Tag Archives: freedom

A Start

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Thomas Duesterberg, a Hudson Institute Senior Fellow, proposed five steps for our Federal government to take to address the People’s Republic of China’s economy and growing technological prowess. They form the foundation for a good start in countering that nation’s rise against us.

• tighten export controls on technology and expertise related to AI or national defense. …also coordinate export controls with allies on semiconductor production and equipment

This should be expanded to include sourcing the raw materials, intermediate processed components, and finished products of any type from sources outside the PRC.

• work with Congress to limit Chinese access to US financing, with stronger outward investment controls and limited access to listing on American stock exchanges

This should include enforcing existing requirements that any company, foreign or domestic, must meet to be listed on an American exchange. Chief among these are that those listed must subject themselves to stringent American accounting practices and audits. The current requirements vis-à-vis PRC-domiciled companies listed or seeking listing are under discussion with the PRC; however, there is nothing to discuss here: either those companies satisfy, or they must be delisted or cannot be listed in the first place.

• impose sanctions on Chinese banks. Washington has largely not pursued them, though reporting indicates Chinese banks have facilitated and financed illicit commerce such as technology transfer to Russia, drug trafficking, and money-laundering, as well as the purchase of sanctioned Iranian and Russian oil

• show Chinese tech companies reciprocity. China effectively bars most American firms from its markets by either forbidding them or making entry contingent on ridiculous requirements, such as revealing source code. Washington should bar firms tit-for-tat, especially in response to intellectual property transfers demands from China

Not tit-for-tat, as that would work in both directions: were the PRC to reduce or drop those restrictions, we would then need reciprocate. The mistakes here are two: one is that the PRC cannot be trusted to stop its parallel…sub rosa…thefts of our companies’ source code, intellectual property, technologies. The second mistake is that we should be doing no economic business with the PRC in the first place.

• enlist allies in the fight. The administration has competing foreign-policy priorities, but limiting China’s ability to compensate for losing the US market would measurably enhance success

President Donald Trump’s (R) protectionist tariffs against friends and allies and others work at cross purposes with his foreign policy tariffs against the PRC (and against Russia, Iran, and northern Korea, albeit for these three the moves primarily are sanctions). Leaving aside the broader counterproductive nature of protectionism, such tariffs are counterproductive by reducing or eliminating the targeted nations’ incentive to work with us against the PRC, even with the PRC’s inimical practical and operational moves toward those friends and allies, and others.

In fine, more is needed for Duesterberg’s proposals. The PRC is an avowed—by it—enemy nation, committed to overcoming us economically, militarily, and so politically. The sort of steps proposed by Duesterberg need to be broadened in reach to address the entirety of the PRC economy, which would directly limit that nation’s military growth and improvement as well as its technology growth and improvement, which would indirectly limit its military. That, in turn, would limit its ability to overcome us politically.

There is, though, only so much our government can do by itself. Our private enterprises, small, medium, large, and international, need also to recognize the enmity the PRC has toward us and to recognize how much their own interactions with the PRC and with PRC-domiciled companies facilitate the PRC’s effort to dominate us. They need to move apace in withdrawing from those interactions and find non-PRC related sources for their production, from ores to processed ores to components for assembly to finished products. They need also to stop aiding and abetting the PRC through helping it develop its own technology base.

Rifles and the 2nd Amendment

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Sunday editorial, AR-15 Rifles and the Constitution, is centered on the potential for the Supreme Court to take up the question of whether AR-15s, and semi-automatic rifles in general, are protected by the 2nd Amendment of our Constitution. My commentary here is centered on Judge Harvie Wilkinson III, who wrote the 4th Circuit’s en banc opinion upholding a Maryland law that bans the sale and possession of “assault weapons.” He wrote that such rifles

fall outside the ambit of protection offered by the Second Amendment because, in essence, they are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.

He’s both factually wrong on this, and he, like activist judges before and alongside him, distort the 2nd Amendment’s protections to reinterpret that Amendment to say what he wants it to say rather than what it actually says. Here’s the actual text of the 2nd Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Wilkinson’s factual error: AR-15s and the like are not at all military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations. They were developed around the same time as the Army’s then-new M-16, but the latter was designed for full automatic use, whereas the AR-15s of the industry were designed explicitly for civilian use in civilian environments and are wholly incapable of (full) automatic operation. They require a brand new, subsequent, trigger pull in order to fire a second round—it’s a new trigger pull for each individual round that’s fired. The only automation in the sequence is the same as with any other semi-automatic firearm (pistols, for instance): it automatically chambers the next round.

Now for Wilkinson’s cynical redefinition reinterpretation of what the Amendment says. The amendment says in so many words—and in only those words—the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. There is not a syllable in that bar, not the veriest minim of a pen stroke, that gives the government any authority at all to say what our needs are in our keeping and bearing Arms. Wilkinson’s writing is nothing more than a power grab for government and an attempt to amend our Constitution from the bench by an activist judge.

