Liberty

America the Uniquely Free

Mark Noonan66 Comments

Just at the moment we don’t, perhaps, feel as patriotic as we might like. We probably feel that things have gone very wrong and we wonder about the long term survival of our Republic.

It is, after all, simply true that many Americans – and probably most of our current Ruling Class – despise the men in this picture. They also despise what they accomplished – in both making a nation and then, to the everlasting fury of our Ruling Class, setting up a system where the law restrains the government, not the people. And that is why as down as we might feel at the moment, we can’t give in to such feelings.

Never in human history has a government been established which held that the government can only do certain, enumerated things. This past couple weeks, for the first time in nearly a century, the Supreme Court of our land made rulings in accordance with this American dogma – that which isn’t granted to the government, is reserved to the people. The nutshell of the four main rulings is that the nobody stuttered 1775 to 1787. The Founders were men of many backgrounds and divergent – in some cases, hostile – interests. What bound them all together, what made success in War and Peace possible, was their unified conviction that the individual is the measure of things. It was, in a very real sense, a secular version of Our Lord’s command that the Sabbath was made for Man, not the other way around. And, so, the Government is made for Man.

Everywhere around the world today, you find that even is allegedly free nations, everyone still waits for permission. When they vote, all they’re doing is decide who will decide for them – and not just on major issues: the mania for regulation in America is very bad these days, but even our bloated bureaucracy hasn’t reached the suffocating levels of bureaucracy seen in all advanced societies in the world. And there is also this difference, in foreign lands the people grumble but they submit. In America, the Spirit of ’76 still exists. Perhaps a bit attenuated, but it is still there – there still remains the concept, and the desire, that government will do as the people command, not the other way around.

The overturn of Roe is the strongest symbol of this continuing spirit. It took 49 years. it took the electing of four different GOP Presidents. The appointment of 10 Supreme Court Justices. Innumerable legal and legislative battles at the local, State and federal levels before it was achieved. And while the primary motivator was life, itself, we must not discount that the reason the movement started and maintained itself in growing confidence and strength was because in Roe the violation was not just of the laws of God, but of the reason for the United States’ existence. And this was crucial, because while religious believers were the mainstay of the movement, it could not have succeeded absent the crucial leavening of non-religious people who yet saw that Roe was an outrage. And the outrage was some judges telling us what to do. They had no warrant for such action! That was the key: whether or not abortion should be legal is a matter for a free people to debate and decide…not to have it handed down from on high, with only a few lawyers getting a say.

The spirit is also vibrant in the 2A movement which scored a signal victory, as well as the anti-regulation people and, of course, those who care most about free exercise of religion. All did very well, though in these last three, the victory is not yet complete (Roe’s overturn ends the abortion matter, by and large, at the federal level – the Pro-Life movement will now have to work State by State to continue to advance their cause). The main thing here is that people are still pressing the issue – demanding that even now, in 2022 when the State has become a monster out of control that it obey the rules. That the laws mean what they say and even the government must obey. And they’ll keep pressing – in 2A, the forces of reaction in New York went to work immediately, essentially making almost all of New York a gun-free zone. This will be challenged, and the tyrants will be defeated – and just like the Left screwing up by taking Alabama to court, so the Left may have really screwed up in New York…because you can almost see the Justices ruling that “shall not be infringed” really means what it says. We’ll see how that goes, but I feel confident in the long term.

And this kind of freedom – the freedom which demands not just a vote on who is in charge, but control over what is done – is a very American freedom. It, in fact, only exists in the United States. I’ve seen plenty of foreign comments where they seem to sincerely not understand why we even fight over things like abortion and guns. To them, their government decided that guns don’t belong in civil hands and that abortion is a good thing…and that’s the end of it. They can’t conceptualize telling their government “no, you can’t do that”. At most they can only see their way to voting for someone who will tell them what to do more efficiently than the other guys.

We must keep this – we must win the battle with our own who hate our country. And as we do this, we must also expand it around the world. I’m not talking about nation-building…I’m talking about disabling access to America for nations which don’t have a Bill of Rights like we do…and a real Bill of Rights; some definite “Congress shall make no law” and “shall not be infringed” stuff in there. We are, as Reagan said, a shining city on a hill. Even in our current, pathetic state, people still flood in. Sure, some for base motives, but most because the story has spread around the world…in the USA is real freedom and you can make it. It has been, perhaps, the true impulse for humanity all along: a desire to live without permission. To simply do what we want when we want to do it. To make our own way, to pay our own price.

