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Taxation without Confiscation

wealth-confiscation

By Mike Cronin

With income taxes dues in a little over a month and presidential hopefuls in the news every day, now might be a good time to consider some changes to our tax code.  I’ve opined in previous posts that it is not greedy to want to keep what you earn, but it is the essence of greed to want what others have earned.  Our current tax and fiscal policy system is fueled by the greed of politicians who promise things they have no right to give, and by the people who want what those politicians are promising. The primary weapon used for the plunder is income tax withholding, i.e. the taking of your money before you ever see it. This is called confiscatory taxation – your taxes are confiscated from you.

There is a movement afoot to take the government’s power to relieve you of your hard-earned money and put it back in to your hands.  The general idea is to replace the confiscatory income tax with a consumption-based tax – which means taxing you on what you buy and consume instead of on what you make. The most notable proposal for a consumption-based tax system is called the Fair Tax.

The philosophical difference between the confiscatory system we have now and a consumption based system is stark.

The confiscatory system requires the government take money from you by force (i.e. the threat of arrest and punishment for not filing/paying).  It encourages politicians to use taxes to fund elements of the government that have no Constitutional right to exist, and worse, to use taxes to change behavior. It places a huge compliance burden on you and businesses. Lastly, and perhaps most egregiously, it fuels envy politics by allowing demagogues to cry for the rich to pay an ever-increasing portion of the tax bill, while allowing nearly half the population to consume an enormous amount of government benefits and entitlements w/o consequence or motivation to change. Worst of all, the harder you work and the more you produce, the more you are taxed. Americans have accepted this for a while, but we are beginning to wake up and see that punishing productivity is insane – if you want more productivity, jobs, and economic growth.  On the other hand, if you want power over millions, a good way to obtain it is to divide and conquer by pitting the masses with low incomes against the few with extraordinary incomes.

A consumption-based taxation system more closely aligns government revenue collection with the morality most of us follow every day.   First, it allows the taxpayer much more control over how much tax he or she will pay, and it puts the government in the role of beneficiary instead of bully.  Second, it more logically aligns with how we pay for almost everything else in life. (E.g. if we don’t buy much jewelry, then we aren’t forced to pay for jewelry).  A person (or business) with large consumption habits is presumably using more government than someone with low consumption habits. Under a consumption-based taxation system, big consumers will pay more for government than the small consumer, and income will no longer be a factor.  In short, people will pay their taxes in direct proportion to how much they consume instead of how much they make.   This will return some of the power Washington stole from us and put back in our hands. Oh, and it will mean no more 1040s and no more IRS!

Sounds eminently fair to me.

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A Capital Idea: an “-ism” for Freedom

By Mike Cronin

Last week, I offered the view that adopting socialism is a recipe for disaster. Most of the political “-isms” (socialism, communism, fascism, imperialism, etc.)  “-chies” and “-cracies” (monarchy, anarchy, theocracy, democracy, plutocracy, oligarchy, etc.) sound different on paper, but they all have two things in common: the rule of one human or few humans over the rest, and the absence of individual freedom.

There is an alternative.  Our founders gave us a Constitutional republic which enshrined the rule of law and individual liberty.  The essential element of freedom is property rights, including self-ownership.  The political-economic system that arises where freedom reigns is called capitalism.  It has never been fully embraced by any country.  Our own country perhaps came the closest, which greatly contributed to the vast economic achievements and ever-increasing prosperity we came to expect as Americans.

Yet our failure to fully adopt it has had a profound effect on our history. The institution of slavery was a direct affront to the concept of freedom, and it convulsed our country from its beginnings through the Civil War and beyond. I’ve written elsewhere of slavery and unjust war as two of the four major dysfunctions that have afflicted our country.

Want some examples of how capitalism is better than socialism?

The Ukraine is a geographic bread basket, similar in productive potential to the US Midwest; yet the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (of which Ukraine was once one of the socialist republics) had to import grain from us during the height of the cold war. Why couldn’t they produce and distribute enough to feed themselves?

Virtually every labor saving and communications device and other technological advancement since the Dark Ages was invented or perfected in the US or another semi-capitalistic country. (E.g. the electric light bulb, the car, the airplane, the microwave oven, the TV, VCR, and DVD, the laser, vaccines, etc.). Have you ever considered buying a car designed and manufactured by an Iranian or North Korean company?  Does such a thing even exist? Why aren’t such things invented in dictatorships and socialist utopias?

