The health scare bill is the gift that just keeps giving—giving-up individual freedoms to government. From a “TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE” to a “SURCHARGE ON HIGH INCOME INDIVIDUALS” to “STUDENT LOAN REFORM”; it’s all there, designed to leave little room for voluntary, peaceful exchanges. But we missed another provision among the thousands of sections the H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010 sports:
UPDATE (July 24): Gold Confiscation coming? FDR, idolized by BHO and McMussolini alike—by almost all offshoots of the duopoly, in fact—forbade “the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates” at pains of punishment: a fine of “not more than $10,000, or “imprisoned for not more than ten years or both.”
ICE is supposed to deport, or at least process, illegals aliens apprehended by Arizona law enforcement—OR, MAYBE NOT.
A top Obama official, John Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement government, told the Chicago Tribune that the Arizona immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070, is not “good government.”
The best way to reduce illegal immigration is through a comprehensive federal approach, he said, and not a patchwork of state laws.
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano backed the bastard up: “ICE,” she said, “is not obligated to process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona authorities.
ICE has the legal discretion to accept or not to accept persons delivered to it by non-federal personnel … It also has the discretion to deport or not to deport persons delivered to it by any government agents, even its own.”
FoxNews’ Megyn Kelly called this government by fiat.
This is how it rolls in the US. I’ve long contended that commentators who constantly hail America’s unique freedoms are willfully misleading their followers. States’ rights? Those died a long time ago.
The federal government no longer fulfills its most basic negative duty, and that is to protect its citizens. But this is not new.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
Update (May 23): Ann Coulter is at her best when she gets legal. She dredges up the “UNITED STATES v. BRIGNONI-PONCE” (1975), in which the SCOTUS unanimously, including every liberal on the Court, decided that “border police could take into account the Mexican appearance of a car’s occupants. They could not do random stops based on nothing but that ‘appearance.'” The Arizona law does not go as far as the SCOTUS’ ruling.
Another interesting point made by AC: “Iconic labor leader, and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, along with Ralph Abernathy, successor to Martin Luther King, marched against illegal immigration.”
If Amy Cooter wishes to follow a real hate group, she should embed with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Cooter spent protracted time with a cross-section of the country’s maligned militias, for a PhD. in sociology, I presume. As hard as the Egg Head from CNN tried to extract from her the line the Southern Poverty Law Center peddles about many patriotic Americans, he came away empty handed (and headed).
Although talker Monica Crowley has blamed Obama for the Missouri State police report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement,” and dated February 20, 2009 (it warned about subversives like … me), I believe it was initiated in the Bush era. Once again, here too, there is no difference between the Republicans, when in power, and the Dems in their statist collaboration to defame the best of America.
And the “Hutaree militia”? I’m now old and scarred enough to say openly what as an MSM editor I would merely have cunningly proposed as an interesting hypothesis to some energetic young reporter: I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that any group of white blue collar workers would naturally want to attack the local police, another blue collar group.
I think, as Richard Hoste has argued, that it’s far more likely to turn out to be a case of entrapment by some ambitious prosecutor trying to please his/her political masters.
Glenn Beck is invaluable in highlighting the constitutional underpinnings of the republic violated by almost every law enacted by both parties. However Beck’s discussion is generally incomplete (along the lines highlighted in the article “Life, Liberty, and PROPERTY,” where I also readily conceded that “The man exudes goodness and has a visceral feel for freedom”).
Again and again Glenn has alerted his viewers to Obama’s disdain for the Constitution as a “charter of negative liberties.” Said the president: (Transcript here)
If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.
To the president’s telling complaint vis-a-vis the Constitution being deficient in its articulation of negative liberties only, Glenn has retorted as follows: “That’s the way the founders designed it, because they saw what governments do when they are allowed to do stuff for you.”
I’m afraid that’s not quite it. Articulated by the Founders, in the philosophy of classical liberalism and natural law, negative liberties are the only authentic rights. Glenn must articulate more than a utilitarian perspective, which doesn’t do justice to the profundity of America’s Founding Fathers. Glenn is welcome to use the following explanation from “CRADLE OF CORRUPTION,” in my book (buy it), with attribution, of course:
“The only rights of man are the rights to life, liberty, and property. These rights exist irrespective of governments. Rights always give rise to binding obligations. In the case of natural rights, the duty is merely a duty to refrain from doing. My right to life means you must refrain from killing me. My right to liberty means you cannot enslave me. My right to property means you should not take what is mine, or stop me from taking the necessary action for my survival, so long as I, in turn, heed the same strictures.”
“If to exercise a right a person must violate someone’s life, liberty and property, then the exercised right is not a right, but a violation thereof. Because my right to acquire property doesn’t diminish your right to the same liberty, this right is known as a negative right. Negative rights are real or natural rights because they don’t conscript me in the fulfillment of your needs and desires, and vise versa. They merely impel both of us to keep our mitts to ourselves.” [“CRADLE OF CORRUPTION”]
[SNIP]
You see, positive liberties are rejected outright in natural law, unless undertaken voluntarily. So, dear Mr. Beck, the reason the Constitution is by-and-large a charter of negative liberties, as the president put it, is because positive, state-minted rights violate the individual’s negative (real) rights.
The Great Glenn in action:
Update (Dec. 18): Sitting in for Glenn, Judge Andrew Napolitano delivers a superb explication of the natural-rights doctrine, joined by Joe Salerno, whose lectures at the Mises Institute I greatly enjoyed, and John Tamny of RealClearMarkets.com. What a shame the Wall Street Journal’s statist extraordinaire, Stuart Varney, now tenured at Fox Business, gets to TALK over the Three Wise Men. I’ve had enough of the Stephen Moores and Stuart Varneys of the world, wrong for decades, yet able to keep lucrative careers going, as they pepper their verbiage with the occasional, non-committal, crudely stated truths (“government needs to be throttled”).
Allow freedom and reality to be heard for a change. Expunge the snake-oil merchants from forums friendly to freedom.
Readers, please send me the YouTube clip of this round table, which should be up very shortly (after all, YouTube is not yet run by the state).
