The root of psychopathology is the irrational, false belief that a utopian, “perfect” world is desirable or possible. The root of sociopathy is the irrational, false belief that YOU possess the infallibility and right to impose your delusion of utopia on everyone.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Economic and civil liberties should not be seen as two ideals to be weighed separately but as one set of inalienable rights that are inherent to our humanity. What is economic prosperity worth if you can’t speak your mind? What value is there to having civil protections if everything else in your life is regulated into despair? Oftentimes civil and economic freedom are intertwined in such intimate ways that there really is no difference. Sadly, today economic rights have taken a second class status under the current judicial status quo, which is why policies that infringe on things like free speech receive plenty of scrutiny yet arbitrary regulations on business pass with almost no oversight.
This is why a recent Supreme Court decision, Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid, is such an important win for those concerned with economic freedom, specifically property rights. The case was decided on June 23, 2021, and was split 6-3 on “expected ideological lines.” Although there was likely much nuance in the thinking of the various justices, the win is a much-welcomed departure from the Progressive status quo of deference to the will of the state. The case itself concerned an “access regulation” in California that allowed labor unions to enter a private property in this case, Cedar Point Nursery, provided that they dispense notice to the Agricultural Relations Board. After doing so, the owner of the property is mandated to allow access without contestation. Such a policy seems to have been clearly put in place at the behest of politically influential labor unions and to the expense of private citizens.
Ilya Shapiro and Sam Spiegleman from the Cato Institute weigh in on the matter by explaining:
Cedar Point will go down as a big and clean win for property rights. California’s law is no mere labor regulation: it grants a right to be on the owners’ land three hours per day for 120 days per year. Ending it respects the constitutional rights of both the property owners and union officials, who lose only the ability to trespass for a third of the year.
The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause provides, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Here, even though the state didn’t seize any property outright, the Supreme Court has long recognized that if a regulation “goes too far,” it’s functionally equivalent to the use of eminent domain.
The Court’s recognition here that state-sanctioned trespasses, even if not permanent and continuous, are compensable takings is a major victory for property‐rights advocates who have toiled for decades to expand the universe of per se takings beyond the narrow scope of permanent physical invasions or total‐value‐loss regulations.
In particular, Cato’s Amicus Brief on the matter explains three basic points on why California’s labor regulation was unconstitutional and curtailed property rights, thus requiring at minimum, just compensation.
The first being that allowing labor unions to simply enter private property with a permission slip from the government violated the right to exclude. If you cannot exclude people from your property, it has ceased to be private property. The fact that the government has given itself the power to grant that decision makes the use of such powers a per se taking of private property.
The second argument is that the state of California has clearly not implemented the access regulation to make businesses safer, nor does the regulation confer reciprocal advantages, which would also make it a per se taking. Allowing labor unions to forcefully enter a private business and stir up commotion is by no means a necessity for safety nor is that benefiting the community as a whole.
The third point is that the state does not have the justification to use its police power because not allowing union trespassing on private land does not in any sense of the imagination pose a safety risk.
For decades, the state and a deferential court system have allowed the gradual unraveling of property rights to the will of the regulatory state. This has justified the aforementioned relegation of economic freedoms and autonomy to second-class status, with the government being able to intervene in economic life provided that it can merely find a rational basis. In the case of Cedar Point Nursery, California’s law essentially allowed property rights to be confiscated by the state for union access, three hours a day, 120 days a year, without just compensation. This was justified as being a “labor regulation” and “necessary for public safety”.
The Supreme Court finally handed a rare, but hopefully, consequential victory to those who respect the institution of property rights. In this case, the Court ended what was an incoherent charade to skirt around the 5th Amendment’s Takings Clause. A charade that attempted to call a blatant appropriation of private property to bolster the power of unions at the expense of property owners an exercise in public safety.
Our entire civilization is built on the foundation of private property. Such an institution not only creates strong economic incentive structures that lead to good practical outcomes but also has an important moral foundation. National Affairs recounts the rhetoric surrounding the Civil Rights Act of 1866 by writing:
Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull, the leading champion of the legislation in the Senate, explained that the “first section of the bill defines what I understand to be civil rights: the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue and be sued, and to give evidence, to inherit, purchase, sell, lease, hold, and convey real and personal property.”… As a member of the House from Ohio argued, “It is idle to say that a citizen shall have the right to life, yet to deny him the right to labor, whereby alone he can live. It is a mockery to say that a citizen may have a right to live, and yet deny him the right to make a contract to secure the privilege and reward of labor.