And we must keep it because if we lose, it will never come back. Never again will any government set up a system which limits government. This is a once-in-history experiment. Our unique concept of liberty is the best – in fact, it is the only liberty to be found in the world. Fight for it. Keep it. Pass it on. The people of 1776 look down upon us, right now, and wonder if we have the heart and stomach for it?

The Last, Best Hope

Mark Noonan12 Comments

I consider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. – Abraham Lincoln

That, boiled down, was all the Civil War was about. Lincoln’s view was that regardless of any complaints the South had about the result of the 1860 election or the structure and function of American government, they could not legitimately break up the country because they didn’t get their way. Popular government requires that the losers accept the loss and set their minds to reversing the result at a future election. But there was more to Lincoln’s statement than the immediate problem of the Civil War – the assertion is rather universal: is popular government something wise, or nothing but folly? The jury is still out. Spoiler: the jury will always be out. It is an endless effort.

Popular government has two requirements: the aforementioned acceptance of the election results and that the government never seeks to thwart the popular will. People have to get out there and campaign and vote, accept the results and then the government has to do what it was elected to do within the restrictions of the Constitution. Obviously, we’ve settled whether or not secession is something to do when you lose, but we haven’t settled whether or not popular government can maintain a system where the popular will prevails. The popular will is whatever the people want done now via Constitutional means and the unrepealed Constitutional things they did in the past: the government, to be truly popular, must do both to the best of it’s ability – honor what exists, and implement what is desired under law.

Voting is, of course, only a mechanism for assessing the popular will. It tells us who convinced the most people to go along with a party or candidate. This is a very important thing, but it isn’t the end of it. Voting is only an aspect of how things work. Far more important is what the government does once it is in power. First and foremost, does it do what it said it would do? Secondly, does it obey the law as it does things? A government which doesn’t do what was proposed – or, even worse, does the opposite – is deliberately thwarting the popular will. A government that doesn’t obey the law is attacking the very concept of popular government.

And as I said, our experiment is still on-going – and we’re rather up against it. For a short while there, the example of America started to spread liberty around the world. But even at its peak in, say, the 1950’s, the freedoms being established weren’t American freedoms. They were conditional. How so? Well, let’s take a look.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Congress shall make no law. That is a very vigorous statement. Doesn’t matter how bad you want it. Doesn’t matter how justified you think you are or even if 90% of the people agree with you…Congress shall make no law. Boom, as the hip people say. Done. Now, to be sure, you can break the law and so make laws against free speech and so forth, but if you are obeying the law – as is required for popular government to work – then you have no recourse other than changing the Constitution, a very difficult process and even here in 2022 you’d never get close to an Amending majority to change so much as a word of that. Now, how about this for a contrast:

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The Canadian Charter goes on for quite a bit after that detailing this, that and the other thing but it is all moot: Everything after the word “it” negates what was said before and makes nonsense of what comes after. What are “reasonable limits”? The Charter doesn’t define them so what a “reasonable limit” is will be whatever the government of the day decrees…and as that government, via the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, essentially controls the terms of the political debate, it isn’t like the people have a real shot at changing who will be decreeing what is reasonable. The current government of Canada got 32.6% of the vote last election – and just today it announced that it is freezing handgun purchases…because, to the government, that is a reasonable limit. And as we saw with the trucker protests, the government will also decide what are the reasonable limits to popular opposition to government decrees.

Neat, huh? Voting all over the place…and your freedoms are non-existent; entirely depending on the government deciding whether they meet reasonable limits.

And it is like that all over the world. Either there is no specific assertion of the rights of the people (France’s Constitution, for instance, only asserts that it honors the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man – but it doesn’t make them obligatory under French law), or such assertions are hemmed in with weasel words allowing the government to do whatever it wants. Only in the United States do you get things like Congress shall make no law or shall not be infringed. And, let me tell you, this just irritates the heck out of our Ruling Class.

And don’t act all surprised about this – what government ever really wants to limit itself? Well, we know of one, and just one: The Constitutional Convention of 1787. For the very first and only time in history, a group of people came together to craft a government which would have built in provisions to limit the power of government. Most people – even most historically literate people – don’t realize how astonishing this is. People who are drawn to government are, after all, mostly drawn to power. Such people are inherently unlikely to enact anything that would actually stop them from doing something. But in 1787, a whole bunch of people drawn to power did just that. It was a miracle – and as I said many years before, I think that God moved them to do as they did. Can’t prove it, but what emerged out of Philadelphia in 1787 was so unique and so sublime that I can only credit God for it. But, that aside, the main thing is that it was done.

