Limits to freedom

Blogcritics.org are apparently upset about how the Secret Service is dealing with protesters at Pres. Bush's public appearances. You can read the whole thing here, but this passage jumped out at me:

In the letter to Ashcroft recently released, the members of Congress called the prosecution of Bursey for carrying his sign outside the designated free speech zone "a threat to the freedom of expression we should all be defending."

"As we read the First Amendment to the Constitution, the United States is a 'free speech zone.' In the United States, free speech is the rule, not the exception, and citizens' rights to express it do not depend on their doing it in a way the President finds politically amenable ... We ask that you make it clear that we have no interest as a government in 'zoning' Constitutional freedoms...

No interest in zoning Constitutional freedoms? Since when? It looks to me as if someone decided to interpret the Constitution with some consistancy for a change and read the First Amendment the same way the Second Amendment has been read for many years.

But they are actually right. There are no zones of Constitutional freedoms. Per the First Amendment, the entire United States is a free speech zone. And per the Second, it is a free to bear arms zone as well.

As we read the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the United States is a 'free to bear arms zone.' In the United States, the individual right to keep and bear arms is the rule, not the exception, and citizens' rights to bear arms do not depend on their doing it in a way that Sarah Brady or anyone else finds politically amenable.

Guns to blame?

Jeff has an interesting post over at Alphecca. After you read it, come back and read my comments below.

When I was a teenager (age 13 or 14) in Houston, Tx, I walked into a Western Auto, bought a .22 rifle and ammo and walked out. White Oak bayou was near my house and my friends and I regularly walked the mile or so carrying our .22s for an afternoon of plinking along the bayou after school. Lest anyone think that this was somewhere in the country, I lived inside Loop 610.

Was this legal? Buying the gun was. Owning the gun was. Shooting the gun inside the city limits was not. But we knew gun safety and shooting down into the bayou was safe so we never got into trouble. And we knew if we did get into trouble with the police, we would be in even more trouble with our parents.

Our parents raised us, taught us right and wrong, taught us correct behavior, and reinforced that teaching with discipline. Discipline was not a negotiation of what we could do an not do. It was rules of conduct with real consequences for breaking the rules. That is another big change. Kids today are not disciplined and the law often prevents parents from doing so effectively. As a result, kids often have little respect for their parents' authority and consequently, they learn little respect for any authority. This doesn't apply to all kids, but it applies to way too many.

Terrorists Termites

The World Trade Center wasn't the first incident, nor the last, but it did inspire these words:

"We continue to pursue the terrorists in cities and camps and caves across the earth. We are joined by a great coalition of nations to rid the world of terror. And we will not allow any terrorist or tyrant to threaten civilization with weapons of mass murder. Now and in the future, Americans will live as free people, not in fear, and never at the mercy of any foreign plot or power.

"We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power.

"We will not relent until justice is done and our nation is secure. What our enemies have begun, we will finish." --President George W. Bush, 09-11-2002.

The USA, in good conscience and without hypocrisy, cannot ask that Israel do otherwise.

The Roadmap for Peace is a noble goal, but Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the other Palestinian terrorists organizations and those that support them and celebrate their actions are not just roadblocks on that road, they are landmines in a desert. They have to be cleared before the road can even be built.

The world may wish for peace in the Middle East. So what? The Palestinian terrortists wish for the complete destruction of Israel.

Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a hard-line Hamas leader, said Saturday his Islamic militant group would not halt its attacks against Israel.

"The word cease-fire is not in our dictionary, Resistance will continue until we uproot them from our home land."

Terrorists are like termites. You can't negotiate with termites. You can talk all you want, but all the while, they just keep chewing, chewing, chewing. Why? Because while your goal is to protect your house, the termites' goal is to consume it. You can't talk to termites, and if it is your house they are eating, you can't ignore them either. You have to exterminate them. Israel seems to understand this. After 9-11, I thought we had figured it out as well.

Guns and Self-defense

Alphecca has a post on guns and self-defense. He cites a couple examples where the Violence Policy Center says that people who own guns for self defence are often killed with their own gun, and that owning a gun created a false sense of safety. Jeff says this is the result of an improper use of the gun.

He's right. When someone is killed with their own gun by an assailant, it is quite often due to misplaced trust--the victims placed their trust in the threat presented by the gun in their hands and not in their ability to use the gun in their hands. When the threat was insufficient to stop the assailant, they were unprepared to take the next step required and actually fire the gun in self-defense. Or if they did fire the gun, they tried not to hurt the assailant too badly and just wound him enough to stop him. WRONG! When the use of deadly force is necessary to defend oneself, nothing less will suffice. If you have the opportunity to do so, point the gun at the attacker and say "STOP!". If the attacker does not stop immediately, shoot to kill. If you do not have the time to warn them off, just shoot to kill. And remember: "Two in the body and one in the head guarantees they're really dead."

:: UPDATE ::

There is more on this subject at The Smallest Minority. My same comments apply.

If you like a good conspiracy, this one's a doozy

George W. Bush and Tony Blair said Iraq had weapons of mass distruction.

As Robert Kaplin reports, The Iraqi government in the 1990s admitted to U.N. weapons inspectors that it had produced 8,500 liters of anthrax, as well as a few tons of the nerve agent VX.

From the report Hans Blix delivered to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 27:

On the question of Iraq's stocks of anthrax, Blix reported there existed "no convincing evidence" they had ever been destroyed. On the contrary, he said, there was "strong evidence" that Iraq had produced even more anthrax than it had declared "and that at least some of this was retained." Blix also reported that Iraq possessed 650 kilograms of "bacterial growth media," enough "to produce . . . 5,000 litres of concentrated anthrax."

On the question of VX, Blix reported that his inspection team had "information that conflicts" with Iraqi accounts. The Iraqi government claimed that it had produced VX only as part of a pilot program but that the quality was poor and therefore the agent was never "weaponized." But according to Blix, the inspection team discovered that the Iraqi government had lied. The Iraqi government's own documents showed that the quality and purity of the VX were better than declared and, according to the inspection team, there were "indications that the agent" had indeed been "weaponized."

6,500 "chemical bombs" that Iraq admitted producing still remained unaccounted for. Blix's team calculated the amount of chemical agent in those bombs at 1,000 tons. As Blix reported to the U.N. Security Council, "in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for."

German intelligence service reported in 2001 that Hussein was three years away from being able to build three nuclear weapons and that by 2005 Iraq would have a missile with sufficient range to reach Europe.

President Jacques Chirac declared this past February that there were probably weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that "we have to find and destroy them."

Al Gore, declared last September, presumably based on what he had learned as vice president, that Hussein had "stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

In a speech delivered at the Pentagon in February 1998, Bill Clinton described what he called Iraq's "offensive biological warfare capability, notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs." Clinton accurately reported the view of U.N. weapons inspectors at the time "that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons."

But only Bush and Blair were lying? Read all about it here.

:: UPDATE ::

Instapundit (as usual) has more to say about it.

:: UPDATE 6/11/2003 ::

More quotes from more apparent liars.

Federalism, States Rights and the Civil War

Mrs. du Toit says one of her pet peeves is people that try to revise history. It is one of mine as well.

The national conflagration known as the Civil War as not just about slavery as many current revisionists want to believe, but slavery was an important part of the fuel that flared into war, and emancipation was used as a weapon during the war. The spark that set the fire was the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, but the embers had been smoldering since the foundation of the nation.

Even during the Constitutional Convention there were two sides (there always are) and they were diametrically opposed on the issue of the role of the national government. The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, favored a strong, stable, centralized government which could enforce uniformity in national affairs. The Democratic-Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, favored a weak national government and strong, sovereign, state governments as they felt these were more responsive to will of the people.

It must be remembered that at this time, there was no such thing as national citizenship. Individuals were citizens of states and the state governments were responsible to the citizens. The national government was seen as a government formed by the people to govern the common interests of the states on a national level. The House of Representatives was directly elected by the people, but the Senate was not elected but appointed by the state governments as representatives of the states. Also, political parties did not have the recognized role that they now have in American politics. The Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians did not really become parties until the election of 1800 and even then, their role was ill-defined.

The nation was struggling to establish its identity. Hamilton had a vision, Adams had a vision, Madison had a vision, Jefferson had a vision. In that order, those visions created a spectrum of political ideas and it was thought by most at the time that only one of these vision could successfully guide the new nation. There was disagreement as to which one it should be, but the idea of a loyal opposition, of changing from one vision to another with each election was unfathomable and to those in power, opposition to the sitting government seemed to border on treason. Therefore, they sought to protect the nation by suppressing opposing views.

