Category: reason

10/28/1787: James Wilson gives speech to the Pennsylvania ratification convention about the need for a Bill of Rights.

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20 Years Ago

November 2000

“You can see…why black reparations activists might get the idea that such political settlements, no matter how secure and final they looked at the time, are subject to perpetual reconsideration: They’ve been watching the stunningly successful campaign over World War II–era reparations. After the end of that war, American policy makers concluded treaties with the former Axis powers intended to resolve with finality questions of who owed what and to cut off the prospect of debilitating litigation. For about 50 years they thought they’d succeeded, until American lawyer-activists suddenly appeared on the front pages demanding separate, added reparations.”
Walter Olson
“Stale Claims”

25 Years Ago

November 1995

“From the beginning, stories about ‘assault weapons’ blurred the distinction between semi-automatics and machine guns. Machine guns are automatics: They fire as long as the trigger is held back. The possession of such firearms has been strictly regulated by the federal government since 1934…and no new automatics have legally entered civilian circulation in the United States since 1986. But semi-automatics, regardless of how much some of them may look like machine guns, fire one shot per trigger pull. Civilians have commonly used them for recreation and self-defense since the turn of the century.”
William Tonso
“Shooting Blind”

“Social workers across the country have a longheld practice of preventing the adoption of minority children by different-race parents, calling interracial adoption ‘cultural genocide.’ Since the infants and children involved don’t have lobbyists, their voices go unheard as they get shuffled from foster home to foster home.”
Nina Shokraii
“Adopting Racism”

35 Years Ago

November 1985

“The East River tunnel is supposed, one day, to improve train service between Queens and midtown Manhattan, but as construction has dribbled on, there has been controversy about which line to connect it to on the east side. The under-river tunnel itself—already 14 years in the making—is due to be finished within the next two years. And the rail connection at the east end is going to be a whole lot slower….A mere 520-foot length of subway, this connecting line is going to take eight years to build, according to an MTA spokesman. That works out to 65 feet a year!”
Peter Samuel
“Snail Beats Subway”

“In its view of ‘social responsibility,’ much of American business and the American public still follow [Andrew] Carnegie. They accept as he did that wealth and economic power entail responsibility for the community. They may not share his vision of the rich man as social reformer, but they accept, at least in theory, Carnegie’s assertion that doing well commits one to doing good. Carnegie’s innovation has become a uniquely American institution: the foundation, with one after the other of the super-rich, from Rockefeller to Ford, following Carnegie’s example.”
Peter Drucker
“Doing Good Makes Cents”

45 Years Ago

November 1975

“Since the end of the Second World War, Britain has become almost completely socialized. All of the great socialist ideals have been legislated into existence in Britain: subsidized medical care, subsidized housing, food, redistribution of income, social planning. The failure of each and every one of these plans combined with towering balance of payments deficits have left the country on the verge of social disintegration and economic collapse.”
A. Keerma
“The Socialization of Canada”

“As owner of my home, my ‘property rights’ include (among other things) the privilege of entering it whenever I please, the right that others not enter without my permission, the immunity against unilateral revocation of these rights or privileges by any private individual, and the power to transfer my rights and privileges of ownership to another through sale.”
Edwin Dolan
“The Limits of Liberty”

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The Gloucestershire Constabulary in England says it will patrol routes out of Wales looking for Welsh drivers who appear to be taking long trips. Cops will stop them and order them to turn around. If they don’t, police will report them to their Welsh counterparts for possibly violating a 17-day ban on nonessential travel that Welsh authorities say is necessary to stop the spread of coronavirus. The Welsh government has also closed most businesses for those 17 days and restricted high schools to online instruction only.

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Worried about Tuesday?

Remember: The most important parts of life happen outside politics.

Love, friendship, family, raising children, building businesses, worship, charity work—that is the stuff of life! Politicians get in the way of those things. But despite the efforts of power-hungry Republicans and Democrats, life gets better.

You may not believe that. Surveys show most people think life is getting worse.

But it isn’t, as Marian Tupy and Ron Bailey point out in their new book, Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know.

“Child labor was once ubiquitous. Now it’s limited to a few countries in Africa. Women did not have a vote (until New Zealand granted it at the end of the 19th century). Today, women vote everywhere except for the Vatican,” Tupy reminds us.

“Gays and lesbians, persecuted for millennia, are free to marry. Slavery was universal; now it is illegal. The world has never been more peaceful, more educated and kinder.”

But the nastiness of today’s politics may stop progress! Make life worse!

It’s possible, but “worse” compared to what?

I’ve lived through the Vietnam War, a military draft, 90 percent income tax rates, price controls, indecency laws, widespread racism and sexism, Jim Crow, the explosion of crime in the 1970s…

Overall, life got better.

With Donald Trump and Joe Biden claiming the other will destroy what’s good, it’s hard to see improvement. But the world has made progress, largely thanks to libertarian ideas.

“For millennia the world was marked by despotism, slavery, hierarchy, rigid class privilege, and literally no increase in the standard of living,” says Cato Institute Vice President David Boaz in the May/June 2020 Policy Report.

