Philosophy Learn more about our
organization and the moral basis of capitalism.
Campaigns Find out about the
Center's many activism projects.
Media Center
News mentions, press releases and
speakers.
Bookstore
Purchase the essential
texts on capitalism here.
Feedback
Send us a comment or ask
a question--we want to hear from you!
Contribute This website and the
Center's advocacy programs are not free--we depend on you to support our
efforts. Invest in your freedom today! Donate once or set up a monthly
withdrawal plan--we accept all major cards.
Oh, savor the delicious irony (Hit tip to How Appealing):
Poor Lloyd Constantine.
The New York lawyer should still be celebrating last May's $3 billion settlement of a landmark case against Visa USA Inc. and MasterCard International Inc., one of the largest antitrust awards in U.S. history. Mr. Constantine represented retailers, led by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., that sued the card companies for forcing stores that accept credit cards to pay surcharges to accept debit cards. His firm, Constantine & Partners, requested fees of roughly $600 million.
But almost a year later, instead of savoring victory, Constantine & Partners is having trouble getting paid. A handful of lawyers known as "objectors" have swooped down on Mr. Constantine's case. Objectors are attorneys who earn fees by challenging settlements, usually arguing to lower the fees requested by other attorneys in successful class-action settlements. [WSJ]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn’t there this novel in which the looters who destroy America’s producers get looted themselves??? I think there was a lot of speeches and philosophy in it too . . .
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo
at 11:43 AM | link
| donate |
"Would you make the same statement about Nazis, al-Qaedists, Klansmen? The logic of your position seems to demand it." He replied: Sure; I wouldn't fire a postman just because he's a Klansman, and the Supreme Court's caselaw would be on my side in this, see, e.g., U.S. v. Robel; Elrod v. Burns.
So, Volokh is not soft on Communists, he is a First Amendment scholar.
In Elrod v. Burns, the US Supreme Court held that the Democratic Sheriff of Cook County, Ill., had violated the constitutional rights of non-civil-service employees by discharging them "because they did not support and were not members of the Democratic Party and had failed to obtain the sponsorship of one of its leaders". In US v. Robel, the Court held that a law barring members of the Communist party from “engage[ing] in any employment in any defense facility" to be unconstitutional.
I agree with the Court’s decision the first case. A government officer does not have the right to coerce membership or support for a political organization as a condition of employment.
The second case is more complex. In US v. Robel, the court held that a ban on communists from working at government facilities was “an unconstitutional abridgment of the right of association protected by the First Amendment.” The law in question was politically controversial and was passed over President Truman’s veto. In its decision, the Court quotes Truman as saying "the language of the bill is so broad and vague that it might well result in penalizing the legitimate activities of people who are not Communists at all, but loyal citizens."
Yet in rendering its decision, the Court did not contemplate situations where a person’s philosophy would be so irrational and so abhorrent that it would preclude them from being employed by the government. Membership in the Klu Klux Klan is based on the philosophy of racial collectivism—the view that one’s racial group is the fount of all truth and justice— and the desire to implement that philosophy nation-wide. If that is a person’s view, how can they be trusted to be just with coworkers of different races, or with the public? Taken literally, the Court precludes the government from contemplating a person’s character and actions in is its hiring and firing for anything other then the most concrete-bound issues. The government may fire Jones for stealing pens, but not for being an active advocate for the institutionalized theft between the classes as a member of the Communist Party.
The difficulty in judging these cases rests in divining the line between the an individual’s right to hold ideas free from coercion and the responsibility he bears when he acts upon wicked or vicious ideas. Life requires the freedom to think without shackles—yet this freedom does not excuse one from bearing the responsibility for his corrupt actions. Agreement with racial and social collectivism is outside the bounds of honest disagreement. Membership in an organization dedicated to the advancement of these ideals indicates a serious moral breach, and takes one from merely holding a wrong idea to acting upon it. Those who seek to implement vicious ideas have no right to demand that other men deal with them, or that a government dedicated to protecting individual rights provide them with job opportunities.
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo
at 1:23 PM | link
| donate |
Wednesday, May 05, 2004 :::
Short Break
With finals and all, I'm taking a short break from blogging, probably until next Thursday. See you all then!
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo
at 3:30 PM | link
| donate |
Friday, April 30, 2004 :::
The Culture: Soft on communisim?