Things were relatively quiet when George Washington was President, but he was succeeded by John Adams and the quiet ended. Federalists policies antagonized the Jeffersonians throughout Adams' term. The Federalists held power until 1800 when the Democratic-Republicans gained control of Congress and Thomas Jefferson was elected president. The shift in power was due in part to a rift between Hamalton and Adams over war with France--Hamilton wanted it, Adams didn't--and in part to public response to the passage of the Alien and Sedition acts in 1797. The purpose of these acts was to provide a way to suppress and punish opponents of the government. This was seen by the Democratic-Republicans as too much power for the national government and they campaigned for a different vision of the role of government

But it was not really that simple. Before the election, Jefferson and Madison responded to the Alien and Sedition acts with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. The Kentucky Resolution submitted by Jefferson was the most radical, proposing the doctrine of nullification which held that as sovereign states, a majority of states could vote to nullify any law passed by Congress with which they disagreed. This doctrine was to become one of the smoldering logs in the fire of Civil War.

When Jefferson took office, he retained many of the policies a structures put in place by the Federalists. The policies were working and he felt that with power in his hands, they could not do the harm he feared from the Federalists. He allowed the Alien and Sedition acts to expire, but like the Federalists, he also sought to suppress and punish his opponents. Jefferson used the weapon of impeachment.

Before leaving office, the Federalist Congress passed the Judicial Act creating hundreds of new federal judges. Adams was up until midnight the last day of his term signing judicial appointments. Jefferson viewed this as an attempt to pack the federal courts with federalists in an attempt maintain control over at least one of the three branches of government and he didn't like it. Jefferson ordered Sec. of State James Madison to ignore the appointments and they went undelivered. The new Congress soon repealed the judicial act and Jefferson thought that was the end of it. Then one of the appointees [?] Marbury asked the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus ordering James Madison to deliver his appointment so he could assume his legally created and appointed office.

To make a long story short, the Supreme Court ruled that it could not issue the writ because the law passed by congress delegating that power to the court was unconstitutional. This established the principle of judicial review which gives the Supreme Court the power to declare laws passed by Congress to be unconstitutional.

Jefferson felt this gave the Court too much power because the Supreme Court was controlled by federalists. He feared they would use this power to nullify Dem-Rep legislation passed by Congress. Jefferson sought to purge the courts by charging federalist judges with high crimes and misdemeanors and impeaching them. In most cases he was unsuccessful, but it shows that Jefferson was just as determined as Adams and Hamilton to suppress opponents to his political vision.

The opposition between federalism and state sovereignty continued and eventually took on sectional lines pitting the largely industrial-mercantile North against the largely agrarian South The early on, the critical issue was not slavery but the protective tariff which the South felt penalized them unfairly as two thirds of the tariffs collected were collected in southern states. One of the early weapons which the South tried to use against national laws favoring the North was nullification, this time championed by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

Calhoun's doctrine of nullification did not require a majority of states. It held that because the states were sovereign, they could act on their own and did not have to rely on the Supreme Court to declare a law unconstitutional. Rather, any state had the power to nullify within its borders, any law passed by congress with which it disagreed. Nullification could only be overcome by a Constitutional amendment ratified by 3/4s of the states and if the federal government tried to force compliance without an amendment, the state had the right to secede from the Union.

South Carolina tested this doctrine and lost the battle but won the war when President Andrew Jackson declared the doctrine of nullification to be treasonous and threatened to use all the force necessary to enforce the laws of the United States within South Carolina. Other southern states refused to support South Carolina in the confrontation so South Carolina agreed to a compromise formulated by Henry Clay of Kentucky by which S.C. would withdraw its nullification of the tariffs in exchange for a gradual lowering of the tariff over the next 10 years. Because the tariff was lowered, Calhoun and his followers considered this a victory for state sovereignty and continued working to build a solid South that could eventually successfully oppose federal political and military power.

With the tariff question settled, the critical issue soon became slavery. The abolitionist movement was growing in New England, primarily Massachusetts, and demands for an end to slavery were increasing. Because these demands came primarily from the north, the South felt attacked again. The South feared that a strong federal government controlled by northern interests would seek to destroy the south's economy by abolishing slavery which was critical to the South as a source of labor for raising the cotton on which its economy was based.

Federalism had always been strongest in the north, especially New England, and as more states were added to the Union, the issue of whether slavery would be allowed in these states became critical. This was because of representation in the Senate. The North had a greater population so it was likely that northern states would control the House. But since each state has only two senators, population was not an issue in the senate. As long as there was a balance between slave states and free states in the senate, one section could not ride roughshod over the other. Through a series of compromises, this balance was maintained until 1860.

The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was seen in the South as a clear signal of the intention of the North to prevent the introduction of slavery into the territories and thus end once and for all the balance of power in the Senate that had kept the flames of regional conflict suppressed. The (now solidly aligned) Southern states began exercising their sovereignty and seceded from the Union (South Carolina was first, of course). Abraham Lincoln, while he accepted a principal of limited state sovereignty, did not believe that any state had a right to leave the Union once joined. This was the spark of rebellion that finally set the bonfire ablaze.

The issue driving the events was slavery, but freeing slaves was not the purpose of the Civil War. The purpose was to preserve the Federal Union. There was little doubt that forcing the slave states to remain in the Union meant the eventual end of slavery. Fully 69% of the popular vote for President in the 1860 election was for anti-slavery or free-soil candidates. Most of those votes came from northern and western states. The South was outnumbered in the House and if slavery was prohibited in the territories, either by legislation of popular sovereignty, the balance in the Senate would swing to the anti-slavery forces who would then pressure the South intolerably. For survival, the South had to leave the Union and make its own way.

Lincoln was only moderately anti-slavery. He felt that given time, slavery would come to an end as the South found more efficient ways to drive their agrarian economy. Lincoln was opposed to emancipation of slaves without compensating slaveholders and he felt that emancipation further required a way of colonizing the freed slaves outside of the United States. For Lincoln, the war was always about preserving the Union, but he had to balance this against the fact that his support came from two groups, pro-Unionists that were against abolition, and abolitionists that saw the war primarily as a way to bring about emancipation. It was a delicate balance.

By 1862, there was growing discontent over the course of the war. Lincoln was in danger of losing the support of the abolitionists who were beginning to see that the goal of restoring the Union might be at odds with the goal of abolition. They began to see that war was not necessary to free the slaves in the remaining Union states, but that nothing could be done to free the slaves in the United States without a constitutional amendment. The constitution recognized slavery, and the 5th amendment prevented the taking of private property (slaves) with out due process of law and just compensation. As a result, the abolitionist were evermore ready to say "Good riddance" to the South and free the slaves remaining in the Union. Lincoln was losing his base of support.

Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. Many think that this freed the slaves, but it did not, at least, not entirely. The proclamation was primarily a war measure aimed at putting pressure on the Confederacy on one hand and restoring abolitionists support for the war effort on the other. In July, Congress had already passed, and Lincoln had accepted, the Second Confiscation act which declared that all slaves held by those in rebellion were free. However, Lincoln delayed in proclaiming these slaves to be free because he feared upsetting the balance of his support for the war by offending the non-abolitionist in the north. He waited for a success on the battlefield when pro-war sentiment would be strongest. In September, after the battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation of emancipation declaring that a final proclamation of emancipation, under the terms of the Confiscation act, would be forthcoming unless the states then in rebellion surrendered by January 1863.

When finally issued, the Emancipation proclamation only freed the slaves in areas not currently under federal control (and thus was not enforceable until those areas came under federal control) but did nothing to alter the status of slaves in rebellious states or parts of states that were under federal control. Nor did it free the slaves in slave states that had remained part of the Union.

Think about it. Lincoln was fighting a war to preserve the Union. His support was precariously balanced between pro-Unionists that didn't really care about abolition and certainly not about fighting for the rights of blacks, and abolitionists that felt abolition was a holy writ to be imposed on the slave states by whatever means necessary whether they were in the Union or not. The abolitionists cared nothing for preserving the Union without the abolition of slavery. Without the slave states to oppose it, abolition could be accomplished in what remained of the United States with an amendment but the rest of the country was not interested in debating such an amendment in the middle of a war. The Emancipation proclamation gave the abolitionists reason to support the war effort because it created a means of freeing the slaves in the Confederacy by the extension if US military power. It did not require that the war be won or the Union restored, just that Union armies move through Confederate territory, freeing the slaves as they go. In addition, once the war had ended, attention could be turned to and amendment to abolish slavery. Pursuit of the war now served the purposes of both abolitionists and pro-Unionists and Lincoln had the base of support he needed to pursue the war for his purpose, which was to preserve the Union.

