Restoring America’s Assimilation Apparatus

amgreatness.com/2018/11/19/restoring-americas-assimilation-apparatus/

November 19, 2018

If the goal of immigration reform is to preserve American culture and prosperity, then the question would-be reformers would do well to ask is what strategies will have a chance at success.

Heated rhetoric about hordes of gangbangers and birth tourists overrunning our border will work, maybe, with about 40 percent of American voters. Cryptic escalatory references to how “the Second Amendment will save us” are futile jabberings. If it had to, the American government would deploy swarms of slap drones and other high-tech counter-insurgency gadgetry that would neutralize America’s rebel “militias” in hours. These are impossible options.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way. American culture and prosperity can be preserved.

Immigration policy can move to a merit-based system, where admittance is based on applicants having valuable job skills, English language proficiency, good health, and cultural compatibility. There is a way to build a consensus among American voters that demands these reforms. The question is where to look.

As Henry Olsen explained in these pages recently, the Trump coalition has a tenuous hold on power—at best. “Whether it is regaining a portion of . . . RINOs or a winning a much larger share of Hispanic or African-American votes,” Olsen wrote, the president and the MAGA movement “need more supporters to succeed.”

How? Here it is necessary to consider the art of the possible. Are RINOs or liberals ever going to support immigration policies that preserve American culture and prosperity? Probably not. Those voters—mostly members of the upper middle class—love to virtue signal their aversion to any border policy that might invite even hints of “racism,” at the same time as they love the cheap labor that immigrants provide to clean their floors and cut their grass. They will be the last to be convinced.

What about “people of color,” those voters who constitute the other half of the Democratic bloc? Why should Trump Republicans settle for 10 percent, or even 40 percent, of their votes? What would it take for these voters, most of whom are either immigrants or have immigrant parents, to embrace American culture as passionately as the Irish and German immigrants of a century ago, and want to defend it?

The answer is simple: Attack and permanently discredit the forces in America that are doing everything they can to prevent assimilation. There are three critical fronts in this war.

University Campuses and K-12 Public Education
The degree to which the extreme Left now dominates university campuses in America defies brief description. America’s universities are training ethnic and racial minorities to despise traditional American culture and to believe they will experience lifelong discrimination in a hostile culture steeped in “white privilege.” But the programs that enable these seditious actions can be challenged in court, because they are discriminatory, they violate academic freedom, they undermine the economic value of an expensive college degree, and, in public universities, they waste taxpayers money.

Examples include the Orwellian diversity statements that applicants now have to submit to be considered for faculty positions. The discriminatory affirmative action plans. The segregation of “safe spaces.” The expensive, divisive, and economically useless ethnic and gender studies. The incredibly expensive “inclusion” and “diversity” bureaucracy. The abuse of Title IX by opportunistic bureaucrats and trial lawyers. Not only can court rulings destroy many of these programs, but people of color could be persuaded to reject such nonsense. Because the degrees they’re earning through them are worthless.

Rescuing America’s public elementary and secondary schools is equally important. There is no reason young people today cannot embrace America’s proud heritage regardless of their national origin.

But instead of receiving a balanced education that highlights America’s unique contributions to universal equality of opportunity, there is an inexorable shift towards textbooks that disparage the nation and its origins. Among the central figures in this growing movement to turn America’s youth against their own country is the late Howard Zinn. His hopelessly biased bestselling history text is designed to fill impressionable, rebellious youth with cynical resentment against everything that’s made America great: capitalism, private property, Christianity, democracy, meritocracy, the Protestant work ethic, and Western Civilization itself.

Fighting the leftist influence in K-12 schools starts with providing alternatives. Charter schools. Vouchers. Continuing to attack the Leftist agenda of the powerful teachers unions. These fights can play out in the courts, but they can also be fought at the grassroots. Because Leftist controlled public K-12 schools are failing to educate students. And the students who are the most negatively affected by Leftist mismanagement are those who live in low income, immigrant communities.

Exposing the Environmentalist Attack on the West
Nobody denies the urgency of many environmental challenges. Asian trawlers strip mining the oceans for protein. African poachers slaughtering critically endangered species. Chinese power plants belching so much soot they spread toxic clouds across half a continent. Rapid, unsustainable population growth across most of the planet’s equatorial regions.

The trajectory of all attempts to mitigate these genuine challenges is fatally slowed in deference to a corporate, fascistic imperative: Fighting “climate change.”

One may stop just short of declaring the entire climate change movement to be nothing more than a despicable hoax, inspired by globalist dreams of absolute profit and power. Humans can alter climate, probably more through land use than through CO2 emissions, but these impacts need to be honestly studied in order to consider practical options.

Instead, the climate alarmists demand that humans phase out all use of fossil fuel within a few decades. This is patently, ridiculously impossible. Moreover, even if it were possible, according to their own “scientific” projections, it’s already too late. So what’s really going on?

What the climate alarmists are creating, some of them consciously, others as unwitting accomplices, is artificial scarcity of virtually all critical resources; land, homes, electricity, gas and oil, water, transportation. This enriches wealthy elites who own the means of production. They eliminate competition, drive up prices, and collect higher returns. Throughout the Western World they have boxed in cities, supposedly to preserve “open space,” they’ve shut down power plants, they’ve prevented construction of dams and desalination plants, they’ve prevented projects to widen and upgrade roads. The solutions they’ve offered punish low-income communities most of all. High-density, high-rise apartments with sky-high rents. Expensive electricity and expensive gasoline. Water that’s rationed yet still costs more every year. Roads crammed beyond capacity, causing the most harm to those commuters who must live far from their jobs in order to afford their rent.

Why isn’t this an attack on immigrants? Why isn’t this an attack on people of color? Why should they continue to vote for people who used to allow land development to lower the price of land and housing, but now require everyone to cram into the existing footprints of legacy cities?