And ever since then, people far less worthy than the Founders have tried to work their way around it. You can just look at a Pelosi or a Clinton and see them burning with envy at Justin Trudeau just deciding, all on his own, that you can’t buy a pistol in Canada any longer. They hate the fact that here in America there are clear, easy to understand laws which say the government can’t do that. And of course they still circumvent the law as often as they can. But even that probably bothers them – they have to dress it up, slip it into a must-pass bill, make sure the MSM gets the right Narrative…and all the while they have the fear that our genuinely independent judiciary will strike it down, with the added complication that dozens of States are likely to resist and by non-cooperation and lawsuits cause all manner of trouble. So, soooo much easier if you could just get Pudding Brain to sign a decree between Matlock and Nap Time.

And they also very much prefer that our ability to speak, worship, own property, be armed and so forth were subject to their arbitrary interpretation of what the law says. They really want some “reasonable limits”!

They’re trying to get those “reasonable limits”. Been trying for decades and they’ll never quit. Dressed up as “gun safety”, “reproductive rights”, “equity” and such, they are very much trying to impose some “reasonable limits” on us. And we have to fight them off – as preparation for utterly destroying them as a political force. We must do this because we must continue to obey Lincoln – we must, that is, continue to prove that popular government isn’t an absurdity. It is either win this fight, or throw up the sponge and look for the first likely dictator who at least promises to leave us alone in our personal beliefs. We’d get the choice between the Left’s Lenin, or our Caesar. I don’t want that – I’d rather we kept freedom. But, in the end, there might not be enough of us to do that. But I’m sure going to try.

This is still the world’s last, best hope. Has been since 1776 and will be until such time as the rest of the world starts writing into its laws the things government isn’t allowed to do. And in this, you’ll now pardon me if I don’t give a damn about the world and it’s problems. This is a big reason why I’m indifferent to things like Ukraine: I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now. Namely, making sure America as founded continues to exist. All else comes a very distant second to that. We are, thank God, not involved in a hot Civil War, but we’re just as much in a Civil War as ever…because as was said regarding the last one, the House must become all one thing or all the other. Either we restore an America where government is restricted, or we become an America where the people are.

What Are Human Rights?

Mark Noonan12 Comments

There has been much debate this past week over Florida removing Disney’s special tax and governing provisions and as it went on it occurred to me that the concept of “rights” isn’t properly understood in America these days by a lot of people. We know that the Left doesn’t understand the concept at all, but even many on the Right seem to be pretty hazy on the subject. So, let’s take a stab at defining what a right is:

A human right is something that an individual inherently has: to determine if something is yours by right, you must consider whether or not any human being, at least in potential, can think, say or do a thing on their own: if they can, it is almost certainly a right. If thinking, saying or especially doing something requires the cooperation of one or more additional people, it isn’t a right but a privilege.

In our Declaration, we assert that we are endowed by God with these rights. It isn’t necessary to believe in God to hold that rights are inherent, but it is a lot easier if you do. The main thing about it, though, is the assertion that a human being, as such, simply has them. They aren’t granted, they are secured. And that is the crucial thing – because we go on to assert that governments are instituted among men to secure our rights. That’s the only purpose of government: to make sure that everyone’s rights are secured: left up for debate is just how to secure the rights, but that the individual has the rights and government must secure them to be legitimate is a bit of dogma absent which the United States has no reason for existing.

It is also important to remember that rights are individual in nature. They don’t adhere to a group: they adhere to you and me, as people, simply because we are people. There are no black rights or gay rights or women’s rights: there are only human rights and only individual human beings have them.

What has gone very wrong in America over the past century, and especially the last fifty years or so, is the loss of this understanding of human rights, and what our government is supposed to be doing. When a Leftist says that the Constitution doesn’t give you a right to own a machine gun, all he’s doing is talking drivel. Of course it doesn’t give you a right to a machine gun. It doesn’t give you anything. It secures all your rights (or, that is what it is supposed to do). To say it doesn’t specifically authorize machine gun ownership, or their other argument that gun ownership is dependent upon militia membership (with the further assertion that the militia is now the standing Army) is to talk nonsense. The Constitution also doesn’t specifically say I can have a ham sandwich – and I doubt anyone will try to enact common sense ham sandwich control. I have, as a human being, the inherent right to do anything that any individual human being has the potential to do on their own: as long as I’m not required to obtain the consent of another to do a thing, then I get to do it and the only purpose of government is to secure my right to do it.

