Tag: fee

FEE: Why Adam Smith Said ‘Virtue Is More to Be Feared Than Vice’FEE:

Today’s article comes from the Foundation for Economic Education, Why Adam Smith Said ‘Virtue Is More to Be Feared Than Vice’. Those who seek to impose their version of virtue on others, will do so viciously and unconstrained by their conscience, because they believe they are morally correct.

The use of force in society is one of the most important issues governments must address. Unfortunately, they often get it wrong—and Smith understood why.

ally, a coworker, walked into my office one day and announced that he’d discovered the answer to the world’s problems. And it was all so simple. People just needed to act with wisdom. If everyone acted with wisdom, then crime, poverty, and war would disappear. I agreed and asked how he would achieve this miracle. I expected some elaborate plan, but it turned out that that “acting with wisdom” was the sum total of Wally’s insight. In response to every question, he only repeated that people should act with wisdom.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a world-famous astrophysicist, but his plan for solving the world’s problems is neither more scientific nor less threadbare than Wally’s. Tyson proposes the world of “Rationalia,” a virtual utopia in which everyone will act with reason.

Socialists have a similar solution to the world’s problems. In their utopia, people will all act, not with wisdom or reason, but with altruism. Unlike either Wally or Tyson, though, they have proposed various plans for bringing this about—all of which boil down to some variation of: (1) burn it all down and a perfect world will spontaneously arise from society’s ashes, (2) force everyone to act benevolently until so acting becomes natural, or (3) create a fair and equal society in which material goods are distributed uniformly, thus eliminating all greed and envy and, along with them, any motivation for violence and crime.

Each socialist scheme relies on force, or the threat of force, wielded by omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent dictators. But could such a society, which necessarily sacrifices justice for altruism, survive?

A reading of Adam Smith’s book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, suggests not.

Smith’s concept of justice was based on securing people from injury by others. That is, protecting people from assaults on their persons, property, and agreements. To Smith, acting justly consisted largely of refraining from injuring others. He believed that a society’s fundamental reason for existence was to provide this level of justice. Further, he argued, any society that fails in this basic duty will itself fail. In his book, Smith wrote: “Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it.”

Unfortunately, securing the peace often requires force. But using force is just when it is done to oppose injustice—that is, when it is used in response to the initiation of force. While governments cannot hope to establish perfect justice, they can provide sufficient security to allow people to live their lives and to flourish.

What no government is competent to do, however, is to ensure that its citizens act wisely, rationally, or altruistically. Doing so would require using force—not to prevent people from harming others, but to compel them to behave in ways that the government determines to be proper. Force so employed leads to socially destructive injustice.

First, someone’s idea of what is altruistic (or wise or rational) must be imposed on everyone. A recent example is Biden’s executive order forgiving hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student loans. Was his action altruistic? It appears so if our focus is fixed on only the students who benefit from the President’s order. It seems less so if we broaden our focus and our time horizon to include those who must pay for the loans and those who will be hurt in the future by the perverse incentives that his order will create. Universities, for example, will be emboldened to hike tuition and even more students will borrow money that they are unlikely to be able to repay.

In short, whatever policy is chosen in the name of morality, some will see it as immoral, and they will bitterly resent being forced to support it.

Second, a policy that the central authority deems altruistic must be implemented and paid for by people who may oppose it or the way it is implemented. They must be compelled—by force if necessary—to comply with the policy and they must be prevented from subverting it. If “subversion” is construed to include “fomenting social discord” by public criticism, then the central authority may limit free speech and freedom of the press. If pastors question the policy’s morality, the central authority might also limit religious freedoms.

Third, the policy may produce unintended consequences that create more injustices. How will the central authority respond? Will it suppress knowledge of the consequences to prevent discord and, potentially, loss of its legitimacy or power? Will it respond with another layer of coercive policies and, if so, how will it enforce them and what will it do if more unintended consequences result?

Finally, as Smith observed, “Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.” Those attempting to impose virtue—or, at least, their idea of it—tend to deal viciously with dissidents who, because they oppose “virtue,” are, by definition, evil.

“Hell,” Michael Novak once said, “is what happens when you pursue heaven-on-earth.”

Force used to prevent or redress assaults on persons and property is legitimate; force used to coerce “benevolence” is not. Force is, ultimately, the only hammer in a government’s toolkit and it should be used only on what is achievable and, even then, only sparingly.

Governments can reasonably aspire to deliver Adam Smith’s formula for prosperity: “Peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” In attempting to provide what it cannot, government will destroy its ability to provide what it can.

FEE: Roger Ver on Cryptocurrency, Human Liberty, and Economic Education

The Foundation for Economic Education interviews bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver on Cryptocurrency, Human Liberty, and Economic Education.

It can help us have freer markets than we have ever had before and to do this faster than lobbying the government for political change. People shouldn’t need a social security number, an ID, and a bank account in order to participate in the economy, and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Cash that are fast, cheap, and reliable can make that possible.

Hal Finney, who is the first person we know of other than Satoshi Nakamoto to run the Bitcoin code, wrote in an email back in the 90s that we can’t just fade into cyberspace and expect technology alone to give us freedom.

“I believe we will have the kind of society that most people want. If we want freedom and privacy, we must persuade others that these are worth having. There are no shortcuts. Withdrawing into technology is like pulling the blankets over your head. It feels good for a while, until reality catches up.”

For all the good that cryptocurrency like Bitcoin Cash can do, it isn’t enough. Bitcoin won’t stop tax collectors showing up at your door demanding 30% of your income and it won’t stop the state putting people in cages for victimless crimes. At least it can’t do it alone. We stop those by winning the battle of ideas too and making people care about being free.

I used to think it was the government and regulators who would try to make it difficult for people to use it, and that is still a threat, but the people in cryptocurrency are also a threat. We’ve seen over and over just how hard it is to scale a blockchain project so that it can actually be used by people around the world. A lot of people have their own ideas about what Bitcoin should be, and these are totally different than what Satoshi Nakamoto wanted or what got so many people like me excited about Bitcoin to begin with. So we see today projects like Bitcoin and Ethereum that are experiencing unsustainable transaction fee levels that are going to push people onto custodial services or keep them out of the cryptocurrency economy altogether.

That’s the big threat, I think—that we never get a project that is actually allowed to grow without being rate limited by the people involved. Cryptocurrency can’t help people be more free if they can’t use it. Fortunately, Bitcoin Cash is one of the few projects working towards solving that, and anyone in the world can send any amount of money for less than a penny.