In most cases, landlocked nations are doomed to economic mediocrity or worse. (Examples: Afghanistan, Mongolia, and Bolivia). But a few, such as Switzerland and Lichtenstein, are incredibly well off.  What separates them? The ones that are well off have a much higher degree of individual freedom and capitalism than the others.

China was once every bit the communist leviathan that the Soviet Union was.  Why didn’t China go the same way the USSR did? Conversely, why is the US going through a decline?

China is ascending to the same degree it has adopted limited capitalistic market reforms. Our country is declining to the same degree we adopt the socialist dysfunctions that destroyed the Soviets and continues to hamper the Chinese. Imagine the productive energy that could be unleashed if 1.4 billion people enjoyed a fully free existence!

Despite the vast body of historical evidence that capitalism works and socialism doesn’t, capitalism has been given a bad name.  Individual freedom requires individual responsibility for one’s own actions and living with the consequences of one’s choices.  For that reason, capitalism will always be a hard sell compared to the free goodies and cradle-to-grave care promised by the heralds of the other “-isms.” On top of that, where capitalism has some influence, prosperity follows. Prosperous people are easy for envy-baiters to blame in order to gain an audience…and power. In virtually every human system of organization other than capitalism, anyone with wealth could only attain it by taking a bigger share of “the pie” than everyone else. Capitalism is unprecedented – it allows the productive to enlarge the pie!  But the envy mongers can’t or won’t see that.  They say capitalism fosters greed.  There’s no denying that greedy people exist,  and some of them advance quite far under semi-capitalistic economies, but socialism is absolutely powered by greed and envy!

It is easy for the prophets of utopia to blame capitalism for the sins of the other systems. The latest example is the appellation “crony” capitalism.  The proper term for companies using influence, connections, and campaign donations to get laws passed that stifle their competition is “corporatism.”  Using the coercive power of government to stifle your competition when you can’t win competitively through offering better value is not capitalism at all, though it has some capitalistic trappings (namely the privately-owned nature of the corporation).

The really ironic thing about the other “-isms?”  They need the productivity of capitalism.  A greedy socialist can’t “redistribute” wealth from the productive to the parasitic if there isn’t any wealth to start with.  He must decry capitalism even as he robs the capitalistic in order to buy votes from those he has bamboozled.

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Socialism Seems Free, but You WILL Pay for it!

By Mike Cronin

No doubt you’ve heard the word socialism being bandied about a lot lately. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is an avowed socialist. A recent poll shows that 36% of millenials favor socialism.  And whys shouldn’t they? Free education!  Free healthcare!  Subsidized housing, food, & utilities! Socialism sounds really good. But it isn’t.

It might help if we have a common understanding of what socialism really is.

Simply, socialism is a political/economic theory where all property is owned “by the people.” What could be better than a place where all property is shared and nothing is owned?  That’s the theory.  In practice, It results in the state asserting primacy in all aspects of life and individuals having few, if any, rights. It is a form of collectivism – which means the group, or collective, is prioritized over the individual. Bee hives, ant colonies, and human “communes” are collectives. Under any form of collectivism, the majority can do away with the rights (and often lives) of the minority (of which the individual is the most basic element).

Collectivism/socialism comes in various forms, such as communism, which the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics (USSR) subscribed to, and “Nationalsozialismus” (the German term for National SOCIALISM, from which the term “Nazi” is derived).  Some might argue that the Nazis were in fact fascist, not socialist.  Fascism was also the system of socialism that Mussolini oversaw in Italy. (The term fascism derives from the Latin term “fasces,” a bundle of sticks with an axe protruding from it. Fasces was the Roman symbol of power.)

Some political scientists argue that communism is on the political left, while fascism is on the right, as depicted in this graphic:

I argue that the only practical difference between communist variety of socialism practiced in Soviet Russia and the fascist-flavored socialism animating Nazi Germany and Italy was that the fascists gave lip service to the idea of private property rights – as long as the property was used at the direction of the state.   There were no private property rights at all in the Soviet Union.