Why should they vote for people who reject the cost-effective solution of installing scrubbers on smokestacks to enable clean use of fossil fuel, and instead sell subsidized solar rooftop systems to the wealthy, which forces everyone else pay higher utility rates to fund the grid upgrades necessary to accommodate distributed power?

Why should they vote for people who, instead of just building a few dams and permitting desalination plants to supply water to coastal cities, impose water rationing and charge higher rates? Why should they vote for people who could widen the freeways, but instead pour hundreds of billions into mass transit solutions that are impractical and always end up underutilized?

It isn’t difficult to make this case. It takes courage more than money. Courage to be called a “denier.” But if enough people insist on a rational response to climate change alarm, “denier” will lose its power to silence. And the people who are the most negatively affected by leftist climate alarm policies are those who live in low income, immigrant communities.

Meeting Big Money with Big Money
Saving America’s culture and prosperity is tough, because most wealthy people don’t consider preserving America’s culture and prosperity as a high priority.

Their moral argument goes like this: We will shift people and capital to wherever we find the greatest return on investment, because if all of us maximize our returns, collectively we will foster more rapid global economic growth. That’s a comforting argument, especially when you’re disenfranchising an entire nation.

Alas, the argument has a fatal flaw.

American culture—and Western culture generally—is the engine that gave birth to individual rights, capitalist entrepreneurship, democratic republics, the rule of law, a sizable middle class, and the prosperity, adaptability, and stability that enabled their wealth. Not only do the ordinary people who are the inheritors and carriers of this culture deserve better but if their culture is destroyed, the security that wealthy people enjoy will also be destroyed. Hardcore leftists know this. The wealthy RINOs, including leftist and libertarian oligarchs, often do not. They are naïve.

In the November 2018 election, leftist oligarchs and NeverTrump billionaires vastly outspent the Republicans. Pierre Omidyar, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Tom Steyer, and George Soros, to name a few, spent hundreds of millions to elect Democrats and push left-wing policies. Usually reliable right-leaning oligarchs, such as the Koch Brothers, not only failed to match the torrent of funding from the left, but they were selective in their support, abandoning Republicans who were too “Trumpian.”

Not only were Republicans outspent in 2018 but the Democrats were smarter with their money. Billionaire Tom Steyer, who poured $123 million overall into 2018 midterms, funneled $3.8 million for targeted youth voter registration, voter contact, and get-out-the-vote efforts just in California, and just in toss-up congressional districts.

Democratic operatives collected individual voter data from online and offline sources, testing thousands of online ads, which allowed them to pinpoint which individual voters in pure Republican households were most receptive to crossing party lines. They recruited an army of amateur opposition researchers to “read every line of every document” of targeted Republicans’ lives, voting records, and disclosure reports.

Anti-MAGA billionaires did everything right. Their upgraded tactics, and their unprecedented funding, are here to stay. Who will counter their efforts?

There are 565 billionaires in the United States. Most of them are globalists; some are left-wing; some are libertarian. But not all of them. It would only take a determined effort by two or three of them, using their money as strategically as the Democrats and RINOs just did, to change the game. It’s time for some of them to step up. Because as it is, in the United States there are well established, well organized networks of think tanks and super PACs on the Left and the Right. But neither of these networks embrace a vision of American greatness that puts Americans first.

Understanding Who’s On Your Side
The battle to reform immigration laws and assimilate newcomers is not racial; it is cultural. The enemies of assimilation, for the most part, are globalist oligarchs and their mostly white liberal pawns.

There exists a vision of compassionate nationalism, however, that makes an uncompromising commitment to the interests of the American people, but does so in recognition that only a strong America—a very strong America—can help midwife the eventual emergence of a global civilization that embraces Western values.

The great independent voting bloc are those millions of Americans—nearly 25 percent of the population—who either have recently arrived in America, or are first-generation Americans. Many of them are intermarrying with whites, especially Asians and Latinos. These voters are up for grabs for a host of reasons.

To generalize, Asians resent being held back by affirmative action. Latinos resent being displaced by more recent immigrants. It’s the same story with blacks. And all people of color are increasingly receptive to the argument that Democrats have done nothing to help their communities. Welfare has failed. Unions have ruined public education. College courses in ethnic and gender studies are a joke. And as anyone with a smile and an open heart immediately learns, America is not a racist nation. We are the friendliest people on earth.

Americans are right to fear unchecked immigration. But their enemy is not the immigrants themselves. It is the liberal totalism that robs everyone of opportunities who is not already wealthy. It is leftist hatred that trains immigrants to dislike America and Americans. As the truth about the leftist elites is exposed, as they are accurately revealed as plutocratic, manipulative profiteers who are indifferent to the plight of ordinary Americans, people of color will join the MAGA movement. And with their participation, many white RINOs and moderate liberals will at last feel comfortable also joining.

Resistance to #TheResistance is not futile. With a positive, welcoming attitude, combined with a well-funded, winning national strategy, America’s new immigrants will be assimilated. And that will be a wonderful thing.

Photo Credit: iStock/Getty Images

Re-posted with permission.

Are We About To Throw The Baby Out With The Bath Water?

Tom Kite is PGA Tour player whose low Major total belies his resume as a player….He only led the Tour in earnings twice, but he was the second Tour player to crack $1 million in a season (1989, a year after Curtis Strange did it), he finished in the Top 20 in money 17 times, and he was the first player to accumulate $6 million, $7 million, $8 million, and $9 million in career earnings.¹ Tom, although an excellent player was not Greg Norman, Ben Crenshaw, Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus; names one might expect to head that list. How? He did it by having a considerably higher finishing average than other players and naturally earned more prize money as a result.

In 1960, the New York Yankees lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3 games to 4. Amongst the Yankees’ roster were future Hall of Fame Players Berra, Maris and Mantle. Still the Yankees lost despite having scored a total of 55 runs to the Pirates’ 27 runs.

