Republic Or Democracy?

I read a news story down here in Florida today about a local teacher who insists that students should not be taught that America is a democracy, emphasizing that America is a republic. The school board agreed to use the term "representative democracy," but the teacher remains unperturbed and continues arguing that the word "republic" is the most accurate.

The news story dripped with disdain for this woman and portrayed her as obsessed with mere semantics. But America needs a lot more people like her, for the distinction between a republic and a democracy (representative or otherwise) is crucial to America's identity and survival.

The founders scorned democracy as the untrammeled will of the mob, whose passions always lead it to abuse power and destroy prosperity. A "representative democracy" suffers from this same defect; the will of the mob is simply funneled through a few ciphers and remains free to rape, pillage, and plunder however the mob demands.

Contrast this to a republic, where the rule of law places limits on what the mob may accomplish no matter how fervent or unanimous the desire. A representative democracy knows no limits to governmental power, but a republic is founded precisely on the notion that there are things the government cannot ever do. The extinction of that notion is what has destroyed the republican nature of America and guarantees rough seas ahead, for the rule of law has yielded to the rule of men. Thank goodness there's a woman with enough sense and courage to challenge it.

It's Christmas

When we celebrate the birth of someone who, though destitute and carried about by a donkey, possessed a greater nobility than Julius Caesar. Whether you believe in Jesus as historical figure or the son of God, the message he brought is a profound one that cannot be overlooked. Those who came before taught that man's nobility lay within the world by subduing earthly foes and preserving bodily purity. Jesus taught that nobility requires moving beyond the world rather than wallowing in it, fixing one's gaze upward to the ideal and eternal rather than the pragmatic or actual. A blunt way of summarizing the message is that Earth is a ghetto and the body a prison. People who measure their lives solely by their achievements here are poor in spirit, mundane, and trapped. The rich in spirit are in the world but not of it, and nothing of the world can harm them. Understanding this makes all of life's petty torments evaporate, and that is the true gift of Christmas.

Human Rights -- Part IV

The International Covenant On Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights

Simultaneous with the re-packaging of the UDHR’s First Generation Rights into the ICCPR in 1966, the U.N. General Assembly also re-packaged the UDHR’s Second Generation Rights into the International Covenant On Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights (“ICESCR”), thus elevating interventionist, welfare-state ideology into the status of another legally binding regime. Similar to the ICCPR, the ICESCR entered into force only ten years after its creation when the requisite number of nations ratified it. President Jimmy Carter signed the ICESCR in 1979, but the Senate has never given its advice and consent, so the treaty remains unratified by the United States to this day. And as usual this offers little comfort – Carter’s signature by itself binds the United States not to defeat the “object and purpose” of the ICESCR, meaning that any serious effort to roll back unlawful government programs domestically will meet with much gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts from the “human rights” community.

As discussed previously with regard to the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, the Second Generation Rights re-appearing in the ICESCR have nothing to do with individual freedom and everything to do with governmental activism such as the redistribution of wealth and the reordering of private relationships. So we see once again the statism originally advocated by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948:

Article 6(2) commands that governments expend taxpayers’ money to supply vocational training, an objective that at best belongs to the political realm, certainly not the moral or legal realms that the ICESCR purports to represent.

Article 7 commands private employers to provide specific levels of pay, promotion and vacation time, objectives that a genuinely free society would allow employers and employees to work out amongst themselves however they wish. Even if some nations dislike individual freedom and choose to enact this type of legislation, they have the sovereign power to do so – just as other nations should have the sovereign power not to.

Article 9 proclaims a universal “right” to social insurance, meaning that some citizens are now entitled to receive wealth from other citizens. Such redistributions are objectionable enough when they amount to optional public policy, but by making this type of policy mandatory the ICESCR again slips into moral perversion.

Article 10(2) mandates paid leave for childbearing mothers, another noble objective, but one that cannot be achieved by official diktat unless we admit once and for all that private citizens may not frame their contractual relationships as they choose.

Article 11 again mandates an “adequate” standard of living, something that tends to occur much more frequently in those societies where government does not presume to control private economic activity (i.e., the pursuit of happiness). Ironically, standards of living tend to suffer most in societies where governments micromanage the “production, conservation, and distribution of food” as counseled in Article 11(2).

Article 13 reiterates the UDHR’s call for “free” (i.e., taxpayer-financed) education that will inculcate children with attitudes, opinions, and behaviors friendly to the United Nations and its works. Lest any parents seek to school their children in an institution other than a government mill, Article 13(4) still commands that such institution deliver the pre-approved set of teachings.

Unlike its cousin the ICCPR, the ICESCR does not create a new bureaucracy charged with monitoring “human rights” abuses. Instead, that task falls to a separate United Nations entity – the Committee On Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights – which receives occasional reports from member nations and which issues commentary on how to advance the ICESCR’s goals. According to this Committee, “compulsory old-age insurance” is a human-rights imperative to be imposed by “national law,” meaning that any government declining to re-shuffle its citizens’ wealth is deemed guilty of a human-rights violation. The Committee also decrees that private employers may not decide for themselves whether to hire and fire as they see fit, even when a potential employee’s mental or physical health is unstable. With regard to equality between men and women, the Committee sweeps away the limited-government tradition of treating everybody as equal before the law, demanding rather that government drop all neutrality and actively force equality of conditions (the full scope of which remains entirely undefined). Finally (and all too predictably), the Committee seeks to graft these beliefs onto the minds of children, declaring that nations must “monitor” educational content to ensure that it advances the ICESCR’s objectives.

