Quotulatiousness

January 16, 2019

Justin Trudeau is against using refugees as political props … at least when others do it

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Middle East, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Politicians traffic in hypocrisy, example seven million and three:

There were no good reasons to make a big show of [Rahaf Mohammed] Alqunun’s arrival, in other words, and plenty of good reasons not to. Furthermore, Justin Trudeau has been very clear about what he thinks of using refugees as political props. He was at his most thespian back in 2015 when it was alleged Stephen Harper’s office had been sifting through applications from Syrian asylum-seekers in search of potential photo ops.

“That’s DIS-GUST-ING,” Trudeau hissed at a campaign stop in Richmond, B.C. “That’s not the Canada we want; that’s not the Canada we need to build.”

In the end, though, there was Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland with her arm draped around Alqunun, announcing that this “brave new Canadian” would not be taking questions. Luckily, Freeland herself had arrived equipped with some crimson talking points.

“I believe in lighting a single candle,” she said. “Where we can save a single person, where we can save a single woman, that is a good thing to do. … And I’d like to also emphasize, this is part of a broader Canadian policy of supporting women and girls in Canada and around the world.”

“Canada is a country that understands how important it is to stand up for human rights, to stand up for women’s rights around the world,” Trudeau chimed in.

It would be well-nigh impossible to argue against hearing, at the very least, Alqunun’s claim for asylum. But at this point, she is certainly also a political prop — a living symbol of the Liberal view of Canada’s place in the world, and an always-welcome opportunity for self-congratulation.

January 14, 2019

Lysander Spooner and the US postal system

Filed under: Government, History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Naomi Mathew recounts the battle between anarchist Lysander Spooner and the United States Post Office:

This is a story about a philosopher, entrepreneur, lawyer, economist, abolitionist, anarchist — the list goes on. As his obituary summarizes, “To destroy tyranny, root and branch, was the great object of his life.” Although he is rarely included in mainstream history, Lysander Spooner was an anarchist who didn’t merely preach about his ideas: He lived them. No example illustrates this better than Spooner’s legal battle against the US postal monopoly.

Born in 1808 in Athol, Massachusetts, Lysander Spooner was raised on his parent’s farm and later moved to Worcester to practice law. Eventually, he found himself in New York City, where business was booming — but not for the Post Office.

The Postal System of the 1840s

In Spooner’s day, government subsidized the cost of building infrastructure used for mail routes. Postage rates paid for these subsidies, which in turn made the rates expensive. For example, in 1840 it cost 18.75 cents, over a quarter of a day’s wages, to send a letter from Baltimore to New York.

Corruption was another issue facing the post office. Positions appeared to change after each election cycle, indicating political cronyism. Congress was also under pressure from the coach contractor lobby, and favorable postage routes were often given to contractors with political connections. Thanks to a legal monopoly it had enjoyed since the Confederation, the Post Office remained the sole legal mail business despite its skyrocketing costs and corruption.

In his book Uncle Sam, The Monopoly Man, William Wooldridge describes how high postal costs led some to defy postal laws: Traveling individuals doubled as temporary, private postmen. By the 1840s, these illicit services were chipping into government revenues. Eventually, a court ruled it legal for individuals (but not companies) to carry mail. As a result, underground mail enterprises sprung up. Agents covertly used the existing rails, coaches, and steamboats to transport letters. It is estimated that in 1845, a third of all letters were transported by private mail firms.

January 11, 2019

“It is profoundly stupid, so most people assume it can’t be. But that’s what the law is now”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Apparently the federal government believes that drinking and driving is such a huge, intractable problem that they’ve decided it’s worth sacrificing your right to privacy in order to combat this scourge:

It may sound unbelievable, but Canada’s revised laws on impaired driving could see police demand breath samples from people in bars, restaurants, or even at home. And if you say no, you could be arrested, face a criminal record, ordered to pay a fine, and subjected to a driving suspension.

You could be in violation of the impaired driving laws even two hours after you’ve been driving. Now, the onus is on drivers to prove they weren’t impaired when they were on the road.

This isn’t a simple change of rules, it’s a wholesale abandonment of common sense.

“If you start to drink after you get home, the police show up at your door, they can arrest you, detain you, take you back to the (police station) and you can be convicted because your blood alcohol concentration was over 80 milligrams (per 100 millilitres of blood) in the two hours after you drove.”

Changes to Section 253 of the Criminal Code of Canada took effect in December giving police greater powers to seek breath samples from drivers who might be driving while impaired.

