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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, May 15, 2004
Take Me Home: The John Denver Story (2000) I caught this movie on the Country Music Television channel. (This is proof that I was channel surfing--you won't find me watching CMT intentionally.) I don't know how accurate it is--this review seems to think that it suffered from pretty serious accuracy problems--but it was a very touching film. The film portrays John Denver's start in the mid-1960s, singing with a folk music trio, in an America so incredibly straight-laced and squeaky-clean that I am not sure that most Americans under 30 will quite believe it. At one point, he drives a hundred miles to ask Annie out on their first date--and she points out that she can't do it, because the dorm she lives in has a curfew. (Yeah, colleges used to operate in loco parentis, which means "in place of the parents." They attempted to protect the virtue and health of their students. Try not to laugh. If I have to explain why discouraging casual sex was considered a good idea, well, never mind.) I remember that America--although it was going away as I arriving. It was not perfect. It was often hypocritical--but I would argue that it was better to have high aspirations often not met, than to aspire to nothing at all. Watching Chad Lowe's portrayal of this painfully sweet and decent guy pursuing and then marrying an equally sweet and decent Annie put a big lump in my throat. I would like think that there are lots of relationships starting today like that, but the tales that I hear from college students make me think otherwise. I've always been pretty conflicted about John Denver. John Denver's politics, as near as I could tell, were a mixture of good intentioned liberalism and bunny-hugger environmentalism. Not good, but there were a lot of entertainers embracing vastly more damaging ideas during the 1970s and early 1980s. Denver almost seems like a conservative compared to a lot of the pro-totalitarian nonsense that flows out of Hollywood these days. I will tell you that it is impossible for me to listen to much of the music that put him on the map without misting up: "Leaving on a Jet Plane", "Annie's Song", "I'm Sorry", "Sunshine On My Shoulders", "Rocky Mountain High", "Poems, Prayers, and Promises", "Country Roads". There are songs like "The Eagle & The Hawk" that are so evocative that when I hear it, I feel like I am in the Rockies. (Wait a minute! I do live in the Rockies now, or at least within an hour's drive!) Some of his songs are completely forgettable--just so cute and cloying that I can't take them serious, like "Thank God I'm A Country Boy!" And there is one song that I have heard by him twice, the title of which I do not remember. It is one soldier in a hospital bed trying to wake up the soldier in the adjoining bed, talking about how they are finally going to go home--and as the song continues, and the other soldier doesn't respond, the desperation in the singer's voice increases. It is a shatteringly powerful song--and one that deserves to be heard more often. The film portrays the dark side of John Denver--a talented songwriter whose relationship with his father (played in an understated way by Gerald McRaney) was difficult, and consequently was unable to be the father to his adopted children that he should have been. The film also gives a pretty dark portrayal (presumably based on John Denver's autobiography) of a guy so driven by the pursuit first of fame and adoration, then by his political desires, that he destroyed his relationship with Annie, both by adultery while on tour, and because he clearly had not worked through a lot of his personal demons. (The scene with the chainsaw is pretty chilling--I found myself wanting to yell, "No, that will be the end of the marriage!") On a smaller scale, I've seen too many marriages destroyed by that sort of pursuit of wealth in the electronics industry. Learn from the lesson. No Bias In This Reporting, Oh No... From the Boston Globe: A petty win for RomneyUPDATE: I'm told that in spite of the appearance, this columnist is actually an opinion writer, not a reporter. The Political Equivalent of Dimensionless Points, Frictionless Surfaces, and Perfect Gases When I took physics, we made a lot of simplifying assumptions: dimensionless points; wires of zero thickness; frictionless surfaces. In chemistry, you learn that the gas laws are close, but not perfect, because of van der Waals forces. Helium is pretty close, but there is no perfect gas. Engineering involves working with real materials, and real problems. A reader responded to my criticism of Randy Barnett's libertarian theory of the Constitution: Laws against public nudity: Sir, simply put, without public lands,This is the political equivalent of a dimensionless point. It is a simplifying assumption that has little to do with the real world. In an Ayn Rand or Robert Heinlein novel, there can be a society where there are no public places--even the courthouses might be leased from private parties, and subject to the rules those owners impose. Real world law has to be like engineering--something built on the real world, and the limitations of real governments, and real people. This May Be Too Depressing a Story to Read If you aren't in a good mood right now, skip past this story. I mention it because it brings out two important points: 1. Mental illness treatment in America is a disaster. 