Whether people have no property rights at all, or have the “right” to own property in service to the state, is a distinction without a difference. Both systems had charismatic, murderous dictators in charge. Both systems had secret police, concentration camps, and mass murders. Both systems failed to create wealth; they could only steal it or destroy it. There was no freedom in either system.

Thus, a more accurate depiction of communism and fascism on the right-left political model would be to put them both on the left under socialism, with freedom and capitalism on the right.  The diagram below is closer to the truth:

Consider that every country that has adopted any form of socialism has been degraded or destroyed in direct proportion to the degree of socialism it enacted. Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union. North Korea. Cuba. Venezuela.

China and Vietnam were once in the same boat, but both have attained some limited reversal from the crushing oppression the others experienced through adoption of limited free-market economic reforms. But make no mistake, the Chinese and Vietnamese people are not free.

Consider Karl Marx’s famous aphorism: “From each, according to his ability; to each according to his needs.” It sound so wonderful, but it glosses over the essential question: Who decides what your gifts and needs are? (Newsflash – it sure isn’t going to be you!) “From each, according to his ability” means that the state will extract every bit of use out of you that it can, and your desires are irrelevant.  “To each, according to his needs” means that the state, not you, will determine what you need, and you will be lucky to get it.

So how bad is socialism?  At it’s best, socialism creates resentment and dependency; at its worst the people living under socialist governments are slaves – the ones who survived mass murder.

 

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Government = Force

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action. - George Washington

By Mike Cronin

To commemorate President’s Day, let’s use the above quote, allegedly from George Washington, as the genesis of a thought experiment. What if we replace the word “government” with the word “force” and ask what it is properly used for?

Is force a moral way to protect yourself from violence initiated by others?  I say yes.  Therefore, by extension, using government to deter violent attack, or to retaliate for the same, is proper.  The policing, defense, and intelligence functions of government are legitimate for this reason.

Is it moral to enforce contractual agreements and hold fraudsters accountable?  Again, I say yes, and again, I say the criminal justice functions of government are legitimate for this purpose.

Is it moral to use force to entertain people?  I say no.  Government funding for the arts is immoral in this context, not to mention absurd.

Is it proper to use force to educate people?  Once again: it is the wrong tool for the job.

Is it moral to use force to prevent you neighbor from viewing material you believe to be objectionable?  I say no. By extension, it is improper to rely on government to tell us what we can and cannot view (unless that material is produced by violating the rights of others, as in the case of child pornography).

How about using force to provide people a retirement check, health insurance, unemployment compensation, or other “entitlements?”

Or using force to provide subsidies, corporate bailouts, tax “credits,” and to manipulate the economy?

I could go on, but I think you see where I am going with this. If it is wrong for an individual to initiate the use of force against his or her neighbor directly, then it is just as wrong to employ the coercive power of government to commit the same crime by proxy.

Force is not only immoral to use outside of the context of protection from violence, fraud, or other violations of our rights, it is also manifestly the wrong tool for most jobs.  Using force to educate, or entertain, or to invent and deliver entitlements, is like using a sledgehammer to wash windows. The most likely outcome will be glass shards on the floor.  Yet even if you manage to avoid  shattering the glass, you still won’t get the windows clean.

That is the reason the Founders wrote the Constitution: to restrict the forcefulness of government to only those very few functions where force is the proper response, and to prevent its absurdly destructive employment against us in every other facet of life.

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Putting Polls in their Place

By Mike Cronin

Now that election season is in full swing, we are subject to a constant stream of polls and polling results in the news. Many of these polls are legitimate attempts to gauge public opinion.  But some polls, and/or the results of some polls, are put to use to shape our opinions rather than discover them.  One example I heard recently alleged to be reporting opinions on who had little or no chance of winning the presidency in November.  The polling methods might have been legitimate, but the client who ordered the poll might have had an ulterior motive.  Here’s a possible scenario:

Candidate A, or an organization in favor of Candidate A, orders a legitimate poll from a reputable firm such as Gallup or Quinipiac to find out who people think have the worst chances of getting elected. The poll is taken and the results come back that people don’t think Candidates X, Y, or Z have much chance of getting elected in the fall.  Candidate A’s organization then trumpets these results loudly and often. Had the results been inconclusive, Candidate A’s organization wouldn’t have publicized the poll at all.