Under the new law, police officers no longer need to have a “reasonable suspicion” the driver had consumed alcohol. Now, an officer can demand a sample from drivers for any reason at any time.

But there’s no possible way this could be abused, right?

“It’s a serious erosion of civil liberties,” said Toronto criminal defence lawyer Michael Engel, whose practice focuses almost exclusively on impaired driving cases.

Engel said someone could be unjustly prosecuted. If a disgruntled business associate or spouse called police with a complaint and an officer went to investigate at the persons’ home or place of business, police could demand a breath sample.

“Husbands or wives in the course of separations would drop the dime on their partner,” Engel said, describing the potential for the law’s abuse by those calling police out of spite, for example.

QotD: Libertarian “co-ordination”

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… advocates of liberty are about as good at coordinated action as a bunch of cats. I pretty much laughed myself (physically) sick when I read that the Sad Puppies “strictly enforced slate voting.” Not only did the numbers completely deny this (the only lockstep voting was no award) but the idea of anyone on our side doing anything “lockstep” just about… Giggle, snort.

If you told most people on our side “you have to do it this way, it’s the only way” you’d get “Who’s gonna make me, you and whose army?” And if you said “you have to do it this way or we’ll kill you,” you’re still likely to get “You’re not the boss of me.” We should have “Stupidly individualistic” stamped on our foreheads.

So long, coordinated marches like what the left (they of the collectivist will) executed are really impossible for us.

On the other hand… On the other hand, we seem to do pretty well in our long uncoordinated march of building under and building around and building over.

We might all be marching in different directions and to the tune of a different kettle of fish, but the other side is so profoundly incompetent, that even so we can still replace the moribund institutions they took over.

It’s just going to take a little while. Not a hundred years, but probably twenty. Not three generations, but one and a half.

In the end we win, they lose, but you can’t stop when your ankles first start hurting.

The last mile of the long march is always the hardest one, but the goal is almost in sight.

Sarah Hoyt, “The Long March”, According to Hoyt, 2015-12-20.

January 10, 2019

A timely reminder about the dangers of expanding government power

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At Coyote Blog, Warren Meyer points out to the Republicans that if it was bad during the last presidency, it’s just as bad during this one:

Dear Republicans:

The last thing we need now is even more expansion of executive power. I remember when, gosh it was like only two or three years ago, you Republicans were (rightly) bemoaning Obama’s executive actions as unconstitutional expansions of Presidential power. You argued, again rightly, that just because Congress did not pass the President’s cherished agenda items, that did not give the President some sort of right to do an end-around Congress.

But now, I hear many Republicans making exactly the same arguments on the wall that Obama made during his Presidency, with the added distasteful element of a proposed declaration of emergency to allow the army to go build the wall.

[…]

I can pretty much guarantee you that if Trump uses this emergency declaration dodge (and maybe even if he doesn’t now that Republicans have helped to normalize the idea), the next Democratic President is going to use the same dodge. I can just see President Warren declaring a state of emergency to have the army build windmills or worse. In fact, if Trump declares a state of emergency on a hot-button Republican issue, Democratic partisans are going to DEMAND that their President do the same, if for no reason other than tribal tit for tat.

Patreon’s changing role

Filed under: Business, Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Quillette, Uri Harris outlines how Patreon has changed over the last year or so and what those changes mean for both content creators and financial supporters:

On December 6, crowdfunding service Patreon removed the account of popular YouTuber Carl Benjamin, who is better known by his YouTube moniker Sargon of Akkad. In a statement, Patreon explained that Benjamin was removed for exposing hate speech under its community guidelines, which prohibit: “serious attacks, or even negative generalizations, of people based on their race [and] sexual orientation.” The incident in question was an appearance on another YouTube channel where Benjamin used racial and homosexual slurs during an emotional outburst. (The outburst was transcribed and included for reference as part of Patreon’s statement.)

Patreon’s reaction sparked immediate accusations of political bias from many centrists and conservatives, as Benjamin—who identifies as a classical liberal—is a frequent and outspoken critic of contemporary progressivism, receiving hundreds of thousands of views on many of his videos. The fact that Benjamin was removed from Patreon for an outburst on another YouTube channel almost a year ago, when he produces hours of content every week on his own channels and appears regularly on many others, suggested that this was a targeted attempt to remove him due to his politics, either by Patreon employees themselves or as a response to outside pressure.

