Category Archives: Constitution

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?”

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT and “Return To Reason” on WND.

‘South Africa’s Bloody Freedom’

Africa, Conservatism, Constitution, Crime, Journalism, Media, Political Correctness, Race, South-Africa

There is none so complex and politically charged an issue as the new South Africa. Cosseted American journalists, for the most, can’t and won’t deal with it honestly. Barbara Simpson, WND colleague and beloved KSFO talk-show host, is not a member of the pack. In reviewing “Into the Cannibal’s Pot – Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Barbara castigates “a world media” that are “complicit in the massive, politically correct cover-up of the gradual destruction of that country.”

In her WND column, “South Africa’s Bloody Freedom,” this grand lady reaches beyond the remit of the Mandela-worshiping masses, among whom are the insular, petty, provincial penmen of the American conservative press (pulp and pixels).

I was especially interested in her book because I’ve been to South Africa twice, not as a tourist, but spending time with people who live there, talking with them, seeing how they live, reading local newspapers and seeing it, not through rose-colored glasses, but as it is. It led me to pursue the horrors of Zimbabwe as well. The pattern is clear and almost identical.
Unfortunately, the blindness of our country continues, most recently with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg traveling in Africa.

UPDATED: Israel’s Alright

Constitution, Debt, Iran, Israel, Neoconservatism, War

Israel hase overwhelming military superiority over Iran, a fact that should not be lost in all the heated rhetoric.—Bruce Riedel

“The former head of Israel’s Mossad, Meir Dagan, says Iran won’t get the bomb until at least 2015,” writes the Brookings’ Institution’s Bruce Riedel. “In contrast, Israel has had nuclear weapons since the late 1960s and has jealously guarded its monopoly on them in the region. The Israelis have used force in the past against developing nuclear threats. Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 were the targets of highly effective Israeli airstrikes against developing nuclear weapons programs. Israel has seriously considered conducting such a strike against Iran and may do so, especially now that it has special bunker-busting bombs from the United States.”

Read Riedel on Israel’s “multiple delivery systems,” “the Israeli air force’s capability,” and the country’s “conventional military superiority over Iran and the rest of the region,” including its “armed forces’ intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities,” which are “vastly superior to those of its potential rivals.”

Israel is more than capable of taking care of business. I support the right of the Israelis to do what their admirably cautious generals and intelligence agents (like Dagan) think is necessary to protect themselves—I do not support America’s moves on Iran.

“Let’s Fret About Our Own Tyrants.” “In case the advocates of a muscular response have failed to notice, we’re pinned down like butterflies by our own tyrants.”

UPDATE (Feb. 7): “Iran poses no ‘existential threat’ to Israel – ex-Mossad chief”:

[Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy] argues that talk of Iran posing an “existential threat” to Israel is merely Tel Aviv using big words to impress the international community. … “I think Israel is strong enough to protect itself, to take care of itself. I think ultimately it is not in the power of Iran to destroy the state of Israel,” he told RT. “I believe the leadership believes that in order to arouse international public opinion, in order to mount pressure on the Iranians, it is necessary to impress upon the world at large that this is a serious international threat.

Barry Soetoro Frankenstein (Reply From The Man Who Will Be President)

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Constitution, Economy, Intelligence, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Political Economy, Propaganda, Regulation, Republicans, The State

The following is excerpted from “Barry Soetoro Frankenstein,“ my new weekly column:

In Obama’s simplistic scheme of things—as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, “for the third straight Address, the President’s speech was written at an eighth-grade level”—to recreate the glory of America, it is thus essential to continue to reinvent the state. …

In the spirit of brute-force statism, the POTUS promised a Trade Enforcement Unit to police “unfair trading practices,” and a “Financial Crimes Unit to “crack down on large-scale fraud.” …

Il Duce’s next derring-do? Send him the bill, and the Divine One will even instruct the provinces to incarcerate local kids in high school “until they graduate or turn 18.”

Having used the military to great political effect, Obama now intends to deploy the Department of Defense, no less, in the “clean energy business.” In Obama’s very elementary thinking, the DOD is bound to do a bang-up job.

… From financial aid (for foreign students, no less) to an affirmative-action placement in Harvard Law School, Barry Soetoro is a Frankenstein of the state’s creation. If not for government, Obama would have never managed to write himself into history. As a product of the state, Barry Soetoro sees it as the source of all possibilities. …”

Read the complete column, Barry Soetoro Frankenstein, now on WND.com,

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help this cause.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher.

UPDATE (Jan. 31): Sen. Paul Delivers State of the Union Response – Jan. 24, 2012