Knowing that we are all influenced to some degree or another by peer pressure, the results of the poll could sow discouragement among the supporters of Candidates X, Y, and Z, and even affect the candidates themselves, potentially hastening their departure from the race and reducing the competition against Candidate A.

There are dirtier tricks in the pantheon of polling practices. One such is to use the so-called “push-poll.” A push-poll is not really a poll at all in that it doesn’t seek to find out your opinion, but to change it or reinforce it. You might have received a piece of political junk mail that seems like a poll, but the questions will be highly “loaded” or biased.  Questions from such an artifact might read something like these examples:

“Candidate B wants seniors to lose their Medicare benefits. Do you think we should allow him to get his way?”

“The ABC project will pollute the local wetlands with 10x the current level of toxic substances.  Candidate B receives campaign donations from the company behind the project.  Don’t you think we need campaign finance reform?”

In both examples, the reader is first led to be outraged. The outrage is inherently tied to a candidate, then the respondent is manipulated to respond a certain way. The client of the poll wasn’t trying to find out people’s feelings on Medicare or campaign finance; rather, he or she was trying to sully the competition. A legitimate opinion poll will word the questions in as neutral a way as possible.  For instance, the questions above might be legitimized by rewording them in the following way:

“How do you feel about Medicare?

It should be maintained         Uncertain            It should be abolished”

“What is your opinion on campaign finance?

It needs to be completely reformed       It could use some reforms           It does not need any reforms”

So how can you peek behind the curtain of the polling game? Whenever you are asked to participate in a poll, or you hear polling results, consider these questions and/or look for trouble signals:

Who took the poll?  Was it a reputable polling firm?

Who commissioned the poll? What do they stand to gain or lose from the results?

Was the sample (the group of people taking the poll) drawn at random?  (If not, the poll will results will be biased, and therefore suspect.) Something to consider: most internet or call-in polls may seem to be sampling at random, but they are not. They are surveys of people who are already interested in the topic at hand! Most often, valid polls are accomplished via random digit dialing.

Was the sample size large enough?  (If the total population is, say, “likely voters,” which might be 75 million people, a sampling of ten people is not sufficient to gauge the opinion of the whole, but a sampling of 1000 or 10,000 might be. This is what statisticians get paid the big bucks to figure out.)

Are the questions biased or neutral?

Who is touting the results of the poll? Have they focused on the results of only one question that serves their ends, while ignoring the results of other questions on the same poll?

When you understand how polls can be used and misused, you increase your immunity to being manipulated in ignorance.

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10 Thoughts for 2016

By Mike Cronin

Instead of resolutions, I suggest these 10 thoughts for the New Year:

Regardless of your party preference or which side of the political spectrum you align with, remember that even the politicians you like are more concerned about getting elected (or re-elected) than they are about representing you or your interests. (props to Thomas Sowell)

Similarly, the mass media news outlets exist make profit.  They do so primarily by selling advertising air time. Keeping you hooked is the goal of their programming tactics: dramatic music, constant movement, urgent tones, “alerts,” scrolling updates, etc. None are necessary to impart information; they are hooks. Keeping you informed is less important than keeping you watching.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes popularized the idea that the Constitution is a “living document.” This notion suggests the founders meant for us to interpret their words in the context of our time, not their own.  In fact, the founders did recognize that times change and the Constitution must be adaptable to those changes.  They meant for us to be able to make those changes by the formal process of amending the Constitution.  Getting an amendment passed and ratified is very difficult – on purpose. But it is possible – that’s why there are currently 27 amendments.  It’s a good bet that any party, pressure group, or court that attempts to re-interpret the meaning of the founders words knows it could never see its agenda come to fruition though the amendment process. The Constitution is not a living document, but it is an amendable one!

Confiscatory taxation: When your neighbors and co-workers use the coercive power of government to steal money from you to pay for laws and programs you don’t want.

When you hear about waste in government spending, you are told about “pork” (e.g. ridiculous projects to study cow flatulence, install “modern art” to “beautify” some government facility, build arenas and bridges, or make payments to farmers not to grow food, etc.). Pork barrel spending is certainly wasteful, but I submit that when a politician says we need to cut waste, then offers pork projects as examples, he is attempting to distract us from the most egregious form of government waste: spending money we don’t have on entire government departments, agencies, bureaus, etc. that do not protect anyone’s rights (the only proper function of government) and thus have no legitimate reason to exist.

