"Some people believe that being pro-choice is being on the side of freedom. I've never understood how an act of violence, killing a human being, albeit a small one in a special place, is portrayed as a precious right. To speak only of the mother's cost in carrying a baby to term ignores all thought of any legal rights of the unborn. I believe that the moral consequence of cavalierly accepting abortion diminishes the value of all life.
It is now widely accepted that there's a constitutional right to abort a human fetus. Of course, the Constitution says nothing about abortion, murder, manslaughter, or any other acts of violence. There are only four crimes listed in the Constitution: counterfeiting, piracy, treason, and slavery. Criminal and civil laws were deliberately left to the states. It's a giant leap for the federal courts to declare abortion a constitutional right and overrule all state laws regulating the procedure. If anything, the federal government has a responsibility to protect life- not grant permission to destroy it.
....
Almost all regulations by the federal government to protect us from ourselves (laws against smoking, bans on narcotics, and mandatory seat belts, for example) are readily supported by the left/liberals who demand "choice." Of course, to the pro-choice group, the precious choice we debate is limited to the mother and not to the unborn.
The fact is that the fetus has legal rights - inheritance, a right not to be injured or aborted by unwise medical treatment, violence, or accidents. Ignoring these rights is arbitrary and places relative rights on a small, living human being. The only issue that should be debated is the moral one: whether or not a fetus has any right to life. Scientifically, there's no debate over whether the fetus is alive and human - if not killed, it matures into an adult human being. It is that simple. So the time line of when we consider a fetus "human" is arbitrary after conception, in my mind." -Pages 1-3 of Liberty Defined
Showing posts with label Federal Government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Federal Government. Show all posts
Monday, September 12, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
"An argument we hear even now is that a hundred years ago..."
"An argument we hear even now is that a hundred years ago, when the federal government was far smaller than it is today, people were much poorer and worked in less desirable conditions, while today, with a much larger federal government and far more regulation in place, people are much more prosperous. This is a classic case of the post hoc, ergo proper hoc fallacy. This fallacy is committed whenever we carelessly assume that because outcome B occurred after action A, then B was caused by A. If people are more prosperous today, that must be because government saved them from the ravages of the free market.
But that is nonsense. Of course people were less prosperous a hundred years ago, but not for the reason fashionable opinion assumes. Compared to today, the American economy was starved for capital. The economy's productive capacity was miniscule by today's standards, and therefore very few goods per capita could be produced. The vast bulk of the population had to make do with much less than we take for granted today because so little could be produced. All the laws and regulations in the world cannot overcome constraints imposed by reality itself. No matter how much we tax the rich to redistribute the wealth, in a capital-starved economy there is an extremely limited amount of wealth to redistribute.
The only way to increase everyone's standard of living is by increasing the amount of capital per worker. Additional capital makes workers more productive, which means they can produce more goods than before. When our economy becomes physically capable of producing vastly more goods, their abundance makes them more affordable in terms of dollars (if the Federal Reserve isn't inflating the money supply). Soaking the rich works for only so long: the rich eventually wise up and decide to hide their income, move away or stop working so much. But investing in capital makes everyone better off. It is the only way we can all become wealthier. We are wealthier today because our economy is physically capable of producing so much more at far lower costs. And that's why, just from a practical point of view, it is foolish to levy taxes along any step of this process, because doing so sabotages the only way wealth can be created for everyone." -Pages 93 & 94 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
But that is nonsense. Of course people were less prosperous a hundred years ago, but not for the reason fashionable opinion assumes. Compared to today, the American economy was starved for capital. The economy's productive capacity was miniscule by today's standards, and therefore very few goods per capita could be produced. The vast bulk of the population had to make do with much less than we take for granted today because so little could be produced. All the laws and regulations in the world cannot overcome constraints imposed by reality itself. No matter how much we tax the rich to redistribute the wealth, in a capital-starved economy there is an extremely limited amount of wealth to redistribute.
The only way to increase everyone's standard of living is by increasing the amount of capital per worker. Additional capital makes workers more productive, which means they can produce more goods than before. When our economy becomes physically capable of producing vastly more goods, their abundance makes them more affordable in terms of dollars (if the Federal Reserve isn't inflating the money supply). Soaking the rich works for only so long: the rich eventually wise up and decide to hide their income, move away or stop working so much. But investing in capital makes everyone better off. It is the only way we can all become wealthier. We are wealthier today because our economy is physically capable of producing so much more at far lower costs. And that's why, just from a practical point of view, it is foolish to levy taxes along any step of this process, because doing so sabotages the only way wealth can be created for everyone." -Pages 93 & 94 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"...government intervention into the economy cannot be...."