I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for reading people like Mises, Rothbard, and Bastiat. If you’re a student today who hasn’t read them, chances are you think economics is all about boring numbers and figures, but that’s not it at all. It’s really about understanding individual human action in a world of scarcity, opportunity cost, and incentives. You need that in business, investing, in your career, in anything you might want to do.

Politically, I saw this quote by Isaac Morehouse, who has written a lot of good stuff for FEE.org, which I loved: “good intentions combined with no understanding how an economy works leads to hell on earth.” I don’t think I can put it better.

I read The Freeman in high school and it helped get me started down a path that led to reading people like Mises, Rothbard, Bastiat, and Hazlitt. People are not going to get any of this material in school today, and organizations like FEE are some of the only places that young people can go to get quality introductions and instructions to these thinkers and ideas.

FEE is consistent. One of the things I think about when I support people, causes, and organizations like FEE is whether or not they can be relied upon to continue their work with as much energy and principle as they had when they first caught my eye. Sadly this is not always true. I’ve built several businesses and invested in many more and I can’t tell you how hard it is to build and maintain a team of people who are committed to the vision. I think this is even harder to do in the liberty space where there is so much pressure to compromise and make tradeoffs that serve the organization and the people in it, but water down the message and its impact. In the nearly three decades I’ve been a fan of FEE, I haven’t seen that. You can have a lot of trust in FEE that your investment is going to be used to advance freedom today and tomorrow.

FEE: The Mobbing of a Portland Bookstore Reminds Us Why Fahrenheit 451 Was Written

A couple of months ago we remarked on how big tech internet censorship of conservative voices was the liberal equivalent of book burning. Now mobs in Portland have taken a big step closer to actual book burning, demanding that Portland’s premier bookstore – Powells – stop selling a book critical of leftist hate/terrorist group Antifa. Read about it in the Foundation for Economic Education’s article The Mobbing of a Portland Bookstore Reminds Us Why Fahrenheit 451 Was Written.

or three days and counting, protesters in Portland, Oregon have gathered at a local bookstore to demand that it stop selling a new book critical of Antifa.

“Far-left activists surrounded Powell’s Books in Portland on Monday and demanded the store stop selling Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, a book about antifa written by Andy Ngo,” Reason’s Robby Soave reports. “The protests forced the store to close early.”

Ngo, the editor-at-large of The Post Millennial, a Canadian conservative news site, has documented the activities of Antifa, a leftist group that advocates violence in the name of fighting fascism. The journalist was beaten by Antifa activists at a rally in 2019, leaving him with a serious brain injury.

Left-wing activists say that because Ngo documents and criticizes the activities of Antifa, which claims to simply be “anti-fascist,” he is therefore a fascist. Saying his work is too dangerous to be allowed to be aired, Antifa members have called for Ngo to be banned from social media. Now they are trying to get his book banned from bookstores.

“We have to show up every day until they stop selling that f—king book,” one activist said. She claimed it was like “stopping the historical publication of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf.'”

So far, the bookstore has not fully submitted to the protesters’ demands.

“This book will not be on our store shelves, and we will not promote it,” the store announced. “That said, it will remain in our online catalogue. We carry books that we find anywhere from simply distasteful or badly written, to execrable, as well as those that we treasure. We believe it is the work of bookselling to do so.”

“There are books in our stores and online inventory that contain ideas that run counter to our company’s and our employees’ values of safety, equality, and justice,” the explanation continued. “While we understand that our decision to carry such books upsets some customers and staff members, we do not want to create an echo chamber of preapproved voices and ideas. It is not our mission or inclination to decide to whom our customers should listen.”

The protests against the book have only generated more media buzz and attention to it, inadvertently—and rather ironically—helping it sell more copies.

Of course, the impulse to censor is understandable. We all think we know what is truly right, and we all believe that we’re the good guys. But the mob’s decision to engage in the modern-day equivalent of book-burning is nonetheless worth questioning.

In the novel Fahrenheit 451, author Ray Bradbury depicted a world in which firemen do not put out fires; they ignite them. In Bradury’s dystopian world, books have been outlawed, and it is the fire department’s job to go around burning them, with the eventual goal of eliminating books entirely from society. That way, the authorities reason, they can control peoples’ access to information. And by controlling what information people may access, they can control public opinion.

“You can’t build a house without nails and wood,” one character explains. “If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood.”

“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one,” the same character later says in defense of the society’s book-burning efforts. “Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it.”

“Now do you see why books are hated and feared?” another one of Bradbury’s characters asks. “They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless.”

How does Bradbury’s message relate to Antifa’s book-banning campaign? Members of Antifa don’t generally come across as particularly “comfortable.” Yet tyrannical impulses can be found in insurgencies as well as in “the establishment.”

Like Bradbury’s “firemen,” Antifa is trying to limit the sharing of ideas in order to avoid criticism and prevent social outcomes they dislike. Rather than grapple with the criticisms Ngo makes of Antifa on their merits, they resort to deplatforming. They don’t seek to engage but to erase.

Of course, maybe critics are right that Ngo’s arguments about Antifa are weak or his facts are wrong. I don’t have any reason to believe so, but then again, I have yet to read the book.

However, we won’t ever get to the bottom of this debate by silencing one side of it. Indeed, the very fact that one side seeks to ban its opponents’ arguments suggests that, like the oppressors in Bradbury’s fictional society, they fear that their stance wouldn’t hold up to full public scrutiny.

Of course, history’s most infamous book burners were the Nazis, who also sought to “win the debate” through censorship. Antifa’s “anti-fascist” credentials are not helped by adopting typically fascist tactics.

Silencing speech cripples the contest of ideas that leads a free society toward truth over time. So censorship is worth fighting against, no matter how large the mob outside the bookstore grows.

FEE: Minimum Wage Hikes Kick in Across the Country—at the Worst Possible Time for Small Businesses

From the Foundation for Economic Education comes Minimum Wage Hikes Kick in Across the Country—at the Worst Possible Time for Small Businesses. Washington state’s minimum wage rose $0.19 per hour this year. Several states’ wage rose a full dollar, and New Mexico’s minimum wage rose $1.50/hr.

2020 was one of the worst years in modern American history for small businesses. And now, thanks to a wave of minimum wage legislation that kicked in on January 1, things are about to get even worse.

Make no mistake: small business owners are already seriously hurting.

