Category Archives: Individual Rights

Updated: 'Who Won In Israel's Elections?'

Democracy, Individual Rights, Iraq, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Natural Law

Writes Daniel Pipes: The real winner was the politically and personally unpredictable figure, Avigdor Lieberman, 50, of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, who raised the specter of the country’s increasingly hostile Arab citizens:

“Tzipi Livni, the head of the Kadima party, can credibly claim victory in the elections on Tuesday because her party won the most seats. Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud party can also claim victory as the head of the largest party in the larger of the two coalitions, the national camp.

Both Livni and Netanyahu can plausibly claim ‘I won’ the elections this week – but neither did.

But the real winner was the politically and personally unpredictable figure, Avigdor Lieberman, 50, of the Yisrael Beiteinu party. A Moldovan immigrant who started his career in Likud and as then served as director-general of Netanyahu’s prime ministerial office, he founded Yisrael Beiteinu in 1999.

Lieberman has introduced a new issue into Israeli domestic politics – the place of the country’s Arab citizens. Noting their increasingly public disloyalty to the state, he has argued that they should lose their citizenship and their right to live in Israel unless they declare their loyalty to the Jewish state.

This topic has clearly struck a nerve among the Israeli Jewish electorate and prompted responsible Arab voices to acknowledge that Israeli Arabs have ‘managed to make the Jewish public hate us.’ As I wrote in 2006, Israel’s ‘final enemy’ may finally, be joining the battle. The consequences of this for the Arab-Israeli conflict as a whole could well be profound.”

By Daniel Pipes, Wednesday 11, Feb 2009

Update (Feb 12): In response to the always provocative Myron hereunder: As a classical liberal, I’m wary of conflating the vote, for what it’s worth, with natural rights. I agree with you that the latter must be inviolable. But the vote? That’s a political right. Neither is citizenship a natural right. Talk about taking away property or denying due process: those are unconscionable, and violate natural rights.

Preventing more hostile Arabs from migrating into Israel proper is perfectly legitimate in natural law. It’s non-aggressive self-defense.

Updated: Uncivil Agenda

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Business, Gender, Individual Rights, Private Property, Race

One can only hope that the Obama Administration’s commitment to further curtail freedom of contract, speech, and religion; and the already severely delimited right to associate and dissociate at will–that these go the way of his tax hikes on those who’ve accrued more riches than others. (The update consists of links to the better perspective.)

Since my wish is not His command, please apprise yourselves of what’s ahead. Read through Obama’s “Civil Rights” program (I’ve posted half of it). I do, however, support his efforts to reduce drug-use prosecutions, but not through coerced “treatment”:

* Combat Employment Discrimination: President Obama and Vice President Biden will work to overturn the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that curtails racial minorities’ and women’s ability to challenge pay discrimination. They will also pass the Fair Pay Act, to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.
* Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: President Obama and Vice President Biden will strengthen federal hate crimes legislation, expand hate crimes protection by passing the Matthew Shepard Act, and reinvigorate enforcement at the Department of Justice’s Criminal Section.
* End Deceptive Voting Practices: President Obama will sign into law his legislation that establishes harsh penalties for those who have engaged in voter fraud and provides voters who have been misinformed with accurate and full information so they can vote.
* End Racial Profiling: President Obama and Vice President Biden will ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal incentives to state and local police departments to prohibit the practice.
* Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Support: President Obama and Vice President Biden will provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, so that they are successfully re-integrated into society. Obama and Biden will also create a prison-to-work incentive program to improve ex-offender employment and job retention rates.
* Eliminate Sentencing Disparities: President Obama and Vice President Biden believe the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated.
* Expand Use of Drug Courts: President Obama and Vice President Biden will give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior.

Read on.

Update III: Bush Bolsters Israel, Makes Policy Change Hard for Barack

Barack Obama, Bush, Democracy, Economy, Individual Rights, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Neoconservatism, War

“President George W Bush called the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel an ‘act of terror’ and outlined his own conditions for a ceasefire in Gaza, in his weekly radio address to the American people.”

Listen to the president’s radio address. This is a very emphatic statement from George Bush. Such a forceful position in support for Israel makes it hard for the incoming president to deviate, or chart a new course.

Update I: The backdrop to the Israeli offensive:

A quarter of a million Israeli citizens have been living under incessant terror attacks from the Gaza Strip with thousands of missiles fired over the past eight years.

Israel left Gaza in 2005, giving Palestinians the chance to run their own lives. Despite this, more than 6300 rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel since then.

During the past year alone, more than 3000 rockets and mortars have been launched into Israel.

As US President-elect Obama stated during a visit to Sderot five months ago, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing.”

More…

Update II (Jan. 4): Regarding Bush and the comment by “gunjam” (may his gun never jam): Bush’s support for Israel’s self-defense need not be psychologized. The president’s violation of the negative rights of Iraqis; and his support for those of Israelis is not courageous, but craven and contradictory. As I observed in “Conservatives For Killing Terri“:

I can think of only two occasions on which I agreed with George Bush. Both involved the upholding of the people’s negative, or leave-me-alone, rights.

The first was his refusal to capitulate to the Kyoto-protocol crazies. Not surprisingly, some conservatives denounced this rare flicker of good judgment. And I’m not talking a “Crunchy Con” of Andrew Sullivan’s caliber—he does proud to Greenpeace and the Sierra Club combined. No less a conservative than Joe Scarborough commiserated with actor Robert Redford over the president’s “blind spot on the environment.” (Ditto Bill O’Reilly.)

The other Bush initiative I endorsed was the attempt by Congress to uphold Terri Schiavo’s inalienable right to life—a decision very many conservatives now rue.

Update III: Did I hear Bush claim Hamas took over Gaza by violent coup? This is what the neoconservatives would like their acolytes to believe. This pie-in-the-Palestinian-sky helps neocons downplay the failure of their democratic evangelizing. Hamas, of course, won the 2006 elections fair and square. Even J. Carter conceded that much, if I’m not mistaken, as did other observers like him, who rushed to the PA to watch their Palestinian protégés practice democracy. The neocons will never admit that a democratic heart does not beat in every breast. In their cultural relativism they are no different from the lefties. Neocons are simply lefties who like war.

Home Invaders-Cum-Home Liberators

Communism, Crime, Individual Rights, Private Property, Socialism

All the characters involved in this operation are de facto and de jure squatters, trespassers, and home invaders.

But to the Associated Press, they are “activists,” “homeless,” and “realtors” with a difference. In an article titled “Activist moves homeless into foreclosures,” the AP prattles:

Rameau is an activist who has been executing a bailout plan of his own around Miami’s empty streets: He is helping homeless people illegally move into foreclosed homes.
“We’re matching homeless people with people-less homes,” he said with a grin.
Rameau and a group of like-minded advocates formed Take Back the Land, which also helps the new “tenants” with secondhand furniture, cleaning supplies and yard upkeep. So far, he has moved six families into foreclosed homes and has nine on a waiting list.

It takes all kinds to make a village of idiots.