You cannot reason with a person who does not value logic. (Props to Sam Harris)

Now that women are allowed in every specialty in the armed forces, there have been calls to require women to register for the draft – in the name of equal rights and equal opportunity.  How about we discuss ending all draft registration and disbanding the Selective Service System instead?  The draft is a form of indentured servitude if not outright slavery. If equal rights are the motivation driving changes in military gender composition, then men should have the same right women currently enjoy: to not register for the draft and to not serve against their will!

One definition of a “license:” When the government takes away a bit of your freedom, then allows you to buy permission to do the thing you were once at liberty to do.

Presidential candidates will make all kinds of assertions and promises about what they will do for the economy or crime control or the environment – but, short of invasion or natural disaster, all he or she can legally do in those areas is make proposals, sign bills into law, and direct the executive branch. The president’s real power lies in foreign relations, not domestic ones.  This is why the Secretaries of State and Defense are more prominent than the Secretary of the Interior, for example.

Some people judge Congress by the number of laws it passes. This is absurd.  The more laws there are, the harder it becomes to be law-abiding, and the easier it becomes to inadvertently break the law.  Supposedly, ignorance of the law is not an excuse to break it – but no one can know all of the laws, because there are too many!

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When Everything is a Crisis, Nothing is a Crisis

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By Mike Cronin

Dear politicians, intellectuals, pressure-group leaders, and media mouths,

All day every day you bombard us with crisis after crisis. Drugs. Guns. War. Climate. Celebrity drama. International tensions. Rape culture. Income inequality. Racism. Sexism. Immigration. Political correctness. The list goes on ad-nauseam. Most are real issues that need reasoned efforts to solve or mitigate, but you spin them into crises, then you anoint yourselves as experts and saviors that can save us – if only we turn over our rights, our money, or our reason (or all three!) to you.

We understand that at some level you have to market and advertise your issue, your ideals, your narrative.  On the other hand, you need to understand that at some point we will succumb to crisis fatigue and stop caring about your cherry-picked and manicured emergencies.  We will become apathetic.  Most of you don’t want that; you want your pet cause to be solved or cured. But some of you do want an apathetic populace.  An apathetic populace is ripe for manipulation by a charismatic tyrant.

If you are one of the public figures I opened this letter to, and you genuinely want your problem solved, dial down the urgency settings on your rhetoric or you will defeat yourself!

If you are a tyrant in waiting:  know that your tactic is exposed.  You are not fooling anyone.

That is all.

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Some Thoughts on Mass Shootings

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By Mike Cronin

In my last post, I tried to moderate the gun debate by debunking the myths that 1.) Shootings and violence are on the rise; 2. The police can and must protect you; and 3). The 2nd Amendment does not protect an individual’s right keep and bear arms.

A sharp-eyed commenter pointed out that I was largely silent on the sub-issue of mass shootings, so I thought I’d have a go at trying to cut through some of the alarmism* emanating from the media and gauge how bad the problem really is. Let’s take a look:

According to Mass Shooting Tracker, there were 363 mass shootings in 2013, 339 in 2014, and 353 in 2015 as of Dec 6.  Mass Shooting Tracker doesn’t articulate their criteria for what exactly a mass shooting is, though they do state that their mission is “providing unbiased, raw statistics, all with verified sourcing to inform society of the number of Mass Shootings that occur in the United States each year, no matter the cause or intent of the toll of victims.”

Nearly one mass shooting per day sounds horrific, right?  But the folks at Pew research recently published an article that shows that gun homicides have been going down since the 90s.

But wait! In June of this year, President Obama recently started “that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.”

And this Wall Street Journal article screams that the US leads the world in mass shootings.

So what gives?  Gun homicide has been going down, yet mass shootings are an almost daily occurrence?

We certainly have gun violence and mass shooting in this country; there is no denying that.  But is the problem really a crisis spiraling out of control?  Are we really the worst place among developing nations, or have we run across a vast case of weasel-ese?

chluke “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

We are being fed a tangled web of facts and data woven to further an agenda by spinners adept at using truth to lie or mislead or to “shape a narrative.”