I can thus own any property that someone wishes to sell me. I can say whatever I want. I can believe whatever I want. I can go in the public domain anywhere I wish. I don’t have to account for my actions to anyone unless I’ve tried to take something from them (ie, their life, their liberty or their property). Most people don’t get this concept: that we are all free agents. We’re not supposed to have to fill out a form. We don’t need permission. To take it to a small level as an example: in most places, every year you have to re-register your car and pay for the privilege of not getting a traffic ticket while driving your property in the public domain. What possible argument can be made that I, as a person, should have to tell the government what I own? Why should I have to pay each year to tell them what I own? I have an inherent right as a person to own a car and that’s the end of it. You might reasonably be able to tell me that I have to keep it on the roads, that I can’t exceed certain speeds as a means to protect the rights of others on the roads…but you don’t need to know if I own a particular car. But we’ve grown so used to this sort of thing that we don’t even see it for the imposition that it is. And because we do things like register cars, the Left says it is reasonable to register our guns. And, hey, please have your child fill out this form telling the government what religion you are and what language is spoken at home. One thing leads to another, doesn’t it?

The Left makes their arguments because they (a) don’t know what a right is and (b) haven’t the foggiest notion of how the United States Constitution and government are supposed to function.

But it also infects the Right. Plenty of voices rose up as Florida removed Disney’s special protections to say that we on the Right are violating Disney’s right to free speech. They are asserting that Disney corporation, in engaging in the debate about sex education in school, was merely exercising its right to free speech and to take away Disney’s tax breaks was unjustly punishing speech. This is an absurdity. Disney is a publicly traded corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees…it is a collective thing and thus has no rights at all. All it has are privileges…and the Florida legislature has decided to revoke some of those privileges. Each Disney employee is, of course, free to say whatever they want – and the employees of Disney are also empowered to range their corporation on any side of the political spectrum they wish. Nobody can make the least move against any individual Disney employee for speaking out…but the collective entity called Disney has no rights and, as it enters the political debate, it is entirely legitimate for their political opponents to use their constitutional powers against the Disney entity. In this case, the power inherent in government to decide what the tax bill is going to be.

These days, we’re so used to asking permission to do things that even many on the Right seem to think that as long as you can go to court and have a judge say you can do a thing, you’re free. But that isn’t how it is supposed to work. It isn’t for me, as an individual, to argue I have a right – it is for those who say I don’t to argue that I don’t have it. Like this: what was wrong in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case was that the owner of the shop had to defend himself. He had to go through a long, tortuous, expensive legal process just to get a judge to say, “hey, turns out he as an individual doesn’t have to bake a cake if he doesn’t want to”. Do you see how utterly ridiculous that is? Who the hell was anyone to think, even for a moment, that they had the right to tell a person they must do anything? Free people can’t be told to do something they don’t want to do. The end. The whole case should have been five minutes:

Plaintiff: Your honor, I want that man to bake me a cake.

Judge: Defendant, do you want to bake the Plaintiff a cake?

Defendant: No.

Judge: Ok, sorry, Plaintiff, he doesn’t want to do it. Case dismissed. Oh, and Plaintiff: you owe the Defendant his legal costs.

But because we’ve got into this “mother, may I?” attitude, it went on for years. And because it was allowed to go on for years, the people trying to destroy Masterpiece Bakeshop simply tried again and again with different plaintiffs and slightly different arguments. But they all came down to the same absurdity: an assertion that Person A has a right to order Person B to do something. That in this or that circumstance, a person loses their rights as an individual depending on the supposed need of another individual.

We must get back to the understanding of human rights – it will be crucial as we reform America. The old America we grew up in (and especially that, say, our grandparents knew) is gone. We’re at the crossroads where we are going to decide if America will remain free, or become a quasi-Socialist society of Rulers and Ruled. But for us to recreate a free America, then Americans are going to have to re-learn what being free means. They’ll need to re-learn, that is, that we don’t need permission. My grandfather used to make massive business deals on a handshake. There was no contract. There were no lawyers involved. They were free, adult Americans presumed by all concerned to be in full possession of their faculties and so if the deal went belly up they’d all take their lumps and move on. They didn’t need to fill out a government permission form (and the very concept would have amazed them): they saw their opportunity to make money and agreed to give it a try. We must restore that mental attitude – something in the mind which assumes we’re all able to do a thing without permission from anyone save those directly involved.

Because if we don’t, then even our victory over the current Left will be hollow – unless people are imbued with a spirit of liberty, they won’t remain free. They won’t, that is turn from Marx to Madison, but from Marx to Franco. In the end, Franco is still vastly better than Marx…but Madison is better than both, by a long shot.