The 13th Amendment was proposed by a Congress controlled by abolitionists and ratified by states that were predominantly free. It was not done until after the war ended and the states of the defeated Confederacy had not yet been readmitted to the Union. It is doubtful that such an amendment would have been ratified if the slave states had been immediately restored to statehood and included in the count. War was not necessary to end slavery in the United States, but a constitutional amendment certainly was and it was secession that made such an amendment possible. War was necessary to preserve the Union but if slavery was to be outlawed, it had to be done before it was put back together. And that is what happened. The Confederacy was defeated, slavery was outlawed, and the defeated states were "reconstructed" and "allowed" to rejoin a Union that now outlawed slavery.

One thing the Emancipation proclamation eventually did for many in the North was change their view of the purpose of the war. By 1864, slavery seemed to be the cause for which the South was fighting and if the South wasn't fighting, there would not be so much suffering and death. By this time, the North was not fighting to preserve the Union so much as to end the war and now ending the war also meant ending slavery which would remove the South's reason for fighting.

What the proclamation did not do was change the purpose of the war for the South. The war was to defend state sovereignty and southern independence. Slavery was not the primary issue, it was just something that North was trying to take way in order to extend their economic dominance over the southern states and make them dependent upon northern merchants. Remember, it was only the secession of the slave states that made the ratification of the 13th amendment possible. If the South had remained in the Union, slavery would have continued for some time but the South would have been under increasing economic and political pressure from the rest of the country. The South had come to believe that the common interests that originally bound the states together had been subsumed by overriding regional concerns and union was no longer desirable. In effect, they wanted a divorce.

But at the root of all was the old conflict between federal sovereignty and state sovereignty. And in the end, the federalists won. That states could not secede was enforced by force of arms. Federal citizenship was pronounced and trumped state sovereignty. The 14th Amendment extended the protections of the federal Bill of Rights to US citizens and state constitutions and state law had to conform. The United States became a federal republic with a strong central government, as Hamilton and Adams had envisioned, and not a loose association of sovereign states with a weak central government acting as its agent which Jefferson had desired.

When studying the history of the Constitution, it is important to know the original intent of the founding fathers because where it has not been modified, that original intent still holds true. But one of the original intents was that government be responsive to the changing needs of the country, in many cases, original intent has been modified to meet the needs of changing times. Where original intent has been preserved, that original intent is valid, but where it has changed--through force of arms, amendment, or judicial interpretation--that change is equally valid. It does little good to pretend otherwise. Just like it does little good to pretend the Civil War was just about slavery.

"News"papers?

Porphyrogenitus is wondering just how much we can trust newspapers these days:

I am starting to wonder just how much of what we were told in the Newspapers of Record just wasn't so. Actually, I'm wondering less and less: the answer is this isn't very new. People are just more aware of it now, and the Real Reporters© find this turn of events unbecoming.

I'm not surprised at all. Over the years, I have found that newspaper reports of incidents of which I have direct knowledge read nothing like what I know to be true from having witnessed it first hand. And the few times I have been interviewed, the quotes bore very little resemblance to what I actually said. The sports sections are different, but these are generally reports of events with thousands of witnesses, many of whom will be reading the reports. Sportswriters can't afford to deviate too far from the truth. Not so with "news" reports which may be the only information the reader has on the subject.

As a result, I don't read newspapers for news. I read the sports and the comics, and use the rest of the paper to clean the barbeque grill.

Surfing the Blogosphere

From USS Clueless: The Dog Days of August. When I followed the link to "Dogs marry in Connecticut", I was greeted with an ad for Hillary Clinton and Barbara Walters. That is just too much coincidence.

From Michael Totten: France Requests U.S. Statehood

On a serious note, from Little Green Footballs: Palestinian kids: Ask for death. Sounds like a roadmap to pieces.

James Lileks has apparently discovered an American naming convention:

Well, we know Eric Robert Rudolph’s guilty, don’t we? He has THREE NAMES. He was Eric Rudolph for years, but now he’s Eric Robert Rudolph. Say no more. That’s why I never thought Richard Jewell did the Atlanta bombing; he would have been described as Richard Jay Jewell, or Richard Harvey Jewell. People don’t get a middle name unless they’re a famous criminal. That’s the law. Ricky Ray Rector. Lee Harvey Oswald. James Earl Ray. Sirhan Sirhan Sirhan.

The nation is run by people with four names (William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, Harry Herbert Heever Hoover,* etc.) The nation is entertained by people with one name - Cher, Sting, Madonna, Eminem, Rush. The people with three names are found guilty by jury members who have two names. What of the five-namers, you ask? Those are the puppet masters, my friend. The Masonic Illuminati. Somewhere now in Bavaria, Rheingelt Quincy Etienne Xavier Chernobog is shaking hands with John Jacob Zhinkleheimer Kim Tanaka. And that handshake took six years to learn.

In case you were wondering what happened to Bill Whittle. (be sure and read the comments)

Floating all Boats

In this post by Daniel Drezner, it sounds like the rich get richer, the poor get rich and someone else moves in to take their place. Isn't that the way it's supposed to work?

The Importance of the 2nd Amendment

Much of the following is part of a thread I was involved in a couple of years ago on a newsgroup. I wanted to get my comments on the record here.

Possession of firearms should be limited to the armed services. That *WAS* the purpose the Second Amendment--it says so in so many words.

No it doesn't, not at all. The militia is the armed citizenry. IOW, a militia is not something that you join. The militia is created by the simple existence of an armed citizenry.

There is much confusion created by the sentence construction of the 2nd Amendment. The Bill of Rights as a whole was intended to protect individual rights against infringement by the Federal government. It was based on the Bills of rights in several state constitutions which protected individual rights against infringement by state governments.

The introductory phrase, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," is intended to explain the reason that the individual right to keep and bear arms is being protected. The 2nd Amendment is unique in that it is the only amendment which has such an explanatory preamble. Even so, it does not state that the only reason for a citizen to be armed is so that he can join a militia. It is clear from contemporary writings promoting the Bill of Rights that the militia was created by the existence of an armed citizenry and not that the citizenry was armed by the existence of a militia.

An amendment to protect the right to education might be similarly written:

"A well-educated electorate being necessary to the preservation of a free society, the right of the people to read and compose books shall not be infringed."


This does not mean that only well-educated voters have the right to read or write books. Nor does it mean that the right to read books of one's choosing can be restricted to only those subjects which lead to a well-educated electorate.

The purpose of this provision is: although not everyone may end up being well-educated, enough people will become well-educated to preserve a free society.

Similarly, the purpose of the 2nd amendment is that the people from whom a necessary and well-regulated militia will be composed, shall not have their right to keep and bear arms infringed so that there will be an armed citizenry from which the state (and federal militias) can be drawn.

In The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788, while the states were considering ratification of the Constitution, Tench Coxe wrote:

"Who are the militia? are they not ourselves. Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American...The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."

Here is a quote from the case of Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886):

"It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the States, and in view of this prerogative of the general government...the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question [the Second Amendment] out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms..."

When the Constitution and Bill of Rights was written, the people knew what the intent was and said so in print. As a result, anyone who can read can know what the original intent was without having to speculate.

Only one law needs to be passed, in my opinion. Reword the archaic amendment in the Bill of Rights to remove the right bear handguns, automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and use copkiller bullets. There, I've said it. I will now put on my flame retardant suit.

No flames here. I happen to agree that the only resolution to this issue is to re-write the 2nd Amendment. It will require re-writing the whole Constitution though because the Second Amendment is the primary guarantee that the will of the people can be ultimately enforced. Without the Second amendment, we are left to rely on the benevolence of the government. And it was due to a distrust in the benevolence of government that the Bill of Rights was adopted in the first place.

So while I agree that the Second amendment could be re-worded for clarification, I would favor re-wording it to make the right to keep and bear personal weapons a clear and unambiguous right of individual citizens not subject to restriction by federal, state or local government except as a result of felonious activity of the individual.

The US Constitution does not grant any rights or privileges to the citizens it serves. Rather, the Constitution is the means by which the citizens delegate power to, and restrict the power of, the government.

The freedom and liberty we enjoy in the US is protected and preserved by the Constitution. And the Constitution is protected and preserved by the 2nd amendment. Any attack on the personal right to keep and bear arms that is protected by the 2nd amendment is an attack on the Constitution itself and thus an attack on the U.S.

There are established constitutional methods in place for altering the nature of the Constitution. So far, none of the opponents of the 2nd amendment have attempted to seek such a solution. Instead, they propose ignoring the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and anything else that gets in the way of their agenda--an agenda_they intend to pursue regardless of who may disagree or get in their way.