These stories seem relevant to today’s political campaign rhetoric. We are told our system is corrupt. It may be; but wouldn’t it be a good thing to look at where and how? In light of the twisted language of our politically correct consciousness, which makes honest substantive discussions on issues difficult at best, it would likely be prudent to ensure my words here are clear.

Ever since our nation’s founding, we, the average citizen, have had a say in our national elections and discourse. But, aside from our votes, it has never been direct. Our votes, other than on state and local initiatives, nearly always involve our selection of someone to represent us. We delegate our political desires to someone who, hopefully, will reflect our views when they cast their votes on specific legislation.

We are not, as a political structure, a pure democracy. Never have been, although it could be argued that we have moved more in that direction. Our founders did not trust a pure democracy: structurally, we are a representative republic.

“what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

– Federalist No. 51, James Madison

As Franklin, replying to a woman who asked as he left the Constitutional Convention, “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?,” stated, “A republic . . . if you can keep it.”

Note Madison states the obvious: government is necessary due to the flaws of humanity generally. Not that people are evil per se (though some most certainly are – Hitler & Stalin come to mind), but that self interest is a universal human characteristic. Yet, government, established to prevent individual self interest from becoming anarchy or rule of the jungle, is an organization run by people. So how do you prevent the very self interest government is set up to protect against from becoming a tool of those who work in government?

A republic. A pure democracy is essentially mob rule: 50%, plus one negates the 50% less 1 in all matters. That is law of the jungle, lynch mob governance. A republic on the other hand is a layered form of democracy that attempts to mitigate the aggregation of political power. This form is still imperfect because people are still people.

I’ve recounted all of this because we’re being told nearly every day how corrupt the delegate system is. When, in truth, if any one cared to go beyond the railings and look into the process, it is actually a full demonstration of the principles of our founders’ efforts to keep us from being our own worst enemy. How?

First, the delegate selection is NOT controlled, at least in one political party’s structure¹, by one centralized entity or small group of elites. Each state has it own rules, means and methods. This means that no one person or small group can control the outcome. A successful candidate must be able to navigate many different process rules, from state to state. It is much the same as a business in one state seeking to expand its offices to another state – they have to look at how the laws, taxes, etc., impact how they conduct business in order to successfully operate there.

This multi-faceted, variable process is accidentally brilliant. Accidentally because the states themselves and the state party structures were set up independently, over a period of decades, and through their own localized self interest developed whatever delegate process they thought would serve their own constituents best. Each of these statewide party representatives are individuals who got involved in the process because they wanted to influence the outcome however they could.

Perfect? Not at all. But it does keep political power less concentrated and more diverse. And that benefits us all.

Confusing? Yes. Corrupt? Not likely; it is just too diversified, too disconnected for full centralized control. Those who argue for pure democracy would do well to recognize the dangers of mob rule. Is that what you really want? How long would our society survive if that were how we decided things?

Don’t like the outcomes? Get involved. But regurgitating easy and disingenuous slogans which tend only to stoke emotional fervor is destructive. It is the very thing that lead to the rise of some of history’s most wretched atrocities. One only need look to 1789 France to appreciate the horror of the mob. Our elected officials, particularly in the last three election cycles, have not been as representative as many had hoped they would be as to the direction of the country, the size, scale and scope of government’s influence in our daily lives. But to allow that disappointment and frustration to literally blow up the layered system meant to protect us from ourselves is precisely what some advocate for – an utter collapse of the system allowing for who knows what.

It should be noted that what makes government necessary is at the same time the very thing that requires government be restrained and limited in size, scale and scope. Otherwise, we cease being even the imperfect representative republic.  The Constitution acknowledges the imperfections of humanity and attempts to allow each of us to enjoy individual liberty to pursue life as we envision it. It seeks to protect our God-given, unalienable rights by preventing each of us from using political power to our own advantage over one another. And while, we’ve done considerable damage to that bulwark, it is not yet fully lost.

But, if the tone and language, accompanied by blind, emotional outrage and verbal assaults are any indication, we could inadvertently usher in that which disassembles the very thing that ensures each and everyone of us are able to continue being a free people, to enjoy life as we would pursue it.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

– Benjamin Franklin

1.  PGA Tour Career Money Leaders History
2. The Democratic Party delegate process has what are known as “super delegates”. These delegates are solely controlled and assigned by the DNC directly to the candidate the Party decides, not the voters. CNN interview DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz explaining this: https://youtu.be/w5llLIKM9Yc

Lex Rex
April 20, 2016

The Willful Blindness of an IRS Sycophant

July 24, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

Remember Sleepless in Seattle, the 1993 romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan?

Well, there should be a remake of that film entitled Clueless in Washington. But it wouldn’t be romantic and it wouldn’t be a comedy.

Though there would be a laughable aspect to this film, because it would be about an editorial writer at the Washington Post trying to convince people to feel sorry for the IRS. Here’s some of what Stephen Stromberg wrote on Wednesday.

Congress has done some dumb things. One of the dumbest is the GOP’s penny-wise-pound-foolish campaign to defund the Internal Revenue Service. …its mindless tantrum against the IRS has produced for taxpayers: a tax season that was “by far the worst in memory,” according to the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an agency watchdog.

Before I share any more of the article, I should point out that the “Taxpayer Advocate Service” isn’t a watchdog. It should be renamed the “Government Advocate Service” since its main goal is to increase the IRS’s budget.

But I’m digressing. Let’s continue with Mr. Stromberg’s love letter to tax collectors.

The underlying problem is that Congress has asked the IRS to do a lot more, such as administering a critical piece of Obamacare, but the GOP Congress won’t give the agency the funding it needs to do its work. …But good luck convincing Republicans to fix the IRS’s entirely predictable and avoidable problems. Not when that would mean restraining the impulse to act on anti-tax orthodoxy, blind populist anger and scandal-mongering about the IRS mistreating conservatives. In fact, Republicans want to double down on their nonsense budgeting, proposing deep cuts to the IRS last month.

