Category Archives: Individual Rights

UPDATE III: Magic Manhattan, Matters of the Mind (&, Yes, Manhattan’s Magnificent)

America, Ilana Mercer, Individual Rights, Intelligence, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Rights, South-Africa

I am back at my desk after a magnificent trip to Manhattan, where it was my distinction and delight to address the New York City Junto gathering as the featured speaker for the month of May.

The title of my address was “Natural Rights in ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot’: Abstractions or Facts of Life?”

For his generous and gracious hospitality I must thank the formidable force behind the NYC Junto forum, Victor Niederhoffer, Ph.D. Dr. Niederhoffer, with whom I enjoyed a late night snack after the lively event, is a well-known “professional investor,” trader and speculator. In other words, a man of the free, glorious, financial markets. He founded Junto in 1985, as a discussion group for people who treasure liberty (and, yes, the great Gene Epstein was present).

Dr. Niederhoffer puts NYC Junto guests up at The Harvard Club of New York, established in the late 1800s. I hope to have an image or two for you of the setting, later this week.

The turnout was good and the interactions most enjoyable.

The courteous organizers (Rudolf Hauser, Iris Bell and Linda Peterson) had prepared an introduction to this scribe and her work. It was posted at Junto.org, here. Not being a man who is easily scripted, Dr. Niederhoffer made a valiant attempt to stick to it. But after a few sentences, he gave up and said something to this effect:

“All I can tell you is that you can’t win an argument with this woman. I’ve tried and failed.”

As we say in Hebrew, “Dayenu.” Coming from Victor Niederhoffer, that’s more than enough for this woman.

At the time, when Dr. Niederhoffer and I had had the exchange to which he conceded defeat, I replied thus: “It takes a man and a gentleman to know and say what you’ve said. There are too few of those these days.”

More materially, the quality of recognizing, respecting and heeding intelligence speaks to who a man is. You cannot learn this quality. It is rare, as it demands—and coexists with—a healthy and happy ego.

Other than Dr. Niederhoffer, I have met one other man very recently who has this quality. Otherwise, not a day goes by when one is not saddled with the enormous opportunity costs, personal and professional, that accompany dealing with an ego-driven Idiocracy.

For idiots are invariably malevolent. Oscar Wilde said it best in one of his plays: “She thought that because he was stupid he would be kindly, when of course, kindliness requires imagination and intellect.”

UPDATE I: Here is a very blurred image. I have a few more, also blurred, that I will upload to the Facebook photo album, eventually.

May, 2012, Ilana @ NYC Junto:

UPDATE II: When the punishing publication process of Into the Cannibal’s Pot culminated in a book on Amazon—also The Only Shop in Town—hundreds of my readers wrote in private to share their impressions with me. I say again to all new readers and friends made what I’ve said to the aforementioned readers over the year. The conversation must take place in public, on the forums that exist for the purpose of spreading the word about—and discussing—these ideas.

Of these, Amazon is the most vital to The Cannibal’s cause. Please post your reviews to Amazon. Those who’ve done so over the last year have heard from me (and have my deepest appreciation).

Otherwise, all topics are discussed on BAB (Barely a Blog), which I personally moderate and maintain, on Facebook (ditto), Twitter, and in the Comments Sections appended to the WND and RT weekly articles.

UPDATE III (May Eighth): In reply to Sunny Black, see the new BAB post, “Manhattan Le Magnifique.”

UPDATED: Organized Vs. Disorganized Crime (US Vs. China)

China, Criminal Injustice, Government, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Liberty, Private Property, Regulation, The State

Statists stateside have come down harshly on me for even suggesting that your average Egyptian under Mubarak or Libyan under Gadhafi was probably less likely than his American counterpart to be jailed, harassed or have a threatening encounter with the state’s emissaries.

Do you think these former dictators retaliated against “Their People” with diabolical efficiency for selling raw milk and homemade lemonade? Or unintentionally violating Honduran law of which the Hondurans themselves were ignorant? Or attempting to erect a structure on their land?

It’s the difference between organized and disorganized crime: Uncle Sam runs an organized criminal syndicate; Third World despots run disorganized criminal endeavors. It is not unreasonable to suggest that it’s easier to live off the grid in those tin-pot dictatorships America is forever overthrowing, than in the USA, the land of the “free.”

“Illegal Everything,” as John Stossel sees it. He “argue that America has become a country where no one can know what is legal.”

Kids who open lemonade stands are now shutdown by police. I tried to open a lemonade stand legally in NYC. That was quite an adventure. It takes 65 days to get permission from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
With government adding 80,000 pages of rules and regulations every year, it’s no surprise that regular people break laws without even trying.
A small businessman spent 6 years in federal prison for breaking Honduran regulations (and, to make it worse, the Honduran government said he didn’t). A family in Idaho can’t build a home on their land because the EPA says it’s a wetland-but it only resembles a wetland because a government drain malfunctioned and flooded it.

