“The failure of communism should have been, after all, not just a turning point in geo-political power – the ending of the Cold War and the break-up of the Warsaw Pact – but in modern thinking about the state and its relationship to the economy, about collectivism vs individualism, and about public vs private power. Where was the discussion, the trenchant analysis, or the fundamental debate about how and why the collectivist solutions failed, which should have been so pervasive that it would have percolated down from the educated classes to the bright 18-year-olds? Fascism is so thoroughly (and, of course, rightly) repudiated that even the use of the word as a casual slur is considered slanderous, while communism, which enslaved more people for longer (and also committed mass murder), is regarded with almost sentimental condescension.”

Janet Daley

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“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature…. If the next centennial does not find us a great nation … it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”

President James Garfield

“The US presidential race is a prime example of the poor judgment and poor use of resources that legacy news media coverage displays — at least from the standpoint of the serious student of world events. The coverage begins much too early, contains much too much fluff and spin, and provides the reader with next to no serious insight about where the country is headed.

There are good economic and competitive reasons why the media covers the presidential race in mind numbing detail, but just because they write it doesn’t mean we have to read it.

Many people follow politics the way sports buffs follow sports news, or supermarket shoppers read People magazine and there is nothing wrong with this. Apart from the schadenfreude and love of gossip, it is an innocent human pastime and a perfectly reasonable leisure activity. But it is not the same as a serious interest in events, and people who really want to understand what is happening in the world and help build a better future need to spend less time following horse race chit chat and more time both following the real news and carrying out the historical, economic, cultural and intellectual study programs that will enable them to understand the news in greater depth.”

The “News” That Isn’t News

“In his last official act of business in 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act from his vacation rental in Kailua, Hawaii. In a statement, the president said he did so with reservations about key provisions in the law — including a controversial component that would allow the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge.

The legislation has drawn severe criticism from civil liberties groups, many Democrats, along with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who called it “a slip into tyranny.” Recently two retired four-star Marine generals called on the president to veto the bill in a New York Times op-ed, deeming it “misguided and unnecessary.”

“Due process would be a thing of the past,” wrote Gens Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar. “Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States”

I haven’t heard anyone outside of government defending this, not even the war-hawk right who you’d think would be okay with anything that strengthens our government’s ability to protect the poor defenseless population (cough, Todd Beamer, cough). If this had happened under the previous administration we all know that there would have been an unholy racket about the president “shredding the Constitution” and setting up a Fascist government. Now? Not so much.

Don’t misunderstand me. I do not think that the President is going to use this bill to start pulling political opponents off the street and disappearing them. Emphatically NO. I’m not all conspiracy-theory about this. Saying it’s a horrible bill and goes against our ideas of due process and rule-of-law isn’t the same thing as saying the president is eeeevill and Fascistic. It’s terrible law, and shockingly bad in light of the fact that the President held himself up as such a strong constitutional scholar–and convinced so many people to vote for him based on that claim. But we all know how laws that get passed now with the promise that they won’t be abused by the current administration (cross our hearts… just give us this power now and everything will be okay) will be reinterpreted, stretched, and applied with a far wider interpretation by a future administration (hey, the law is there and has been on the books for a while). So the slippery slope argument definitely applies.

Even members of his own party have publicly acknowledged that this bill was badly written and allows this very thing to legally be interpreted from the document. So they proposed language that would remove the possibility without defanging the legislation in general. That language was stripped from the final bill.

This cartoon on Instapundit says it well:

There is no more damning evidence of the failure of this administration to live up to their campaign promises of open government, trustworthy government, and fair government than this. In light of the Change we were told would happen, the passing and signing of this bill (by both parties) is indefensible.

“The depressing part is how safe a bet it is that [people will] go back to being oblivious the moment their direct interests aren’t threatened. They’ll cheer for the next tax hike, the next round of environmental feel-goodism, the next political “fix” for the next transient market failure – and never notice that by doing so they’re creating the political conditions in which malignant growths like SOPAs inevitably flourish.

So here’s a clue: the only way to keep your freedom – on the Internet or anywhere else – is to defend everyone else’s freedom as well, by keeping your government tiny and starved and rigidly constrained in what it can do. Otherwise, the future you’re begging for is SOPAs without end.”

worth reading.

Congress passes the Indefinite Detention Powers act. (aka the “National Defense Authorization Act”, but hey, let’s call a spade a spade…).

Just ask yourself what the reaction would have been if the previous president had passed this the previous congress had passed this. Thanks to friend Sean for pointing out that it is Congress, not Presidents, that actually pass laws. I know this, but when was the last time that an unpopular bill wasn’t laid at the feet of Congress? Technically, congress passed the recent Health Care bill, but there’s a reason that it is called (even at the President’s own insistence), Obama-care.

Still, I agree with Sean that the NDAA is a horrible bill. Shame on both parties for this stinker. But evidence pretty strongly suggests that it doesn’t matter what we think any longer.

I actually called my Representative’s office in Washington this morning to voice my unhappiness with the SOPA bill that’s in markup today. I mentioned sotto-voce “not that it matters what a constituent says”. Her attitude, pretty plainly, was of course not!. Have a nice day!

“Much of what we think of as “normal” behavior in a consumer society strikes me as wasteful and vulgar. But it’s a disdain I tend to keep quiet about, for at least two reasons:

I find that, as little as I like excess and overconsumption, voicing that dislike gives power to people and political tendencies that I consider far more dangerous than overconsumption. I’d rather be surrounded by fat people who buy too much stuff than concede any ground at all to busybodies and would-be social engineers…

…I do not – ever – want to be one of those people. And just by being a white, college-educated American from an upper-middle-class SES, I’m in a place where honking about overconsumption sounds even to myself altogether too much like crapping on the aspirations of poorer and browner people who have bupkis and quite reasonably want more than they have.”

from Why I Love Wal-Mart in Spit of Never Shopping There.

We generally avoid Wal-Mart, opting instead for the nearer and neater Target, but I like this guy’s point.

“I’d just as soon get rid of the Commerce Clause and have a simple constitutional principle: “The Federal government can do anything a state government can do, and if there’s a conflict the Federal rule wins.” It would shorten legal textbooks considerably. Unfortunately, it’s not what the document at issue says.

Nevertheless, in the course of arguing for the constitutionality of Obamacare’s “individual mandate,” Einer Elhauge pretty much rules out the possibility that limiting the federal government to the regulation of “commerce … among the several states” inhibits the feds from doing anything. To counter the charge that then Washington could make you buy broccoli, Elhauge argues … um, Washington could make you buy broccoli! But don’t worry, there are other limitations . . . Well, OK then! As long as we can just leave it rotting in the fridge. … But it’s a little suspicious–-and surely not a selling point–-that under Elhauge’s argument the only limits on government would be the rights — like “bodily integrity” and privacy — that liberal lawyers have dreamed up but not the limits — i.e. whether or not something is “interstate commerce” – the Founders dreamed up.”

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