2. No man is an island; disasters lead to more disasters. Hughes, 38, a homeless Lafayette man, was found dead in a wooded area near Tapawingo Park in West Lafayette. The Tippecanoe County coroner's office has not yet assigned a cause or manner of death, but investigators suspect health problems and alcohol abuse contributed to his demise.Yes, I guess that it did. The KKK & Al-Qaeda A reader pointed me to a very thoughtful column that, while not directly tied to Dr. Rice's comparison, dovetails with it well: About eighty years ago and only a few miles from my home, the Ku Klux Klan was reborn in an explosion of fiery crosses on top of the massive granite outcropping known as Stone Mountain. The men who attended this celebration were convinced that they represented what was finest in southern culture, and that their newly resurrected organization would be dedicated to preserving the heritage of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant values that had been so integral in the creation of the United States. Ted Koppel On The Iraq War He spoke at UC Bezerkley commencement, and to my surprise: Under fire for a recent broadcast on fallen U.S. soldiers in Iraq, veteran U.S. television anchor Ted Koppel said on Thursday that he was not opposed to the U.S. war there but questioned the way it was being conducted.Well that describes my feeling as well. He does seem to be promoting the "I was only following orders" defense (say it with a thick German accent): "It is quite extraordinary that so much attention is still being focused on the culpability of a bunch of young military police, when they, in fact, were clearly operating under guidelines that had been set much, much further up the command chain. It is the legitimacy of those guidelines that require public discussion." Encouraging a Coup d'Etat in America Sidney Blumenthal's column in the Guardian seems to be a nudge, nudge, wink, wink encouragement of a military coup d'etat against Bush: One high-level military strategist told me that Rumsfeld is "detested", and that "if there's a sentiment in the army it is: Support Our Troops, Impeach Rumsfeld". Democratic Hypocrisy Calling For Rumsfeld's Head Charles Krauthammer points out that the Democrats had a different view of the matter when the crimes were worse (dozens of Americans died), and when the Cabinet official was more directly involved in the process: Democrats calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation invoke the principle of ministerial responsibility: a Cabinet secretary must take ultimate responsibility for what happens on his watch. Interesting idea. Where was it in 1993 when the attorney general of the United States ordered the attack on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, which ended in the deaths of 76 people? Barbarism At Abu Ghraib Prison Here's the story you won't find on the evening news: As perfect justice, the story in fact begins in Abu Ghraib prison, in 1995. With Iraq's economy in a tailspin, Saddam arrested nine Iraqi businessmen to scapegoat them as dollar traders. They got a 30-minute "trial," and were sentenced, after a year's imprisonment, to have their right hands surgically cut off at Abu Ghraib prison. Excuse Me While I Go Into Shock Falsehoods from gun control group are actually corrected in a major newspaper! The Chicago Tribune's coverage of the Million (give or take 900,000) Mom March was just corrected: An article Monday about the Million Mom March incorrectly reported that Uzi submachine guns and AK-47 assault rifles were included in the 1994 assault weapons ban. In fact, both those types of weapons were banned before the 1994 law, which prohibits the manufacture or importation of 19 types of weapons, including other Uzi guns and other AK-type assault rifles. South Carolina Repeals One Gun A Month Law The details are here. These sort of laws are in the category of flaming nuisances. The objective is to stop gun trafficking--without having to actually look for and arrest gun traffickers. This is rather like requiring speed governors on cars, so you don't have to actually punish speeders. There are odd circumstances where a one gun a month law might well significantly interfere with an individual's right to keep and bear arms. For example, if you were burglarized, and you needed to buy a handgun (for concealed carry) and a shotgun (for home defense) immediately. But most of the time, these laws have little impact on legitimate gun owners. They are still dangerous, however, because once you have accepted the legitimacy of one gun a month, why one gun every two months? Or every year? Or every five years? Those would become major impediments for legitimate gun owners. Ohio Concealed Carry Permit Law Working From the Toledo Blade: Two men were charged yesterday in the robbery of a West Toledo carryout during which one of them was shot twice by a store employee.Talk about just in time! Friday, May 14, 2004
Crooks This Hardworking Deserve A Real Job From Reuters: OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Oklahoma police are looking for grease bandits who made off with 5,000 pounds (2268 kg) of used cooking oil and grease from three restaurants. When Ann Coulter Is Good, She Is Spectacular! You will recall (or maybe you won't) my comments about Los Angeles Times editor John S. Carroll's complaints about Fox News not being "real" journalists, because they have a political agenda. I wish that I written something as sharp as this: Last week, John S. Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, delivered a lecture during "Ethics Week" of the Society of Professional Journalists. The speaker has not yet been announced for "Abstinence Week" of the Society of Professional Whores.But having gotten the cheap laugh, there's real substance to the rest of the column. After pointing out that the claim that Fox News watchers are ignorant, because they disproportionately believe that there was an Iraqi connection to al-Qaeda, Coulter points to a number of pieces of evidence, including the Czech intelligence service's claim to have seen Mohammed Atta meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague a few months before 9/11: Interestingly, liberals refuse to believe Czech intelligence on the Prague meeting ... because the CIA doesn't believe it. Apparently, this is the lone, singular assertion by the CIA that liberals wholeheartedly trust. The CIA also concluded that evidence of WMDs in Iraq was -- in the words of CIA director George Tenet -- a "slam dunk case." But liberals hysterically denounce that CIA conclusion as a "misperception" created by Fox News Channel.She also points that David Kay's report does certainly show that, if Iraq didn't have WMDs in large quantities, they certainly had the capability to produce them, and had committed a number of violations of existing Security Council resolutions on aggressive weapons. I had mentioned this curious story from a month or so ago, asking, "Where did al-Qaeda get the nerve gas--apparently in quantity--for this planned attack on the Jordanian government?" Oddly enough, the Washington Post reported on December 12, 2002: The Bush administration has received a credible report that Islamic extremists affiliated with al Qaeda took possession of a chemical weapon in Iraq last month or late in October, according to two officials with firsthand knowledge of the report and its source. They said government analysts suspect that the transaction involved the nerve agent VX and that a courier managed to smuggle it overland through Turkey.According to some reports, the chemical weapons seized in Jordan included VX. I'm sure that's just a coincidence, of course. That Washington Times article has some interesting statements from an interview with someone named John Loftus: Q: David Kay said, in an interim report, there was a possibility WMD components were shipped to Syria. Labels: terrorism Maybe There's A Place For These Guys On Air America A couple of DJs lost their jobs out in Portland: PORTLAND - The radio station KNRK at 94.7 FM is issuing an apology to its listeners after talk show hosts Marconi, Tiny and sidekick Nickie J. laughed at and ridiculed the beheading of American Nick Berg.If you think that Air America wouldn't hire these turkeys, read this. If A Couple Of These Long Posts Look Familiar... I have updated them with some additional material from Federalist 84 concerning the authority of state governments. What Rights Are Retained? In re-reading Federalist 84, I found this significant argument: It has been several times truly remarked that bills of rights are, in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgements of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the prince. Such was MAGNA CHARTA, obtained by the barons, sword in hand, from King John. Such were the subsequent confirmations of that charter by succeeding princes. Such was the PETITION OF RIGHT assented to by Charles I., in the beginning of his reign. Such, also, was the Declaration of Right presented by the Lords and Commons to the Prince of Orange in 1688, and afterwards thrown into the form of an act of parliament called the Bill of Rights. It is evident, therefore, that, according to their primitive signification, they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain every thing they have no need of particular reservations. "WE, THE PEOPLE of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ORDAIN and ESTABLISH this Constitution for the United States of America.'' Here is a better recognition of popular rights, than volumes of those aphorisms which make the principal figure in several of our State bills of rights, and which would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government.Hamilton is making the case for why the people should be trusted, and I will confess that I have less trust in the democratic rule than Hamilton purports to have. Admittedly, this was a pamphlet intended to sway the population towards supporting the proposed U.S. Constitution, and so perhaps we should not assume that Hamilton really believed that popular government made a Bill of Rights unnnecessary. The next paragraph's argument, however, suggests that while the federal government's powers were limited, state government powers were not--unless explicitly reined in by a state constitution's Bill of Rights: But a minute detail of particular rights is certainly far less applicable to a Constitution like that under consideration, which is merely intended to regulate the general political interests of the nation, than to a constitution which has the regulation of every species of personal and private concerns. If, therefore, the loud clamors against the plan of the convention, on this score, are well founded, no epithets of reprobation will be too strong for the constitution of this State. But the truth is, that both of them contain all which, in relation to their objects, is reasonably to be desired.Throughout Federalist 84, Hamilton is comparing the proposed U.S. Constitution to the New York State Constitution. It seems that Hamilton was distinguishing the two by the fact that the federal government had only a limited set of powers, and therefore had little need for a Bill of Rights, while a state government's authority includes "the regulation of every species of personal and private concerns." That sounds pretty all encompassing, doesn't it? I would argue that Hamilton would not have made this argument unless it represented at least a widely held view, if not a majority view of the authority of state governments. Human Rights and The Constitution (Part I) What Do We Mean By Human Rights? What are human rights? There are two fundamentally different understandings of "human rights," one of which is a list of obligations owed to an individual, and the other a list of limitations on the authority of the government with respect to the individual. For convenience, I will describe this first notion of rights as "obligation rights" and the second as "natural rights." Obligation rights include the notion that you have a right