This belief was bolstered by the fact that Patreon’s CEO Jack Conte had appeared on popular YouTube talk show “The Rubin Report” last year to explain the removal of conservative YouTube personality Lauren Southern, where he seemed to suggest that Patreon’s content policy had three sections and that hate speech was in the first section, meaning that it only applied to content uploaded to Patreon’s own platform. (Southern was removed for off-platform activity because she had “crossed the line between speech and action,” Conte maintained, which he implied was covered by the more severe second and third sections of their content policy.)

There’s nothing unusual about a company revising its content policy, of course, but it seemed suspicious that Benjamin was being removed for a different set of rules than those Patreon’s CEO had previously articulated. In fact, several people pointed out the prevalence of similar slurs on Patreon’s own platform as further indication that Benjamin was specifically targeted for his political views.

January 6, 2019

“Carding” is an infringement of rights that does nothing to reduce crime

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley wonders why the blatantly unconstitutional practice of “carding” people without even a hint of suspicion that they’ve done anything wrong was instituted in the first place:

… it’s far easier to make a case that carding has no effect at all on serious crime than that it has a huge one. But even if previous carding practice had “worked,” even if the new regulation had stopped it from working, it barely even amounts to a defence. As [Justice Michael] Tulloch notes, “the regulation simply gives effect to the existing law that people do not have to provide their identification when there are no reasonable grounds to believe the person has committed an offence.”

If carding “worked,” in other words, it relied on citizens not knowing or caring about their already-existing right to be left alone whilst minding their own business, or being too intimidated to exercise that right — as well they might be. Politely refusing an armed man or woman’s request to identify yourself is no small thing, all the more so if you have “nothing to hide.”

The problems inherent in such a situation are myriad. There are quantifiable harms: People were denied jobs and security clearances, and in at least one case menaced by child services, thanks to information stored in police databases that implicated them in nothing other than being included in a police database. And there are more existential harms. Imagine growing up with a squeaky-clean nose yet constantly feeling like a person of police interest. It’s profoundly alienating, especially when targets quite logically conclude, based on well-documented statistics if not their own intuition, that they’re being harassed because of their race, skin colour or some other innate characteristic. It’s no less insidious if the bias is unconscious; it might even be more so.

Nothing good can come from it, and plenty bad. It hinders police in solving crimes, for one thing: “When a segment of society believes that it has been unfairly targeted by the police,” Tulloch writes, “it will delegitimize the police in their eyes.” All those desperate calls for witnesses to come forward will be met more skeptically. Tulloch cites research showing “inappropriate interaction with police” can even “desensitize young people from guilt regarding potential acts of crime.”

January 1, 2019

QotD: The hallmark of civilization

Filed under: Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The true mark of the civilized society is not that it defends the rights of people who are loved by the bulk of the population, for those people need no defense. No one, after all, will arrest a popular person for saying or doing popular things. The true mark of the civilized society is that it defends the rights even of those who are universally reviled.

Indeed, in a truly civilized society, there would be no question but that you would defend the rights of people who disgust you provided they do no violence to others.

Our society is not civilized.

Perry Metzger, “On Civilization”, Samizdata, 2017-03-30.

December 31, 2018

7 Things You Should Know About Free Speech in Schools: Free Speech Rules (Episode 1)

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

ReasonTV
Published on 13 Dec 2018

Watch the first episode of Free Speech Rules, a new video series on free speech and the law. The first episode looks at the seven things you should know about how the First Amendment is applied in schools, from black armbands to ‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus.’

——————–
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Reason is the planet’s leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won’t get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines.
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Watch the first episode of Free Speech Rules, a new video series on free speech and the law that’s written by Eugene Volokh, the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA, and the co-founder of the Volokh Conspiracy, which is hosted at Reason.com.

The first episode looks at the seven things you should know about how the First Amendment is applied in schools:

1) Political and religious speech is mostly protected.
Students, from first grade to twelfth, can’t be punished based on their political or religious speech. As the Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District: “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gates.”

2) Disruptive speech is not protected.
Schools can punish speech that “materially disrupts schoolwork” — for instance, because it prompts fights.

3) Vulgar or sexual speech is not protected.
Schools can also punish students for using vulgarities or sexual innuendos.

4) Praising drugs is not protected.
Schools can punish speech that seems to praise drug use, and probably also alcohol use and other crimes, at least when the speech doesn’t seem political.

5) Official school newspapers are the school’s own speech.
Courts see the newspaper as the school’s own speech, even if students are the ones who write it.

