So the point is that most people living in our country today have a much better life than Henry VIII. Almost all of us have better health, life expectancy, comforts and enjoyment of life by far than even the epitome of life in the 16th Century. And the difference between today’s rich and “poor?” Your barber’s Timex watch keeps as good time as any CEO’s Rolex, his used Ford gets him here and there as well as the CEO’s Tesla, and his clothing is almost the same quality as the CEO’s designer brands. Plus today almost everyone has cellphones, big screen televisions, computers and access to healthy foods and medicines. Even airplane trips are available to almost everyone. So even though there is a marked disparity in incomes, when it comes down to it, the difference between the lives of the wealthy and poor is so much closer today than it has ever been before. So look what Liberty and the Free Enterprise System have done for us all! That is not to say that we should not work to narrow today’s disparity of wealth. But maybe along the way we should also focus on the life of Henry VIII, and be more thankful of what we have!
Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President
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Truly one of the most important factors affecting our country’s domestic tranquility is people’s ability to get a job. In so many different ways, not being able to find lawful employment contributes greatly to a loss of self-respect which, in turn, leads to despair, crime and drug abuse. And probably the ones most susceptible to those ills are people who have served time in prison. Why? Because if ex-felons cannot get a job, the odds are shown to be appreciably higher that they will commit another offense that will land them back in prison.
Everyone knows that money is much too influential in today’s politics, so how can that influence be lessened? To me the answer is to allow all natural people who are citizens or holders of Green Cards to contribute as much money as they wish to the candidates or ballot measures of their choice, with the firm provision that all contributions above a certain fairly small but fixed amount must be published in a timely fashion. This would both be fair and consistent with freedom of speech. Under today’s system, if Bill Gates were running for a public office he could contribute as much of his money to his own campaign as he wanted. So why should he not be able to contribute to other campaigns as well? And then if the voters feel that a candidate is beholden to Bill Gates or anyone else, they still would be free to vote for that candidate’s opponent.
At the moment I am finalizing a new musical entitled “Convention,” which is about our great country’s Constitutional Convention in 1787. As a result, for the past few years I have been heavily involved with research about the thoughts, beliefs and principles of our Founders. (In that group I include women like Abigail Adams.) And, although the delegates obviously had different backgrounds, biases and beliefs, do you know what the most important function of government was for virtually each one of them? The protection of individual liberties from the encroachment of government! (The second most important was security.) This thought might be somewhat controversial today, but it shouldn’t be. And it has been the purpose of these “2 Paragraphs” editions for the past 119 weeks to help more people to think and focus about government in these terms, i.e. the terms of Liberty.
I am writing this just as the details of the Manchester explosion are coming forward. Maybe this analysis will not be well received by some, but it is something that must be said and understood by civilized society. Nevertheless, first I must say that without any doubt this is a tragedy, and sympathy must be given to the victims. But having said that, we must focus upon what is happening, the type of beasts that are behind it, and what humanity’s best response should be to these inhuman acts. And that response must be: Don’t let the bad guys win! For instance, just after the explosion all major news networks I saw devoted uninterrupted hours to the story. No! Don’t give the bad guys the satisfaction! Furthermore, some people were saying that we must respond by more surveillance of those who might cause such tragedies. Does that mean that all Muslim immigrants are suspect and must be surveilled? No, once again, that turns this into a fight between Christianity and Islam, which is exactly what the bad guys are trying to effect.
“Zero Tolerance” laws and rules allow judges, bureaucrats, school principals and other officials to avoid having to make responsible decisions. And they also frequently result in stark injustices. For example, once a junior high school student went to a swap meet where he bought a sterile marijuana seed that was immersed in formaldehyde and encased inside a Plexiglas pen. Then he took his purchase to school to show his friends. But due to Zero Tolerance rules about bringing drugs onto campus, the student was suspended for a month. Do you think that helped the students learn to respect authority? Soon, however, the decision was revoked when his father showed up with an attorney. What do you think the students learned from that result?
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