Oops, time for another correction.

Stromberg is cherry picking data to imply that the IRS budget has been savaged.

If you look at the long-run data, however, you’ll see that the IRS now has almost twice as much money to run its operations as it did a few decades ago.

And that’s based on inflation-adjusted dollars, so we have a very fair apples-to-apples comparison.

Stromberg also wants us to sympathize with the bureaucrats because the tax code has been made more complex.

The underlying irrationality is the same: The IRS doesn’t write the tax code or health-care law, but the agency must apply these policies and engage with people affected by them, so it is an easy scapegoat.

Part of this passage is correct, and I’ve specifically pointed out that the tax code is mind-numbingly complex and that politicians deserve an overwhelming share of the blame for this sorry state of affairs.

That being said, the IRS goes beyond the law to make the system worse, as we saw when it imposed a regulation that put foreign tax law above American tax law. And when it arbitrarily rewrote the Obamacare legislation to enable additional subsidies.

In other words, it deserves to be scapegoated.

But there’s a bigger issue, one that Stromberg never even addresses. Why should we give more money to a bureaucracy that manages to find plenty of resources to do bad things?

Never forget, after all, that this is the bureaucracy that – in an odious display of bias – interfered with the electoral process by targeting the President’s opponents.

And then awarded bonuses to itself for this corrupt behavior!

Even more outrageous, the Washington Examiner reports today that the IRS still hasn’t cleaned up its act.

A series of new revelations Wednesday and Thursday put the Internal Revenue Service back under fire for its alleged efforts to curtail…conservative nonprofits. …the Government Accountability Office uncovered evidence that holes in the tax agency’s procedure for selecting nonprofit groups to be audited could allow bias to seep into the process. …lawmakers exposed the lack of safeguards that could prevent IRS officials from going after groups with which they disagreed. Meanwhile, the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch released documents Wednesday that suggested the IRS targeted the donors of certain tax-exempt organizations.

Does this sound like a bureaucracy that deserves more of our money?

If you’re still not sure how to answer, consider the fact that the IRS also somehow has enough money in its budget to engage in the disgusting “asset forfeiture” racket.

The Wall Street Journal recently opined on this scandal.

…a pair of new horror stories show why Americans dread any interaction with the vindictive tax man. Khalid Quran owns a small business in Greenville, North Carolina. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1997, opened a convenience store near a local airport, and worked long hours to give his four children more opportunity. After nearly two decades, Mr. Quran had saved $150,000 for retirement. Then in 2014 the IRS seized his bank account because he had made withdrawals that raised red flags under “structuring” laws that require banks to report transactions of more than $10,000. Mr. Quran had made transactions below that limit.

So even though Mr. Quran did nothing illegal and even though it’s legal to make deposits of less than $10,000, the IRS stole his money.

Just like money was stolen from the Dehko family.

Here’s the other example from the WSJ.

Maryland dairy farmer Randy Sowers…had $62,936.04 seized from his bank account because of the pattern of his deposits, though the money was all legally earned. …Mr. Sowers told his story to a local newspaper…a lawyer for Mr. Sowers asked…“why he is being treated differently.” Mr. Cassella replied that the other forfeiture target “did not give an interview to the press.” So much for equal treatment under the law.

Yes, you read correctly. If you have the temerity to expose the IRS’s reprehensible actions, the government will try to punish you more severely.

Even though the only wrongdoing that ever happened was the IRS’s confiscation of money in the first place!

So let’s celebrate the fact that the IRS is being subjected to some modest but long-overdue belt-tightening.

Notwithstanding Mr. Stromberg’s column, the IRS is not a praiseworthy organization. And many of the bureaucrats at the agency deserve our disdain.

• It has thieving employees.
• It has incompetent employees.
• It has thuggish employees.
• It has brainless employees.
• It has protectionist employees.
• It has wasteful employees.
• And it has victimizing employees.

The bottom line is that IRS budget cuts show that Republicans sometimes do the right thing.

And maybe if there are continued cuts and the current tax system actually does become unenforceable at some point, maybe politicians could be convinced to replace the corrupt internal revenue code with a simple and fair flat tax.

P.S. Clueless in Washington won’t be the only remake out of DC if President Obama decides to go Hollywood after 2016. Indeed, I suspect his acting career would be more successful than mine.

Reposted from International Liberty.

No one can give you what is already yours

This is the first of “How Big a Life Do You Want” articles.

No One Can Give You What is Already Yours.

Rights. A lot is said about rights. Not all everything called rights have anything to do with what essential rights are. If one were to get down to the root of the matter – rights are first and foremost unalienable, inherent, part and parcel of your very being. If at any moment the idea is accepted that rights are anything but unalienable, part of your very existence, then what you think you have is no longer a right but a decree, edict, endowment or some specific benefit bestowed by some higher authority, usually some form of government or ruler.

In the first case, your rights are the basis of law; in the latter, laws define your rights. Further, if rights are inherent, unalienable then no person, entity or governing body can be said to have jurisdiction over your rights. This is because the rights of every individual emanate from each and every individual’s very existence; this bundle of rights exist a priori, proceeding any law or government.

This is precisely what was meant by that portion of the Declaration of Independence which reads:

“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.”

Frédéric Bastiat in “The Law” says it this way:

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life—physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production–in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.¹

This cannot be understated: whether you believe in a God or not, if your rights begin and end with a governing entity, then you do not possess unalterable, unalienable, inherent rights. What you would have were little more than someone giving you at their discretion what they deem you should have. Their presumption is that they have the right and therefore the authority to decree as they see fit. How do they have such authority? Did you give it to them? By what right do they claim such power? Birth? Privilege? A superior intellect? Some high moral character that sets them apart and above the rest of humanity? Or is it mere political power?