"...government intervention into the economy cannot be assumed to be good and welcome and just.
But that is how it is portrayed in too many of our American history classrooms. It is not unusual for American students to find their textbooks telling them that injustice was everywhere before the federal government, motivated by nothing but a deep commitment to the public good, intervened to save them from the wickedness of the free market. Alleged "monopolies" dictated prices to hapless consumers. Laborers were forced to accept every-lower wages. And thanks to their superior economic position, giant corporations effortlessly parried the attempts of anyone foolish enough to try and compete with them.
Every single aspect of this story is false, though of course this version of our history continues to be peddled and believed. I don't blame people for believing it - it's the only rendition of events they're told of, unless by some fluke they have learned where to look for the truth. But there is an agenda behind this silly comic-book version of history: to make people terrified of the "unfettered" free market, and to condition them to accept the ever-growing burdens that the political class imposes on the private sector as an unchangeable aspect of life that exists for their own good." -Pages 92 & 93 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
But that is how it is portrayed in too many of our American history classrooms. It is not unusual for American students to find their textbooks telling them that injustice was everywhere before the federal government, motivated by nothing but a deep commitment to the public good, intervened to save them from the wickedness of the free market. Alleged "monopolies" dictated prices to hapless consumers. Laborers were forced to accept every-lower wages. And thanks to their superior economic position, giant corporations effortlessly parried the attempts of anyone foolish enough to try and compete with them.
Every single aspect of this story is false, though of course this version of our history continues to be peddled and believed. I don't blame people for believing it - it's the only rendition of events they're told of, unless by some fluke they have learned where to look for the truth. But there is an agenda behind this silly comic-book version of history: to make people terrified of the "unfettered" free market, and to condition them to accept the ever-growing burdens that the political class imposes on the private sector as an unchangeable aspect of life that exists for their own good." -Pages 92 & 93 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
"How, by the way, did we ever let ourselves..."
"How, by the way, did we ever let ourselves be talked into such a thing? The income tax was first proposed for several reasons. The tariff, from which the federal government received most of its funding, was for a variety of reasons bringing in a decreased revenue. At the same time, federal expenditures were going up, thanks in part to an increase in the military budget.
An alternative had to be found. At the time, many Americans viewed the tariff as an unfair tax that burdened them as consumers and benefited big business by sheltering it from foreign competition. A tax on incomes, the argument went, would at last force the rich to pay their share. And that's just how the income tax was pitched to the people: tax relief for you, in the form of lower tariffs, and a tax increase for the rich. Do not worry, people were told. Only the richest of the rich will ever pay the income tax.
That phony promise didn't last long. Within a few years, tax rates had shot through the roof, and classes of people who had thought they would never be taxed found themselves paying as well. And by the 1920s the tariff was raised again anyway, so the people wound up getting the worst of both worlds." -Page 80 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
An alternative had to be found. At the time, many Americans viewed the tariff as an unfair tax that burdened them as consumers and benefited big business by sheltering it from foreign competition. A tax on incomes, the argument went, would at last force the rich to pay their share. And that's just how the income tax was pitched to the people: tax relief for you, in the form of lower tariffs, and a tax increase for the rich. Do not worry, people were told. Only the richest of the rich will ever pay the income tax.
That phony promise didn't last long. Within a few years, tax rates had shot through the roof, and classes of people who had thought they would never be taxed found themselves paying as well. And by the 1920s the tariff was raised again anyway, so the people wound up getting the worst of both worlds." -Page 80 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"What we should work toward, however, is abolishing...."
"What we should work toward, however, is abolishing the income tax and replacing it not with a national sales tax, but with nothing. Right now the federal government is funded by excise taxes, corporate income tax, payroll taxes, the individual income tax, and miscellaneous other sources. Abolishing the income tax on individuals would cut government revenue by about 40 percent. I have heard the breathless claims about how radical that is - and compared to the trivial changes we are accustomed to seeing in the government, I suppose it is. But in absolute terms, is it really so radical? In order to imagine what it would be like to live in a country with a federal budget 40% lower than the federal budget of 2007, it would be necessary to go all the way back to.... 1997.
Would it really be so hard to imagine living in 1997 again? In return, we would have an economy so robust and dynamic that it would doubtless shatter even my own optimistic expectations. And we would once and for all have repudiated the totalitarian assumptions at the heart of the income tax." -Pages 79 & 80 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
Would it really be so hard to imagine living in 1997 again? In return, we would have an economy so robust and dynamic that it would doubtless shatter even my own optimistic expectations. And we would once and for all have repudiated the totalitarian assumptions at the heart of the income tax." -Pages 79 & 80 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"Alexis de Tocqueville was very impressed..."