to have things provided: a job, shelter, food, medical care. One problem with this notion of rights is that it seems to be ever-expanding. I remember some years ago seeing a Los Angeles City Councilman explain that cable TV "was a basic human right" as part of his justification for some particular cable TV regulatory scheme. Another problem with such a right is that while it is a "right" of the individual receiving food, shelter, medical care, or cheap cable TV, someone has to provide the good or service. Mr. A's right becomes the government's obligation--and soon, Mr. B, Ms. C, and Ms. D are required to fund it. You can argue the merits of obligation rights all you want--but this is not the notion of "rights" that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution had in mind. This idea of obligation rights is largely a nineteenth and twentieth century idea. The idea of natural rights, on the other hand, is quite old. Mortimer Adler argues that: The idea of a natural right order to which all things, including human beings, should conform is one of the most ancient and universal notions. It is a major principle in the religious and philosophic systems of ancient India and China, as well as in classical Greek philosophy. Plato calls it "justice" and applies it to the human soul and human conduct.There has long been opposition to the idea of natural rights. Jeremy Bentham, utilitarian philosopher, denied it completely: "The idea of rights is nonsense and the idea of natural rights is nonsense on stilts...." I am not going to bother arguing the point. People that believe that natural rights is "nonsense on stilts" aren't the source of our current problem of Constitutional interpretation. Besides, those who deny the validity of natural rights are welcome to Auschwitz, the Gulag Archipelago, Saddam Hussein's prisons, and the Rwanda genocide. These are the logical consequences of denying that individuals have rights that all are obligated to obey. How should we understand the U.S. Constitution and human rights? In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson expressed a consensus view of the time: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....Here we have an abstract notion of rights, but not a list of those rights. Even worse, there is a "shorthand" in this definition of rights that we need to understand. Everyone agreed at the time that the states had the authority to execute or imprison people--to take away their "Life" or "Liberty"--not to mention taking away their "Pursuit of Happiness"--as punishment for crimes. The more accurate form of this statement would have been, "certain unalienable Rights (except as punishment for crimes of which the individual has been duly convicted), that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." What does "Liberty" mean? How far does one's liberty extend? Is it unlimited? Again, examination of the laws written and enforced by state governments at the same time gives some idea that "Liberty" did not mean anarchy. There were laws that protected individuals from violence. Thus, murder, robbery, rape, and assault were all criminal matters. There were laws that protected individuals from economic exploitation. Carrying over a tradition from English law, the states believed that they were free to engage in all sorts of economic regulation in defense of the common good (or at least what legislators pretended was the common good). Many of these laws provided monopolies to favored movers and shakers; others may have been legitimately intended for the public good, but good intentions are not enough. Throughout the colonial period, Parliament and colonial legislatures passed all sorts of laws that promoted mercantilism. While stumbling through one of many musty volume on New York colony, I was amused to find an example of a lawsuit concerning a shoe sellers guild. One man was making and selling shoes without being part of the guild. The guild took action to stop him. He appealed to the governor. In the course of trial, it came out that the shoe sellers guild was actually making shoes--and the governor reminded them that under English law, they weren't allowed to make shoes in America. They were supposed to tan leather, and then ship it to England. There, it would be made into shoes, and shipped back to America. The inefficiencies associated with mercantilism were just astounding. States were astonishingly willing to pass laws regulating prices and wages (especially during the Revolution itself). Eric Foner's Tom Paine and Revolutionary Philadelphia shows how Paine became a bit more skeptical of the virtues of unlimited democracy because of how workers used price control laws to unjustly drain the pockets of merchants during the Revolution. Some states after the Revolution, notably Rhode Island, used "legal tender" laws to force merchants to accept worthless Rhode Island currency as payment for all debts--giving merchants wads of paper utterly useless outside the colony. The idea of laissez-faire economics was fast gaining respectability, especially after Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776), but even Smith recognized that there were legitimate areas for governmental regulation of the marketplace for the public good. (Compared to the abusive system then in use, however, what he proposed probably seemed like anarchy.) Many of the colonial and state laws were intended to protect public morality. These included laws against nearly all sexual practices except for intercourse, and even then, only within marriage. These include laws against premarital sex (sometimes punished by requiring immediate marriage), laws against adultery (although some colonies only criminalized sex with a married woman, not sex with a married man), against sodomy (not precisely defined, but certainly including anal sex), and