Surely the ridiculousness of this notion can be see for what it is. If what you cling to as “rights” under this scenario can be dismissed at the whim and leisure of a ruling individual or group, then rights do not exist; only authority and political power. If rights are believed to be endowed by authority, and not inherent, unalienable, political structure doesn’t matter – it can be a true dictatorship, an oligarchy or a democracy (which is little more than soft tyranny of the majority).

Are you comfortable with the idea that what you believe you have as a right is nothing more than what another deems it to be? Or does it make more sense that rights are truly part and parcel of your being and the being of every individual? If these essential rights are inherently yours, then they are not and cannot be given to you.

No one can give you what is already yours: Life, Liberty, Property. Everything else grows out of this basic concept. Rights either are inherent and unalienable or law is based upon who rules at the time. The choice should be obvious.
Life, Liberty, Property – these are the essential rights each of us possess. You cannot have one without the other two. The existence of these carries with it your right to hold and enjoy these and to defend them, to keep them from being take from you.

This right of defense (to hold and enjoy one’s basic rights freely) is the foundation of all law. So, the purpose of Law is to protect the inherent and unalienable rights of every individual. Laws or legislation that violate anyone’s essential rights would then be contrary to the purpose of Law Theft and fraud are the taking of your property by force or coercion. Murder is the taking of another’s life. Slavery is the taking of one’s freedom and property. It is lawful to prevent theft, fraud, murder and slavery precisely because they take or attempt to destroy the essential rights of an individual or another group of individuals by another individual or group of individuals.

A characteristic of rights is that one’s possession and exercise of that right does not take from another. Your thinking, your speaking, your breathing, your own efforts do not directly cause the loss of the things in anyone else. Your Property, which begins initially with your own body, is not another person’s, nor does your mere existence, put an end to another individual’s having a body. Your right to maintain and improve your own existence does not preclude another person’s right to do so.

This may seem ridiculous to cover, but over the years so many assumptions have glossed over the basic concepts and observations of our own humanity and our relationships, they have to be mentioned. These are what make a truly free society possible,. Precisely because these are presumptive they are often overlooked and forgotten.

So what happens when the co-equal and inalienable rights of two individuals cross paths? Shall one merely use force to take what they want or need from the other? Or shall a mutually agreeable exchange be made to the basic satisfaction of both parties? Which of these choices would be the more civil and respectful? Which action represents freedom and tolerance?

I ask then, just how big a life do you want?

“The Law” by Frédéric Bastiat can be found in several places (it’s a mere 75 pages):

https://mises.org/library/law

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

http://www.constitution.org/cmt/bastiat/the_law.html

http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss2.html

Why it Matters that the United States Is (Supposed to Be) a Republic, not a Democracy

June 13, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

If you want to go to a Presbyterian church instead of a Baptist church, should the government be able to interfere with that choice? Even if, for some bizarre reason, 95 percent of the population doesn’t like Presbyterians?

If you want to march up and down the sidewalk in front of City Hall with a sign that says the Mayor is an idiot, should the government be able to throw you in jail? Even if 95 percent of the population somehow has decided the Mayor is a genius?

Most Americans instinctively understand that the answer to all these question is no. Not just no, a big emphatic NO!

That’s because certain rights are guaranteed by our Constitution, regardless of whether an overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens feel otherwise.

And that’s what makes us a republic rather than a democracy.

But the bad news is that many of our rights in the Constitution no longer are protected.

For instance, Article I, Section 8, specifically enumerates (what are supposed to be) the very limited powers of Congress.

Our Founding Fathers thought it was okay for Congress to have the power to create courts, to coin money, to fund an army, and to have the authority to do a few other things.

But here are some things that are not on that list of enumerated powers (and certainly not included in the list of presidential powers either):

• Department of Agriculture
• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Department of Education
• Department of Transportation
• Social Security
• Medicare
• Medicaid
• Food Stamps
• Obamacare
• Transportation Security Administration
• TARP
• Export-Import Bank

And the list could go on for several pages. The point is that the entire modern Washington-based welfare state, with all its redistribution and so-called social insurance, is inconsistent with the limited-government republic created by America’s Founders.

These programs exist today because the Supreme Court put ideology above the Constitution during the New Deal and, at least in the economic sphere, turned the nation from a constitutional republic into a democracy based on unconstrained majoritarianism.

Here’s some of Walter Williams wrote on the topic.

Like the founders of our nation, I find democracy and majority rule a contemptible form of government. …James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said that in a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” …John Adams said, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” …The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation — the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. …the Constitution’s First Amendment doesn’t say Congress shall grant us freedom of speech, the press and religion. It says, “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…” …In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. …Laws do not represent reason. They represent force. The restraint is upon the individual instead of government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government. …ask yourself how many decisions in your life would you like to be made democratically. How about what car you drive, where you live, whom you marry, whether you have turkey or ham for Thanksgiving dinner?

And click here for a video that explains in greater detail why majoritarianism is a bad idea.

But perhaps these cartoons will make it even easier to understand why 51 percent of the population shouldn’t be allowed to rape and pillage 49 percent of the population.

We’ll start with this depiction of modern elections, which was featured on a friend’s Facebook page.

And here’s one that I’ve shared before.

It highlights the dangers of majoritarianism, particularly if you happen to be a minority.

P.S. George Will has explained that the Supreme Court’s job is to protect Americans from democracy.

P.P.S. Here’s more analysis of the issue from Walter Williams.

P.P.P.S. Some leftists are totally oblivious about America’s system of government.

P.P.P.P.S. Though Republicans also don’t really understand what the Constitution requires.

P.P.P.P.P.S. Looking at the mess in the Middle East, I’ve argued we would be in much better shape if we promoted liberty instead of democracy.