Yes, the US is under attack...from itself. But this is healthy and serves its on purpose. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom and the stronger the attacks, the more vigilant people become.

The US is always under attack from itself. The Constitution creates a government of three parts that exist in dynamic tension. Each balances and opposes the others and through that opposition, supports the others.

It is the same with ideas. Thesis plus antithesis produces synthesis. Without such discussion of differing opinions, there is no progress.

Judiciary rulings by courts with the appropriate jurisdiction interpret and define the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and tell us how they apply. In all cases of Constitutional interpretation, the US Supreme Court has final jurisdiction.

Slander, libel, copyright, religious practices, all of these issues have been tested in court and ruled on based on the court's interpretation of the law and the 1st amendment. These rulings have helped to clarify and shape our understanding of the 1st amendment and this is a proper and necessary part of the constitutional process.

However, to date, the Supreme Court has not issued a ruling in support of a federal gun control law based on a clear interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Rather, most rulings have upheld such laws on the basis of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce. Until the 2nd Amendment is revised by subsequent amendment, or by Supreme Court ruling, it has to be accepted as written with the original intent of the authors.

Different groups may have differing opinions as to what the 2nd amendment actually says and what it was originally intended to say. Neither side of this discussion has the power or authority to make the final determination without amending the Constitution. Only the Supreme Court can do that and so far, it has declined to do so. But it is going to have another chance.

What every well regulated militia needs...

...but is it armed?

Rachel Lucas is losing patience

And I don't blame her. A great rant about anti-gun idiocy.

Regarding tax cut fantasies

JaneGalt has a very good debunking of a Salon article criticizing the recent tax cut. She sums it up by saying:

"Pointless articles like this are not helpful. The only extent to which they work is the extent to whcih the readers don't notice the number flummery. If you can only make your point by deceiving your readers... well, maybe it's time to look for another point."

Exactly.

The Divine Right of Capital

The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy, by Marjorie Kelly, editor and publisher of Business Ethics magazine was published in 2001. The premise is that while the American Revolution did away with the divine right of kings, the rise of corporations has resulted in the evolution of an economic aristocracy of the wealthy. The foundation of this aristocracy is the corporate mandate to maximize the return to stockholders.

Kelly uses extensive metaphor to compare corporate stockholders to 18th century French and English nobility who did no work but derived their income from their lands worked by serfs, and compares corporate employees to the peasants and serfs whose labor produced the income which flowed to the nobles.

The metaphor is strong, but the reasoning is flawed. The basis for the comparison of stockholders to nobility is that they (she says) have the right to extract wealth from the corporation in return for nothing.

Equity capital is provided by stockholders when a company goes public, and in occasional secondary offerings later. But in the life of most major companies today, issuance of common stock represents a distant, long-ago source of funds, and a minor one at that. What’s odd is that it entitles holders to extract most of the corporation’s wealth, forever.

Equity investors essentially install a pipeline, and dictate that the corporation’s sole purpose is to funnel wealth into it. The pipeline is never to be tampered with — and no one else is to be granted significant access (except executives, whose function is to keep it flowing).

The truth is, the commotion on Wall Street is not about funding corporations. It’s about extracting from them.

In other words, unless they by stock directly from the corporation, stockholders do not invest in corporations, they invest in the stock market and the corporation derives no benefit from the "investment". What's more, because the corporation must maximize the return to the stockholders, it does so at the expense of the employees who are directly involved in producing the wealth that is being distributed.

Unfortunately, she then refutes herself a few pages later by saying:

Stockholders are theoretically said to have a right to all of [the profits], and in an earlier age this was apparently true....But today stockholder get only a piece of earnings (about a third) in dividends. The rest is kept as retained earnings, to be used by the corporation.

There is the continual investment that the stockholder makes. The stockholder is not taking all of the value out that he/she is entitled to. Retained earnings not paid out to stockholders is reinvestment being made by the stockholders. By Kelly's own example, the average stockholder reinvests twice as much as is taken out. But this is only for companies paying dividends. For companies that pay no dividends, the stockholders take nothing out of the corporation as they receive none of the profits. Because of this 100% reinvestment, the value of the corporation grows and so does the value of each share.

Yet Kelly says:

Equity represents the actual capital stockholders contributed when they purchased new shares. And the retained earnings portion of profit is added to that equity each year. Thus by the magical closed loop of accounting, equity grows year after year, while stockholders never contribute another cent.

No, not another cent, just two-thirds of the reward they are entitled to (twice as much as they take out).

But why are stockholders entitled to all of the profits in the first place? Because they own the damn company! Yes. They really do.

If you own a company as a sole proprietor, you are entitled to 100% of the profits. If you take on an equal partner, you are each entitled to 50% of the profits because you each own 50% of the company. If you sell shares in the company, then each shareholder owns the percentage of the company represented by the shares of stock they own and they are entitled to an equivalent share of the profits. All of the shareholders (i.e. all of the owners) as a whole are entitled to all of the profits.

An owner of a business is entitled to the profits from that business for as long as he owns the business. If he sells the business, he is no longer entitled to the profits, the new owner is. Likewise, a stockholder is entitled a share (dividend) for s long as he owns the stock. If he sells his share to a new owner, the new owners has the same right to the profits as the original owner. And if he does not receive all that he is entitled to, then what he does not receive is a reinvestment. I don't know why that is so hard to understand.

Why are stockholders favored over employees? It goes to the issue of risk and reward which I discussed previously. Employees, since they receive a paycheck whether the company is profitable or not, trade their interest in future profit for a steady income. Stockholders take the risk that there will be no income unless the company is profitable and this risk commands a higher reward. Lets go back to retained earnings for a moment. In companies that do not pay dividends, and there are a lot of them, the stockholder receives nothing until he sells his stock to the highest bidder. If he has made a good investment, the earnings retained and not paid out in dividends will have increased the value of the corporation and thus the value of the stock. But if not, he will lose money. Is this gambling? Speculation? No more so than when a man builds better mousetrap and hopes to sell it. If people buy his mousetrap, he makes money, if not, he loses.

Another complaint Kelly has is the that employees are carried as an expense and this makes them a target of cuts when business is bad. I tend to agree with her to some extent here. Employees are more than an expense. Good employees are an asset and assets add value, they do not reduce it. Many companies recognize this and pay bonuses to employees when profits are good. Many new corporations, especially technology companies, pay employees in salary and stock options. Employees thus have a stake in the success of the company and are entitled to both share in the profits and reinvest in the corporation just like other stockholders. They are also entitled to sell their stock like any other stockholder and many do.

Of course, as we saw in the technology and dot-com bubbles, in companies that are not profitable, stock options may be the major component of employee compensation and employees get to assume the same risk as the stockholder. If the company does not succeed, they never get paid. And when they don't get paid, being a stockowner doesn't seem like such a good idea. The fact is, most employees don't want to assume risk, and wait for reward that may not come. they want a paycheck every two weeks. They want the check because the can't afford the risk. Investors assume the risk because they can afford to do so. And Marjorie Kelly doesn't like it.

Where does wealth come from? More precisely, where does the wealth of major public corporations come from? Who creates it?

To judge by the current arrangement in corporate America, one might suppose capital creates wealth — which is odd, because a pile of capital sitting there creates nothing. Yet capital-providers (stockholders) lay claim to most wealth that public corporations generate. They also claim the more fundamental right to have corporations managed on their behalf.

Wealth is created by the combination or labor and capital. Capital without labor creates nothing because there is nothing to work on it. Labor without capital created nothing because there is nothing to work with.

What do shareholders contribute, to justify the extraordinary allegiance they receive? They take risk, we're told. They put their money on the line, so corporations might grow and prosper.

Let’s test the truth of this with a little quiz:
Stockholders fund major public corporations — True or False?
False. Or, actually, a tiny bit true — but for the most part, massively false.

To the contrary, this is very true, as shown by her own example of retained earnings.

In fact, "investing" dollars don't go to AT&T but to other speculators. Equity "investments" reach a public corporation only when new common stock is sold — which for major corporations is a rare event. Among the Dow Jones Industrials, only a handful have sold any new common stock in 30 years. Many have sold none in 50 years.

Sorry, that does not follow. An owner of a business is entitled to the profits for as long as he owns the business. If he sells the business, he sells not just the present value of the assets, but the future value of the profitability of the business. To receive value now, future profitability is discounted and the new owner assumes who is buying the present value and future profits assumes the risk of failure.

An investor buys a share of a company. The investor becomes part owner. A part owner is entitled to a part of the profits. As an owner can sell a business, a part owner can sell his part. The new part owner is then entitled to the same part of the profits, including future profits. But by your own example, the stockholder rarely gets all that he is entitled to.

