Life, Liberty, Property #43: liberty relies on the rule of law, not government favoritism that picks winners and losers.
By S.T. Karnick
IN THIS ISSUE:
- Liberty Relies on Rule of Law
- Reality Bites Book Publishers
- So This Is Christmas. And What Have You Done?
- Cartoon
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Liberty Relies on Rule of Law
The past few years have provided a crucial lesson for the liberty movement: our freedoms depend on rule of law. We cannot be free without the protection of a strong and fair sovereign.
That is a hard pill for us to swallow. Libertarians and classical liberals are rightly concerned about the relentless tendency of government to accumulate power and ruthlessly redistribute the citizens’ property and other resources according to the rulers’ ability to sustain and augment the power of the reigning regime.
Our rights to life, liberty, and property depend on due process and a full respect for the rights, privileges, and immunities of the people. Without that, arbitrary government can do pretty much as the current individuals in control desire—and it generally does that, up to and often beyond what those in power perceive they can get away with.
What a harsh lesson for the liberty movement we have had since at least as far back as the panicked reaction to the government-caused Great Recession of 2007-2008. The taxpayer-funded bailouts of big banks, multinational automobile companies, and other powerful business interests exposed the government favoritism that picks winners and losers among the millions of supposedly private enterprises across the nation.
The Sarbanes-Oxley financial regulation monstrosity encoded that rigged economic system in the law, unconstitutional in every element of it. The explosion of regulation under the Obama administration added to the advantages for big businesses by increasing the relative burdens of regulation on small companies as opposed to giant multinationals, which could much more easily absorb the costs. Cheap money from the central bank further benefited those who were already rich and rewarded reckless speculation on less-productive economic activities.
Meanwhile, the central government consolidated its power and worked with media companies to suppress dissent and even discussion of their actions.
Then, with the surprising election of Donald Trump to the presidency, governments at all levels unleashed the power of mobs to frighten the populace into submission. Rioters tore down statues, closed down thoroughfares, looted businesses, engaged in countless violent assaults and murders of entirely innocent people unrelated to their ostensible complaints, took over entire sections of major cities, perpetrated mass thefts in retail spaces, and committed countless other crimes against the public.
Governments in the main did nothing to stop this, and much to encourage it. Of course, these state and local governments rejected the Trump administration’s many requests for permission to help restore order.
It was obvious that these activities were part of a Cloward-Piven strategy to destabilize the entire country and create monumental disorder that would reflect badly on the incumbent president and unleash a desire for a progressive-Democrat regime to take power and restore order. The nation’s press kept this agenda hidden from the public to the extent possible.
After hamstringing the Trump administration through the fake Russia collusion investigations, the absurd Ukraine claim, and countless other outrages, and with the economy growing at a frustratingly rapid pace in response to Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation (especially in the vitally crucial energy sector), the nation’s governments shut down the country altogether in 2020 and changed the election laws through flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional means to ensure a victory for Basement Joe Biden and his puppeteers.
A candidate who did not campaign ended up being credited with a record 80 million votes.
Since then, the regime has worked ceaselessly to ensure that Trump does not win the presidency again, this time relying on corrupt judges, unhinged prosecutors, government threats toward media organizations (who were already thoroughly inclined to comply with the scheme), and state manipulation of election ballots. Most recently, the Supreme Court of the state of Colorado ordered the name of Donald Trump be removed from the state’s primary ballot.
“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court stated in its 4-3 decision. This action, which is in the process of being duplicated in about three-dozen other states, is clearly a desperate move to stave off the otherwise-inevitable defeat of Joe Biden in next year’s election.
This action is obviously unconstitutional. The Colorado court admitted as much by staying its decision until January 4 (the day before the primary ballots are to be printed) or the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case. The Colorado court’s action follows the lead of President Biden’s decision to extend the federal government’s nationwide forced moratorium on housing evictions even though he admitted that it was unconstitutional; he would enforce it until the Supreme Court told him not to, Biden said.
That was just one of Biden’s multitude of explicit and knowing violations of the presidential oath of office: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
All of this is for our own good, of course. The government and its toadies and co-conspirators throughout the media and multinational business interests are doing everything they can to save us from fascism, which will arrive, if it does, only in the person of Donald J. Trump.
Remember, however: when leftists accuse their political opponents of doing something awful, they themselves are the ones really doing it.
The participants in this corrupt system are destroying the rule of law to save it, or so they claim. They profess their fealty to “Our Democracy,” their term of endearment for the corrupt system alluded to in the barbarities, outrages, affronts, and indignities described above. They have no shame in their unbridled efforts to accumulate power. Those who seek to gain and sustain power do not care what happens to the country as a result of their actions. They will ruin everything in the world as long as they get to rule over the ashes.
We are in the grip of an uncomfortable paradox. Those of us who believe in freedom must devote our energies to restoration of the rule of law in this nation. It is the precondition for all the freedoms we enjoy.
That is a harsh truth for us freedom-lovers to accept, but it is nonetheless true.
Source: AP
Reality Bites Book Publishers
It goes against my nature to present such a downbeat lead essay at any time, and especially for a newsletter scheduled to arrive on Christmas Day. So here is the first of a couple of items of good news, which show that truth and reality can succeed even in our current Empire of Lies.
Publishers of woke books are getting creamed in the marketplace, The Daily Mail reports:
Woke books that were bought for huge advances by ‘inexperienced’ editors have flopped commercially, insiders say.
‘Ideological fanatics’ allowing their politics to dictate professional decisions have seen profits slump, according to industry experts.
Among the works responsible for huge losses is the once hotly anticipated memoir by the actor Elliot Page about his journey transitioning. ‘Pageboy’ received a $3 million advance but has sold just 68,000 copies.
Industry standards suggest for publishers paying roughly $7 per book sold is considered a good deal, according to insiders talking to The Free Press.
The publishers have paid Page approximately $44 dollars per copy.
Publishers and editors in the United States and abroad are deliberately and openly rejecting books by white, male, heterosexual authors to make room for these losers, the article notes. The losses are piling up:
Other recent ‘woke’ flops are Carolyn Ferrell’s ‘Dear Miss Metropolitan’ described by the New York Times as ‘a story of three young girls, Black and biracial, who are kidnapped and thrown into the basement of a decaying house in Queens.’
The novel was acquired in a deal estimated to be worth more than $250,000, but has shifted just 3,163 copies since it was published in 2021.
Another example is ‘queer feminist Western’ ‘Lucky Red’ by Claudia Cravens which has sold around 3,500 copies despite commanding a $500,000 advance.
That’s $79 a copy paid to Ferrell, and $143 a copy to Cravens, who is lucky indeed. Another book mentioned in the story went for $55.55 per copy. The latter was bought by one of the many editors of “color” and minority sexual preference hired in recent years as white male editors have retired or been turfed out.
The publishers cannot continue to run such losses for very long. Change will come. Either those publishers will come to their senses, or they will be overtaken by others and go out of business.
Source: The Daily Mail
So This Is Christmas. And What Have You Done?
As the item above demonstrates, the truth will indeed set us free if we can keep this republic going for a while longer. It will be a close-run thing, and I think that 2024 is going to be even more chaotic than this year has been, and in fact even worse than 2020. Reality, however, will continue to set the boundaries for human action.
The choice before us as a nation is to accept the rewards for good choices or endure the price of bad ones. Our job as journalists and policy analysts is to show what those choices are and what they will bring on. I hope that you will continue to support us at The Heartland Institute in that good work in the coming year and beyond.
I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Cartoon