Reposted from International Liberty.

Does “Freedom” Mean an Entitlement to Other People’s Money?

June 10, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

Maybe the warm weather is affecting my judgement, but I’m finding myself in the odd position of admiring some folks on the left for their honesty.

A few days ago, for instance, I (sort of) applauded Matthew Yglesias for openly admitting that punitive tax rates would put us on the downward-sloping portion of the Laffer Curve.

He still favors such a policy, which is very bizarre, but at least his approach is much more honest than other statists who want us to believe that very high tax rates generate more revenue.

Today, I’m going to indirectly give kudos to another leftist.

Writing for the Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel openly argues that the meaning of freedom should be changed. Here’s some of her argument, and we’ll start with her reasonably fair description of how freedom currently is interpreted.

For conservatives, freedom is centered in markets, free from government interference. …Government is the threat; the best thing it can do is to get out of the way. …freedom entails privatization, deregulation, limiting government’s reach and capacity.

Needless to say, I agree with this definition. After all, isn’t freedom just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual”?

Heck, this is why I’m a libertarian. Sure, I like the fact that liberty produces more prosperity, but my main goal it to eliminate needless government coercion.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to her column. She complains that folks on the left have acquiesced to this traditional conception of freedom.

Democrats chose to tack to these conservative winds. Bill Clinton’s New Democrats echoed the themes rather than challenge them. “The era of big government is over,” he told Americans, while celebrating “ending welfare as we know it,” deregulation of Wall Street… Obama chose consciously not to challenge the conservative limits on what freedom means.

Then she gets to her main argument. She wants Hillary Clinton to lead an effort to redefine the meaning of freedom.

This is Hillary Clinton’s historic opportunity. …She would do a great service for the country — and for her own political prospects — by offering a far more expansive American view of what freedom requires, and what threatens it. …expanding freedom from want by lifting the floor under workers, insuring every child a healthy start, providing free public education from pre-k to college, rebuilding the United States and putting people to work… Will she favor fair taxes on the rich and corporations to rebuild the United States and put people to work? Will she make the case for vital public investments — in new energy, in infrastructure, in education and training — that have been starved for too long? Will she call for breaking up banks…? Will she favor expanding social security…? …to offer Americans a bolder conception of freedom…and set up the debate that America must decide.

Needless to say, I strongly disagree with such policies. How can “freedom” be based on having entitlements to other people’s money?!?

Heck, it’s almost like slavery since it presupposes that a “right” to live off the labor of others. But that’s not technically true since presumably there wouldn’t be any requirement to work. So what would really happen in such a society is that people would conclude it’s better to ride in the wagon of government dependency, as illustrated by these cartoons.

Which means, sooner or later, a Greek-style collapse because a shrinking population of producers can’t keep pace with an ever-expanding population of moochers and looters.

Nonetheless, I give Ms. vanden Heuvel credit for acknowledging that her preferred policies are contrary to the traditional definition of freedom.

To be sure, I’d admire her even more if she simply admitted that she favors government coercion over freedom. That would be true honesty, but I can understand that folks on the left would prefer to change the meaning of words rather than admit what their agenda really implies.

P.S. Some of you may recognize that the issues discussed above are basically a rehash of the debate between advocates of “negative liberty” and supporters of “positive liberty.” The former is focused on protecting people from the predations of government while the latter is about somehow guaranteeing goodies from the government.

P.P.S. As mentioned in Ms. vanden Heuvel’s column, today’s effort to redefine freedom is similar to the so-called economic bill of rights peddled in the 1940s by FDR.

Reposted from International Liberty.

Even the IRS Admits that the Tax Code Is Very Biased against Successful Taxpayers

May 29, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

When I debate class warfare issues, here’s something that happens with depressing regularity.

I’ll cite research from a group like the Tax Foundation on how an overwhelming share of the income tax is borne by upper-income taxpayers.

The statist I’m arguing with will then scoff and say the Tax Foundation is biased, thus implying that I’m sharing bogus data.

I’ll then respond that the group has a very good reputation and that their analysis is directly based on IRS data, but I may as well be talking to a brick wall. It seems leftists immediately close their minds if information doesn’t come directly from a group that they like.

So I was rather happy to see that the Internal Revenue Service, in the Spring 2015 Statistics of Income Bulletin, published a bunch of data on how much of the income tax is paid by different types of taxpayers.

I’ll be very curious to see how they respond when I point out that their favorite government agency admits that the bottom 50 percent of earners only pay 2.8 percent of all income tax. And I’ll be every more curious to see how they react when I point out that more than half of all income taxes are paid by the top 3 percent of taxpayers.

There’s a famous saying, generally attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

With this in mind, I’m hoping that this data from the IRS will finally put to rest the silly leftist talking point that the “rich” don’t pay their “fair share.”

This doesn’t mean, by the way, that the debate about policy will be settled.

Getting statists to accept certain facts is just the first step.

But once that happens, we can at least hope that their minds will be opened to subsequent steps, such as understanding the economic impact of punitive tax rates, recognizing that high tax rates won’t necessarily collect more revenue, or realizing that ordinary workers suffer when harsh tax policies reduce economic vitality.

Though I’m not holding my breath and expecting miracles. After all, some leftists openly state that they don’t care if the economic damage of high tax rates is so significant that government doesn’t collect any tax revenue.

You can see an example of one of these spite-motivated people at the 4:20 mark of the video I narrated on class-warfare taxation.

P.S. Shifting to another tax topic, some of you may have heard about the massive data breach at the IRS. Here’s some of what CNN is reporting.

The Internal Revenue Service believes that a major cyber breach that allowed criminals to steal the tax returns of more than 100,000 people originated in Russia, Rep. Peter Roskam confirmed to CNN on Thursday. …The IRS announced Tuesday that organized crime syndicates used personal data obtained elsewhere to access tax information, which they then used to file $50 million in fraudulent tax refunds.