By her own description, stockholder are only paid 1/3 of the profits they are entitled to (as owners, they are entitled to 100%). So by your own description, stockholders are continually reinvesting in the corporation. Retained earnings are added to equity because that is what it is; it is an investment, just like the stockholder's initial investment.

The stock market works like a used car market, as accounting professor Ralph Estes observes in Tyranny of the Bottom Line. When you buy a 1989 Ford Escort, the money doesn’t go to Ford. It goes to the previous owner. Ford gets the buyer’s money only when it sells a new car.

Other than buying and selling, the stock market works nothing like a used car lot. This is a false analogy. When you buy a new car, you are not buying a share of Ford. When you buy a used car you are not buying a share of Ford. You are comparing apples and anthills---there is no analogy.

Similarly, companies get stockholders’ money only when they sell new common stock — which mature companies rarely do. According to figures from the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission, about 99 percent of the stock out there is "used stock." That is, 99 out of 100 "invested" dollars are trading in the purely speculative market, and never reach corporations.

Public corporations do have the ability to sell new stock. And they do need capital (funds beyond revenue) to operate — for inventory, expansion, and so forth. But they get very little of this capital from stockholders.

In 1993, for example, corporations needed $555 billion in capital. According to the Federal Reserve, sales of common stock contributed 4 percent of that. I used this fact in a pull-quote for a magazine article once, and the designer changed it to 40 percent, assuming it was a typo. It’s not. Of all capital public corporations needed in 1993, stockholders provided 4 percent.

Well, yes, critics will say — that’s recently. But stockholders did fund corporations in the past.

Again, only a tiny bit true. Take the steel industry. An accounting study by Eldon Hendriksen examined capital expenditures in that industry from 1900 to 1953, and found that issues of common stock provided only 5 percent of capital. That was over the entire first half of the 20th century, when industry was growing by leaps and bounds.

So, what do stockholders contribute, to justify the extraordinary allegiance they receive? Very little. And that’s my point.

Equity capital is provided by stockholders when a company goes public, and in occasional secondary offerings later. But in the life of most major companies today, issuance of common stock represents a distant, long-ago source of funds, and a minor one at that. What’s odd is that it entitles holders to extract most of the corporation’s wealth, forever.

Equity investors essentially install a pipeline, and dictate that the corporation’s sole purpose is to funnel wealth into it. The pipeline is never to be tampered with — and no one else is to be granted significant access (except executives, whose function is to keep it flowing).

The truth is, the commotion on Wall Street is not about funding corporations. It’s about extracting from them.

Once again, by her description, stockholders are only paid 1/3 of the profits they are entitled to (as owners, they are entitled to 100%). So by her own description, stockholders are continually reinvesting in the corporation. Retained earnings are added to equity because that is what it is--and investment, just like the stockholder's initial investment.

The productive risk in building businesses is borne by entrepreneurs and their initial venture investors, who do contribute real investing dollars, to create real wealth. Those who buy stock at sixth or seventh hand, or 1,000th hand, also take a risk — but it is a risk speculators take among themselves, trying to outwit one another like gamblers.

No, all stockholders assume risk for the corporation. As she has described, retained earnings are real investing dollars. Any stockholder that does not receive his full share of the profit is assuming the risk that the company will be unprofitable in the future and the investment as well as his interest in future profits for which he paid, will be lost.

It’s odd. And it’s connected to a second oddity — that we believe stockholders are the corporation. When we say "a corporation did well," we mean its shareholders did well. The company’s local community might be devastated by plant closings, its groundwater contaminated with pollutants. Employees might be shouldering a crushing workload, doing without raises for years on end. Still we will say, "the corporation did well."

One does not see rising employee income as a measure of corporate success. Indeed, gains to employees are losses to the corporation. And this betrays an unconscious bias: that employees are not really part of the corporation. They have no claim on wealth they create, no say in governance, and no vote for the board of directors. They’re not citizens of corporate society, but subjects.

Investors, on the other hand, may never set foot inside "their" companies, may not know where they’re located or what they produce. Yet corporations exist to enrich investors alone. In the corporate society, only those who own stock can vote — like America until the mid-1800s, when only those who owned land could vote. Employees are disenfranchised.

The employee does not put the value of his labor at risk. He exchanges it for immediate reward in the form of wages. Employees exchange risk for security. They do this because the do not want to take the chance that the company will not make money and their labor will be unrewarded. So they accept present value of the labor rather than wait for a share of the potentially greater value that results from the combination of labor and capital.

The employee can put his labor at risk. In some companies, employees accept lower wages but receive stock options. These options are not a gift, they are a recognition that the employee has assumed some risk in accepting a lower wage. This assumption of risk entitles the employee to a share of the future profitability of the company instead of just the present value of his labor.

Investors do not have to set foot inside a company to make their critical contribution: the assumption of risk. The initial investor takes the greatest risk, and generally, reaps the greatest reward when the stock price increases with the company's success. But as part of his investment, he is also entitled to a share of profits for as long as he owns the stock and the company is profitable. Later investors assume a lesser risk so they may not see as much growth in stock price. If the company pays dividends, they are entitled to those as a share of the profits. But if it does not pay dividends, they will have less reward. But again, for less risk.

We think of this as the natural law of the free market. It’s more accurately the result of the corporate governance structure, which violates free-market principles. In a free market, everyone scrambles to get what they can, and they keep what they earn. In the construct of the corporation, one group gets what another earns.

No, the investors earn their share of the profit by assuming risk. There are different levels of risk that can be assumed. Bondholders assume less risk and receive interest on the money they loan to the corporation. The interest reflects the risk they assume, but the loan is a liability and the bondholder is creditor who will be repaid before the stockholder's profit is calculated. Thus, the bondholder has a lower risk and a lower reward.

The employees assume little or no risk and accept payment for their labor. By assuming no risk, they are not entitled to a share of the profits, though they may be rewarded with bonuses.

The oddity of it all is veiled by the incantation of a single, magical word: "ownership." Because we say stockholders "own" corporations, they are permitted to contribute very little, and take quite a lot.

She really gets carried away with this idea that stockholders contribute little. Without stockholders, who would assume the risk? Employees don't want to do it because they can't afford to. They need the steady income. Only someone with sufficient cash reserves can afford the risk. And without someone to assume the risk and provide the capital, there would be no work for the employees.

What an extraordinary word. One is tempted to recall Lycophron’s comment, during an early Athenian slave uprising against the aristocracy. "The splendour of noble birth is imaginary," he said, "and its prerogatives are based upon a mere word."

But the risk assumed by the stockholder is real, not imaginary, and the reward for assuming that risk is well earned.

I could go on, but the rest of the book is more of the same. Kelly's style is pejorative argument. She assigns negative labels to that she wishes to demonize then uses the definitions of those labels to support her arguments. But she provides very little hard data to support her labeling. The term "stockholder" is used interchangeably with "monied class", but the majority of stockholders are not extraordinarily wealthy (you don't have to be rich to own stock, you just need to be willing to assume the risk). Kelly's appeal is to the emotion, not to the mind; she seeks visceral reaction, not reasoned thought. Two passages demonstrate this.

Shareholder primacy emerged from the ether in the mid nineteenth century when it was articulated by the courts. The basis for shareholder primacy is common law, judge-made law.

But common law is definitely not "judge-made law". Common law the "law of the commons", established through custom and practice and judicially recognized by the courts as legally binding. If shareholder primacy is based in common law, it is based in centuries of custom and practice and did not "emerge from the ether" at the whim of a judge. But Kelly wants us to believe that shareholder rights are something dreamed up by a judge to protect his rich friends. When common law is viewed correctly, it stands Kelly's theory on its head.

[Shareholder primacy] stems from the seafaring age, when persons jointly financed ships and sought to hold the operators accountable so money would not be wasted....One might add, parenthetically, that the custom of investor primacy once permitted piracy--as seafaring vessels were legally permitted to attack other ships and seize their cargo....One might suppose evenly modestly civilized thinking would have led us to carve out a "piracy exemption," saying corporations should maximize returns to shareholders, but they should avoid piracy. But we haven't gotten even that far yet.

Piracy was never legal, though some countries did not consider it to be illegal. It is one of the oldest crimes on the high seas. In times of war, private vessels are issued letters of marque which authorizes them to attack enemy merchant ships. These are privateers, not pirates. Congress is authorized to issue letters of marque in Article ! Section 8 of the US Constitution. But Kelly would have us believe that corporations loot and pillage on behalf of stockholders and since she has chosen metaphor as her vehicle, she created one. Here is an idea that emerged from the ether.