"Alexis de Tocqueville was very impressed, when he visited our country in the nineteenth century, to see how many voluntary associations Americans had formed in order to achieve common goals. "The political associations which exist in the United States are only a single feature in the midst of the immense assemblage of associations in that country," he wrote. "Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the Government in France, or man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association." De Tocqueville admired "the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United States succeed in proposing a common object to the exertions of a great many men, and in getting them voluntarily to pursue it."
That may be all well and good for the arts and the like, some may say, but private efforts could never substitute for gigantic government budgets for various forms of welfare. But private assistance would not need to match these budgets dollar for dollar. As much as 70 percent of welfare budgets has been eaten up by bureaucracy. Moreover, government programs are far more easily abused, and the money they dispense more readily becomes a destructive habit, than with more local or private forms of assistance.
Why would we expect a system based on legal plunder, as ours is, to be a net benefit to the poor or middle class, in whose name so many government schemes are enacted? Every one of the special benefits, on behalf of which hundreds of millions of dollars are expended on lobbyists every year, makes goods more expensive, companies less efficient and competitive, and the economy more sluggish. Given that the politically influential and well connected- neither of which includes the middle class or the poor- are the ones who tend to win privileges and loot from government, I do not understand why we take for granted that the net result of all this looting is good for those who are lower on the economic ladder. And when the loot is paid for by printing more money and causing inflation, which (as I show in the chapter on money) disproportionately harms the most vulnerable, the suggestions that the least prosperous are helped by all this intervention collapses into outright farce." -Pages 75 & 76 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
That may be all well and good for the arts and the like, some may say, but private efforts could never substitute for gigantic government budgets for various forms of welfare. But private assistance would not need to match these budgets dollar for dollar. As much as 70 percent of welfare budgets has been eaten up by bureaucracy. Moreover, government programs are far more easily abused, and the money they dispense more readily becomes a destructive habit, than with more local or private forms of assistance.
Why would we expect a system based on legal plunder, as ours is, to be a net benefit to the poor or middle class, in whose name so many government schemes are enacted? Every one of the special benefits, on behalf of which hundreds of millions of dollars are expended on lobbyists every year, makes goods more expensive, companies less efficient and competitive, and the economy more sluggish. Given that the politically influential and well connected- neither of which includes the middle class or the poor- are the ones who tend to win privileges and loot from government, I do not understand why we take for granted that the net result of all this looting is good for those who are lower on the economic ladder. And when the loot is paid for by printing more money and causing inflation, which (as I show in the chapter on money) disproportionately harms the most vulnerable, the suggestions that the least prosperous are helped by all this intervention collapses into outright farce." -Pages 75 & 76 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"Take arts funding, for example."
"Take arts funding, for example. Some Americans appear to believe that there would be no arts in America if it were not for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), an institution created in 1965. They cannot imagine things being done any other way, even though they were done another way throughout our country's existence, and throughout most of mankind's history. While the government requested $121 million for the NEA in 2006, private donations to the arts totaled $2.5 billion that year, dwarfing the NEA budget. The NEA represents a tiny fraction of all arts funding, a fact few Americans realize. Freedom works after all." -Page 75 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
Sunday, September 4, 2011
"To be sure, the U.S. Constitution is not perfect. "
"To be sure, the U.S. Constitution is not perfect. Few human contrivances are. But it is a pretty good one, I think, and it defines and limits the scope of the government. When we get into the habit of disregarding it or - what is the same thing - interpreting certain key phrases so broadly as to allow the federal government to do whatever it wants, we do so at our own peril. We will wind up with a situation like the one we face right now, that few Americans are happy with.
I do not believe that most Americans want to continue down this path: undeclared wars without end, more and more police-state measures, and a Constitution that may as well not exist. But this is not a fated existence. We do not have to live in this kind of America. It is not too late to rally and recall our people to the Constitution, the rule of law, and our traditional American republic." -Page 67 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
I do not believe that most Americans want to continue down this path: undeclared wars without end, more and more police-state measures, and a Constitution that may as well not exist. But this is not a fated existence. We do not have to live in this kind of America. It is not too late to rally and recall our people to the Constitution, the rule of law, and our traditional American republic." -Page 67 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"When Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973..."
"When Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, striking down abortion laws all over the country, even some supporters of abortion were embarrassed by the decision as a matter of constitutional law. John Hart Ely, for instance, wrote in the Yale Law Review: "What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers' thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation's governmental structure." The decision, he said, "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try and be."