My own agenda is to try to help people understand the world through the use of reason and rationality.  I am biased in favor of freedom, individual rights and liberty, free markets, and capitalism.  I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.  Once I did that wearing a uniform, now I’m trying to do it in part with this blog.  To that end, when I cite references or statistics or other data, you can bet I tried to find sources or data that support my point…but I also will tell you that.

The leading adversaries in the gun control/gun rights debate do the same thing, except that they are much less likely to tell you their bias or agenda like I just did. The people who want more gun control, or even full confiscation, know that they are up against the 2nd Amendment.  They will use, or misuse, every statistical trick, fact, and rhetorical tactic in a way that makes gun violence in America seem as bad as possible.

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Conversely, there are people who would have us believe that the entire mass media is hell-bent on eradicating guns from America, or that Liberals just don’t get the concept that making something illegal won’t make it go away. They will also use, or misuse, sources and data to back up their positions.

Here are  a couple of tricks spin-meisters like to use:

Use absolute numbers vs rates to make a comparison between populations. The Wall Street Journal article does this.  It claims the US leads the world in mass shootings.  They are using absolute data to back that claim.  It is a fact that the US has more mass shootings than any other developed nation…but that is not the whole story. The US has more people and more guns than the rest of the developed countries, so of course we will have more mass shootings and more deaths, in absolute terms.  But do we have the highest death rate from mass shootings?  Nope.  We’re somewhere in the upper- middle. So which country is the worst? Would you believe it is statistically more likely that someone in Norway (?!) will die in a mass shooting than in any other developed country? That makes President Obama’s June assertion incorrect. Mass shootings do happen in some other developed countries with as much or more frequency per capita than in the US.

Omit context:  How many of the mass shootings in the US are justified self-defense (i.e. not a crime)?  We are not told.  How many are being committed by perpetrators with weapons that are already illegal to possess? We are not told. How many perpetrators were in the country illegally? How many were crazies off their meds who should not even be in public unsupervised? We are not told. How many happened at places where it was already illegal to have a gun at all (i.e. so-called “gun-free zones”)? We are not told. How many were attacks by terrorists? We are not told.  It is factual, but misleading, to merely count up incidents and report them without providing any context.

Another way to omit context: Make a crisis out of some aspect of a problem that supports your point, while ignoring or evading that the larger problem is within normal bounds. Mass shootings are but a subset of shootings, which are but a subset of violence, which is but a subset of causes of death.

Is there some other cause of death that is more of a problem than mass shootings? If so, why isn’t it getting as much attention?

In fact, there are several. The top ten causes are various diseases, accidents, and suicide. The homicide rate is roughly only half the suicide rate. Sadly, Heart attacks, cancer, accidents, diabetes, and suicide are not very newsworthy in and of themselves, but a killing spree is high drama.

So is the mass shooting problem as bad as we are led to believe? I’ve given you a peek behind the curtain, but you’ll have to decide that for yourself.

*Here is a mild example of the kind of alarmism I am referring to:  The Mass Shooting Tracker data listed above clearly indicate there are very nearly enough mass shootings (according to their unstated definition of mass shooting) to equal one per day over the last three years.  A PBS article citing this very same source ran with the headline “More than one mass shooting happens per day in the U.S., data shows.” Call me guilty of splitting hairs, but claiming a source indicates “more than one per day” when the data show “nearly one per day” is either sloppy exaggeration, ignorance of the length of a year, or irresponsible sensationalism.

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Moderating the Chain-Reaction Gun Debate

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By Mike Cronin

The recent shootings in Paris, San Bernardino, and Colorado Springs have brought out the usual heated debate over guns and gun control.  Perhaps we can moderate the chain-reaction with a bit of reason by dispelling a few myths:

Myth: Gun violence is exploding in America. Mass shootings are up, and more people than ever are being killed by guns.

Fact 1: Not true. It’s very hard to find source material on this issue that is reasonably free from bias – either liberal or conservative.  The least-biased source I found, Pew Research, shows that “National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data.”

Fact 2: Even if we set aside any policy or philosophical agenda on the part of the media, consider that news organization select stories based on several factors of “newsworthiness.”  “Mass shootings” fit several of these criteria.  They are sensational stories. It is good business to hype sensational stories; ergo killing sprees get lots of coverage…and perpetuate a sense of dread or crisis.   It’s just not as sexy to report that “no one was shot today” when an armed citizen deterred a gunman from committing a violent act.