When state and local governments responded to the outbreak of COVID-19 in the spring with harsh lockdowns and restrictions, businesses were forced to shutter. Many in the restaurant and hospitality industry remain shut down many months later, or were briefly allowed to reopen then shut down again this fall. Meanwhile, much of the taxpayer-financed aid meant to help these businesses was instead captured by big corporations or lost to fraud and waste.

To add insult to injury, thousands of small businesses were vandalized and looted during the summer unrest after the death of George Floyd. (No, insurance doesn’t eliminate the harm).

At least 100,000 small businesses that were forced to close in 2020 will not reopen, according to Yelp. In a recent survey, almost 60 percent of small business owners said that they don’t expect their enterprise to survive through June 2021.

Many of these same small businesses teetering on the brink of collapse are about to get slapped in the face with surging labor costs. A total of 20 states had minimum wage hikes take effect this month as part of scheduled ramp-ups.

“New Mexico will see the largest jump, adding $1.50 to its hourly minimum and bringing it up to $10.50,” the Hill reports. “Arkansas, California, Illinois and New Jersey will each increase their minimum wages by $1.”

Additionally, many localities have enacted area-specific minimum wage hikes. For example, Flagstaff, Arizona just raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour while Belmont, California just upped its rate to $15.90 an hour.

These might not sound like massive hikes in absolute terms, but you have to think of it like this. Payroll is often one of the largest expenses small businesses have—and it may have just arbitrarily spiked by 5 to 15 percent.

The timing here could not be worse.

“A dramatic increase in the minimum wage even in good economic times has been shown to be harmful,” Employment Policy Institute Managing Director Michael Saltsman said. “In the current climate, for many employers it could be the final nail in the coffin.”

And employees will suffer perhaps just as much as employers. Even though they’re ostensibly meant to uplift workers, increases in the minimum wage always and inevitably hurt more than they help.

Why? A wage is important for the living standards of the worker, but that isn’t its only important aspect. A wage is a price. Prices are essential for order in an economy, so price controls throw markets into chaos.

“By the simplest and most basic economics, a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when prices are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market,” famed free-market economist Thomas Sowell explained in his book Basic Economics. “The result is a surplus, whether the price that is set artificially high is that of farm produce or labor.”

“Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount— and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed,” Sowell writes. “Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they either lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force.”

Thus, as free-market economist Murray Rothbard put it, the minimum wage amounts to outlawing jobs:

“In truth, there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory unemployment, period. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means, plainly and simply, that a large number of free and voluntary wage contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of unemployment. Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.”

So, it’s no surprise that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that a national $15 minimum wage would destroy up to 3.7 million jobs. Of course, these hikes aren’t nationwide, and many aren’t quite up to $15 yet. Nonetheless, struggling small businesses already have so little wiggle room in their budgets and are on the brink of collapse. Thus the negative effect minimum wage hikes have on local economies will be severe.

Of course, there’s little doubt that the legislators who enacted these pre-planned minimum wage hikes hoped to help workers, not put them out of work amid an economic crisis. But the laws of basic economics are unmoved by compassionate hand-wringing—and good intentions never guarantee good results.

FEE: Why Seattle’s Proposed ‘Poverty Excuse’ for Crimes Would Destroy the City’s Economy

Why Seattle’s Proposed ‘Poverty Excuse’ for Crimes Would Destroy the City’s Economy is published by the Foundation for Economic Education.

Matthew Humphrey recently lost $4,000 worth of goods in a theft of his Seattle barbershop. Under a new proposal the Seattle City Council is considering this month, what happened to him wouldn’t even be a crime—if the thieves claimed they were driven by poverty, that is.

“I think it’s insane,” the victimized barber told a local news outlet. “It’s one of these well-intended concepts (of) we want to take care of people that can’t take care of themselves. But what you are really doing is hurting other people.”

Up for debate is a reform proposed by Seattle City Councilmember Lisa Herbold. For up to 100 different misdemeanor crimes, including theft, harassment, shoplifting, trespassing, and more, an individual could be excused if he or she claims poverty was their motive.

“In a situation where you took that sandwich because you were hungry and you were trying to meet your basic need of satisfying your hunger; we as the community will know that we should not punish that,” King County Director of Public Defense Anita Khandelwal said of the proposal, which she helped craft. “That conduct is excused.”

The intent of the proposal is to avoid punishing desperate people just trying to survive. But the provision exempts not only stealing food or similar necessities, but stealing anything—if you claim the money gained from its sale would be used for essentials.

First and foremost, this policy would obviously incentivize more crime and more theft.

It would basically give anyone with a good sob story a green light to violate property rights at will. In doing so, it would condemn Seattle to economic decline.This policy would basically give anyone with a good sob story a green light to violate property rights at will.

In a free market with secure property rights, people can engage in mutually-beneficial commerce. In working to earn a profit, they will create employment opportunities and provide others with the goods and services they need. Businesses can invest and communities can grow.

Without secure property rights, none of this is possible.

Think about it using Humphrey, the aforementioned barber, as an example. As a small business owner, he employs people in his Seattle neighborhood. They go out and spend their money elsewhere around town. Meanwhile, locals can get haircuts they want at a price that’s worth it to them (otherwise, he’d be out of business with no one willing to pay).

Yet if the Seattle proposal became law, Humphrey and thousands of other small business owners would likely have to shut down.

“It’s a little upside-down world,” he said. “The end result is small companies like mine have to close their doors because they can’t afford to be broken in [to] all the time.”

You certainly can’t blame him. There’s no way any small business owner could possibly operate when anyone who is poor or homeless—or claims to be—is able to rob their store and get away with it. Survival, let alone profitability, is impossible amid such unpredictability and lawlessness.

And so, while perhaps some homeless or poor people might benefit from lawless looting in the very short-term, this reform would almost certainly destabilize and erode the city’s economy and incentivize crime. If businesses cannot operate, jobs will not exist, wages will not be offered, taxes will not be paid, and, in short order, crime and poverty will only increase.If businesses cannot operate, jobs will not exist, wages will not be offered, taxes will not be paid, and, in short order, crime and poverty will only increase.

This is why free-market economist Thomas Sowell once said that property rights “belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.”

None of this is conjecture. The strength of property rights in a nation (and it’s certainly true for a city as well) closely correlates with its average per-person income.

Source: Alexander Hammond on FEE.org

So, the takeaway here is clear.

