Category Archives: Private Property

UPDATE II: Bill Getting Brave

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Government, Healthcare, Intelligence, Private Property, Race, Racism, The State, Welfare

Black and white Americans are divided over President Obama, says Bill O’Reilly, pointing to a Gallop poll according to which 88% of Black Americans support Obama; but only 38% of whites.

“A fifty point differential.”

Whites, of course, are barred from expressing racial affinities; but not blacks. Although O’Reilly neglects the black-racism element (he knows that very many blacks are racists), he nevertheless zeroes in on another important reason blacks go with Obama. White Americans fear the expansion of government and the bankrupting of the nation. [I’m not so sure of the first.] This attitude was on display, says O’Reilly, in Missouri, where 71% of the voters rejected the individual mandate to purchase insurance that ObamaCare would have imposed on them.

O’Reilly goes on to clearly state that black America has a different view of politics, in particular, blacks want a bigger federal government for the purpose of imposing social justice and carrying out distributive policies.

Blacks want a central authority “to redistribute income from the white establishment to their precincts” is how O’Reilly, rather directly, describes what black support for “what BHO is doing” is all about.

Fifty four percent of Hispanics support Obama, down 9 points since April. Here too the social justice issue is in operation, says O’Reilly.

O’Reilly recognizes that there are two Americas. It’s hard to decipher his solution—not when he says he support “strict oversight and fair rules,” but not the imposition of entitlements. Oversight over what? To whom a private property owner rents, sells; and who he hires and fires?

And whose property is it anyway to dispense with?

And what about “Thou Shall Not Covet”?

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbor’s.” (THE 10th COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:17)

UPDATE I (Aug. 6): We doffed a hat to Bill’s first show of whatever it was that rolled off Sarah’s word-salad producing tongue, HERE.

UPDATE II: With Bill it’s one step forward, two steps back. Why do African-Americans lag so far behind, asked one of O’Reilly’s viewers in a letter to The Factor today. Because of 100 years of slavery, replied The Sage. Pray tell, Bill, what is the reason Africa is centuries behind the West, China, Singapore, etc?

What’s Fueling The Fever Of Freedom?

Constitution, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Private Property, States' Rights

IMMIGRATION IS. When states stand up to the always-oppressive federal government, it’s a good thing. When issues loom large enough to bring about this necessary rift—necessary if freedom is to prevail—they deserve a closer look, if not, I would argue, our unreserved support. If gay marriage, yea or nay, prompted a state to secede; I’d be the first to cheer that state on.

Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has ruled that “state law enforcement officers are allowed to check the immigration status of anyone ‘stopped or arrested.” According to FoxNews, Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion on Friday “extending that authority to Virginia police in response to an inquiry over whether his state could mirror the policies passed into law in Arizona.”

“It is my opinion that Virginia law enforcement officers, including conservation officers may, like Arizona police officers, inquire into the immigration status of persons stopped or arrested,” he wrote.

Bring it on is what Cuccinelli is telling the federal government.

According to Lou Dobbs, interviewed by Megyn Kelly, “11 states are preparing to emulate Arizona. It is not what the Obama administration wanted; but it is exactly what the American people want,” he told the host of America’s News. Kelly says there are at least 18 states poised to follow Arizona on immigration and into a conflagration with the feds.

Now, you could challenge me as follows: “Mercer, you are not a proponent of majoritarianism. You’ve argued vigorously against democracy—even have a book due out that is a manifesto against raw democracy. Why are the people’s wishes okay in this instance?”

Because, as I’ve often said (most recently in this blog post), people have negative, leave-me-alone rights. Preventing a foreign invasion is perfectly within the purview of the “night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory,” in the words of the late philosopher, Robert Nozick.

Having delegated defense and policing to government, a people has a right to live free of the dangers that flow from being trespassed upon.

To the American Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson especially, secession was essential to the American scheme. Jefferson viewed extreme decentralization as the bulwark of the liberty and rights of man. Consequently, the United States was created as a pact between sovereign states with which the ultimate power lay. Sadly, it has progressed from a decentralized republic into a highly consolidated one.

The Constitution assigns the narrow function of naturalization to the feds. That small thing notwithstanding; I find it hard to fathom a founder arguing that the men and militia of a state should sit on their hands because a tier of tyrants (the feds) told them to (while their farms and nature reserves are trashed and their families endangered).

Neither should libertarians sit this thing out.

What’s Fueling The Fever Of Freedom?

Constitution, Democracy, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Private Property, States' Rights

IMMIGRATION IS. When states stand up to the always-oppressive federal government, it’s a good thing. When issues loom large enough to bring about this necessary rift—necessary if freedom is to prevail—they deserve a closer look, if not, I would argue, our unreserved support. If gay marriage, yea or nay, prompted a state to secede; I’d be the first to cheer that state on.

Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has ruled that “state law enforcement officers are allowed to check the immigration status of anyone ‘stopped or arrested.” According to FoxNews, Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion on Friday “extending that authority to Virginia police in response to an inquiry over whether his state could mirror the policies passed into law in Arizona.”

“It is my opinion that Virginia law enforcement officers, including conservation officers may, like Arizona police officers, inquire into the immigration status of persons stopped or arrested,” he wrote.

Bring it on is what Cuccinelli is telling the federal government.

According to Lou Dobbs, interviewed by Megyn Kelly, “11 states are preparing to emulate Arizona. It is not what the Obama administration wanted; but it is exactly what the American people want,” he told the host of America’s News. Kelly says there are at least 18 states poised to follow Arizona on immigration and into a conflagration with the feds.

Now, you could challenge me as follows: “Mercer, you are not a proponent of majoritarianism. You’ve argued vigorously against democracy—even have a book due out that is a manifesto against raw democracy. Why are the people’s wishes okay in this instance?”

Because, as I’ve often said (most recently in this blog post), people have negative, leave-me-alone rights. Preventing a foreign invasion is perfectly within the purview of the “night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory,” in the words of the late philosopher, Robert Nozick.

Having delegated defense and policing to government, a people has a right to live free of the dangers that flow from being trespassed upon.

To the American Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson especially, secession was essential to the American scheme. Jefferson viewed extreme decentralization as the bulwark of the liberty and rights of man. Consequently, the United States was created as a pact between sovereign states with which the ultimate power lay. Sadly, it has progressed from a decentralized republic into a highly consolidated one.

The Constitution assigns the narrow function of naturalization to the feds. That small thing notwithstanding; I find it hard to fathom a founder arguing that the men and militia of a state should sit on their hands because a tier of tyrants (the feds) told them to (while their farms and nature reserves are trashed and their families endangered).

Neither should libertarians sit this thing out.

Trash Will Trash

IMMIGRATION, Law, Nationhood, Private Property

Illegal aliens have deposited eight to sixteen million tons of trash in the last three years in Arizona’s once pristine wild-life reserves. These are the kind of individuals I want in my still blissful neighborhood. How about you?

We brought you the first of two hidden-camera documentaries compiled by the Center for Immigration Studied days before Fox News aired a segment about them.

Here’s the second heart-breaking episode. And these wonderful animals? What will become of them, if the tsunami of trash continues? Drug-courier vermin pass peacefully into this joke of a country, along with an armed escort. A Pinal Country deputy sheriff is shot in hot pursuit of trespassers. Poor sod; he imagines he still has country to defend.