Why do communists get a free pass, and yet Nazis don't? Consider this post discussing allegations that Robert Oppenheimer was a communist from Eugene Volokh:
While I wouldn't have excluded Communists, past Communists, or Communist sympathizers from all federal jobs (not because I like them, but because of the First Amendment), I surely think it's perfectly constitutional and proper to exclude them from secret nuclear weapons research.
Huh? Change "Communist" to "Nazi," or "al Qadea," and Volokh comes off looking like a fool--the wrongness of his view is plain. Heck, just change it to "Klansmen" and he doesn’t look any better.
The Communist Party stood for the violent overthrow of America and the forcible installation of a communist dictatorship. People are free to hold whatever ideas they choose, but they can not act on ideas that call for the initiation of force. Membership in the Communist Party was just such an act; it was membership in an organization that had it succeeded in its goals, would have resulted in the destruction of the principle of individual rights and the American way of life.
The failure to condemn the communists is the failure to condemn a movement that brutalized and murdered millions. People are outraged over the absurdity of the holocaust deniers, but what about the absurdity of those who mitigate communist atrocities--people who seem to forget just what the communists stood for and the cost of their handiwork?
The question of the communists in America in not a question of the First Amendment. It is a question of whether a nation is obligated to either protect or prosecute those who seek its destruction.
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo
at 12:00 PM | link
| donate |
Wednesday, April 28, 2004 :::
Rights and Reason: Conservatives and Rights
Consider the following paragraph in an unsigned editorial in the Wall Street Journal arguing in support of the detention of US citizens such as suspected al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla as enemy combatants without the writ of habeas corpus.
In an era when the concept of "rights" has come to mean individual rights only, the idea that collective rights might take precedence over those of an individual can be a difficult notion to grasp. But it's the issue at the heart of any discussion of civil liberties in wartime, and the war on terror is no different. The ultimate civil liberty is the right to life.
The conservative Wall Street Journal has just placed the group separate from and above the individual, and it has done so supposedly in the name of the individual’s well-being. Every tyranny of the past one hundred years has relied upon the same moral claim to justify its actions.
Individual rights are the rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness; they come from the principle that man has a right to his life and that he requires freedom of thought and action in order to live. Respect for the principle of individual rights protects man from force; it leaves men free and un-coerced except in retaliation against those who would use force first, and it places the right to retaliatory force under the rule of law. All disputes between men are properly judged by the principle of individual rights; there are no other rights amoung men to consider.
Yet those who support the detention of American citizens without a trial turn the principle of individual rights up upon its head. They say, in effect, that national security allows the government to imprison citizens without having to prove its case under the law, and that the mere attempt to question the government on the strength of its evidence in a courtroom is itself is a threat to national security. Such a view is wrong and it is wicked; it represents perhaps the gravest threat to freedom in America today.
The constitution allows for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in times of invasion or rebellion; both are threats to people’s rights that demand immediate action to protect the people’s government. Yet that power is listed in Article One of the constitution; only the Congress has the power to order any suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and it may only do so in cases of invasion or rebellion where “the public safety requires it.” This is a deliberately high threshold to meet and it serves no less a purpose than to protect the people from unchecked and unchallenged government coercion.
In the post-September 11th world, the Bush administration holds that the need to protect its intelligence sources obliges it to detain Americans accused of crimes against the state without trial. Yet Congress has issued no suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, nor is their any threat against the United States that would justify such a suspension. If a foreign threat exists against America, it ought to be dealt with at its source by our military, and not at the price of destroying checks that protect the individual from the abuse of government power.
Jose Padilla is an American citizen arrested on American soil. Every American accused of a crime—even Padilla—is owed his day in court. There is no universe where the value of intelligence supersedes the rights of the accused. The answer to the dilemma of how to fight the war against militant Islam is not the creation of phony group rights to justify the incursions against individual rights here at home—it is the destruction of the terrorists and the states that sponsor them.
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo
at 9:40 AM | link
| donate |
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo
at 7:55 AM | link
| donate |
Friday, April 23, 2004 :::
Politics & The Culture: The Threat of Bush’s Faith-based America
Ashland University history professor and CAC policy analyst Dr. John Lewis offers devastating reasons to oppose President Bush at Initium:
In the war between reason and religion, declared by Islamic fundamentalists, President Bush is firmly on the side of religion. The positions he supports most passionately are those of theocracies: prayer in schools, a national pledge “under God” recited by children, judges who uphold religion in government, laws against abortion, publicly-funded faith-based initiatives, bans on cloning and genetic research, censorship of pornography, and a marriage amendment to the Constitution. If he has not imposed religious censorship, it is not because it is antithetical to his core values. Mr. Bush is energizing the political foundations of an American theocracy.