Progressive Seattle officials might have the best of intentions behind their proposal to create a hardship exemption to property crimes. But, if successful, their naïve efforts would undermine the rule of law and property rights necessary for Seattle’s economy to survive.

FEE: Gym Owners Who Racked Up $1.2 Million in Fines for Defying Lockdowns Go Viral

From the Foundation for Economic Education, Gym Owners Who Racked Up $1.2 Million in Fines for Defying Lockdowns Go Viral

Nearly 100,000 US businesses on Yelp failed to survive the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing government lockdowns. Ian Smith, the co-owner of Atilis Gym, was determined not to be one of them.

The New Jersey entrepreneur has defied Gov. Phil Murphy’s lockdown orders for months now. On a typical day hundreds of people go to the gym to exercise, and Smith estimates 84,000 people have worked out at the facility since the state resumed its lockdown in May.

For gym patrons, Smith’s lockdown defiance has brought benefits. They get to keep body, mind, and soul fit in what has been a stressful and strange year, and Smith claims not a single COVID-19 case has been traced to his facility.

For Smith and co-owner Frank Trumbetti, however, the decision has had consequences.

“Governor Murphy has thrown everything he possibly could to shut us down. He has arrested my partner and I, given us over 60 citations, some of them criminal. He fines us $15,497.76 per day for every day we’re in operation,” Smith recently told Fox News. “Our fines are totaling over $1.2 million, but every single day, Frank and I open our gym.”

The prospect of facing more than a million dollars in fines and criminal charges is enough to cow most business owners into compliance. Not Smith.

Following his interview with Fox, he posted a short video clip to Twitter showing people working out in his facility and had a simple message for Governor Murphy: “No Science. No Shutdown.”

The clip has already been viewed more than 7.7 million times on Twitter alone as of Monday morning.

Smith is hardly the only business owner to defy lockdown orders. As I wrote before Thanksgiving, Americans of all stripes—business owners, religious observers, and even political officials—are embracing the tradition of civil disobedience and peaceful resistance to lockdowns that have been shown to be largely ineffective at slowing transmission of the virus.

From city officials in Beverly Hills, to restaurants in Kentucky, to gym owners in Buffalo, New York, Americans have begun to stand up to lockdown orders that have ravaged small businesses and caused the first rise in extreme global poverty in decades.

The pandemic has been one of the most trying and terrible chapters in American history. More than 300,000 Americans have died of or with the virus, according to official statistics, and attempts to mitigate the spread of the virus have resulted in widespread economic destruction and mental health deterioration.

But a silver lining is that Ameircans are witnessing a renaissance of civil disobedience against government overreach. From seatbelt laws, to compulsory schooling, to smoking bans on a private property and beyond, in recent decades Americans have obediently acquiesced to laws that have violated individual freedom in the pursuit of an alleged collective good.

The lockdowns, however, have reminded Americans of the true nature of government.

“The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends,” the late economist Walter Williams once observed.

By complying with laws that seem reasonable in the pursuit of a common good, Americans had largely forgotten that government is an evil—a necessary one, perhaps, but one that should be limited and shackled at every turn to prevent it from devolving into tyranny.

This is precisely why the American founders created a fractured system of government that decentralized power and was fortified with numerous checks and balances.

“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia.

As strange as it may sound to many today, the raison d’être of government isn’t to create “a better world,” but the protection of liberty. Because it’s only through the protection of liberty that a better world will be created.

To be sure, the coronavirus is a serious and deadly threat. But it’s one individuals must manage, not central planners.

“Substituting democratic decision making for what should be private decision-making is nothing less than tyranny dressed up,” Williams once said.

Depriving healthy individuals of the ability to work or do commerce is tyranny—even if it’s wearing a dress.

Ian Smith sees that, and his defiance against Murphy—whose clumsy attempts to slow the virus have only resulted in New Jersey having the highest COVID-19 mortality rate in America—is an act of heroism.

Hopefully his act of civil disobedience will inspire others to remember man’s true nature and natural rights.

“I was not born to be forced,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, the American poet, abolitionist, and essayist. “I will breathe after my own fashion.”

FEE: Would AOC Blacklist 73 Million Americans?

The Foundation for Economic Education discusses how people are losing their jobs over a lack of “proper” political orthodoxy – Would AOC Blacklist 73 Million Americans?

Should a qualified employee’s political views determine whether he gets—or keeps—a job? For a growing number of Americans, they already do. As I wrote in an article published recently at American Greatness:

[Last month] a Pennsylvania police chief was forced to retire by his “progressive mayor” after 26 years on the job. His offense? The chief’s wife posted a Facebook message supporting President Donald Trump.

Lancaster Police Chief Jarrad Berkihiser might be the latest victim of cancel culture, but he won’t be the last.

The article was written before the 2020 election. Since then the female African-American police chief of Portsmouth, Virginia, lost her job. The town’s progressive leadership fired Angela Greene after she pressed charges against rioters who decapitated and pulled down a Confederate statue, striking a middle-aged black man in the head. The injury left the man temporarily comatose, caused him to flatline twice as his brain swelled dangerously, and required months of therapy to teach him to walk and talk again. City officials fired Greene on Monday morning, a little more than two months after placing her on paid leave. She said she plans to sue.

Greene will have company in the unemployment line, and not merely because of another round of proposed COVID-19 lockdowns or impending minimum wage hikes. A number of political figures have in effect declared a Bush Doctrine against the Trump administration: They will make no distinction between the 45th president and those who “enable” him. For instance, former Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Robert Reich proposed a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to discover the names of anyone who helped “enable” the Trump administration.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted support of the Trump Accountability Project, an effort to blacklist “Trump sycophants” to stifle their employment prospects. (After the blacklist backlash, TAP announced last Thursday that “this project will no longer be active.”)

“Employers considering them should know there are consequences for hiring anyone who helped Trump attack American values,” said former Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan, threatening not only Republicans but those who hire Republicans.

Depending on how broadly one wants to define “helped,” this description could encompass 73 million Americans. It could go well beyond Trump administration alumni to include anyone insufficiently supportive of the Great Awokening, and perhaps the whole point is to instill the maximum level of fear in the greatest number of political apostates.

This is alarming. Americans of all political backgrounds should seek to reverse this lamentable trend for several reasons.

First, threatening to lock someone out of “polite society” over run-of-the-mill political differences normalizes discrimination. While some find it more acceptable to discriminate against people based on their beliefs rather than immutable factors such as ethnicity, sex, or gender identity, legitimizing employment bias against any group opens the possibility of bias against every group. Worse, researchers have found that Americans already indulge political animosity “to a degree that exceeds discrimination based on race.”