The ICESCR would be laughable but for the fact that its proponents take it seriously, and these proponents find it intolerable that the welfare state has not (quite) achieved the status of holy writ. Exemplifying this mindset is the late Robert Drinan – acclaimed priest, Georgetown University law professor, and U.S. Congressman – who eulogized the ICESCR as “an amazing document.” In awe of the interventionist philosophy of this document, Drinan scorned the United States’ hesitation as a threat “to the potential of the U.N. committee that supervises the [ICESCR’s] implementation.” We can only hope.

On Citizens United

I am sick of hearing people complain about the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and even sicker knowing that an amendment effort is underway to attack it. For the unacquainted, many are irate that the Supreme Court struck down a law limiting the ability of corporations to engage in political speech, especially because the Court treated corporations as "persons" endowed with rights under the First Amendment.

Such anger confirms the abject ignorance enveloping the modern American mind. Let me count the ways.

First, there's a serious issue of reading comprehension. The First Amendment says the following as to speech: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech." Nothing in this language identifies or constrains where the speech must come from, whether it's an individual, a corporation, or even a parrot. The origin of the speech is irrelevant; if it qualifies as speech, it is protected, period.

Second, the issue is not one of rights and who possesses them, but rather of powers and who wields them. The federal government wields only those powers listed in the sparse words of the main Constitution; our obsession with the First Amendment and the entire Bill of Rights is misplaced, for these are redundancies that the anti-federalists insisted on adding as a mere "exclamation point" on the federal government's most prominent and natural limitations. In laymen's terms, the federal government has no enumerated power to regulate speech by individuals, corporations, or parrots, and thus it may not do so. Debating over whether a corporation qualifies as a "person" is thus doubly unnecessary: it has no bearing on the plain language of the First Amendment, which in turn has no bearing on the federal government's inability to regulate speech at all. By thinking of rights as parsimonious grants from the first ten amendments we do ourselves a tremendous disservice, and we give the federal government more power than it warrants. (Note that State governments are free to regulate speech according to the plain language of the First Amendment and the structure of the Constitution as well, but I'll save that for a future post.)

Third, why are people so afraid of political speech all of a sudden? They gleefully support corporations' ability to promulgate dreck in the form of novels, music, television, and movies, all of which eat away at the fabric of society far more than campaign ads might. It is safe to say that Eat, Pray, Love has done 100 times more to destroy American life than Hillary: The Movie. It seems free speech is acceptable so long as it comprises insipid and gratifying entertainment; speech about politics, though, crosses the line (which is ironic when recalling the primary goal of the First Amendment was to protect political speech).

Fourth, I can't help but notice that most of the people upset with Citizens United are leftists, the same people who champion the notion of "collective rights" and read the Second Amendment in an ahistorical vacuum to repose the right to bear arms in the very government the framers feared might abuse them. All such cant over collective rights mysteriously evanesces when a corporation enters the picture.

Fifth, if corporations or similar entities are indeed stripped of their legal personhood, then bully for them! No more criminal charges or fines, no more being sued for aggravated hangnails, and no more being blamed for gross negligence or similar mental states that might trigger punitive damages. If only humans have the capacity for speech, then surely only humans have the capacity for malice aforethought.

Random Thought

Environmentalists portray humanity as an existential threat to the planet, yet they insist on keeping the planet as hospitable for humans as possible.

More Annoyances

Fighter jets flying over a football stadium immediately before the game. It confirms the Roman bread-and-circuses nature of the entire affair.

Seven hundred channels to choose from, but nothing worth watching except Transformers re-runs.

What passes for witty conversation today.

When an opposing attorney completely ignores the argument I made in a motion and simply re-asserts what he has said a hundred times before. It makes the reply easier, but it's still mind-boggling.

Men who act as though the highest goal of life is to impress women.

Having to say my name three times before somebody understands it.

People who send a rapid succession of incoherent text messages rather than a single coherent message, especially when I'm trying to respond but have to pause each time to check the latest one.

Whenever someone decides to park right next to my car even though there are plenty of open spaces to choose from.

Any native speaker of a foreign language who takes a high-school or college class for that language just to score an easy "A."

People who look in one direction but begin walking in another, directly into me.

Drivers who don't signal. Even worse are the drivers who signal after already having changed lanes; if you're going to drive badly, at least have the courage to stick to your guns.

Reading a news story about some unfortunate and deadly accident that was nobody's fault, but knowing that a lawsuit will be filed before the funeral.

People who spell "free rein" as "free reign" or say "could care less" when meaning "couldn't care less." Even worse are the people who defend these errors when informed of them.

Americans who think that we must sacrifice liberty to preserve either safety or economic prosperity, failing to grasp that America was founded on the notion that liberty is far more important than either of those objectives.