She has some ideas that might be worth considering if she did not illegitimize those ideas with her methodology. Her conclusions are as credible as the Salem witch trials and so are her ethics. From this, it is easy to see that Kelly is pursuing an agenda grounded not in ethics but in a socialist/communist ideology of class warfare. If one accepts her initial premise that stockholders only take profits from a corporation and put nothing into it, then the metaphor of a corporate aristocracy might appear to apply and the rest of her arguments are easier to follow (or swallow?) But if the premise is false (which she demonstrates by her own examples), then the rest of her arguments have no basis and the reader must constantly remind himself just what she is talking about. In the later chapters Kelly apparently assumes the reader has accepted the initial premise and provides no reinforcement. I suppose this is understandable--if you don't accept her metaphorical premise, further reading is a waste of time.

Reading this book was a challenge. I have read Nazi and KKK material regarding inferior races and the experience was like drinking Drano. Reading The Divine Right of Capital was not much different. Instead of an idea worth considering, she seeks to convey an ideology of class hatred under the guise of ethical conduct. Actually, Drano might be more palatable.

Guns, guns, guns

The media is biased? I'm SHOCKED!

Did you know that guns cause terrorism?

Another one bites the dust

At least one judge gets it.

A new NRA T-Shirt? "The 2nd Amendment: The first Homeland Security Act."

And finally, an alternative to the 2nd Amendment:



The truth about Bowling for Columbine.

This quiz says I'm a...

What Is Your Animal Personality?
brought to you by Quizilla

OK, so who is Kippercat?

Well, here he is:

Libertarian?

Some have said my post on Liberty and Responsibility sounds distinctly libertarian. I don't know if I'm libertarian or not, but this post on Vinod's Blog makes a lot of sense to me.

Liberty without responsibility is license, even tending to licentiousness. A society is built on social contracts, not just individual ones.

What Next? A Salt Weapon?

Jacob Sullum has a good column on some of the idiotic tactics used by the gun control lobby.

Confirmation Wars

You really should read this posting regarding the current confirmation filibuster in the Senate.

Update :: 5/13/2003 3:12 AM ::

Another view from Terry Eastland and an idea from Bill Frist in the Dallas Morning News.

Where are the (hockey) stars?

In the Dallas Morning News (5/10/2003) hockey writer Tim Cowlishaw asks, "...where are stars?" He posits that the absence of star players in the Stanley Cup playoff games is a disaster for the NHL playoff ratings and goes on to say that the NHL needs to open up the offense to attract viewers.

Where are the stars? On ESPN and ABC, they think they are in the booth talking about anything but the game. It's like they are saying, "hockey is so hard to follow, the fans must tune in to hear us talk." No, not really. As a fan, I want to see the game on the ice, and I want to hear about the game that is on the ice, not the game that the broadcasters think should be on the ice or might have been on the ice, or whatever.

Cowlishaw does have a point about the game needing more scoring from the star players. As he said to me in an email:

They need more genuine scoring chances from great players (Modano, etc.) being allowed to skate and stickhandle. The only way to score goals today with goalies looking as if they weight 350 pounds is to throw it at the net and hope it hits off something. Ugly goals.

Anaheim's Jean-Sebastien Giguere is listed as 6'0" 185, Dallas' Marty Turco is listed as 5'11" 183, but in net they look more like Shaquiel O'Neal and Nick Van Exel. If Jiggy is wearing legal equipment, either Marty needs a new equipment contract or the rules do need to change. Actually, Marty's more athletic style may require lighter, smaller or less restrictive equipment than Jiggy's positional style, but even Patrick Roy and Ed Belfour don't wear pads quite like that.

More offense isn't the key to improving the sport, more excitement is. More real scoring chances would help but scoring alone won't do it. Seeing the puck stop in the net isn't very exciting if you don't know how it got there and after the puck stops, all goals look pretty much the same so 1 or 10, the excitement is the same. A 1-0 game can be a lot more exciting and interesting to watch than an 11-10 game and certainly more exciting than a 10-1 game. In the NHL all star game, you know they are going to score, the only question is how much. But it is only exciting if you can see it and know how it happens. In a low scoring game, excitement comes from the suspense of not knowing who is going to score first (if at all). It is a different kind of excitement, but no less thrilling to watch.

If the NHL wants to attract more TV viewers, it needs to present a product that is attractive to viewers. Hockey is not the easiest sport to watch on TV. The puck is small and travelling at high speed. And compared to other sports, so are the players. The result is action that is hard to follow.

I never watched hockey until 1998 when I was fortunate to see two games at the Corel Centre as a guest of Corel Corp. while on a business trip to Ottawa. The game is much more visible live than on TV because you can see the whole rink and once you understand the game (and there is nothing like watching your first game with a bunch of Canadians to help understand the game), you can "read" the ice and anticipate the puck. It make the action so much easier to follow.

Hockey on TV suffers from two things: Static, "traditional" camera placements, and broadcasters that often seem more interested in discussing NHL news around the league and their own careers than what is happening on the ice.

Camera placement in hockey mimic the placement in football and basketball. Both are slower sports. Football is not continuous action so there is more time for instant replay. Basketball, like hockey, is continuous action, but the ball is much bigger than the puck, doesn't move nearly as fast and is thus easier to follow. Some serious consideration needs to be given to creative camera placement. Overhead would be good. Modern technology allows split-screen broadcasts and a three screen arrangement of overhead view of the rink on one side with one camera following the puck and one focused on the goalie on the other might be something worth considering even though it would be most effective on large screen HDTV.

The broadcasters are another matter. Their role should be to tell the viewer what is happening on the ice. The NHL should hire Dallas Stars broadcasters Ralph Strangis and Darrel Reagh as consultants to develop and train all hockey broadcasters. The fact that Ralph and "Razor" simulcast TV and radio makes their games calls much more effective. They describe the action. The viewer knows what is going on and why. Technology could help here as well. I have found that the radio broadcast often runs 3-7 seconds ahead of the TV broadcast. As a result, I turn down the TV and listen to the radio. I get the same call, but since it comes ahead of the play, I know what is about to happen rather than what just happened. It makes a big difference. Perhaps the NHL should require 5 second video delay in all broadcasts. That alone would make the action easier to follow. And if the action is easier to follow, there will be more fans to follow it.

The iLoo?

Microsoft is developing a portable toilet with web access. The story also says MSFT is negotiating for the manufacture of toilet paper imprinted with web addresses the user may not have visited. Any guesses what addresses will be on the MS TP? Probably sites for Apple, IBM, Linux, Sun, and Corel. BIlly G. would enjoy wiping his butt with those.

OK, so Microsoft says it's a hoax even though MS reps in the UK also say it is real. Apparently they weren't supposed to say anything until Redmond was ready and until Redmond is ready to say so, the iLoo idea isn't real even if it is. Well, at least we know where Baghdad Bob is working now.

A Test for German Pacifism?

Steven Den Beste thinks it is interesting that France is trying to get Russia involved in European defense. He wonders how this will play in Prague and Warsaw and Bucharest. I really wonder how this will play in Germany. The last time (about 100 years ago) France invited Russia to get involved in European defense, Germany reacted rather negatively and we got WWI.

German pasifism has been very visible, but just how passive is Germany? How passive will Germany remain with France on one side inviting Russia on the other to get involved? This may be an interesting test for German pacifism.

:: Update: John Hitz responds ::

What we regard as militarism in Germany is best identified as Prussian; it is the "face" we know from movies and books and a lot of textbooks. My response drops slightly below that threshold to what I can only regard as cultural proclivities that make a fertile soil for militarism to grow in.

Germans like order; orderly things in an orderly universe where stuff works and there is little unnecessary time wasted on conflict. Which, in any other world would make for the pacifist we have today. Acting against this is their historic location in central Europe where they have spent almost as many centuries fighting French, Austrian, Hungarian, Swedish and an occasional Spaniard as they have spent carving their own little niche in the East at the expense of the Poles, Russians, Latvians & Lithuanians (we can exclude the Estonians since they are simply dis-placed Germans that got cut off by from the rest when the aforementioned periodically reasserted their sovereignty). As a result, they have spent a lot of centuries fighting; to protect their own lands and to extend them; they may be quiet little pacifist now but the have a long history of being otherwise.

Their post-World War II experience has been one of "atonement" for what happened under Hitler and an attempt to find a "better" means of dealing with the international community. One of the reasons that Germany has been one of the principal driving forces in the EU is simple national self interest; if they can get everyone to agree to an economic union then they will have less reason to turn back to military means to implement their foreign policy. That's the good stuff. Tucked into the news articles and snippets along the way over the last twenty years (it is easier now, with internet sites that are not only German, but are kind enough to translate for the non-speaking types)there are still indications that the "old" way has not lost its identity.