Second, employment bias denies people the opportunity to share their God-given gifts and talents with others. It deprives their families of an adequate livelihood, entirely out of spite.

But discrimination does not simply hurt those who are discriminated against. It also violates the bigot’s self-interest. Viewpoint discrimination in the workplace denies a firm the most productive talent on the basis of often-irrational biases. That lowers the office’s efficiency, productivity, and ingenuity.

Two researchers, Shanto Iyengar and Sean Westwood, bore this out by conducting an experiment that allowed participants to award scholarships to either the most qualified applicant or a student who shared the same political views. When it came to a time for choosing, they wrote, “partisanship simply trumped academic excellence.” Discriminating against the best and the brightest leaves bigoted firms competing for second place.

Politically prejudiced hiring also harms businesses in another way. One source summarized the late economist Gary S. Becker’s groundbreaking work on the economics of discrimination this way:

Suppose that an employer does not want to employ members of a particular group even though these workers are as productive as any others. If the firm has to pay all workers the same wage it will simply not employ members of the disadvantaged group. However, if it is possible to pay these workers less than those from other groups the firm then faces a trade-off: it can employ members of the disadvantaged group at lower wages and thus increase its profitability, or it can discriminate and employ only workers from the high wage group even though this will mean lower profits. Discrimination in the latter case therefore imposes a cost on the firm.

Finally, if the neo-McCarthyites really believe that President Trump and his supporters are revolutionaries, the last thing they should want is for this group to find itself unemployable, aggrieved, and awash in free time. If they honestly think that job losses make people “cling to guns or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them,” it would behoove them to see their political enemies busy themselves punching time clocks, creating goods and services, and entangling themselves in the joys of family life. One can only speculate how better employment prospects might have thwarted previous revolutions. What if Adolf Hitler had been a better artist? What if Fidel Castro had been a better baseball player?

For economic as well as philosophical and moral reasons, we should oppose viewpoint discrimination in secular education and employment. As I wrote at American Greatness:

We must stand up for Jarrad Berkihiser. We must demand our right to offend and be offended. We must insist on being judged on the content of our character, not the color of our skin.

Among those rights is the right to be judged on our performance, not our political orthodoxy.

FEE: 5 Things I Learned Debating the Prof Calling for Ban on Homeschooling

Kerry McDonald of the Future of Economic Education recently debated (video through link) Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet who had called for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling. In 5 Things I Learned Debating the Harvard Prof Who Called for a “Presumptive Ban” on Homeschooling she discusses her takeaways from the debate.

On Monday, I debated the Harvard professor who proposes a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling. Thousands of viewers tuned in to watch the live, online discussion hosted by the Cato Institute. With 1,000 submitted audience questions, the 90-minute webinar only scratched the surface of the issue about who is presumed to know what is best for children: parents or the state. Here is the replay link in case you missed it.

Last week, I outlined much of my argument against Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet that I incorporated into our debate, but here are five takeaways from Monday’s discussion:

While this event was framed as a discussion about homeschooling, including whether and how to regulate the practice, it is clear that homeschooling is just a strawman. The real issue focuses on the role of government in people’s lives, and in particular in the lives of families and children. In her 80-page Arizona Law Review article that sparked this controversy, Professor Bartholet makes it clear that she is seeking a reinterpretation of the US Constitution, which she calls “outdated and inadequate,” to move from its existing focus on negative rights, or individuals being free from state intervention, to positive rights where the state takes a much more active role in citizens’ lives.

During Monday’s discussion, Professor Bartholet explained that “some parents can’t be trusted to not abuse and neglect their children,” and that is why “kids are going to be way better off if both parent and state are involved.” She said her argument focuses on “the state having the right to assert the rights of the child to both education and protection.” Finally, Professor Bartholet said that it’s important to “have the state have some say in protecting children and in trying to raise them so that the children have a decent chance at a future and also are likely to participate in some positive, meaningful ways in the larger society.”

It’s true that the state has a role in protecting children from harm, but does it really have a role in “trying to raise them”? And if the state does have a role in raising children to be competent adults, then the fact that two-thirds of US schoolchildren are not reading proficiently, and more than three-quarters are not proficient in civics, should cause us to be skeptical about the state’s ability to ensure competence.

I made the point on Monday that we already have an established government system to protect children from abuse and neglect. The mission of Child Protective Services (CPS) is to investigate suspected child abuse and punish perpetrators. CPS is plagued with problems and must be dramatically reformed, but the key is to improve the current government system meant to protect children rather than singling out homeschoolers for additional regulation and government oversight. This is particularly true when there is no compelling evidence that homeschooling parents are more likely to abuse their children than non-homeschooling parents, and some research to suggest that homeschooling parents are actually less likely to abuse their children.

Additionally, and perhaps most disturbingly, this argument for more state involvement in the lives of homeschoolers ignores the fact that children are routinely abused in government schools by government educators, as well as by school peers. If the government can’t even protect children enrolled in its own heavily regulated and surveilled schools, then how can it possibly argue for the right to regulate and monitor those families who opt out?

Of all the recommendations included in the Harvard professor’s proposed presumptive ban on homeschooling, the one that caused the most uproar among both homeschoolers and libertarians was the call for regular home visits of homeschooling families, with no evidence of wrongdoing.

In my remarks during Monday’s debate, I included a quote from a Hispanic homeschooling mother in Connecticut who was particularly angry and concerned about imposing home visits on homeschooling families. (According to federal data, Hispanics make up about one-quarter of the overall US homeschooling population, mirroring their representation in the general US K-12 school-age population.) She made the important point that minority families are increasingly choosing homeschooling to escape discrimination and an inadequate academic environment in local schools. She also pointed out that, tragically, it is often minorities who are most seriously impacted by these seemingly well-meaning government regulations. Writing to me about Professor Bartholet’s recommendation, she said:

“To state that they want to have surveillance into our homes by having government officials visit, and have parents show proof of their qualified experience to be a parent to their own child is yet another way for local and federal government to do what they have done to native Americans, blacks, the Japanese, Hispanics, etc in the past. Her proposal would once again interfere and hinder a certain population from progressing forward.”

Anyone who cares about liberty and a restrained government should be deeply troubled by the idea of periodic home visits by government agents on law-abiding citizens.