Nevertheless, there is only one issue in the 2004 election: the war with militant Islam. Here Mr. Bush has also remained true to his principles. He has not acted against a single religious government.
He took down the Taliban because they had aided those who “hijacked a great religion.” He threw down a secular dictator in Iraq and established the terms by which the country can become fundamentalist. Iranian mullahs have been assured that their overthrow is not on our agenda. We have bombed their opponents in Iraq, and negotiated with their Shi’ite stooges who plan to take over Iraq. If they succeed, they will control a second country— bordering on their first, Iran. A greater Islamic state, armed with nuclear bombs, would be a gift from George Bush.
Mr. Bush accepts that people may establish a government based on religious principles; after all, he thinks, that is what we did in America. He uses US troops to preserve the “rights” of foreigners to establish the same religiously-inspired governments that attacked us to begin with. From the start, Mr. Bush exercised his leadership by declaring the war not against militant Islam, but against “terrorism.” This has obfuscated the nature of our enemies and led us to squander our resources in ways not central to our interests. Had our president named the enemy properly, but then taken no action at all, we would be able to repudiate that inaction and fight the war properly. Now we must repudiate the very aims of the war. It will take extraordinary leadership to reverse this error.
The result is that the source of America’s enemies remains untouched. Iran is building nuclear bombs. Pakistan (a thug who seized power) and Russia (an ex-KGB officer) are called allies. Syria and the Saudis have not been confronted. Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan remain hideouts for Al Qaeda. We arm Islamic soldiers while our money builds schools in Baghdad. When we leave, those schools will teach radical Islam, and those soldiers will shoot at us.
Further, Mr. Bush is undercutting the very idea of self-defense. He spent over a year asking the UN for permission to invade Iraq, while claiming that no permissions will be sought. He is re-defining “overwhelming force” into a consensual war fought with compassionate regard for “innocents.” Such a conceptual stew leaves people with little guidance as to what offensive retaliation against foreign enemies is.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush has established a permanent, institutionalized state of siege at home. The war can now be fought against Unabomber-types, without ethnic “profiling.” And, don’t forget: you are permanently at risk; the war will be long; better buy some duct-tape.
This is all a consequence of Mr. Bush’s “faith-based” thinking. He has “faith in markets,” “faith in the American people,” “faith that people want freedom.” He holds such ideas as religious absolutes. He shoots out a strong statement from his subconscious (“we will make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them”), and then watches it dissolve in the face of arguments he cannot answer. The statement becomes an empty utterance, compromised in words and actions, precisely because it was held on faith rather than as a rational, defensible conviction.
More specifically, Mr. Bush’s policies are defined by two elements: religious patriotism, and religious altruism. The first demands that he stand tall against America’s ungodly enemies. The second demands that he spend billions to help the unfortunate. Picture two bombers over Afghanistan: one drops a bomb (precision-guided, to avoid hitting a Mosque), and the next drops peanut butter. The first satisfies the patriot, the second redeems the altruist. This, he thinks, is how God wants him to fight the war.
It is a positive sign that many Americans want a forthright offense against our enemies. But they are confused if they think that Mr. Bush advocates this in fact. I do not wish to abet that confusion.
What about John Kerry, an obnoxious Carter / Kennedy / Clinton wannabe who sees Americans as war criminals? He does not hide his desire to subordinate American defense to a foreign consensus. This leaves less confusion in its wake; no one will mistake him for George C. Patton. Besides, Mr. Kerry will be desperate to be seen as tough on terrorism; he might actually do a better job against America’s real enemies.
Most of all, in the war with fundamentalist militant Islam, Bush is pro-religion, all the way to the core of his soul. Kerry does not share this premise. If you think that a turn towards a theocracy in America is far-fetched, remember that “The Passion of the Christ” is approaching a half a billion dollars in box-office take, and conservatives have lined up to extol its blood-soaked message.
I personally have struggled with the question of evaluating President Bush's leadership, until now. Bush betrays secularism. A war fought half-heartedly is worse then not fighting at all. There is but one conclusion: Bush's hold over the Republican Party must be brought to an end.
::: posted by Nicholas Provenzo
at 8:24 AM | link
| donate |
The success of the Center for
the Advancement of Capitalism is made possible thanks to voluntary
contributions by people like you. If you would like to help
support the Center's efforts, please make an
online contribution. We accept all major credit cards.
