Tag Archives: freedom

Congressman Colin Allred (D, TX) Makes the Case

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The good Congressman tried to make the case for HR1 in his Letter to the Thursday Wall Street Journal

What HR1 does is simple: it sets national standards for access to vote by mail, early voting, and voter registration so that our democracy isn’t radically different from state to state.

HR1 also nationalizes a number of other aspects of voting currently set by the individual States (as well as giving the Federal government veto authority over any moves a State might make in contradiction, but that’s an extra little fillip).

Unwittingly, though, the Progressive-Democratic Party Representative from Texas has made a critical aspect of the case against HR1.

Our 50 States do not exist merely as counties to the central government, existing solely for the convenience of enforcing laws handed down from the center. They are, instead, 50 different, enthusiastic, ongoing experiments in democracy. The good citizens of Maine have different imperatives than those of Illinois or Texas, and those citizens have different imperatives than those of California or Oregon.

And that’s a core strength of our nation.

An Oxymoron Constitutional Amendment

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That’s what the Illinois State legislature wants to inflict on the State’s citizens. That body has passed a State Constitution amendment proposal, at union behest, that would

guarantee a ““fundamental right to organize and to bargain collectively,” including for better wages, hours, working conditions….

Never mind that that right already exists in our nation’s Constitution via the 1st Amendment’s Freedom of Assembly clause and the Supreme Court’s NAACP v Alabama ruling, which extended “speech” to include association and extended both to the State level.

That’s not the end of it, though. The legislature’s proposed amendment also says that

no law would be allowed to block labor agreements from “requiring membership in an organization as a condition of employment.”

That is a blatant violation of citizens’, and of a citizen’s, freedom of association—and of their speech rights by requiring them to associate with others in order to speak of certain things.

The thing will go to the citizens of Illinois in 2022, and it’s one more illustration of Illinois’ governmental dysfunction.

Race as a Discriminant of Merit

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A Wall Street Journal editorial gets at this as the editors urge the Supreme Court to take up Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard, a case in which Harvard uses race explicitly as a meritorious discriminant for admission.

Harvard personnel actually insist they aren’t discriminating against Americans of Asian descent; they’re merely favoring Americans with black or brown skin. Anyone not chewing the halls’ ivy can see the obvious disingenuousness of that claim; the WSJ‘s editors are entirely correct to push the Court to take up the case.

The larger stakes are whether the Supreme Court will wink as America divides in ways that have proved so destructive in the past.

And

In America today the principle that drove the civil-rights movement—equality for all—is fast giving way to the view that race must be a dominant factor in every decision from college admission to eligibility for a federal farm program to the makeup of corporate boards to who gets priority for a Covid vaccine.

But then the editors wander astray.

It is true that the racial discrimination alleged in Harvard isn’t the same as that of the Jim Crow South. In that era federal government intervention was required to break the state-enforced discrimination against black Americans. Race preferences were rooted then in the false claim of African-American inferiority.
No one thinks Harvard is discriminating because of animosity toward Asian-Americans, much less because it believes they are inferior.

The discrimination is so closely related, though, as to be a conjoined Siamese twin of Jim Crow. Harvard management personnel are setting race-based preference in favor of blacks, rather than against them, precisely because those school managers still believe the claim of African-American inferiority; the school’s management personnel still believe[] [blacks] are inferior.

Demanding Surrender

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While Hamas increases its terrorist rocket attacks on Israel’s population centers—explicitly targeting civilian women and children with the targeting—and Israel increases its active defense against Hamas’ terrorism—while at the same time, warning the occupants of targeted buildings, including the terrorists therein, of the impending attacks—the Biden-Harris administration is stepping up its pressure on the Israeli government to come to a cease fire.

Since it isn’t possible for the Israelis to contemplate a cease fire until the terrorists cease firing, this amounts to Biden-Harris pressure on Netanyahu to surrender to Hamas.

This is a despicable Progressive-Democrat betrayal of our strongest ally in the Middle East and one of our strongest allies anywhere in the world—especially since Hamas’ purpose, and that of Hamas’ master, Iran, is not to force Israel to give them anything, but to achieve the utter destruction of Israel and the extermination of Jews. That purpose is well-known to the Progressive-Democrats, but it doesn’t matter to them.

At least, though, Biden-Harris is setting an example for Netanyahu. Biden-Harris has lifted bars to construction of Nordstream 2 and removed associated sanctions against Russian companies and government officials—ze’s own abject surrender to Russia.

It’s telling that Biden-Harris’ meekness in front of Vladimir Putin comes on the heels of a Russian entity hacking into a major US oil pipeline and shutting down 45% of the fuel deliveries to the east coast—until tribute ransom was paid (itself a disgusting display of abject cowardice that only increases the danger to us all).

Update: He’s gone ahead and done it. Biden has forced Netanyahu to call an end to Israel’s defense against Hamas’ terrorist attacks by agreeing an unconditional cease-fire, ostensibly brokered by Egypt (which has brokered similar deals in the past).

With this cease-fire, Israel has been forced to call off its active defense before it has reduced Hamas’ ability to assault Israeli women and children ever again.

Oh, when Biden announced the agreement, he had many pretty words about the US always standing with Israel, many flowery phrases nicely averring Israel’s right to defend itself.

But the bottom line is that Israel has been forced by Biden to stop defending itself before its task was finished, before Israel had achieved its goals of destroying Hamas’ weapons caches and launch facilities and of eliminating Hamas’ terrorist leaders.

Basing Options

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It seems the Pentagon is only now beginning to think about where to put the soldiers we’re withdrawing from Afghanistan. (I hope some consideration is starting to be given to the equipment, too, rather than just abandoning it to the Afghanis.)

As some of you might expect, I have a thought.

Maybe work a basing deal with Vietnam (we need one of those for our Navy, too).

Alternatively, or in addition, work a basing deal with India, for its far northeast. The states of Sikkim and Assam come to mind.