Myth: Why do you need a gun when you can just call the police?

Fact: The average number of police officers in cities with 50,000 or more residents is 17 cops per 10,000 people.  When you account for shift work, days off, and detectives, supervisors, and special teams (like SWAT), one quarter or less of those 17 will be uniform-wearing officers “on the street” available to respond at any given time.  You might be able to call the police, but it’s very unlikely they will arrive in time to get between you and whatever or whoever is threatening you.

Myth: The police have to protect me.

Fact: No they don’t.  They are obligated to protect society as a whole via the deterrent value of investigating crimes and arresting criminals, not protecting you as an individual.  Don’t take my word for it; the Supreme Court has maintained this position over several cases dating to at least 1981, including Castle Rock v. Gonzales and Warren v. District of Columbia.

Myth: The Second Amendment was about arming the militia, not the average citizen.

Fact:  The Supreme Court ruled in D.C. v. Heller that the 2nd Amendment affirms the individual right to keep and bear arms.  The founders themselves made clear in their writings independent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights that the people must not be prevented from owning and bearing firearms. Consider these few examples from some of the most prominent founders:

“Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences  (sic) and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.” -George Washington

“The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside … Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.” -Thomas Paine

“The great object is that every man be armed.” and “Everyone who is able may have a gun.” -Patrick Henry

“Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not.” -Thomas Jefferson

“The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that … it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; … ” –Thomas Jefferson

“The best we can help for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.” -Alexander Hamilton

The bottom line: 1. Gun violence, though dreadful, is not as bad as you are lead to believe. 2. You are responsible for your own self-defense, not the police!  3. The right of the individual to own a firearm is absolutely what the founders intended to protect, and what the Supreme Court has upheld, in the 2nd Amendment.

Disagree?  let’s hear it!

Posted on by mikecronin2013

Three Random Thoughts

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By Mike Cronin

I have been holding my criticism of Common Core until I could see for myself how it is being applied to my own children’s education.  It isn’t all that special.  My son is learning multiplication.  He recently asked for my help.  The problem he was working on required him to describe various tools he could use to solve it, such as grids, counters, and number lines.  One tool conspicuously missing from the “kit:” multiplication tables!  How “common” can Common Core be if it eschews the near-universal “tools” taught to previous generations?

The Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of gay marriage, essentially granting the right to homosexuals nationwide to wed and enjoy the same legal advantages as heterosexuals, such as designating the spouse as beneficiary for insurance.  In my opinion, homosexuals were seeking the wrong remedy to the wrong injury.  The injury is that for far too long, government has held sway over who could be married to whom, in direct contravention of the concepts of free association and individual rights. It would have been much more proper to argue that the remedy would be for government, at any level, to exercise no purview over the relationships of competent, consenting adults, except in terms of contract enforcement. The quest for nationally-legalized gay marriage was successful…at reinforcing the assumption of a power by the government it was not endowed to by the Constitution.

I recently heard an atheist offer a quip to the effect that if  Creationism (AKA Intelligent Design, or I.D.) becomes a required “theory” to be taught in public school, Evolution should then be a required subject to be preached in church.  I thought that was a neat bit of rhetorical art.  However, as with gay marriage, it would be the wrong remedy for the wrong injury.  The problem isn’t that Creationism/I.D. are religious beliefs disguised as scientific theory, and would therefor constitute a violation of the separation of church and state.  The problem is that we have massive federal interference and oversight (disguised as “support”) for public schools, which ought to be solely the domain of the states. (This may come as a surprise, but there is no power enumerated in the Constitution that gives the federal government any purview over education. The word “education” does not even appear in the Constitution proper.)  Remission of federal control over education would not eliminate the argument over separation of church and state, or of Evolution vs. Creationism/I.D. But it would localize the problem. The states, counties, and school districts would be freer to experiment with curriculum design, and if a family objected to the local curriculum, whether it included Creationism/I.D. or not, they would have more power to influence change or a greater likelihood of finding a curriculum to their liking in a different school system.  And they might have a little more money in their pockets.

Disagree with my reasoning?  Let’s hear it!