The federal government should not play any role in the abortion issue, according to the Constitution. Apart from waiting forever for the Supreme Court justices who will rule in accordance with the Constitution, however, Americans who care about our fundamental law and/or are concerned about abortion do have some legislative recourse. Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution gives Congress the power to strip the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over broad categories of cases. In the wake of the 1857 Dred Scott decision, abolitionists spoke of depriving the courts of jurisdiction in cases dealing with slavery. The courts were stripped of authority over Reconstruction policy in the late 1860's.
If the federal courts refuse to abide by the Constitution, the Congress should employ this constitutional remedy. By a simple majority, Congress could strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over abortion, thereby overturning the obviously unconstitutional Roe. At that point, the issue would revert to the states, where it constitutionally belongs, since no appeal to federal courts on the matter could be heard. (I have proposed exactly this in H.R. 300.)
Let us remember, though, that the law can do only so much. The law isn't what allowed abortion; abortions were already being done in the 1960s against the law. The courts came along and conformed to the social and moral changes that were taking place in society. Law reflects the morality of the people. Ultimately, law or no law, it is going to be up to us as parents, as clergy and as citizens- in the way we raise our children, how we interact and talk with our friends and neighbors, and the good example we give- to bring about changes to our culture toward greater respect for life." -Page 60 & 61 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
The federal government should not play any role in the abortion issue, according to the Constitution. Apart from waiting forever for the Supreme Court justices who will rule in accordance with the Constitution, however, Americans who care about our fundamental law and/or are concerned about abortion do have some legislative recourse. Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution gives Congress the power to strip the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over broad categories of cases. In the wake of the 1857 Dred Scott decision, abolitionists spoke of depriving the courts of jurisdiction in cases dealing with slavery. The courts were stripped of authority over Reconstruction policy in the late 1860's.
If the federal courts refuse to abide by the Constitution, the Congress should employ this constitutional remedy. By a simple majority, Congress could strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over abortion, thereby overturning the obviously unconstitutional Roe. At that point, the issue would revert to the states, where it constitutionally belongs, since no appeal to federal courts on the matter could be heard. (I have proposed exactly this in H.R. 300.)
Let us remember, though, that the law can do only so much. The law isn't what allowed abortion; abortions were already being done in the 1960s against the law. The courts came along and conformed to the social and moral changes that were taking place in society. Law reflects the morality of the people. Ultimately, law or no law, it is going to be up to us as parents, as clergy and as citizens- in the way we raise our children, how we interact and talk with our friends and neighbors, and the good example we give- to bring about changes to our culture toward greater respect for life." -Page 60 & 61 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"One of the most contentious issues in our public life..."
"One of the most contentious issues in our public life over the past three and a half decades has been abortion. As a physician, and in particular as an obstetrician who has delivered over 4,000 babies, I have always had a special interest in the subject of abortion. When I studied medicine at Duke Medical School from 1957 to 1961, the subject was never raised. By the time of my medical residency at the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-1960s, though, wholesale defiance of the laws against abortion was taking place in various parts of the country, including my own.
Residents were encouraged to visit various operating rooms in order to observe the procedures that were being done. One day I walked into an operating room without knowing what I was walking into, and the doctors were in the middle of performing a C-section. It was actually an abortion by hysterotomy. The woman was probably six months along in her pregnancy, and the child she was carrying weighed over two pounds. At that time doctors were not especially sophisticated, for lack of a better term, when it came to killing the baby prior to delivery, so they went ahead with the delivery and put the baby in a bucket in the corner of the room. The baby tried to breathe, and tried to cry, and everyone in the room pretended the baby wasn't there. I was deeply shaken by this experience, and it hit me at that moment just how important the life issue was.
.....
The federal government should not play any role in the abortion issue, according to the Constitution. ... the issue would revert to the states, where it constitutionally belongs.
.....
To those who argue that we cannot allow the states to make decisions on abortion since some will make the wrong ones, I reply that this is an excellent argument for world government- for how can we allow individual countries to decide on abortion or other moral issues, if some may make the wrong decisions? Yes the dangers of a world government surely speak for themselves.
Let us therefore adopt the constitutional position, one that is achievable and can yield good results but that shuns the utopian idea that all evil can be eradicated. The Founding Fathers' approach will not solve all problems, and it will not be perfect. But anyone expecting perfection in this world is going to be consistently disappointed." Pages 58-61 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
Residents were encouraged to visit various operating rooms in order to observe the procedures that were being done. One day I walked into an operating room without knowing what I was walking into, and the doctors were in the middle of performing a C-section. It was actually an abortion by hysterotomy. The woman was probably six months along in her pregnancy, and the child she was carrying weighed over two pounds. At that time doctors were not especially sophisticated, for lack of a better term, when it came to killing the baby prior to delivery, so they went ahead with the delivery and put the baby in a bucket in the corner of the room. The baby tried to breathe, and tried to cry, and everyone in the room pretended the baby wasn't there. I was deeply shaken by this experience, and it hit me at that moment just how important the life issue was.