6) This only applies to public schools.
Under the so-called “state action doctrine,” the First Amendment doesn’t limit private schools, even those that get tax breaks or government funds.

7) California is different. Some states, like California, have passed laws that provide more protection to students.

Written by Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment law professor at UCLA.
Produced and edited by Austin Bragg, who is not. This is not legal advice.
If this were legal advice, it would be followed by a bill.
Please use responsibly.

December 18, 2018

QotD: Addiction

Filed under: Health, Liberty, Quotations, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The chief difficulty with the word “addiction” is the idea that it describes a power greater than the will. If it exists in the way we use it and in the way our legal and medical systems assume it exists, then free will has been abolished. I know there are people who think and argue this is so. But this is not one of those things that can be demonstrated by falsifiable experiment. In the end, the idea that humans do not really have free will is a contentious opinion, not an objective fact.

So to use the word “addiction” is to embrace one side in one of those ancient unresolved debates that cannot be settled this side of the grave. To decline to use it, by contrast, is to accept that all kinds of influences, inheritances, and misfortunes may well operate on us, and propel us towards mistaken, foolish, wrong, and dangerous actions or habits. It is to leave open the question whether we can resist these forces. I am convinced that declining the word “addiction” is both the only honest thing to do, and the only kind and wise thing to do, when we are faced with fellow creatures struggling with harmful habits and desires. It is all very well to relieve someone of the responsibility for such actions, by telling him his body is to blame. But what is that solace worth if he takes it as permission to carry on as before? Once or twice I have managed to explain to a few of my critics that this is what I am saying. But generally they are too furious, or astonished by my sheer nerve, to listen.

Peter Hitchens, “The Fantasy of Addiction”, First Things, 2017-02.

December 17, 2018

QotD: Woodrow Wilson’s repressive regime

Filed under: History, Liberty, Quotations, USA, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Not surprisingly, such intellectual kindling was easy to ignite when World War I broke out. The philosopher John Dewey, New Republic founder Herbert Croly, and countless other progressive intellectuals welcomed what Mr. Dewey dubbed “the social possibilities of war.” The war provided an opportunity to force Americans to, as journalist Frederick Lewis Allen put it, “lay by our good-natured individualism and march in step.” Or as another progressive put it, “Laissez faire is dead. Long live social control.”

With the intellectuals on their side, Wilson recruited journalist George Creel to become a propaganda minister as head of the newly formed Committee on Public Information (CPI).

Mr. Creel declared that it was his mission to inflame the American public into “one white-hot mass” under the banner of “100 percent Americanism.” Fear was a vital tool, he argued, “an important element to be bred in the civilian population.”

The CPI printed millions of posters, buttons, pamphlets, that did just that. A typical poster for Liberty Bonds cautioned, “I am Public Opinion. All men fear me!… [I]f you have the money to buy and do not buy, I will make this No Man’s Land for you!” One of Creel’s greatest ideas – an instance of “viral marketing” before its time – was the creation of an army of about 75,000 “Four Minute Men.” Each was equipped and trained by the CPI to deliver a four-minute speech at town meetings, in restaurants, in theaters – anyplace they could get an audience – to spread the word that the “very future of democracy” was at stake. In 1917-18 alone, some 7,555,190 speeches were delivered in 5,200 communities. These speeches celebrated Wilson as a larger-than-life leader and the Germans as less-than-human Huns.

Meanwhile, the CPI released a string of propaganda films with such titles as The Kaiser, The Beast of Berlin, and The Prussian Cur. Remember when French fries became “freedom fries” in the run-up to the Iraq war? Thanks in part to the CPI, sauerkraut become “victory cabbage.”

Under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, Wilson’s administration shut down newspapers and magazines at an astounding pace. Indeed, any criticism of the government, even in your own home, could earn you a prison sentence. One man was brought to trial for explaining in his own home why he didn’t want to buy Liberty Bonds.

The Wilson administration sanctioned what could be called an American fascisti, the American Protective League. The APL – a quarter million strong at its height, with offices in 600 cities – carried government-issued badges while beating up dissidents and protesters and conducting warrantless searches and interrogations. Even after the war, Wilson refused to release the last of America’s political prisoners, leaving it to subsequent Republican administrations to free the anti-war Socialist Eugene V. Debs and others.

Jonah Goldberg, “You want a more ‘progressive’ America? Careful what you wish for: Voters should remember what happened under Woodrow Wilson”, Christian Science Monitor, 2008-02-05.