Despite the landmark 1925 US Supreme Court decision that ruled it unconstitutional to ban private schools, there remains lingering support for limiting or abolishing private education and forcing all children to attend government schools. Homeschooling is just one form of private education.

In her law review article, Professor Bartholet recommends “private school reform,” suggesting that private schools may have similar issues to homeschooling but saying that this topic is “beyond the scope” of her article. Still, she concludes her article by stating that “to the degree public schools are seriously deficient, our society should work on improving them, rather than simply allowing some parents to escape.”

The government should work to improve its own schools, where academic deficiencies and abuse are pervasive. But it should have no role in deciding whether or not parents are allowed to escape…(continues)

FEE: Police Accountability Begins With Ending Qualified Immunity

Ben Harris at the Foundation for Economic Education writes that Police Accountability Begins With Ending Qualified Immunity

Following the death of George Floyd, peaceful—and less than peaceful—protests have broken out across the country against what is perceived as an abusive police system that often absolves officers of wrongdoing, sometimes in the most egregious cases. To address unjust policing and restore public trust will require big changes in state and federal policy, as well as in police practice.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has just passed on an opportunity to effect such change. Several petitions requesting the Court to re-examine a legal doctrine known as qualified immunity were recently denied, leaving little hope that the Court will take the lead on needed reform. Only Justice Clarence Thomas voiced dissent.

Qualified immunity grants police officers and other government officials immunity against civil lawsuits in the exercise of their responsibilities, subject to key limitations. Among the limitations outlined originally by Congress, a police officer loses immunity when he or she, “subjects… any citizen of the United States or other person within… to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.”

Over the years, the Court has functionally neutered Congress’s original objective of holding public officials accountable for the violation of civil rights. As the case law has developed, the police and other officials receive immunity unless the facts indicate a constitutional right has been violated and the right was “clearly established” at the time of the misconduct.

The term “clearly established” is the minnow that has swallowed the whale.

To determine whether the right was clearly established, it must either be established by statute or case law. But which case law? The Supreme Court can “clearly establish” something as a right, but it rarely does so. Appeals courts have held they can clearly establish a right, but the Supreme Court has cast this assertion into doubt. So the lower courts are left with a Catch-22. They cannot enforce a right without it being established, but the only way to establish the right is to enforce it.

This has led to some of the most egregious case law in recent history. For example, the Cato Institute cites a Ninth Circuit case that alleged the police stole $250,000 in cash from homeowners. “The three‐​judge panel held that while theft may be “morally wrong,” the officers could not be sued because the Ninth Circuit had never specifically considered the issue, and therefore the right not to have police steal your property while executing a search warrant was not “‘clearly established’ in that jurisdiction.” Additionally, the Supreme Court has aggressively policed qualified immunity, supporting officers and dismissing petitions of citizens that would establish those rights.

We do not tolerate such behavior among private citizens; even less should we tolerate it among public servants, who, if anything, should be held to higher standards, not lower. Yet, the current state of the law holds officers to standards lower than is reasonable even for basic citizenship, let alone for their profession, and to avoid facing personal liability for their actions. While doctors and other health care professionals, lawyers, and even general laborers are held to standards of reasonableness appropriate to their work environment, often a more exacting standard, law enforcement is given a bar so low that nearly all conduct clears it.

When the Court created qualified immunity, its concern was that public officials would be deterred from executing their important responsibilities if mired in lawsuits. The Court’s concern is not completely unfounded. Law enforcement is a dangerous job and imposing the cost of a potential civil suit could discourage people from becoming police. However, these concerns are mitigated when provided additional context.

First, policing is not as relatively dangerous among professions as is commonly held. Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate that log workers, fishery workers, aircraft engineers, roofers, garbage collectors, and many others all have more dangerous jobs than the police.

Second, the risks and costs of civil lawsuits can be managed through insurance markets, just as it is for other professions. Such insurance markets could also be a further check on police abuse. As Clark Neily of the Cato Institute has written:

Like police, doctors have a difficult and stressful job that sometimes involves making life‐​or‐​death decisions under conditions of uncertainty. But unlike police, doctors don’t expect the rest of us to pay for their mistakes. Instead, doctors carry professional liability insurance, which pays to defend them against malpractice claims and protects them from financial ruin by paying out damage awards to successful plaintiffs.

Insurance companies are exceptionally good at identifying risk. Think about car insurance. The more accidents or speeding tickets a driver has had, the higher their premiums will be. The same is true for teenagers, who tend to get in more wrecks than adults and therefore represent a greater risk to the insurance company.

Instead of spreading those risks among all of their policyholders, insurance companies charge risky drivers more while giving a break to their safest drivers, who pay less.

…insurance companies have powerful incentives to identify the greatest risks — whether drivers, doctors or cops — and charge them accordingly. If cops had to carry insurance, the worst offenders would quickly be identified and charged higher rates. If they failed to clean up their act, they would eventually become uninsurable and thus unemployable.

Currently, qualified immunity pushes the cost of police misbehavior onto victims and the public, but because those costs are diffused among many and the benefits concentrated among a few, it is difficult to muster the political momentum necessary to turn it around. Politics remains a barrier to reform.

Additionally, reducing police accountability in the short term is not only unjust, it also undermines the objectives of those who tolerate high leeway for the police. When members of society do not trust that law enforcement will be held accountable for its failings, mostly at the expense of a few, then it impacts the ability of law enforcement to protect people. When law enforcement is truly needed, such as to control rioting and violence, trust that any aggressive interventions are fair and reasonable will have already been compromised, which in turn leads to less trust and more potential rioting, which leads to more heavy-handed police interventions and so forth.

Abolishing qualified immunity raises the costs of misbehavior. And as the cost of abuse increases so will the reputation of law enforcement as an institution that serves all, as bad actors are priced out of the occupation.

But now the cycle is spinning in the opposite direction, largely due to qualified immunity. And it will continue to spin out of control until steps are taken to restore accountability for, and thus trust in, law enforcement.

Access to justice is a sign of an inclusive civilized society, and righting harms through civil law plays an important part in curbing injustice and providing redress to the injured. The Supreme Court has created a system that undermines Congress’s original intent to hold law enforcement accountable and denies civil law remedies to those who have been wronged.

Fortunately, Rep. Justin Amash has introduced a bill to end qualified immunity. Since the Court has proven derelict in its responsibility to defend the constitutional rights of Americans, it is now up to Congress to decide whether they will fulfill that duty.