The right to private property is the right to the products of your own labor. The right to your own labor and its products is the right to your body. Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt University, James W. Ely, writes:
(T)here are few examples of free societies that do not respect the rights of property owners. One could persuasively maintain that without guarantee of property rights the enjoyment of other individual liberties, such as freedom of speech, would be meaningless. Put simply, the absence of a system of private property renders self-government unlikely. As Justice Joseph Story explained in 1829: “That government can scarcely be called free, where the rights of property are left solely dependent upon the will of a legislative body.
For much of American history, this admiration and recognition of property rights remained a cornerstone of political as well as legal thought. However, much with everything concerning the size and scale of American government, this drastically changed during the 20th century, most notably during the Progressive Era. Ely writes:
Like the Progressives, the New Dealers were impatient with constitutional restraints on governmental power. They quite openly set out to revise constitutional law and reduce private economic rights. Despite some initial judicial resistance, the New Dealers were remarkably successful in achieving their goals and fundamentally altering the legal landscape. Modern constitutional law bears only a faint resemblance to the original constitutional design.
Ely concludes by noting that although many of the judicial precedents have been unwound, the Progressive Era’s legacy on property rights is still salient. The new battle over the soul of constitutional interpretation has only begun and the end result is yet to be seen.
Cedar Point was a rare, well deserved, and sorely needed victory for private property rights, a once sacred institution that has all been desecrated over the years. In this case, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of individuals and dealt a blow to cronyist labor unions and their enablers in the government. The Court’s decision marks a step in the right direction towards a judicial regime that enforces the Constitution and does not view it as simply a welcome mat for the ambitions of state actors. Although it is only one decision, it should send a clear signal that in this country, under this constitution, the inalienable rights of individuals shall be protected from the mob as well as the Leviathan.
Made available by the American Institute for Economic Research.
In America, the system of capitalism once enabled men to become billionaires. After a time, the billionaires turned around and created a hybrid system of Communism and fascism, with the worst elements of each: censorship, wealth redistribution, gun confiscation, rewarding of laziness, elimination of the middle class and protection of an elite class based on pull, connection and political allegiance–anything but merit. These millionaires and billionaires, who prospered because of capitalism, made it so nobody could become billionaires, or even happy middle class people ever again. Not after hyperinflation, stagnation and rampant crime became the new normal. They did so, incredibly, in the name of “virtue” and anti-racism. Their primary weapon against the once great people they vanquished? Unearned guilt. They said if you didn’t go along you were racist, cruel, heartless and “selfish”.
These will be the words of honest historians of the future–unless we massively and TOTALLY reverse course. Immediately. 180 degrees. A total U-turn and reversal of ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING we are doing.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
For decades liberal gentiles and jews have been lying to us that diversity within a single country is wonderful. Hiding behind this lie is an agenda to undermine every Western country by destroying its unity. The tool used was massive non-white immigration, supplemented in the United States with teaching blacks racial hatred of whites.
If you think blacks have not been taught to hate whites, watch the 13 minute video included in Fred Reed’s article and listen to blacks tell you how much they hate you ( https://www.unz.com/freed/blackness-fatigue-enough-is-too-much/ ). Not all blacks, of course, but the blacks who don’t hate us are “Uncle Toms.” The blacks who do hate white people tell us about it in the Black Arena Report: https://www.blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-terrible-origins-july-4th
Blacks learn to hate us from liberal gentiles and jews who brought America Cultural Marxism from Germany in the 1930s. Hatred of whites is institutionalized in American education—-critical race theory—-but also in entertainment such as movies, songs, and books. A new entertainment medium has emerged-—woke horror movies concerned with the rise of Trump supporters portrayed as white supremacists. In these movies white supremacists draped in the American flag wipe out black communities. https://www.rt.com/op-ed/528241-forever-purge-trump-capitol-riot/
What most Americans know they have learned from movies and TV. Hardly any Americans read books, much less serious ones. Back in those days when I was a university professor, I recall a lecture I gave on the Russian revolution. A student interrupted me and said, “that’s not the way in happened in the movie.”