I suppose I could use this opportunity to take a few potshots at the IRS, but there’s a far more important issue to raise.

I’m guessing the IRS probably has the best computer security of any tax bureaucracy in the world. Yet even all the IRS’s expertise couldn’t stop hackers from obtaining sensitive information.

Now let’s contemplate something truly frightening. The Obama Administration wants the United States to be part of an OECD pact that obligates participating nations to promiscuously share information with dozens of other governments, including untrustworthy, hostile, and/or corrupt regimes such as Russia and China, not to mention make information available to jurisdictions that presumably will have very little technical capacity to guard data from hackers and identity thieves. Here’s the list of participating nations on the OECD website, and it includes Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Greece, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Romania, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine.

Yet none of this reckless endangerment would be an issue if we had a simple territorial tax system like the flat tax. Under such a simple and fair system, only income inside America’s borders would be taxed (unlike the wretched system of worldwide taxation we have now), so there would be no need to have risky information-swapping deals with dodgy foreign governments.

P.P.S. Senator Rand Paul is one of the few lawmakers fighting to protect Americans from having their information shared with foreign governments.

P.P.P.S. Shifting back to the original topic of class-warfare taxation, here’s a lesson on the Laffer Curve I offered to President Obama.

Reposted from International Liberty.

Grading the Rubio-Lee Tax Reform Plan

Grading the Rubio-Lee Tax Reform Plan

March 4, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

In my 2012 primer on fundamental tax reform, I explained that the three biggest warts in the current system.

1. High tax rates that penalize productive behavior.

2. Pervasive double taxation that discourages saving and investment.

3. Corrupt loopholes and cronyism that bribe people to make less productive choices.

These problems all need to be addressed, but I also acknowledged additional concerns with the internal revenue code, such as worldwide taxation and erosion of constitutional freedoms an civil liberties.

In a perfect world, we would shrink government to such a small size that there was no need for any sort of broad-based tax (remember, the United States prospered greatly for most of our history when there was no income tax).

In a good world, we could at least replace the corrupt internal revenue code with a simple and fair flat tax.

In today’s Washington, the best we can hope for is incremental reform.

But some incremental reforms can be very positive, and that’s the best way of describing the “Economic Growth and Family Fairness Tax Reform Plan” unveiled today by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

The two GOP senators have a column in today’s Wall Street Journal, and you can read a more detailed description of their plan by clicking here.

But here are the relevant details.

What’s wrong with Rubio-Lee

In the interest of fairness, I’ll start with the most disappointing feature of the plan. The top tax rate will be 35 percent, only a few percentage points lower than the 39.6 percent top rate that Obama imposed as a result of the fiscal cliff.

Even more troubling, that 35 percent top tax rate will be imposed on any taxable income above $75,000 for single taxpayers and $150,000 for married taxpayers.

Since the 35 percent and 39.6 percent tax rates currently apply only when income climbs above $400,000, that means a significant number of taxpayers will face higher marginal tax rates.

That’s a very disappointing feature in any tax plan, but it’s especially unfortunate in a proposal put forth my lawmakers who wrote in their WSJ column that they want to “lower rates for families and individuals.”

What’s right with Rubio-Lee

This will be a much longer section because there are several very attractive features of the Rubio-Lee plan.

Some households, for instance, will enjoy lower marginal tax rates under the new bracket structure, particularly if those households have lots of children (there’s a very big child tax credit).

But the really attractive features of the Rubio-Lee plan are those that deal with business taxation, double taxation, and international competitiveness.

Here’s a list of the most pro-growth elements of the plan.

A 25 percent tax rate on all business income – This means that the corporate tax rate is being reduced from 35 percent (the highest in the world), but also that there will be a 25 percent maximum rate on all small businesses that file using Schedule C as part of a 1040 tax return.

Sweeping reductions in double taxation – The Rubio-Lee plans eliminates the capital gains tax, the double tax on dividends, and the second layer of tax on interest.

Full expensing of business investment – The proposal gets rid of punitive “depreciation” rules that force businesses to overstate their income in ways that discourage new business investment.

Territorial taxation – Businesses no longer will have to pay a second layer of tax on income that is earned – and already subject to tax – in other nations.

No death tax – Income should not be subject to yet another layer of tax simply because someone dies. The Rubio-Lee plan eliminates this morally offensive form of double taxation.

In addition, it’s worth noting that the Rubio-Lee plan eliminate the state and local tax deduction, which is a perverse part of the tax code that enables higher taxes in states like New York and California.

Many years ago, while working at the Heritage Foundation, I created a matrix to grade competing tax reform plans. I updated that matrix last year to assess the proposal put forth by Congressman Dave Camp, the former Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee.

Here’s another version of that matrix, this time including the Rubio-Lee plan.

As you can see, the Rubio-Lee plan gets top scores for “saving and investment” and “international competitiveness.”

And since these components have big implications for growth, the proposal would – if enacted – generate big benefits. The economy would grow faster, more jobs would be created, workers would enjoy higher wages, and American companies would be far more competitive.

By the way, if there was (and there probably should be) a “tax burden” grade in my matrix, the Rubio-Lee plan almost surely would get an “A+” score because the overall proposal is a substantial tax cut based on static scoring.

And even with dynamic scoring, this plan will reduce the amount of money going to Washington in the near future.

Of course, faster future growth will lead to more taxable income, so there will be revenue feedback. So the size of the tax cut will shrink over time, but even a curmudgeon like me doesn’t get that upset if politicians get more revenue because more Americans are working and earning higher wages.

That simply means another opportunity to push for more tax relief!

What’s missing in Rubio-Lee

There are a few features of the tax code that aren’t addressed in the plan.

