Category Archives: Constitution

UPDATED: Rush Limbaugh Pimps Principles (& No One Understands RIGHTS from Wrongs!)

Conservatism, Constitution, Feminism, Gender, Individual Rights, Intelligence, Republicans

In the proud history of conservative serial stupidity, Rush Limbaugh’s latest faux pas takes the cake. An issue concerning constitutional principles fell into his large lap. But the conservative movement’s self-aggrandizing, insufferably pompous Mouth, pimped it.

A privileged Georgetown University law school student named Sandra Fluke was permitted to make the case before a “nonofficial congressional committee” as to why the state should compel the insurance industry to provide sisters with birth-control pills. (Some committee members were in tears listening to this cloistered cow tell of women turning away from the pharmacy counter for lack of funds. Go to the Republic of Biafra for a taste of deprivation, Fluke!)

This flaccid fool was supremely repulsive in her perverse conviction that a woman’s “reproductive rights” were the responsibility of other taxpayer. Fluke is a testament to the destructive role of women in our politics, forever petitioning to expand the power of the state at the expense of individual rights. (Read a corrective about natural rights, here.)

Recall, Limbaugh once launched a sneering assault on a deformed Michael J. Fox, aping Fox’s Parkinson’s-induced spasms, instead of critiquing Fox for petitioning Congress for unconstitutional favors, just like Fluke.

When it came to Fluke, Limbaugh flunked as badly. He began thus:

“What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex — what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”

Limbaugh then said, “ok, so she’s not a slut. She’s round-heeled.” “Round-heeled” is an old-fashioned term for promiscuity.

This is entertaining, but besides the point.

But here is where the middle-aged, so-called conservative loses it, sounding like a lusty old voyeur:

“So Miss Fluke, if we are going to … pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

Game. Set. Match, Sandra Fluke. Limbaugh not only lost the argument to this inconsequential woman, but he also helped anoint a future Democratic, feminist, front-woman and leader.

Conservatives have a hard time with first principles; perhaps they don’t have any. Thus, they can never win an argument with a liberal, for all they have in their intellectual arsenal is a Benthamite utilitarianism (except that Jeremy Bentham was really smart).

Why are conservatives Addicted to That Rush?

UPDATE (March 3): No One Understands RIGHTS from Wrongs! Your point is not the point either, Robert Glisson. The point is that conservatives and liberals alike do not have any mandate to promote responsibility vis-a-vis the legislator. The Fluke female can screw herself silly; quit preaching to her! People are sick and tired of conservatives in their bedroom and liberals in all the other rooms. The only point here is that no taxpayer, coerced by Congress, should be compelled to pay for Fluke’s personal choices, good or bad. I give up on anyone understanding what a natural right means. I do, however, get why people are Addicted to that Rush, who is not “more often right than wrong,” but is both insufferably self-righteous and wrong.

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.