FEE: The Ring-around-the-Rosies Phenomenon – Why Playful Responses to Plagues and Pandemics Are Healthy

From the Foundation for Economic Education, The Ring-around-the-Rosies Phenomenon: Why Playful Responses to Plagues and Pandemics Are Healthy

y older sister took great pleasure in telling a younger-me the dark history behind the nursery rhyme, “Ring-around-the-Rosies.” She told me that the cheerful tune was written about the Black Death: the “pocket full of posies,” refers to small bouquets of sweet-smelling herbs the healthy would carry close to their noses in order to protect themselves from foul-smelling and “contaminated” air; the “falling down” represents death, as is parodied by the accompanying action; and the “ashes” sung about are ashes of that sort.

Needless to say, this isn’t a pleasant backstory (nor an accurate one). In high school, however, I witnessed something which made it incredibly believable. During a school camping trip, at the height of the Ebola crisis, I watched a group of grade-schoolers play a game of their own development: Ebola-tag. Much like a version of tag (given many different names, though I called it ‘blob-tag’), any tagged child would “catch Ebola” and also be “it,” linking arms with their infector.

The children playing didn’t see anything wrong with their game. The parents watching didn’t stop them. At a time when every news agency was sharing the most recent and concerning statistic, it was a small relief to see Ebola momentarily sanitized by children’s laughter.

As the current Covid-19 pandemic became such, I wondered if my youngest brother would be playing similar games, even as I prepared to return from college. He’s empathetic and sweet—but also 10. When I got back, he wasn’t conforming to the pattern; and so, I forgot my curiosity.

That curiosity was soon unexpectedly satisfied, however: I learned that a friend’s siblings had begun playing their own coronavirus tag! The game revolved around the etymology of the virus, which was named for its spiky, crown-like protein protuberances, and their version of tag was one in which the person who was “it” wore a crown, which they would pass off to those they tagged.

Nor is this phenomenon, which I will simply term the “Ring-around-the-Rosies Phenomenon,” unique to children. Adults are engaging in it too, albeit not necessarily in games or play-acting. Perhaps you’ve heard the viral remix of Cardi B’s coronavirus rant. Or heard one of the specially compiled quarantine playlists. And it would take a Herculean effort to avoid the countless pandemic memes and jokes adults and young adults are making en masse.

Playful responses to this sort of tragedy, aren’t new—there were jokes even in 1918 about the Spanish Flu. This sort of black humor isn’t unhealthy. Many Americans are panicking about the pandemic (as evidenced by empty toilet paper shelves across the nation) and many, also, are ignoring it. The cultural saturation furthered by playful coronavirus references threatens the security of deniers, but may also comfort panickers…

Click here to continue reading at FEE.org

FEE: Coronavirus May Lead to “Mass Homeschooling”

From the Foundation for Economic Education comes this article on how the coronavirus pandemic could lead to more homeschooling because of school closures.

s fears of coronavirus mount around the globe, cities and countries are taking action to prevent the new respiratory virus strain from spreading. While the virus has not yet hit hard in the United States, government officials and health agencies have enacted response plans, corporations are halting travel abroad, and education leaders are grappling with what a widespread domestic outbreak of the virus could mean for schoolchildren.

In countries where the virus is active, schools have been shut down and children are at home, learning alongside their parents or through online education portals. The New York Times reports that US schools have been prompted this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prepare for a coronavirus epidemic that could shutter schools and require alternate forms of teaching and learning outside the conventional classroom. According to Kevin Carey of the New America think tank, who spoke to the Times, coronavirus in the US could lead to “a vast unplanned experiment in mass home-schooling.”

It’s unfortunate that it takes a viral epidemic to spotlight the many alternatives to conventional K-12 schooling.

Indeed, in Hong Kong this is already occurring. The coronavirus outbreak led to orders for schools to be shut down in the city for two months, affecting 800,000 students. An article this week in The Wall Street Journal declares that “coronavirus prompts a whole city to try home schooling,” noting that in Hong Kong many children are completing lessons virtually through online learning platforms or receiving live instruction from teachers through Google Hangouts or similar digital tools.

It’s unfortunate that it takes a viral epidemic to spotlight the many alternatives to conventional K-12 schooling. Not only is homeschooling widely popular in the US, educating approximately two million children nationwide, but other schooling alternatives, such as virtual learning, microschooling, and hybrid homeschooling continue to sprout.

Interest in online learning options is sure to increase as the coronavirus spreads, but other in-person schooling alternatives are also likely to gain notoriety.

Virtual learning programs such as the Florida Virtual School, founded in 1997 as the nation’s first fully online public high school, and K12, Inc., one of the largest providers of virtual schooling, enable young people to take a complete course load and earn a high school diploma without sitting in a traditional classroom environment. Supplementary online programs, such as Khan Academy and Outschool, expand learning options and allow young people to dig deeper into topics that interest them or those in which they may need some additional help.

Interest in online learning options is sure to increase as the coronavirus spreads, but other in-person schooling alternatives are also likely to gain notoriety. Microschools, for example, are small, home-based, multi-age learning environments that act like a one-room schoolhouse, typically with no more than 8 to 12 students at a time. Prenda is a fast-growing network of these branded, in-home microschools, with more than 80 schools in Arizona alone serving some 550 students, and plans to expand out-of-state.

Like microschools, hybrid homeschooling programs and small, community-based classes for homeschoolers are also gaining popularity and may be swept into the limelight if conventional schools are forced to temporarily close. Operating with small, age-mixed groups of children, these hybrid models and classes offer an alternative to institutional schooling, avoiding large classrooms and crowded buildings. I have recently launched a marketplace platform, Unschool.school, that connects educators, parents, and learners to these homeschooling models and out-of-school learning experiences, fostering small group, in-person interactions in local community spaces, such as art studios, makerspaces, and spare dining rooms.

These emerging learning options outside of traditional schooling show not only that “mass homeschooling” is possible but also that it may be highly desirable. Personalized learning, small group interactions that build community and connection, and education without the coercion inherent in standard schooling are beneficial whether or not a pending epidemic is what exposes families to these education possibilities. Mass homeschooling may be just the cure we need.

WA Policy Center: King County Judge Upholds Most of I-976

From Washington Policy Center on the present fate of I-976 which passed in voting, but which state administration officials are fighting tooth and nail. I-976 put limits on motor vehicle taxes and fees and was supposed to take effect on Dec. 5, 2019, but has been on hold pending legal challenges.

