was small—but scaled up, with terrorists now acting so as to prompt further lockdowns, the losses can easily mount to a scope far beyond the reach of any physical terrorist act or collection of them done in concert.  Disruptions to our lives get us dancing to the terrorists’ tune as surely as actually killing us.

Widespread lockdowns also get us in the habit of letting the government corral us, for our own good.

Keep in mind Benjamin Franklin’s warning:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, will have neither Liberty nor Safety.

Although the warning might be hard for some to understand, it being older than one hundred years.