.....
The federal government should not play any role in the abortion issue, according to the Constitution. ... the issue would revert to the states, where it constitutionally belongs.
.....
To those who argue that we cannot allow the states to make decisions on abortion since some will make the wrong ones, I reply that this is an excellent argument for world government- for how can we allow individual countries to decide on abortion or other moral issues, if some may make the wrong decisions? Yes the dangers of a world government surely speak for themselves.
Let us therefore adopt the constitutional position, one that is achievable and can yield good results but that shuns the utopian idea that all evil can be eradicated. The Founding Fathers' approach will not solve all problems, and it will not be perfect. But anyone expecting perfection in this world is going to be consistently disappointed." Pages 58-61 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"Now, isn't our Constitution a "living" document that evolves..."
"Now, isn't our Constitution a "living" document that evolves in accordance with experience and changing times, as we're so often told? No- a thousand times no. If we feel the need to change our Constitution, we are free to amend it. In 1817, James Madison reminded Congress that the Framers had "marked out in the [Constitution] itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest" - a reference to the amendment process. But that is not what advocates of the so-called living Constitution have in mind. They favor a system in which the federal government, and in particular the federal courts, are at liberty - even in the absence of any amendment- to interpret the Constitution altogether differently from how it was understood by those who drafted it and those who voted to ratify it.
A "living" Constitution is just the thing any government would be delighted to have, for whenever the people complain that their Constitution has been violated, the government can trot out its judges to inform the people that they've simply misunderstood: the Constitution, you see, has merely evolved with the times.
That's why on this issue I agree with historian Kevin Gutzman, who says that those who give us a "living" Constitution are actually giving us a dead Constitution, since such a thing is completely unable to protect us against the encroachments of government power." -Pages 48 & 49 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
A "living" Constitution is just the thing any government would be delighted to have, for whenever the people complain that their Constitution has been violated, the government can trot out its judges to inform the people that they've simply misunderstood: the Constitution, you see, has merely evolved with the times.
That's why on this issue I agree with historian Kevin Gutzman, who says that those who give us a "living" Constitution are actually giving us a dead Constitution, since such a thing is completely unable to protect us against the encroachments of government power." -Pages 48 & 49 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"..."Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution..."
"..."Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution," [Thomas] Jefferson advised us. "Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." Jefferson was afraid, in other words, that we would allow our government to interpret the Constitution so broadly that we may as well be governed by a blank piece of paper. The limitations the Constitution placed on the federal government had to be taken seriously if we expected to maintain a free society." -Page 45 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"Much of the recent revival of interest in the Constitution centers around...."
"Much of the recent revival of interest in the Constitution centers around the Bill of Rights and the war on terror, a subject I discuss elsewhere in this book. I could not be more sympathetic to these concerns. However, Americans must remember that the Constitution was designed not merely to prevent the federal government from violating the rights that later appeared in the Bill of Rights. It was also intended to limit the federal government's overall scope. Article I, Section 8, lists the powers of Congress. Common law held such lists of powers to be exhaustive.
According to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, all powers not delegated to the federal government by the states (in Article I, Section 8) and not prohibited to the states in the Constitution (in Article 1, Section 10) are reserved to the states or to the people. Thomas Jefferson held that this principle formed the very foundation of our Constitution. It was a guarantee that the experience Americans endured under the British would not be repeated, and that political decisions would be made by their own local legislature rather than by a distant central government that would be much more difficult, if not impossible, for them to control." -Pages 44 & 45 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
According to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, all powers not delegated to the federal government by the states (in Article I, Section 8) and not prohibited to the states in the Constitution (in Article 1, Section 10) are reserved to the states or to the people. Thomas Jefferson held that this principle formed the very foundation of our Constitution. It was a guarantee that the experience Americans endured under the British would not be repeated, and that political decisions would be made by their own local legislature rather than by a distant central government that would be much more difficult, if not impossible, for them to control." -Pages 44 & 45 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"The costs of our foreign policy have become so great that...."
"The costs of our foreign policy have become so great that they risk bringing our country to bankruptcy. When I say "bankruptcy," I do not mean that the federal government will stop writing checks and spending money. The federal government is not likely to go out of business anytime soon. I mean that the checks and the money won't buy anything because the dollar will have been destroyed." -Pages 35 & 36 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
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