At first I thought he was making a joke, but he was serious. He was challenging my explanation based on years of study with a Hollywood movie.
As I have stressed for decades in my annual Christmas column, There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. Without a culture there is no nation.
Western countries are no longer nations. There is no longer an American nation, a British nation, a French nation, a German nation. There are only multicultural hell-holes in which dwindling white majorities are so overwhelmed by guilt and self-doubt that they are unable to resist their disintegration and that of their country.
Fred Reed believes that white people, lacking leadership and a media, are slow to awareness, but that awareness is arriving with the consequence being a social explosion ( https://www.unz.com/freed/blackness-fatigue-enough-is-too-much/ ).
Perhaps or perhaps not. The decades of propaganda and indoctrination have done their damage. Entire generations of white ethnicities have been brainwashed against themselves. In the United States critical race theory is institutionalized in the educational system. It has become the norm, and part of the enculturation of American youth. We can be assured that a similar process has long been underway in Europe. Jean Raspail identified it in 1973 in his novel, The Camp of the Saints. Except for Marine Le Pen in France and Nigel Farage in Britain, no European ethnicity has a champion. All European leaders are on the side of the immigrant-invaders.
It is ironic that during the decades that Western civilization was destroyed Western leaders were focused on “nation building” in former colonies.
The libertarian philosophy is embedded in Enlightenment liberalism. This is clearly seen in its commitment to free inquiry (reason) and free speech, the full realization of which, I argue, requires complete respect for individual rights, including property rights.
Unfortunately we live at a time when those values are increasingly under assault from from a variety intellectuals and activists despite political and cultural differences among themselves. We hear prominent people ask–and it’s really an assertion disguised as a question–whether free inquiry and free speech are really all they have been cracked up to be in light of the American condition. This seems to be a change even from the recent past, when question like that would likely come only from the most authoritarian fringes of the left and right.
Advocates of individual liberty and the rich patterns of cooperation that liberty generates have reason worry. Nothing good would be gained from restrictions on those Enlightenment values–regardless of whether the restrictions came from the government or private sources. Nothing good at all.
Whatever one’s fears about the state of American culture, it is difficult to see how stifling inquiry and speech could improve matters. Whether one is a left-collectivist who believes Enlightenment values lock in white male supremacy or a right-collectivist who believes those values have allowed the left to control the culture’s commanding heights, the crushing of true liberalism can only lead to disaster, eventually for everyone.
You need not be a libertarian to see the point, and fortunately we see nonlibertarians all around the political spectrum expressing dismay about the new disparagement of free-wheeling inquiry and uninhibited expression of its findings.
This is not rocket science. Squelching speech does not make alleged bad thoughts go away. On the contrary, it may give them an illusion of legitimacy they would never have achieved in open discussion. When a subject becomes taboo, even good-faith people may reasonably ask, “What are the self-appointed censors so scared of? Does the forbidden claim have merit that I’ve overlooked?” How does that help the censors beat back ideas?
The value of the open competitive marketplace of ideas is so obvious that it ought not require repeating. We learn through the contest among ideas. The way to defeat an assertion is not to suppress it, but to rebut it. No idea is so dangerous that it has to be banned from the marketplace. A free society cannot tolerate thought police, whether political or private.
To cherish the intellectual marketplace, one only need realize that even someone who is thoroughly wrong about a particular matter or event (and perhaps even ill-intentioned) could contribute to our knowledge by stumbling on an overlooked truth. We just never known who might be the one to set the record straight in some way. (The leftist Norman Finkelstein has admirably made this point many times.)
Moreover, it’s important that the intellectual marketplace–like the commercial marketplace and for the same reasons–not be rigged by the state in any way. All intellectual products should have to compete in a just (that is, rights-respecting) arena. Force is to be barred. But that’s all that needs barring. Now may the best ideas win.
This does not mean that the common-sense rules of respect needn’t be observed or that those who violate the rules should never be called to account. But it does mean that toleration is also a virtue when directed at offenders. We are rightly uncomfortable when people lose their livelihoods for saying the “wrong” thing in the “wrong” way. It is difficult to confine this kind of punishment to only the worst offenders. Boomerangs have a way of coming back at you.
Does an open marketplace guarantee that the truth always always wins right away? Of course not. But it’s the best chance we have of rooting out error in the shortest time. The market certainly beats any imaginable alternative, which would have to be one form or another of authoritarianism. No thank you.