The health care exclusion is left untouched, largely because the two lawmakers understand that phasing out that preference is best handled as part of a combined tax reform/health reform proposal.

Some itemized deductions are left untouched, or simply tweaked.

And I’m not aware of any changes that would strengthen the legal rights of taxpayers when dealing with the IRS.

Let’s close with a reminder of what very good tax policy looks like.

To their credit, Rubio and Lee would move the tax code in the direction of a flat tax, though sometimes in a haphazard fashion.

P.S. There is a big debate on the degree to which the tax code should provide large child credits. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year, I much prefer lower tax rates since faster growth is the most effective long-run way to bolster the economic status of families.

But even the flat tax has a generous family-based allowance, so it’s largely a political judgement on how much tax relief should be dedicated to kids and how much should be used to lower tax rates.

That being said, I think the so-called reform conservatives undermine their case when they argue child-oriented tax relief is good because it might subsidize the creation of future taxpayers to prop up entitlement programs. We need to reform those programs, not give them more money.

Reposted from International Liberty.

▶ Gowdy Opening Statement at Hearing on Immigration Executive Actions

▶ Gowdy Opening Statement at Hearing on Immigration Executive Actions – YouTube.

The Empirical Case for a Much Smaller Public Sector

February 22, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

As a fiscal policy economist who believes in individual liberty and personal responsibility, I have two goals.

1. Replace the corrupt and punitive internal revenue code with a simple and fair flat tax that raises necessary revenue in the least-destructive and least-intrusive manner possible.

2. Shrink the size of the federal government so that it only funds the core public goods, such as national defense and rule of law, envisioned by America’s Founding Fathers.

Needless to say, I haven’t been doing a great job. The tax code seems to get worse every year, and even though we’ve made some progress in recent years on spending, the long-run outlook is still very grim because there’s hasn’t been genuine entitlement reform.

But I continue with my Sisyphean task. And part of my efforts include educating people about the Rahn Curve, which is sort of the spending version of the Laffer Curve. it shows the non-linear relationship between the size of government and economic performance.

Simply stated, some government spending presumably enables growth by creating the conditions (such as rule of law and property rights) for commerce.

But as politicians learn to buy votes and enhance their power by engaging in redistribution, then government spending is associated with weaker economic performance because of perverse incentives and widespread misallocation of resources.

I’ve even shared a number of videos on the topic.

The video I narrated explaining the basics of the Rahn Curve, which was produced by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

A video from the Fraser Institute in Canada that reviews the evidence about the growth-maximizing size of government.

A video from the Centre for Policy Studies in the United Kingdom that explores the relationship between prosperity and the size of the public sector.

Even a video on the Rahn Curve from a critic who seems to think that I’m a closeted apologist for big government.

Now we have another video to add to the collection.

Narrated by Svetla Kostadinova of Bulgaria’s Institute for Market Economics, it discusses research from a few years ago about the “optimal size of government.”

If you want to read the research study that is cited in the video, click here. The article was written by Dimitar Chobanov and Adriana Mladenova of the IME

The evidence indicates that the optimum size of government, e.g. the share of overall government spending that maximizes economic growth, is no greater than 25% of GDP (at a 95% confidence level) based on data from the OECD countries. In addition, the evidence indicates that the optimum level of government consumption on final goods and services as a share of GDP is 10.4% based on a panel data of 81 countries. However, due to model and data limitations, it is probable that the results are biased upwards, and the “true” optimum government level is even smaller than the existing empirical study indicates.

Two points in that excerpt are worth additional attention.

First, they understand that not all forms of government spending have equal effects.

Spending on core public goods (rule of law, courts, etc) generally are associated with better economic performance.

Spending on physical and human capital (infrastructure and education) can be productive, though governments often do a poor job based on a money-to-outcomes basis.

Most government spending, though, is for transfers and consumption, and these are areas where the economic effects are overwhelmingly negative.

So kudos to the Bulgarians for recognizing that it’s particularly important to restrain some types of outlays.

The other point that merits additional emphasis is that the growth-maximizing size of government is probably far lower than 25 percent of economic output.

Here’s what they wrote, citing yours truly.

…the results from the above mentioned models should not be taken as the “true” optimal level of government due to limitations of the models, and lack of data as already discussed. As Dan Mitchell commented, government spending was about 10% of GDP in the West from the end of the Napoleonic wars to World War I. And we do not have any data to think that growth would have been higher if government was doubled or tripled. However, what the empirical results do show is that the government spending should be much less than is the average of most countries at the moment. Thus, we can confidentially say the optimum size of general government is no bigger than 25% but is likely to be considerably smaller because of the above-mentioned reasons.

And here’s their version of the Rahn Curve, though I’m not a big fan since it seems to imply that government should consume about one-third of economic output.

I much prefer the curve to show the growth-maximizing level under 20 percent of GDP.

Though I often use a dashed line to emphasize that we don’t really know the actual peak because there unfortunately are no developed nations with modest-sized public sectors.

Even Singapore and Hong Kong have governments that consume about 20 percent of economic output.

But maybe if I someday achieve my goal, we’ll have better data.

And maybe some day I’ll go back to college and play quarterback for my beloved Georgia Bulldogs.

P.S. Since I shared one video, I can’t resist also including this snippet featuring Ronald Reagan talking about libertarianism.

What impresses me most about this clip is not that Reagan endorses libertarianism.

Instead, notice how he also explains the link between modern statism and fascism.

He had a much greater depth of knowledge than even supporters realize. Which also can be seen in this clip of Reagan explaining why the Keynesians were wrong about a return to Depression after World War II.

And click here if you simply want to enjoy some classic Reagan clips. For what it’s worth, this clip from his first inauguration is my favorite.

Given my man crush on the Gipper, you also won’t be surprised to learn that this is the most encouraging poll I’ve ever seen.

Reposted by International Liberty.