But Wilkinson wasn’t done.

Compared to a handgun, the AR-15 is heavier, longer, harder to maneuver in tight quarters, less readily accessible in an emergency, and more difficult to operate with one hand[.]

This is wholly irrelevant and only cynically offered in his effort to rewrite our 2nd Amendment from his august bench. To repeat: Wilkinson, nor any other judge, has any authority to tell us what our needs are and to presume to limit us to those judge-manufactured needs.

On the other hand, Wilkinson’s entire argument in that last is an argument for legal keeping and bearing Uzis and machine pistols: those weapons are most assuredly lighter, shorter, easer to maneuver in tight quarters, more readily accessible in an emergency, and easier to operate with one hand than those judge-hated rifles.

This is an appellate decision that badly needs reversal by the Supreme Court and a stern admonition by that Court for judges who persist in entertaining such quibbles and outright distortions of our Constitution.

Intolerance and Frivolous Lawsuits

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Jack Phillips, owner/operator of Masterpiece Cakeshop, had yet another lawsuit against him dismissed, this one by the Colorado Supreme Court. Unfortunately, it was dismissed on the trivial technicality that it wasn’t filed correctly.

The Wall Street Journal editors ask the question

[W]hen will the progressive cultural police finally leave him alone?

As long as the courts—which includes our Supreme Court, whose ruling in Phillips’ favor in an earlier lawsuit was based narrowly on the animus of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission—continue rule to timidly, the intolerant progressives will continue to persecute Phillips and the rest of us Americans who won’t bow and scrape at their intolerant feet.

What’s necessary to put an end to progressive bigotry, at least in our courts, is to sanction such legally frivolous, but morally bigoted, lawsuits. The plaintiffs in such cases should be required to pay their persecution target all legal costs, which often is already the case, and they should be required to pay the damages identified by the plaintiff. Further, the lawyers and their employing law firms—which do not have to be a party to such…frivolity—need themselves to be heavily sanctioned: the lawyer(s) fined steeply, beginning with 10% of their top line income and moving up for each subsequent frivolous suit in which they might participate, and the law firms employing them fined similarly steeply.

Courts are justifiably reluctant to find against plaintiffs and plaintiff lawyers on the basis of their frivolous cases, but it’s been made crystalline by the persecution of Phillips that courts are being too timid here.

Should Folks Stand for the National Anthem?

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Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was asked that question, and she gave an answer that, at first blush (at least in this edited clip) seems a non sequitur. It was, but it needn’t have been had Harris actually understood the question and the significance and importance of our national anthem and of standing for it whenever it’s played. Her answer:

I think that one of the beautiful things about our country is that we were founded on certain principles that we articulated in 1776, that we are all to be treated as equals; we articulated those principles in our constitution. And part of what we decided that makes a fair and just and noble society is, in a democracy, a true democracy, is freedom of religion, freedom—right—to association, freedom to organize—first amendment. So, that is part of who we are as a country, and I will defend it to the core, which is that we give people certain choices in our country.

Her words are muddled, but in context, I think are substantially correct (leaving aside that we’re not a true democracy, but a republican democracy, but that’s a distinction for another time), but her problem—the Left’s problem, our problem, our nation’s free speech problem—is that Harris doesn’t understand why her muddled words are correct. That context of her lack of understanding makes her words, counterintuitively to be sure, wrong.

Her words themselves are consistent with accuracy for two reasons. The first is where she didn’t directly answer the question. Yes, I answer for her, folks should stand, and face our flag or face in its direction, hats off, hand over heart, or salute if in uniform, for our national anthem. Doing so shows respect for the symbol of our nation, respect for our nation itself, respect for all of those who’ve fought under our flag in defense of our nation, and especially for those who have been killed or maimed in that defense.

That’s what makes possible the intent of Harris’ fuddled words: not standing cannot be a protest of anything if standing is not a requirement, of respect if not of law. Absent that requirement, there is no counter; there is nothing to protest.

What Happens…

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…when government is the definer of a citizen’s, or of citizens’, rights? One outcome is illustrated by this particular enumeration of rights granted by Government:

The Fundamental Rights and Obligations of Citizens

Citizenship
Voting requirements
Freedom of speech, press, assembly
Religious freedom
Freedom of person
Freedom from insult
Inviolability of the home
Privacy of correspondence
Right to petition the state
Right and duty to work
Right to rest
Protection of retirement
Protection of old, ill, disabled
Right to and duty of education
Right to pursue art, science
Equal rights for women
Protection of marriage and family
Protection of Chinese while overseas

That list of Government-created and -granted rights is then followed and superseded by this:

When exercising their freedoms and rights, citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall not undermine the interests of the state, society or collectives, or infringe upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.

What Government giveth, Government taketh away. In the same breath in this case. As is apparent from that last clause, this is what the constitution of the People’s Republic of China does.

This is the risk we run as we allow to our government increasing authority to define our needs, our purposes—our rights.