It’s in the nature of ideas, as with all tools, that they can be used for good or ill. Stifling discussion because bad people may capitalize on fact can hardly be grounds for shutting down the intellectual marketplace. One could think of no surer example of the cure being worse than the alleged disease.
It’s time for all true liberals, whatever their differences, unite to defend free inquiry and free speech.
Memes from social media of the last several days (mostly mine, credit to others where noted):
If the FDA is not required for COVID vaccine, then why is the FDA needed for anything else?
Tyrants foster unearned guilt. They break your spirit. And then they rule you. That’s all it is.
“Unemployment benefits are intended for people who CAN’T find jobs, not for people who WON’T find jobs.” #gotowork
Actually, not true. The entitlement state was created to destroy the economy and enslave the people. AND IT’S WORKING.
@Joy_Villa on Twitter: How do people hate America 364 days a year and sit back and enjoy a Fourth of July bbq?
The Deadliest Virus in the United States is the Media.
Dog Checks Democrat Owner Into Therapy After Traumatic 4th of July Fireworks Show (Marcia Jeanne Gibson)
“In life it’s important to know when to stop arguing with people and siply let them be wrong.” Leave them free to endure the consequences of their errors and their evasiveness. If they have treated you badly, starve them of your virtue, and of your company.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) decries the “involuntary servitude” she claims black people still suffer in the USA. Her solution? Marxism, which imposes impoverishment and involuntary servitude on EVERYONE. Except elites like herself, of course. Deranged and sickening.
Let’s start over.
And let’s exclude the tyrants who call themselves “Democrats”.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Former Housing and Urban Development Department Secretary Dr. Ben Carson on Sunday blasted Critical Race Theory, calling it a “bunch of garbage.”
Carson told Newsmax TV’s “Wake Up America” that Critical Race Theory was “an attempt to use race as a mechanism for redefining our society.” He warned the teaching could divide the American people and thus destroy the country from within.
“It’s an attempt to use race as a mechanism for redefining our society — redefining what it was based on and how it impacts everybody, and it wants our people to believe that your race is the most critical determinant of who you are and what happens to you in our society. In other words, it’s a bunch of garbage,” Carson emphasized.
“You know, the only thing that can really destroy our country — our country is a magnificent place. It can’t be destroyed by Russia or China or Iran or North Korea, but it can be destroyed from within,” he added. “There’s no question about that. That’s what Jesus meant when he said a house divided can’t stand. Lincoln reiterated that. And we need to recognize that we, the American people, are not enemies.”
A Fox News headline reads: “Major Vulnerability: Biden’s high-wire act with renewed gun control push could hurt Dems in 2022.”
This is Fox News, old school-think. If being rabidly totalitarian in their views did not hurt Democrats in 2020, then why will it hurt them in 2022? Either a plurality of the country wants this insanity, or the left is now effective enough at election fraud and other manipulation to pull this off. It’s dangerous to sit back, like it’s 1980 or 1994, or even 2010, and think they won’t do it.
As I posted on Facebook yesterday:
Liberty is for the INDIVIDUAL. It’s not for the group. Groups are toxic to individuals. The Bill of Rights was created to protect man from his fellow man. Not to enslave him to other men.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Wisdom
38-year-old King George III ruled the largest empire that planet earth had ever seen.
The Declaration of Independence, signed JULY 4, 1776, listed 27 reasons why Americans declared their independence from the King:
… He has made judges dependent on his will alone …
… He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
… He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies …
… To subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution …
… For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us …
… For imposing taxes on us without our consent …
… For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury …
… For … establishing … an arbitrary government …
… For … altering fundamentally the forms of our governments …
… He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
… He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny …
… He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us,
and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
33-year-old Thomas Jefferson’s original rough draft of the Declaration contained a line condemning slavery, as the King of England was part owner of the Royal African Company:
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself … in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither …
… suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold.”
Unfortunately, a few delegates from southern states objected to this line.
Since everyone was in a panic as the British were invading New York and the city was in flames, and since the Declaration needed to pass unanimously, the line in Jefferson’s original draft condemning slavery was tragically set aside.
John Hancock, the 39-year-old President of the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration first, reportedly saying “the price on my head has just doubled.”
Next to sign was Secretary, Charles Thomson, age 47.