MORE.

UPDATE: “The US Is More Authoritarian Than China,” writes Lew Rockwell:

China is nowhere near as authoritarian as the US, and where authority is exercised it appears to be with more restraint. There is no TSA at Chinese airports. My son has entered the country when the customs and immigration checks were simply closed (because it was outside normal working hours) and walked off the plane and into Beijing.
On the surface, there are a lot of “rules” in China, but no one pays any attention and the authorities don’t enforce them.

As I’ve written, “US In The Red And Getting Redder”:

It’s time we came clean about our economic system. The Chinese are honest about theirs; they call it “socialism with Chinese characteristic.” We call ours free-market capitalism, when in fact it is a Third Way system too: “Socialism with American characteristics.”
The picture of China to emerge from behind those pretty Chinese screens is complex. The embodiment of feng shui it is not. The trend, however, is unmistakable: China is becoming freer, America less free. The devil is in this detail.

The Powers Of Obama’s ‘Politburo of Proctologists’

Barack Obama, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Healthcare, Individual Rights, Regulation, Socialism

Not even the US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli can muster a spirited defense of ObamaCare. Said Verrilli, almost apologetically, on Tuesday before the Supreme Court: “Maybe they were right, maybe they weren’t, but this is something about which the people of the United States can deliberate and they can vote, and if they think it needs to be changed, they can change it.” [Oh really?]

Our state’s Attorney General Rob McKenna sees this as the most important case of our lifetime on Federal power under the Commerce clause. The Supreme Court was treating it very seriously, as have all the courts so far, in ruling on the individual mandate. The power to order individuals into private contract, says McKenna, is made up. It’s not as if it had been lying around undiscovered.

It’s a shame that McKenna seems to both support and anticipate ‘severability”—an outcome whereby the individual mandate is severed from the rest of the law, which is upheld.

To the fatuous point of the health-care market being unique, and thus requiring special treatment by the state, McKenna counters that uniqueness is not a constitutional principle.

The issue here is not healthcare policy but Federal power, he says, intimating that Obama’s “politburo of proctologists” cannot “create commerce in order to regulate it.” This is a first, claims McKenna.

As was pointed out in “Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured,” the number of uninsured, by choice or not by choice, is grossly exaggerated.

“The key legal thinker in developing the case against the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate” is Facebook Friend Randy Barnett. Randy is “the originator of the activity/inactivity distinction” being used in the arguments against Obamacare.

Here is Randy’s interview on Ezra Klein’s WaPo’s blog.

Especially pertinent, in the Klein interview, is Randy’s distinction between “the government’s power to tax in order to pay for Medicare, which is a single-payer insurance program that [you’ll] get when over 65,” and the same entity’s constitutional authority to compel the individual to “self-insure on the private market before [he’s] 65.”

RB: “There are several answers, but I’ll limit myself to two. First, there’s the text of the Constitution itself. The text of the Constitution itself gives Congress the power to levy taxes on people and on income. We can’t dispute that. It does not give Congress the power under its commerce power, at least not expressly, to make them do business with private companies.
The second point I would make is that the duty to pay taxes is part of your duty to support the government in return for the protections the government gives you. What the government is claiming here is this power — and this ought to disturb people on the left — to make people do business with private companies when Congress thinks it’s convenient.”

It’s safe to say that even libertarians like Randy who might uphold the elaborate public works sprung from the General Welfare and Interstate Commerce Clauses as constitutional, have to agree that Thomas Jefferson would probably be appalled with it all.

UPDATED: Grand Delusions of Democracy

America, Democracy, Free Speech, Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Ron Paul

On ‘Criminalizing Protest in the States,” RT reports: “Last month that H.R. 347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011, had overwhelmingly passed the US House of Representatives after only three lawmakers voted against it. On Thursday this week, President Obama inked his name to the legislation and authorized the government to start enforcing a law that has many Americans concerned over how the bill could bury the rights to assemble and protest as guaranteed in the US Constitution.”

Under the Trespass Bill’s latest language … someone could end up in law enforcement custody for entering an area that they don’t realize is Secret Service protected and “engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct” or “impede[s] or disrupt[s] the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.”

All the while, the US preaches about the demos and its rights to the rest of the world.

At first, it was reported that, “The only members of Congress to reject this alarming evisceration of the First Amendment were two Tea Party Republicans– Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan and Paul Broun of Georgia, and GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul of Texas.”

Another later news item has it that Paul “ABSTAINED on the final vote.” Is this possible? Please find out. I am finding it hard to believe.

UPDATE: Thanks, MyRon Pauli. Dr. Paul did not let us down, after all.