against sex with animals. "Buggery" as an English legal term referred to anal or oral sex, between any two people, regardless of their sex, and sex between a person and an animal. In America, some colonies seem to have used the term to refer just sex with an animal, reserving the term "sodomy" for non-vaginal sexual intercourse. More on these laws here. Of course, because the Lawrence decision struck down state sodomy laws, this this is one of the major struggles going on about constitutional interpretation. (Let me emphasize that I have no enthusiasm for sodomy laws; I do have enthusiasm for honest and accurate Constitutional interpretation, and the Lawrence decision fails on that count.) Limitations on Governmental Power: For Whose Benefit? State constitutions during and after the Revolution were often focused on preventing the sort of class distinctions that characterized British law, as well as protecting individuals from abuse by the legal system. See the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, for example. However, one of the "rights" that it protects, is a statement that the people are sovereign: Art. IV. The people of this commonwealth have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State, and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not, or may not hereafter be, by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in Congress assembled.This doesn't mean that individuals are sovereign; it means that the polity may pass what laws it deems appropriate to the public good, subject only to those limitations written into the constitution. There is a curious conflict here: on the one hand, many provisions of the Massachusetts Constitution are clearly intended to protect majority will, and prevent a small cadre of professional politicians from taking control. Later provisions require annual elections of legislators. Opponents of the U.S. Constitution would argue against its two and six year provisions for election with the slogan, "When annual elections end, tyranny begins." On the other hand, many of the provisions suggest that the drafters realized that there was some risk that even the legislature, representing majority will, might pass laws that denied individual rights--or that officials operating without proper authority, might do so: Art. XVI. The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a State; it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth.Akil Reed Amar's The Bill of Rights argues that while there were some farseeing sorts who worried about the problem of the majority denying the rights of a minority, such as James Madison, most thinkers of the Revolutionary period were primarily concerned about what Amar calls "self-dealing," where officials use their positions of power for their personal aggrandizement of wealth or power--that majority abuse of minorities wasn't the primary concern. The provisions of the state constitutions in this era seem to indicate an awareness that democracy is not a perfect solution to the problem of individual rights--and that these provisions appear in state constitutions suggests that the awareness wasn't all as limited as Amar seems to think. Certainly, some of the provisions that appear in the U.S. Constitution, such as the ban on states impairing contracts, or making "any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts" in Art. I, sec. 10, suggest that the Constitutional Convention delegates were well aware of what Rhode Island had done with its legal tender laws, and intended to stop it in the future. What Rights Does The U.S. Constitution Protect? The Constitution, before the ratification of the Bill of Rights, contained a relatively small number of explicit protections of individual rights. Some of these, in Art. I, sec. 10, cl. 1, are explicitly limitations on the authority of the states: No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.As should be obvious, the bold parts of this clause protect individuals from state governments run amok. In Art. I, sec. 9, the Constitution prohibits the Congress from impairing a number of individual rights. Some are exactly the same as the limitations on states: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed" and Congress is also prohibited from granting titles of nobility. Other individual rights are protected against Congress, but not against the states. The writ of habeas corpus is one example. While it may set your teeth on edge, the right to import slaves until 1808, is also an individual right protected against Congressional action, but not state action. One of the more interesting yet vague guarantees is in Art. IV, sec. 2: The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.There are several differing theories that have been advanced for this, but the one that the Supreme Court finally stuck to was that citizens of any state must be treated by the law the same as citizens of their own state. The case Paul v. Virginia (1868) involved Virginia discriminating against corporations not incorporated in that state. Of course, the question of what constitutes "Privileges and Immunities" provides an easy way for states to continue to discriminate. California, for example, will not issue concealed handgun licenses to non-residents. Of course, that's not a privilege or immunity. Still, this term "Privileges and Immunities" will pop up again, when Congress drafts the Fourteenth Amendment. Antifederalists objected very strongly to the Constitution, with a variety of motivations and a variety of arguments. Some objected to it because it took power away from the states, and gave it to a new and much more powerful federal government. I do not intend to get into this argument in detail, but I am prepared to believe that Antifederalist objections included both honest and dishonest statements. At least one of the most powerful