December 12, 2018

Why Socrates Hated Democracy

Filed under: Education, Europe, Government, Greece, History, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The School of Life
Published on 28 Nov 2016

We’re used to thinking hugely well of democracy. But interestingly, one of the wisest people who ever lived, Socrates, had deep suspicions of it.

December 10, 2018

Minneapolis abolishes residential zoning to combat racist segregation

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’ve never actually been to Minnesota (despite being a lifetime fan of the Minnesota Vikings), so I didn’t realize that Minneapolis — and presumably other Minnesota cities historically instituted residential zoning to enforce racial segregation:

Minneapolis will become the first major U.S. city to end single-family home zoning, a policy that has done as much as any to entrench segregation, high housing costs, and sprawl as the American urban paradigm over the past century.

On Friday, the City Council passed Minneapolis 2040, a comprehensive plan to permit three-family homes in the city’s residential neighborhoods, abolish parking minimums for all new construction, and allow high-density buildings along transit corridors.

“Large swaths of our city are exclusively zoned for single-family homes, so unless you have the ability to build a very large home on a very large lot, you can’t live in the neighborhood,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told me this week. Single-family home zoning was devised as a legal way to keep black Americans and other minorities from moving into certain neighborhoods, and it still functions as an effective barrier today. Abolishing restrictive zoning, the mayor said, was part of a general consensus that the city ought to begin to mend the damage wrought in pursuit of segregation. Human diversity — which nearly everyone in this staunchly liberal city would say is a good thing — only goes as far as the housing stock.

It may be as long as a year before Minneapolis zoning regulations and building codes reflect what’s outlined in the 481-page plan, which was crafted by city planners. Still, its passage makes the 422,000-person city, part of the Twin Cities region, one of the rare U.S. metropolises to publicly confront the racist roots of single-family zoning—and try to address the issue.

“A lot of research has been done on the history that’s led us to this point,” said Cam Gordon, a city councilman who represents the Second Ward, which includes the University of Minnesota’s flagship campus. “That history helped people realize that the way the city is set up right now is based on this government-endorsed and sanctioned racist system.” Easing the plan’s path to approval, he said, was the fact that modest single-family homes in appreciating neighborhoods were already making way for McMansions. Why not allow someone to build three units in the same-size building? (Requirements on height, yard space, and permeable surface remain unchanged in those areas.)

December 7, 2018

The Anti-Authoritarian Politics of Harry Potter

Filed under: Books, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Foundation for Economic Education
Published on 6 Dec 2018

JK Rowling’s wizarding world isn’t all wands, charms, and transfigurations. The magical universe inhabited by characters like Harry Potter and Newt Scamander is rife with the dangerous incompetence of adults, unchecked corruption, and appalling abuses of power, and not just by Voldemort or Grindelwald.

_____________
Written & Produced by Sean W. Malone
Edited by Arash Ayrom & Sean W. Malone

Australian parliament votes to weaken encryption

Filed under: Australia, Government, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Scott Shackford reports on the latest bit of oddness from the southern hemisphere:

Pretty much every single person in the tech industry, human rights circles, and academia warned the Australian government that forcing online platforms to weaken encryption would lead to disastrous results. Nonetheless, lawmakers are pushing forward — and it’s not just Australians who will suffer as a result.

Last night, Australia’s parliament rushed through the Assistance and Access Bill of 2018 right as their session was coming to a close. The bill gives various government agencies the authority to demand that tech and communication platforms provide them secret bypass routes around encrypted messages.

This is what is known as an encryption “backdoor,” and it’s a bad idea. Governments insist such tools are needed to fight crime and terrorism. The problem is that an encryption backdoor doesn’t care who uses it: If there’s a mechanism to bypass privacy security on a communication system, it can be exploited by anybody who knows how. That includes hackers, thieves, officials from authoritarian governments, and all sorts of dangerous people (including, of course, the very government people who insist they’re trying to protect us). That’s why tech companies have spent years fighting against the idea.

Weak encryption is a threat to the health of any tech platform that involves transferring data, and governments know that. So they insist they’re not demanding encryption backdoors while attempting to enact policies that pretty much demand them.

The Assistance and Access Bill won’t just grant the Australian government the power to demand that everybody from Facebook to Whatsapp help them bypass security to access private communications. The bill will let officials order companies, through “technical capability notices,” to alter their programming to facilitate snooping. And it gives the government the authority to force the tech employees who implement the changes to keep them secret. Break that secrecy, and the employees can face up to five years in jail.

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