“Then libertarian ideas came into the world. Of course, they weren’t called that at the time…. (T)hey were the ideas of human rights, free markets, property rights, religious toleration, the value of commerce, the dignity of the individual—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

These ideas created a wave of progress unlike anything in history.

“Look at the chart of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, or any measure of economic growth,” adds Boaz. “It looks like a hockey stick: flat for almost all human history, and then it rockets upwards.”

The media shriek hysterically about every problem, and we have problems: pandemic, lockdowns, unemployment, wildfires, bad cops, violent riots, crime…

But no matter who wins on Tuesday, life will probably get better.

Entrepreneurs will invent cool things.

This year, while Democrats and Republicans fought, the private sector found cheaper and better ways to send people into space.

The World Bank complained about governments not providing all people clean drinking water. So private companies are doing it. A billboard in Peru turns humidity into potable drinking water. A drinking straw, LifeStraw, removes bacteria and parasites from water.

Forests are expanding because modern farming uses less land, allowing the forests to regrow.

Thanks to often-despised free markets, poverty continues to decline. In 1981, 42 percent of the world lived in extreme poverty. By 2018, only 8.6 percent did. Do politicians ever highlight those gains? No.

Probably because most of those good things happened in spite of them, not because of them.

Most good things do.

Yes, we still have lots of problems: trillion dollar deficits, mental illness, crushing regulation, endless wars (although fewer of them), criminal injustice, inequality, climate change…

But it’s always been that way. Evolution programmed humans to focus on problems. Our ancestors survived in a very dangerous world. If they weren’t hypervigilant, they wouldn’t have lived long enough to give birth to the people who gave birth to us.

I obsess about problems. But I try not to let that distract me from the big picture.

More people in more places enjoy prosperity, religious freedom, personal freedom, democratic governance, largely equal rights, civility, better health, and longer lives.

Neither Trump nor Biden is likely to destroy that.

COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

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Four years ago, Pennsylvania allowed patients suffering from any of 17 serious medical conditions to relieve their symptoms with marijuana. But there was a catch: If they used cannabis as a medicine, they could no longer legally drive.

Last week the Pennsylvania House of Representatives approved a bill that would eliminate that legal disability by requiring evidence of impairment to convict medical marijuana patients of driving under the influence (DUI). That reform points the way to a long overdue reevaluation of DUI laws that irrationally and unfairly punish cannabis consumers who pose no threat to public safety.

Thirty-three states have legalized medical marijuana, and 11 have taken the further step of allowing recreational use. The list is likely to grow next week, when voters in five states will consider marijuana initiatives.

Even as pot prohibition continues to crumble across the country, many states are still treating sober cannabis consumers as if they were intoxicated. Under Pennsylvania’s current rule, any driver with a tiny amount of THC or an inactive metabolite in his blood (one nanogram per milliliter) is automatically guilty of DUI.

Eleven states are even stricter than Pennsylvania, making it illegal to drive with any amount of THC or its metabolites in your blood. Because those chemicals can be detected long after marijuana’s psychoactive effects have worn off, that “zero tolerance” policy is akin to prohibiting all drinkers from driving, even when they are sober.

Half a dozen states, including Pennsylvania, have “per se” laws that define DUI based on the concentration of THC in a driver’s blood, while one (Colorado) allows an inference of guilt when that level reaches five nanograms per milliliter. But these laws don’t make sense either.

Because THC, unlike alcohol, is fat-soluble rather than water-soluble, there is no clear or consistent relationship between THC in the blood and THC in the brain, which means THC blood levels do not correspond neatly to degrees of impairment. Complicating the situation further, individual responses to a given dose of THC vary widely, especially when you compare occasional marijuana users to regular consumers, who may develop tolerance to the drug’s effects or learn to compensate for them.

A 2016 study sponsored by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety concluded that “a quantitative threshold for per se laws” based on THC blood levels “cannot be scientifically supported.” That’s because, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration explained in a 2017 report to Congress, the concentration of THC in a driver’s blood “does not appear to be an accurate and reliable predictor of impairment.”

The Congressional Research Service concurred in a 2019 report. “Using a measure of THC as evidence of a driver’s impairment is not supported by scientific evidence,” it said.

Thirty-two states recognize that THC in a driver’s blood is not enough to prove impairment. They require additional evidence, such as erratic driving or physical and behavioral signs of intoxication.

The Pennsylvania bill would adopt that standard for medical marijuana patients, although it really should be extended to all cannabis consumers, since the validity of a per se rule does not depend on an individual’s reasons for using the drug. The marijuana legalization initiative on Arizona’s 2020 ballot takes the latter approach, replacing that state’s current zero tolerance standard, which already makes an exception for medical use.

Even states that have legalized marijuana for all adults 21 or older do not necessarily have rational DUI laws. Illinois, Nevada, and Washington make drivers automatically guilty at THC blood levels that regular consumers commonly exceed even when they are not impaired, while Michigan still has a zero tolerance law that treats any amount of THC as conclusive DUI evidence.

Although zero tolerance and per se laws were presented as traffic safety measures, they are really just another way of punishing people for defying the ban on marijuana. When that ban is lifted, such laws are an indefensible hangover from an unjust prohibitionist regime that was rightly abandoned.

© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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