arguments that they advanced was that there was no Bill of Rights, as many of the Revolutionary state constitutions had adopted. Their claim was that this new federal government had such enormous powers, that individuals might be badly abused. Federalist responses were often of the form that the Constitution granted only a very limited set of powers to this new Congress, and these powers were explicit. Therefore, all other power remained with the states--or so the Supreme Court seemed to rule in McCullough v. Maryland (1819): This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it, would seem too apparent, to have required to be enforced by all those arguments, which its enlightened friends, while it was depending before the people, found it necessary to urge; that principle is now universally admitted.However, McCullough did acknowledge that, unlike the Articles of Confederation, there was nothing that expressly reserved all other powers to the states. (See Federalist 21 for a discussion of this issue.) Hamilton, in Federalist 84, argued that a Bill of Rights was necessary to protect against abuses by monarchs, and were unneeded in a representative form of government: It has been several times truly remarked that bills of rights are, in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgements of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the prince. Such was MAGNA CHARTA, obtained by the barons, sword in hand, from King John. Such were the subsequent confirmations of that charter by succeeding princes. Such was the PETITION OF RIGHT assented to by Charles I., in the beginning of his reign. Such, also, was the Declaration of Right presented by the Lords and Commons to the Prince of Orange in 1688, and afterwards thrown into the form of an act of parliament called the Bill of Rights. It is evident, therefore, that, according to their primitive signification, they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain every thing they have no need of particular reservations. ``WE, THE PEOPLE of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ORDAIN and ESTABLISH this Constitution for the United States of America.'' Here is a better recognition of popular rights, than volumes of those aphorisms which make the principal figure in several of our State bills of rights, and which would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government.Hamilton is making the case for why the people should be trusted, and I will confess that I have less trust in the democratic rule than Hamilton purports to have. Admittedly, this was a pamphlet intended to sway the population towards supporting the proposed U.S. Constitution, and so perhaps we should not assume that Hamilton really believed that popular government made a Bill of Rights unnnecessary. The next paragraph's argument, however, suggests that while the federal government's powers were limited, state government powers were not--unless explicitly reined in by a state constitution's Bill of Rights: But a minute detail of particular rights is certainly far less applicable to a Constitution like that under consideration, which is merely intended to regulate the general political interests of the nation, than to a constitution which has the regulation of every species of personal and private concerns. If, therefore, the loud clamors against the plan of the convention, on this score, are well founded, no epithets of reprobation will be too strong for the constitution of this State. But the truth is, that both of them contain all which, in relation to their objects, is reasonably to be desired.Throughout Federalist 84, Hamilton is comparing the proposed U.S. Constitution to the New York State Constitution. It seems that Hamilton was distinguishing the two by the fact that the federal government had only a limited set of powers, and therefore had little need for a Bill of Rights, while a state government's authority includes "the regulation of every species of personal and private concerns." That sounds pretty all encompassing, doesn't it? I would argue that Hamilton would not have made this argument unless it represented at least a widely held view, if not a majority view of the authority of state governments. Next: The Bill of Rights and Amendment IX. Labels: homosexuality A Niece Is Graduating From Harvey Mudd College She sent a graduation announcement that included the statement that she was going to be looking for a work using her Physics degree that didn't involve making bombs. Not to worry; physics jobs in the Islamic States of America will be reserved for those not wearing a burkha. An Apt Comparison Condoleeza Rice spoke at Vanderbilt University: NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that terrorists today are driven by the same hatred that inspired Klansmen to bomb a church in 1963 in her hometown of Birmingham, Ala.It is a very fitting comparison. I am afraid that most Americans don't really know what "lynching" involved. Very often, the Klan wasn't content with throwing a rope over a tree and hanging a black man that they suspected had committed a rape. That would have been wrong, but you could understand why short-tempered sorts might be tempted to take the law into their own hands. No, lynching was often quite a bit worse. Sometimes the "crime" was nothing more than a black teenager whistling at a white woman. But hanging someone would have been positively humane compared to what lynch mobs often did. It was quite common to castrate the victim before hanging him. Sometimes, victims weren't hung, but burned alive. Think of Nick Berg--screaming in pain as they cut off his head with a knife. The analogy really does fit quite well. Of course, there are, in every society, people that take sides in the battle between good and evil: Some Vanderbilt students and faculty had signed a petition to