As recently as the mid 70's the popular press in (then) West Germany was calling for an increase in the size and training of the Bundswher. The reason; fear that the U.S. might be willing to "sacrifice" Germany in a potential confrontation with the U.S.S.R. We moved more troops and the cries went down but never really completely disappeared. With the re-unification of Germany, the old Prussians came back into the fold plus the Saxons; East Germany had drawn most of their officer corps from the Prussians (naturally) and the line troops from Saxony. They were brought back "into the fold" just over ten years ago for all practical purposes.

Information from there "starts" with the fall of the Berlin wall and unification; but the old militarism was allowed to continue in both states for the benefit of East Germany & U.S.S.R. When Germany committed a small force to the NATO peacekeeping force in Serbia & Croatia following that affair, it was the first time combat troops from Germany had been sent out of Germany; and most of Europe was less than pleased. Interestingly enough, they performed their duties quite well and were part of the successful pacification of the area. I suppose my only point about that is that whatever they might say about having abandoned "war" as an instrument of national policy, the ability to take it back up is there, with ample historical back up to indicate that if they do, it will be with their usual attention to detail and efficiency.

In the post-Iraq world now in its embryonic stage, nothing is sure or certain. Germany has a stake in what happens in the region; not just because of legal and illegal contracts that they have with a (now former) rogue regime but the potential domino effect that our stated policy hopes to achieve. In a world where access to markets has become global and the competition for them more intense; the possibility of being eliminated (effectively) from such an area cannot be regarded lightly. If the post-Iraq Middle East becomes one engineered by the United States, and from which we reap the "lions" share of the benefit; those on the "outside" will have to consider their options. Add to that, the success that we have demonstrated using force and all you need is a nice economic down turn to get people in high places (in Germany) to re-assessing their policies and means by which they can be implemented.

Paranoid that I can be, I do not have too much trouble remembering the "climate" that Hitler crafted his rise to power in. History does not repeat itself; but given circumstances can produce similar results. I realize that I wander on this subject; like I said much of this is trying to articulate things that I have read and discussed over about twenty years meshing with my original study focusing on Eastern Europe and Germany. Is it a real danger? I don't know, for sure. I am, near as I can see, about the only one I know that even thinks this is a viable scenario.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

So far, US investigators have found no weapons of mass distruction in Iraq and none of the captured Iraqi officials will admit to their existance, much less point the way to them. There may or may not be any and I say, "So what?"

The focus on WMDs is becoming a weapon of mass distraction. Too many people are suggesting that if we don't find WMDs the war will have been in vain. WRONG! The war was not about finding WMDs, it was about removing the threat of WMDs.

Saddam Hussein may have had WMds or he may have destroyed them long ago. The point is, the possibility that he had them or had the capability to produce and deliver them now or in the future made him and his regime a threat. And he would remain a threat until he could demonstrate that he did indeed not have any WMDs or WMD programs. This is what he refused to do for 11 years.

UN inspectors were not sent to Iraq to play an elaborate game of hide and seek. They were there to verify the evidence presented by the Iraqi government that programs known to exist had been dismantled and components known to exist had been destroyed. Most of the evidence presented amounted to someone saying "We don't have any." A lot of times they said that at the front gate while they were trucking the stuff out the back gate. At no time did Saddam Hussein's government ever fully cooperate with UN weapon's inspectors as required by the UN resolutions. Whenever Hans Blix said that progress was being made, he was generally talking about progress toward getting someone to agree that they needed to cooperate, not that they actually were cooperating and certainly not that they were actually verifying anything. Except that Blix did verify that Iraq was not cooperating.

Saddam had his chance but he blew it. Instead of voluntary cooperation with UN inspectors he chose to invite a war which drove him from power if not cost him his life. So now, whether we find them or not, we no longer have the threat. And that alone is enough to justify the war.

Risk & Reward

A friend recently asked me how a working individual could free himself from the grind of wage-earning and engage in free enterprise. His argument came down to, "The long and short of it is no matter the theory that everyone can enter the "market" practice is that the vast majority of the population are part of the "cost" of goods and services (labor), with limited ability and opportunity to be anything else."

My response follows.

"So, then, to every man his chance -- to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining golden opportunity -- to every man his right to live, to work, to be himself, to become whatever his manhood and his vision can combine to make him -- this, seeker, is the promise of America."
- Thomas Wolfe

Lets look at free enterprise. Free Enterprise is best characterized as private enterprise conducted by individuals. In most economic circles, the term free enterprise is not often used in reference to corporate activities except in comparison to fully regulated and controlled corporations.

I have been reading Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips and one thing I note is a constant reference to unequal distribution of wealth. This is a somewhat puzzling reference because an equal distribution of wealth is not and never has been a goal of democratic capitalism. He eventually reaches a point where he ties the idea of equal distribution of wealth to the concept that "labor should receive due reward for the value added." The concept that I don't see mentioned is that reward is proportional to risk.

Capitalism maximizes the reward for risk, not for labor. Henry George, in Progress and Poverty states the principle that labor is compensated from profits, not from capital. In a perfect world (Theory, where everything works?), perhaps profits are always guaranteed. In the real world they are not, and that lack of guarantee creates risk.

There are at least two components required for production, Labor and Capital. (George describes Land as a third but we will put that aside for now as for the purposes of this discussion, Land and Capital can be combined.) Labor's contribution to the production process. can be described variously as energy, effort, skill, ability, or talent. Perhaps this can all be summed up as "Work". What is worked on are the resources and materials provided by Capital in the working environment created by Capital.

An individual, working for himself, provides the labor that creates added value, but he also provides the capital which creates the opportunity for labor to do anything. If the product of labor is sold for profit, the laborer is compensated from the profit. If there is no profit, the laborer is not compensated. In other words, the individual who provided all of the components required for production receives all of the rewards.

If several individuals pool their resources to do business in partnership, they may agree that each shares in the profits equally, or they may agree that the individuals share is proportional to their individual contributions. Once again, those that provide the components required for production receive all of the rewards which they share.

The employee-employer relationship is different. Employees are not partners. Employees are paid for their labor, but contrary to Henry George, they are not paid from profits. Employee's wages are paid from capital. Employees, since they are not partners provide no Capital. Employees contribute only Work. In this contribution, the employee assumes no risk. He expects to be paid for his work regardless of the profitability of the enterprise. If not profits, what is the source of the employee's wages but capital?

The entrepreneur puts his wealth at risk as capital in the hope and expectation that the value added by labor which he pays for can be sold for profit in the marketplace. Because the entrepreneur assumes all risk, all the return is his. From this return, he replenishes the capital which he has used to pay for labor and resources and anything remaining is his profit. It is the profit of capital, not of labor.

From this, it can be seen that even in the sole proprietor or partnership, it is the risk of capital that is rewarded, not the effort of labor. Labor without capital has nothing to work on, nothing to which value can be added--nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Most demands by Labor for a "fair share" of profits is specious. To have a fair share of profits, labor must assume a fair share of risk. To assume this risk, the laborer must either provide his own capital (sole proprietor), partner with someone else with an agreement to share the profits (partnership), or purchase shares in a publicly traded corporation (stockholder).

A partnership may be the most promising arrangement from a free enterprise standpoint. In a partnership, a person with skill but no capital can join with a person with capital but no skills and agree to share profits. the sharing can be equal or can be in unequal percentages per agreement.

Otherwise, what the laborer does by becoming a wage-earner is exchange risk for the security of a steady wage. This wage is not paid at the full potential future value of the work he does but is instead paid at a highly discounted rate. The worker surrender his interest in the value created by the combination of labor and capital to his employer who assumes the risk of the marketplace.

What it comes down to is choice. Do you choose risk and the resulting possibility of great reward of great loss, or do you choose the relative security of a steady wage, even though that wage may be less than the full value created by your labor? The choice is different for each of us because each of us have our own needs, desires and responsibilities.

Risk Management

Since the marketplace rewards risk, the more risk, the more reward you can receive. This is good. What is bad, is that the more risk, the more loss you can occur. If you are an entrepreneur, wouldn't it be nice if you could reduce the opportunity of loss without reducing the opportunity for reward? In other words, manage the risk? It seems like a simple idea, and one simple way to achieve this is to lobby government to pass laws and formulate policies that reduce the risk without reducing the rewards. Usually, government's price for this is a share in the rewards because in direct and/or indirect ways, government is sharing the risk. Where this gets out of hand is when lawmakers pocket a share of the rewards and pass the risk on to the taxpayers.

