Category Archives: Individual Rights

Letter of the Week: John Danforth on Canadian Culture

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Ontario, Canada, and I’ve found about the same percentage of rugged individualists there in industry as we have here in the formerly industrial wasteland known as Michigan.

The difference is that the ‘culture’ there really is ‘cultured’ by the government, as when you grow pathogens in a petri dish. So those who have the constitution of individualists are merely incrementally more out of place and out of touch. Their Ministry of Culture sees to it that all (mostly government controlled) media outlets blanket the landscape with nanny state wonder stories, interspersed with nasty ‘artier than thou’ condescending sniffs at vulgar Americanism. The newspapers, especially in Toronto, have raised this to a fine art. The individualist in such an atmosphere must not only get all of his information from the internet, he must also swim in the sea of life completely at odds with the emotional and intellectual environment around him.

We really aren’t that different, though. The disparaging remarks towards Canadians should be tempered with the observation that at least we (mostly) share a language and a custom of politeness, both of which are fading faster in the U.S. than in Canada. But Canada seems to be in a race with the U.S.—trying to stay 10 years ahead in the slide towards welfare state bankruptcy. That race is the unifying glue to their fractious political system. They might squabble, even contemplate secession, but none of them wants to be seen by the others as ‘just another state.’

My years of dealing with customers across the border have yielded a few valuable friendships. When my friends would joke about us gun-totin’ cowboys (they loved to go the shooting range and waste handgun ammunition, a forbidden pleasure for them), I would ask them if they ever saw the Monty Python lumberjack song. Other than those few friends, though, I was left with the overall impression of wonderment—if I hadn’t seen it myself, I might not have believed that a people could love their servitude so.

—John Danforth

A Republic, if You Can Keep It

America, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, Law, Natural Law

Yesterday Bush signed “The Military Commissions Act of 2006.” I went in search for a libertarian analysis, but found only a few splenetic screeds. While perfectly understandable, these execrations do nothing to dissect the implications of the Bill for Americans. As I read them, I knew I ought to be furious about torture. However, too little was being said about the erosion of due process, constitutional protections and the accretion of executive power.

Libertarians need to cite chapter and verse in the actual Bill and then logically and calmly explain its implications for Americans. (It is very possible that, because of his visceral contempt for the Constitution as a so-called statist document, the anarchist can’t rise to the occasion. However, he may want to bear in mind that to the extent the Constitution comports with natural law, it’s both laudable and legitimate.)

In any case, right or wrong, to security-crazed Americans, the constant squealing about torture is a signal to switch off, as it conjures the namby-pamby liberal whose concerns are, overwhelmingly, with the “evil doers.” Readers are likelier to be swayed by arguments that address the possibility of detention without trial of US citizens and the sundering of habeas corpus and the separation of powers.

Finally, I found this, which does just that. This piece from Reason offers a gist of the administration’s impetus vis-a-vis the Bill. This next piece, however, is unhelpful. Libertarians will get its Bastiatian thrust, but, bar some left-liberals, the rest will find it smarmy and juvenile. You don’t have to agree with everything Jonathan Turley says to find him inspiring. (I certainly don’t. Contra Turley, America is a republic, not a democracy, and hence not meant to manufacture “majoritarian” outcomes. And France’s centralized system is the truly ugly system.) There’s a precis of a talk he gave here. Or you can listen to him here.

Letter of the Week: Prosecutors on the Make

America, Free Speech, Government, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, Religion

James Huggins writes:

David Koresh was living in peace and bothering nobody, as I recall. That family up on Ruby Ridge in Idaho was living in peace and bothering nobody. Richard Jewell down in Atlanta was living in peace and bothering nobody. What do they, and no doubt many others, have in common? They were all a little weird and a lot “different.” Therefore, all were fair game for media assassination and perfect targets for ambitious prosecutors and federal officers.

Remember, prosecutors are politicians and are usually using their jobs as stepping stones to higher elected office. Ranking police officers are political hacks who owe their jobs to politician bosses. People who are not perceived positively by the public, such as white supremacists, religious fanatics, good ol boy rednecks, or rich white boy college students in a black town are perfect grist as these elected swine grind their way upward to better things. The only trouble is that it is not against the law to be a white supremacist, religious fanatic, good ol boy redneck or a rich white boy. Aren’t they protected by the constitution just like your average Muslim Jihadist or illegal Mexican migrant?

I don’t know too much about Mr. Jeffs. I am against polygamy and against older men having their way with young girls. But, in this day and time I would have to look long and hard at the evidence before automatically condemning any person on the say-so of a prosecutor.

As far as the Muslims are concerned, if they are practicing polygamy in this country, I’m sure they won’t be hindered. The big mistake these fundamentalist Mormons made was not publicly supporting Al-Qaeda and actively demonstrating for open borders with Mexico.

—James Huggins

Further reading: “‘Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson” And “Patricide & Prosecutorial Misconduct“

Letter of the Week by Professor Paul Gottfried

Anti-Semitism, Classical Liberalism, Free Speech, Individual Rights

Letter of the Week is by Paul Gottfried, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College, and author of The Conservative Movement, Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy. Professor Gottfried’s new book is The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium.–ILANA

Ilana,
This commentary, “One Man’s ‘Malady,’ Another Man’s Fetish,” is entirely on target. Gibson’s stupid remarks while under the influence are grist for the mills of the leftist social engineers and coercive anti-fascists who run our cultural industry. Although Foxman may care about Jewish women who fall victim to Arab terrorists, he cares much less about such embarrassments than he does about the opportunity to play up the anti-Semitic faux pas of an avowedly conservative Catholic, who dared to make a film on the crucifixion.
By the way, the Passion, which I did see, was not only unbelievably gory but totally implausible. It is impossible for any human being, outside of the Catholic iconographic imagination, to endure so much suffering and blood loss and to survive for an entire day. A German Protestant friend who saw the movie thought it was the greatest advertisement for the Puritans that he had witnessed. The Reformation did away with such gory depictions, together with most other depictions, of religious figures. Watching the Passion was like revisiting a Sicilian shrine that I once stumbled upon in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

—Paul

P.S. I’ve always considered Gibson to be a bit of a loud-mouthed exhibitionist, and his movies have been anything but consistently rightwing. Remember the movie he played in with Danny Glover, in which American agents are trying to foil the machinations of powerful Nazi drug-dealers based in apartheid South Africa?