protest Rice's selection for an award. The petition said the award amounted to a university endorsement of Rice's role in the war in Iraq and described her as a "person who repeatedly misrepresented the truth to tragic effect."Some of the students and faculty would rather be on the side of the monsters. Make no mistake about this. This is not a struggle over money, or oil, or land, or any of a number of relatively minor matters. This is a struggle over whether or not we want to live in a world where Nick Berg's killers continue their operations of death and torture. There are still some pretty serious questions about whether Roosevelt might have done a better job of preparing for Pearl Harbor or not. Some have even suggested that FDR intentionally kept the commanders at Pearl Harbor in the dark. I don't believe that; there were enough mistakes made in getting the message to them that day to explain this as bad luck and incompetence. Make no mistake about it, however, once the war was under way, there was no realistic alternative but the complete destruction of the Axis. It was a system of evil every bit as much as al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, and the various terrorist groups of the Middle East, such as Hamas. Unsurprisingly, intellectuals have decided that they can be neutrals--or allies of evil--in the battle against the sort of monsters that fed people into plastic shredders feet first, or take off their head with a knife. Ooooh! Someone Left The Plantation! From FoxNews: The nonpartisan Jewish Federation (search) based in Palm Beach County, Fla., has come under fire from Democrats after it agreed to host a speech by Vice President Dick Cheney (search) on Middle East policy.The left-wing of the Democratic Party (or as some Democrats like to say, "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party) has spent way too much of the last ten years groveling in front of Yasser Arafat, making equivocating excuses for terrorists, and they expect American Jews to remain monolithically Democratic? Paul Craig Roberts on Brown I used to think quite higly of Paul Craig Roberts, some years back. I blogged some months back about his bizarre claims comparing slavery to the tax system in modern America. Roberts has now written a pretty strange piece about why Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was a bad thing. Now, there are parts of Roberts' new essay that are certainly true--that some prominent black leaders now recognize that the focus on desegregation--rather than quality schools--may have been a mistake. I blogged a few days ago about how not only Thomas Sowell, but also Derrick Bell now have this concern--and that W.E.B. DuBois eventually shared this view in his later years. Other parts of Roberts' essay, though, just leave me disturbed and perplexed: Brown still matters to the left, Garrow writes, because the power the Court seized in its Brown ruling can be used to mandate homosexual marriage. The Massachusetts court has taken the lead, and on May 17 homosexuals will be able to obtain state marriage licenses. This, Garrow writes, is a fitting tribute to Brown’s constitutional vision on its 50th anniversary.I strongly disagree. The road to the Goodrich decision doesn't pass through Brown (which was based on a clear question of whether separate schools violated equal protection), but through Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)--a case that, as I have previously pointed out, was based on armwaving, rather than history. Neither Brown nor Griswold was the beginning of this judicial tyranny, however. You can make as strong of a case that Lochner v. New York (1905) did this as well. It also struck down a state law based on a rather questionable interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. At least Brown has the advantage that the Fourteenth Amendment was clearly intended to deal with state laws that discriminated based on race. (I recognize that there is some legitimate reason to believe that Congress did not intend to strike down segregation of public schools.) If Congress intended the Fourteenth Amendment to enshrine laissez-faire into our Constitution, as Lochner seems to think, I haven't seen the evidence for this. UPDATE: Apparently Roberts has responded to Volokh at some length, of which the most amazing claim is: "As everyone knows, Brown was not a 14th Amendment decision." What? The decision is right here, and it is very clear: In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a nonsegregated basis. In each instance, [347 U.S. 483, 488] they had been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment.Even the headnotes--at the first beginning--are clear on this: Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment - even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors of white and Negro schools may be equal. Pp. 486-496. How Many Science Fiction Stories Of the 1950s Had Mojave Spaceport In Them? This news story about the first successful powered space launch (yes, it just happened) mentions that Mojave Airport is in the process of transforming itself into Mojave Spaceport: With pilot Mike Melvill at the controls — following release from the White Knight turbojet-powered launch aircraft high above the Mojave, California desert — SpaceShipOne punched through the sky today boosted by a hybrid propellant rocket motor. According to sources who witnessed the flight, SpaceShipOne appears to have reached an altitude of a little over 200,000 feet.If you have never been to Mojave before--let's just say that it is a good place to try out things that might go boom, or crash. Media Bias--In A Big Way Instapundit linked to this story, and I suspect that most of my readers probably read Instapundit as well. For those who don't, however, this is a very big story about the level of both bias and