Category Archives: Classical Liberalism

Justice Ginsburg And You: 2 Peas In A Pod?

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights

The following is excerpted from my latest column, “Justice Ginsburg And You: 2 Peas In A Pod?”:

“I would not look to the US constitution,” said US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in an interview with Al-Hayat TV. “If I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012, I might look at the constitution of South Africa, Canada … and the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Al-Hayat’s correspondent had solicited Ginsburg’s advice on drafting the Egyptian constitution.

Go easy on Ginsburg; she’s a lot like you. She shares a disdain for America’s founding document with millions, maybe even a majority, of her countrymen. The US Constitution is flouted daily by the people’s representatives, and has been amended and reinterpreted to the point of no return.

The governing documents that excite Bader Ginsburg’s admiration are documents of positive rights. The American Constitution is by-and-large a charter of negative liberties, as the president once described it derisively.

A positive right is state-manufactured, usually at the behest of political majorities. Rights to a job, water, clothes, food, education and medical care are examples. Some of the European covenants canvassed by Bader consider “freely chosen” desirable work as a human right. Ditto adequate “rest and leisure.”

Once these needs are recognized as rights, they become state-enforceable, legal claims against other, less-valued members of society (“the rich”). Someone who hasn’t had a vacation, or has not reached his career apogee, gets to collect on such claims.

In the case of natural rights—the only founding truths the nation’s fathers could have conceived of, given their classical liberal philosophical framework—the duty is merely a mitts-off duty. My right to life means you must not murder me. My right to liberty means you dare not enslave me. My right to property means you can’t take what’s mine—not 35 percent of it, or 15 percent. Nada. And you have no right to stop me from taking the necessary acquisitive action for my survival, so long as I, in turn, respect the same restrictions.

As an instantiation of a constitutional democracy governed in accordance with state-minted rights, take the new South Africa, where almost everyone knows someone who has been raped, robbed, hijacked, murdered, or all of the above, in violation of natural law.

Not that you’d know it, but the poor South Africans enjoy a constitutional right to live free of all forms of violence, “public” or “private” in origin. Section 12 of their progressive constitution guarantees the “Freedom and Security of the Person.” Clearly “progressive” doesn’t necessarily spell progress, as nowhere does this wordy but worthless document state whether South Africans may actually defend this most precious of rights.

If anything, self-defense can be an offense in progressive South Africa. …

Knowing what you now know about the South African Constitution—what is it do you suppose Ginsburg dislikes about one of the greatest documents of political philosophy?

From all accounts, it is that the US Constitution is principally a charter of negative liberties. …”

Read the complete column, “Justice Ginsburg And You: 2 Peas In A Pod?”

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No Tats, Toots

Classical Liberalism, Drug War, Elections, Foreign Policy, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Rights, Ron Paul

Yes, it’s all very endearing and cute: Young college kids, most of whom are not self-supporting, are supporting Ron Paul, age 76. Paul’s “college-aged volunteer army” has “descended on Iowa from around the nation to coax people to the state’s Republican caucuses.”

Are these kids mere libertines, more committed to toking it up than cutting an overweening state’s reach and spending? It doesn’t appear so. The New York Times believes that, “For the students, much of Mr. Paul’s appeal derives from civil libertarian views like ending the federal ban on marijuana and other drugs, as well as his desire to end foreign wars and his small-government credo.”

I have never been in favor of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, smuggled into the Constitution by statute. The Amendment artificially swelled the ranks of Democratic voters, which has further eroded any protections the Constitution afforded to private property, and swayed the balance of power in favor of those who “vote for a living,” as opposed “those who work for a living.”

However, if Ron Paul’s youthful devotees are voting for negative, leave-me-alone rights—then, by all means, hop on board and bring along your pals on the Left.

UPDATED: Thank You, Pat Buchanan (The Old Right)

Celebrity, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Etiquette, Founding Fathers, Ilana Mercer, Old Right, Trade

I’ll be retiring tonight with “Suicide of a Superpower: Will American Survive to 2025?” by the iconic Patrick J.Buchanan, whom every paleo-libertarian admires. I’ve just received a copy courtesy of the author. The new book is inscribed as follows:

“To Ilana Mercer: Fellow Columnist and Fellow Conservative, with The Respect and good wishes of The Author.”

Mr. Buchanan’s graciousness made my day, make that my month.