The theory of democratic capitalism combines political freedom with the promise of equal economic opportunity. Economic equality in results is not promised or even implied. Contrast this with communism where political freedom is surrendered in exchange for a promise of economic equality.

Wealth creation is capitalism's strength, and I have seen it said that Capitalism's weakness is that it supports the accumulation of wealth by a small elite group. The accumulation itself is not a weakness. No matter how much wealth the top 1% accumulates, the accumulation does not reduce the access to wealth by the remaining 99%. In a communist economy, wealth is not created by the combination of labor and capital because there is no capital and no free market where price is determined by demand. There is just a relatively static amount of wealth that is redistributed to the workers in a rigidly controlled market. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Production is controlled for the purpose of providing jobs and incomes for all workers, not to supply the demands of the marketplace. As a result, there is no linkage between supply and demand and the result is severe shortages and surpluses--stores full of shoes but no bread.

In a capitalist economy, wealth is created by the combination of labor and capital to produce goods and services sold in a (relatively) free market so anyone that can combine labor and capital has the opportunity to create wealth. This is just about anybody. Opportunity exists to supply the demands of the marketplace. If you can supply a product or service at a lower price and still make a profit, you will be successful. If you can't, you will fail. Unless you can find a way to keep the price high enough to cover your costs or keep your competitor's costs high enough that he can't lower the price. One way of doing this is to lobby government to create conditions in the market that are more favorable to you or less favorable to the competition.

This is the real weakness of capitalism. Instead of large accumulations of wealth, it is the unequal access to political power that large accumulations of wealth can buy. Unfortunately, the type of person that accumulates great wealth is often highly competitive. Highly competitive people play to win and all to often, rules and ethics only apply when they are caught violating them. Quite often, the same competitiveness is found in politics so the combination of business and politics all to often results in some very questionable practices.

What can be done about it? Well, if the public is not aroused, not much. This is a democracy after all and if the people aren't troubled enough to address the situation, who else can? In publicly held corporations which are usually seen as the most blatantly unethical, the capitalists are the stockholders but it is often management that engages in the questionable practices. Just as in government where the voter is ultimately responsible for who is elected to office, the stockholders are responsible for who manages a corporation. And just a most voters pay little attention to politics as long as their basic needs are adequately met, most stockholders pay little attention to management practices as long as they are getting an adequate return on their investment. As in most situations, we have met the enemy and he is us.

As an example of this, consider the recent events at AMR Corp (parent of American Airlines) in which attempts to avoid bankruptcy resulted in the CEO, Donald Carty being forced to resign by the Board of Directors. He had been deceptive in not fully disclosing information to employees being asked to make concessions to reduce costs. What he neglected to disclose was plans for funding a pension plan for senior execs that would be protected in the event of bankruptcy. While asking employees to give up salary and benefits, he appeared to not be asking execs to make similar sacrifices. As a result, he lost the confidence of the employees and the stockholders and lost his job. In his defense, even after it was clear he would have to resign, he worked hard to repair the damage and save the company. He was successful (for the time being) and at least one pilot said he showed more leadership in the last 12 hours than he had in the preceeding 2 years.

Terrorism and Palestine

The state of Israel was established by UN resolution 181 on 29 November, 1947 and the nation came into existence on 14 May, 1948 with the expiration of the British Mandate. Israel's right to exist is thus affirmed by the UN and has never been recended by that body. On the other hand, the Arab world and the Palestinians living in the geographic region that became Israel did not accept the resolution and immediately attacked the new state. Since that time, it is the Arabs and Palestinians, not Israel that have been in violation of the UN resolution. Subsequent UN resolutions have ignored this simple fact: the Palestinians have no legitimate demands upon Israel and can have none until they accept the original UN resolution establishing the State or Israel. Since this resolution also established a separate Arab Palestinian state, and since the Jews accepted the resolution when it was passed, just acceptence of Resolution 181 by the Palestinian Arabs would appear to be a solution to the problem. But it is no longer that simple.

Initially, Palestinians resisted Israel by conventional military means with the assistanced and support of the surrounding Arab states of Jordan, Syria and Egypt. When these efforts proved ineffective and were abandoned in 1973, the Palestinians turned to political terror. If they had confined the terror to targets withing Israel, the world may have paid little notice, but the targets were not confined to Israel. The terrorism became international in an attempt to coerce the international community to support the Palestinian cause.

There is an aspect of international terrorism that we must take into account. Some terrorism has political purpose, but many of the acts of radical Islamic terrorism such as 9/11 have no political motivation even though they do have secondary and tertiary links to political causes. For a study of this aspect, read Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology, By Lee Harris

Palestinian terrorism is strange mixture of both politics and fantasy. The Palestinian grievance against Israel is that it exists, and the only way that Israel can address this grievance is to disappear. Israel is not going to do this and is not going to agree to any settlement that would allow this to happen. In this, the Palestinians are pursuing a fantasy. With the embracing of the Paslestinian cause by radical Islamic fundamentalists, the fantasy is deepened. Rather than the Islamic fantasy becoming rational, the Palestinian rational has become more fantastic.

The war on terror is inextricably linked to the Palestine problem. And much as we may feel a need to get Israel and the Palestinians to resolve their differences, we can't afford to do so unless we can separate the negotiations from the actions of the terrorists. If the message is that terrorism forced, impelled or pressured us to bring Israel to the table, we lose and the world loses. The message will be loud and clear that international terrorism works and works well and what worked in Palestine will be copied by others around the globe. Terrorism will increase and not decrease and if we are seen as the ones that pressured Israel to give in, we will be the primary target.

Our stand has to be that regardless of the grievances, the use of international terror illegitimizes those grievances. As long as the terror continues, any negotiations that result in any consideration of those grievances will be a victory for terrorism and not a blow against it. So before any negotiations can start, the terror must stop with no amnesty offerred. But can the terrorism stop? Can the terrorist leadership afford to stop? As Steven Den Beste says, probably not.

Israel is fighting for nothing short of national survival. The Palestinian demand for right of return is suicide for Israel. The only solution is a separate Palestinian state with no right of return to Israel, but while Israel may accept that, many Palestinians (not to mention many Arabs) will not. Another key issue no one wants to talk about is Jerusalem. Israel wants it. The Palestiniians want it. More importantly, the Jews want it and the Muslams want it. As long as the Dome of the Rock and al Aqsa mosque sit on the Temple Mount, I fear there will be no resolution possible and the moment the Dome and the Mosque are gone, there will truly be holy war. The best we can probably achieve is a very uneasy peace for a while until the troubles flare up again over the Jerusalem issue.

I have seen suggestions that Jerusalem should become an open city, administered by the UN as called for in UN resolution 181. UN administration of Palestine is part of what started the problem in the first place so that really sounds like a good idea. sheesh.

Liberty and Responsibility

An individual is a free citizen. An isolated individual, in contact with no other person, has unlimited and unrestricted liberty. Anything and everything is permissible, though not everything is possible and certainly not everything is profitable.

When one free individual comes in contact with another free individual, something has to be worked out between the two so that there is mutual respect for each other's rights to "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness". If the two are to live together in harmony, they must mutually agree to allow their individual liberties to be restricted to some extent.

If a large number of individual are involved, the agreements and compromises may be codified and a system set up whereby the agreements may be administered fairly and justly. For example, a Constitution that establishes a constitutional government.

Since the individual is inherently free, All governmental authority derives from the authority that the individuals give to the government. The government exists and governs by the consent of the governed. Government therefore can never give anything to the people, it can only take from them, and then it can only take what it is allowed to take.

One major problem we have today is that too many people seem to think that government is the implement of an all-powerful entity known as "society" and that everything flows from the government to the individual. Many have been taught that this is the way it works, and many find it convenient to believe because such belief absolves them of any personal responsibility.

This is not the case. A society is made up of individuals, and the action of a society is the sum total of the actions of the individual members. Society can't force the individuals to comply with arbitrary rules and regulations, though society may make it easier for the individual to choose to comply rather than resist. It is still a matter of individual choice: No one ever does anything that they do not choose to do even though they may not be aware of making the choice.

As long as a significant majority of the individuals that make up a society hold the same or similar beliefs, the actions of the society will reflect those beliefs and the society will assume that the rectitude of those beliefs is obvious. However, problems arise when these beliefs are based on false premises. For example, the belief that society as a whole is inherently responsible for the welfare of individuals. Society may assume this responsibility as a result of the belief of its members, but since a society exists only because it has been formed by like-minded individuals, it is the individuals that are inherently responsible for the welfare of the society, not the other way around. The society will flourish only when the individuals that comprise it accept that responsibility.