King County Judge Marshall Ferguson dismissed all but two constitutional challenges to Initiative 976 today.

Notably, he declared that the plaintiffs did not satisfy the burden of providing beyond a reasonable doubt that I-976 violates single-subject rule or subject-in-title rule, both in Article II Section 19 of the Washington Constitution.

The court noted the ballot title is “general, not restrictive.” The initiative broadly addresses motor vehicle taxes and fees in the title, and the court agrees that Sections 2-11 and 13 of the initiative directly address motor vehicle excise taxes.

The arguments given by plaintiffs that the initiative violates the subject-in-title rule also failed to establish a violation. The court asserted that per previous case law, an initiative ballot title “need not be an index to the contents, nor must it provide details of the measure.” The initiative’s ballot title provided “sufficient notice that the initiative repealed vehicle-related taxes and fees.”

Other constitutional violation claims that were thrown out include:

The two that remain, and are why the initiative remains on hold, are claims under Article I Section 12 and Article I section 23 of the state Constitution, “regarding [Kelley Blue Book] and Burien bonds.”

The first claim has to do with government using the private company Kelley Blue Book valuations, which are a proprietary product, to determine vehicle-related taxes. Plaintiffs argued that calculating car tabs based on Kelley Blue Book values would require the state to contract with the company and would “grant…special contractual privilege to a corporation,” which would violate Article I Section 12. Whether that is true requires additional discovery.

Interestingly, the state already uses Price Digests, as well as Kelley Blue Book and National Auto Dealers Association values for vehicles and boats to establish if they are worth less than the average fair market value. Surely this doesn’t require a contract between DOL and these various companies?

The second claim regarding the City of Burien pertains to whether I-976 could impair their municipal bond contracts, which may or may not depend on revenue from the city’s Transportation Benefit District vehicle fees. Additional discovery has to be conducted to determine if bond contracts would, in fact, be impaired.

While these two issues remain outstanding, the initiative remains on hold and people will continue to be charged high car tab taxes and fees. We anticipate there will be appeals and will continue to track this issue and its impact on the state transportation budget now being developed at the legislature.

Tenth Amendment Center: The Presidency is Too Powerful

The following article was written by Trace Mitchell at the Foundation for Economic Education, but republished at the Tenth Amendment Center. In The Presidency is Too Powerful Mitchell lays out an explanation for how President after President has drawn more power to the office. And his analysis there is correct – Presidents have sought to increase the power of the office. However, after giving an example of President Trump’s rhetoric over China Mitchell says “That is how we got to where we are today.” This, unfortunately, ignores the fact that Congress on its own initiative has shifted more power to the executive over time through their desire to escape responsibility. Mitchell touches on it when he talks about Congress delegating their power, but he only puts it in terms of a response to Presidential rhetoric. Congress has accomplished this escape from culpability by unconstitutionally transferring their power and duty to pass all laws to various administrative agencies in the executive. The executive branch now writes administrative law which is enforced by executive agents and judged in executive administrative courts.

This problem was being noted as early as 1944 in a Virginia Law Review article titled “Administrative Law: A Threat to Constitutional Government?” There are times when Congress finds itself at an impasse over certain issues. They know that an action must be taken, but it get done in Congress because of political interests. Sometimes they are able to pass this off to independent committees which decide the outcome and Congress decides that they will vote yea or nay on the committee’s decision without subjecting it to further debate. Other times, though, Congress will simply pass a law that authorizes an executive agency to create the laws covering an area. Congress wins because they can tell their constituents that they acted to resolve an issue, but any negative outcomes can be blamed on the executive agency. Representatives are happy because they can’t be held accountable. Presidents are happy because the executive branch has more power. Citizens lose doubly.

An excerpt from The Presidency is Too Powerful:

Even if Trump does not have the power to directly order all U.S. firms to cease trade with Chinese corporations, the discretionary power held by the executive branch is strong—so strong that he may be able to achieve a similar outcome through other means. He could impose massive tariffs so large they essentially act as de facto prohibitions. He could threaten noncompliant firms with harsher regulations or enforcement that is more aggressive. He may be able to achieve his goals indirectly even if he cannot achieve them directly.

Either way, rhetoric like this shifts the Overton window further and further. We begin to accept things that seemed entirely unacceptable not long ago. We become desensitized. The dividing lines between the different branches of government become increasingly blurred. That is how we got where we are today.

Executive overreach is not a new phenomenon, but it does have an accumulative effect. Each president is able to get away with a little bit more, typically under the guise of an “emergency.” Slowly they amass greater and greater power. Slowly the concept of strictly limited, enumerated powers deteriorates. While each president since the founding has attempted to increase the scope of their power, this behavior took a new form after Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson was able to take advantage of an overly ambitious president’s best friend: war. As FDR’s Attorney General Francis Biddle said, “The constitution has not greatly bothered any wartime president.” Wilson began by going after one of the most fundamental constitutional guarantees: freedom of expression.

After being inaugurated into his second term, Wilson asked Congress to give him the authority to censor the press during times of war, to criminalize the promotion of America’s enemies, and to combat literature that was “of a treasonable or anarchistic nature.” Congress listened and passed the Espionage Act of 1917, which gave Wilson almost everything he asked for except the ability to censor the press. However, just a year later the Espionage Act was amended with the Sedition Act of 1918, which provided for more government surveillance of its citizens and further limited speech that was viewed as detrimental to the government. Wilson finally amassed most of the power he wanted.

Franklin D. Roosevelt continued this legacy of expanding executive power during times of distress. In fact, during his first week in office, FDR used the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917—a law granting the president vast economic powers during times of war or national emergency—to order a “bank holiday” in order to prevent bank runs. This was particularly aggressive because the act did not give him the power to regulate the domestic economy. Since FDR, executive power has continued to expand and grow, increasing more and more under each successive president. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, and Trump have each used and built upon the powers seized by their predecessors.

The Founders were afraid of this exact scenario. James Madison, often referred to as the “Father of the Constitution,” wrote that power “is of an encroaching nature” and thought “it ought to be effectually restrained from passive the limits assigned to it.” To combat this tendency, he created a system of checks and balances where each branch has significant authority over their domain and can limit the power of the other branches. Or, in the words of the great modern philosopher Kanye West, “No one man should have all that power.” However, Madison did not predict that branches would delegate their power to the extent they have with legislation like the Espionage Act or the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Click here to read the entire story at the Tenth Amendment Center.