political manipulation involved in "news" coverage of Iraq. Read it yourself, and pass it on to your friends--especially your friends who get their knowledge from listening to NPR, watching television news, or reading the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, Daily Worker, The Nation, or National Enquirer. (They are all at about the same level of trustworthiness--with the National Enquirer perhaps a little less biased by politics.) It's an article by a Toby Harnden, a reporter for the Telegraph, a conservative British newspaper. It appeared in the Spectator (free registration required): But what do the abominations perpetrated at Abu Ghraib really tell us about Iraq and the faltering American-led project to plant the seeds of democracy here? And why are so many people who were against the war, or are incapable of viewing any American action as anything other than evil or stupid, greeting each fresh revelation with an almost indecent glee?The hatred of Bush is so strong among the media elite that many would rather see the democratic Iraq project fail, rather than Bush get any credit for it. Thursday, May 13, 2004
The Left's Continuing Campaign of Falsification The New York Times is reporting that a series of pictures showing abuse by British troops in Iraq turned out to be fakes--and not even very good ones: On the front page of The Mirror, a photo portrayed a hooded man purported to be an Iraqi prisoner who had been kicked, beaten and urinated on by British soldiers of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment. The authenticity of the image was almost immediately called into question by army officials who pointed out that the soldiers and the Iraqi looked well-scrubbed, their clothes were freshly pressed and the truck that was the scene of the beating appeared in spotless condition. Iraq is notoriously dusty and anyone who has visited there knows the gritty look.And the response of the Mirror? Apologies? In a statement on behalf of The Mirror, Mr. Morgan defended the tabloid newspaper by arguing that because some members of the regiment are under investigation for brutal beatings, including at least one that led to the death of a hotel clerk in Basra, the photos approximated real behavior.So the pictures could be fakes, but because they convey the real nature of things, this makes it okay? If I print out some $100 bills, is that okay because they convey the real nature of things? The Boston Globe Still Won't Admit It Ran Bogus Pictures Instapundit has a detailed discussion of how the Boston Globe has apologized for running pictures of GIs raping Iraqi women that were too graphic and "had not been authenticated"--but won't admit that they pictures were pirated from a commercial porn website, and have been known to be fakes for many days. Kerry One Point Ahead of Bush--in California I guess that this race isn't as close as everyone assumes. Gore took California by 11 points, and now, in a poll conducted May 4 through May 6, Kerry is only one point ahead. Now, I admit that a lot has changed since the 2000 elections. The Democrats (specifically Gray Davis) screwed up big time. The collapse of the Internet bubble has turned a lot of millionaires into working stiffs again, and a lot of the multimillionaires, I'm told, have been badly injured. A lot of Californians were selling their Ferraris a year or two ago, and there were some real bargains in the used small BMW market. Obviously, as the number of Kerry economic chums drop, so will his potential voters. Especially interesting is the age breakdown. The only age category that Kerry wins is 18-34 (where he beats Bush 50-36)--and that's a group that has notoriously low voter turnout. Among people that describe themselves as "certain" voters, it's 46-46. Even among "probable" voters, Kerry's lead isn't that big: 43-39. If it looks like Bush has the election in the bag as the campaign comes to an end, a lot of those "probable" voters won't. Kerry has a huge lead among black voters: 70-16. I do wonder how much of that lead will evaporate if the Bush campaign decides to push the gay marriage issue. Kerry will have to either stop equivocating, and take a pro-gay marriage stand--and watch a big chunk of black voters sit out the election--or come across like he has on dozens of other issues: a guy that won't take a clear position. Treasury Bond Prediction Algorithms? Just so I don't reinvent the wheel, does anyone know of any Treasury bond prediction algorithms that have been developed for figuring where the local top in interest rates is going to be? (I mean, other than the dartboard and oujia board methods.) It seems to me that because of the relationship between short and long-term interest rates, that there might be some patterns in previous high-deficit economic recoveries between federal funds rates, 2 year, 5 year, or 10 year Treasury yields and 30 year Treasury yields. For example, one of the predictors of a dramatic decline in long-term Treasury yields is something called a Treasury yield curve inversion, where long-term interest rates actually drop below short-term interest rates. I've found historical data over at the Federal Reserve Board website, but it strikes me that someone else may have already done the number crunching. More Evidence of Bush Foreign Policy Ineffectiveness From AP: It is best to be loved--but in international politics, being feared is often almost as effective. Barnett's Originalism Randy Barnett thinks that the Lawrence decision and disapproval of homosexuality is driving opposition to his theory of the Constitution as a libertarian document. There might be someone who thinks this way, but it isn't me. The Lawrence decision is more like the final straw in a long line of usurpations by the judiciary. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) (striking down state la |