In a gracious note to this writer, the one and only Mr. Buchanan wrote: “I believe your book is being sold [or bundled on Amazon] along with my new book, ‘Suicide of a Superpower: Will America survive to 2025.’ … my 18,000-word chapter on ethnonationalism and tribalism and the surge of both throughout the Third World—as well as our own declining world—tracks pretty much with what you wrote …”

UPDATE (Oct. 12): You wish, Myron! Being called a “fellow conservative” by Pat Buchanan is most definitely a high honor. Like myself, Mr. Buchanan regards giants such as Democrat Grover Cleveland, Russell Kirk, Barry Goldwater and “Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, also known as Mr. Republican,” as authentic conservatives. Snarky comments to the contrary, Buchanan is a member of the Old Right. (As am I.):

In the wonderfully conciliatory 1992 essay “A Strategy for The Right,” Murray N. Rothbard traced the original American Right to a reaction against the New Deal and the manner in which it obliterated the old republic’s classical-liberal foundations. Members of the original Right wanted to abolish the Welfare State ushered in by the New Deal and return to the foreign policy of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, enunciated in his First Inaugural Address, in March 1801: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Avoiding the metropole status our imposter conservatives or neoconservatives are currently cultivating was crucial to an America First foreign affairs position.
By no means a monolith, the Old Right sported nuanced opinions in matters of philosophy and policy. Sadly, it petered out politically, only to be usurped by the W. F. Buckley, big-government “conservatives.”

Sure, Mr. Buchanan goes wrong on trade, but one would expect posters here to be familiar with my record on free trade.

Steven Jobs – Capitalist Hero

BAB's A List, Business, Capitalism, Celebrity, Classical Liberalism, Economy, Ethics, Fascism, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Technology

By MYRON PAULI

MYRON PAULI explains what separates Steven Jobs, the quintessential “Homo Aynrandis,” from Homo Corporatist, that atavistic throwback that manages the typical corporation nowadays.

ONCE UPON A TIME, great men like the late Steven Jobs (Homo Aynrandis) roamed about in our early republics (note the plural – each state has a republican form of government) – men like Morse, Fulton, Edison, Whitney. These were creators and innovators who helped mankind by helping themselves – not because some bureaucrat put a gun to their heads. They made money through their inventiveness and vision, not by “manipulating the system.”

Nearly all of these early Howard Roarks (the hero in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead) were self-educated. They made their fame and fortune in spite of “the system.” College dropout Jobs was one of these great men and let us hope not the last.

Nowadays, we have a different species of capitalist, Homo Corporatist, “managing” most companies – usually for personal gain and short-term profit – into oblivion. They are often spoiled rich kids who smoke dope through college and then get educational “credentials” in “management” and economics from neo-Marxist pedagogues teaching Keynes, Krugman, Samuelson etc. These corporate-technocratic-idiot-savants work their way into companies, sucking up to the vampires who mismanage these companies, and then get hired as CEOs.

Jobs made that mistake in hiring John Sculley from Pepsi and the soda salesman soon manipulated Jobs out of Apple. Later Apple sued Jobs, whose quote, “It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn’t compete with six people in blue jeans,” says all one needs to know about those characters and the modern era.

But Jobs was down but not out. He made Next and Pixar and out-Appled Apple until they took him back and resumed growing. The alternative for Apple would have been to hire the type of corporate flacks who have mismanaged General Motors for the last 70 years.

As for Homo Corporatist – they are excellent in claiming hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses while their companies slide into oblivion. Thomas Edison founded General Electric whose products were found in nearly every American home – now the company is “managed” by Harvard M.B.A. Jeffrey Immelt. Instead of watching GE televisions, Americans now watch GE’s Rachel Maddow spouting inane nonsense on Korean televisions. GE has become a bubble-manipulating finance company which lobbies for tax breaks and “green energy mandates” from its political buddies.

Homo Corporatist, sadly, is ubiquitous. In China and Russia, they are the children of the old party apparatchiks who now play “businessman” in a fascist economy. In the Arab world, they are the relatives and friends of the King/Sheik/Dictator now operating various “enterprises.” In America, it is Archer Daniels Midland with their agribusiness “ethanol mandates.” It is people like my Senator, Mark Warner, who made money off the FCC monopolistic licenses. It is people like Merrill Lynch’s Stan O’Neal, an egomaniac who had security guards holding an entire elevator bank open for him and ran off with well over $100 million, while sinking “bullish” Merrill with subprime mortgages before moving on to Alcoa whose stock has also tanked.

Most of these managers know less about the products that the companies make than their janitors. They make short term profits by firing research staff, selling ideas and marketing opportunities overseas, and finding quick-fix gimmicks, as they pocket the bonuses, and lobby against competitors – and like good vampires, move on to the next target. Some might be better than others – but can Herman Cain (Federal Reserve Bank leader) cook a pizza??

At my first company after graduate school, the big shots were shorting their own stock to the Employee’s Stock Plan (!); they paid 20 percent to borrow money in 1982 to buy up a company at over 50 times price-to-earnings, and then sacked most of the company, bribed government officials and covered it up, then pleaded “no contest” to the bribes with some leaving the companies with golden-parachute bonuses while the “lower animals” at the company got furloughs and had to take ethics training to not do what the big shots had done – all while the company stock plummeted from 45 to 3! While my years in the employ of the government reinforce my libertarianism, I could see how people in companies like this could wind up as Marxists!

Steven Jobs, Homo Aynrandis, will be missed. He was what capitalism should be about.

**
MYRON PAULI, Ph.D., grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism.