Unalienable Rights: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

The United Stated Declaration of Independence states “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I have been talking lately with a lot of Americans who don’t believe that the founders meant “all men” and “unalienable” when they wrote “all men” and “unalienable.”

These faux-libertarians believe, instead, that when the founds wrote “all men”, they means “all men with valid ID issued by the United States government.” These people do not believe that “all men” applies to immigrants — particularly Mexican immigrants.

The other portion of their disbelief relates to the word “unalienable.” When the Declaration of Independence says “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” they believe it relates only to men whom the Creator placed in the United States at birth. They do not believe that Mexican, Iraqi, or Aghani’s have the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Their belief is that these rights come from the State and that they therefore apply only to American citizens. Obviously, this is not what the founders meant when they wrote “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”.

Nothing good can come from Americans abandoning our fellow men. If we follow this dark and xenophobic path, America will become a besieged island of freedom in a globe full of nuclear-armed dictators. And eventually, we will cease to be anything at all.

Unjust Laws

In 1748, Montesquieu noted “Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.”

In 1957, Ayn Rand wrote “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

In 2008, Professor John Baker of the LSU recorded that there are at least 4,450 offenses in United States Federal Criminal Law. These are offenses which are not the “normal” criminal offenses which one would find in state law. The vast majority of these are offenses which would not even be recognized as crimes by the founders of our great nation.

Worse, the United States Congress is now creating a new criminal offense more than once per week. You and I are legally obligated to understand and comply with each of these new laws — or face incarceration in federal prison.

The Heritage Foundation has created a web site, Over Criminalized, to educate Americans about the damage these laws are doing to our constitutional republic.

One such case is McNab v. United States. David McNab was sentenced to eight years in the federal penitentiary for violating a Honduran exporting regulation. David was accused of exporting lobster in plastic bags instead of cardboard boxes. The Honduran government is not prosecuting David. In fact, the law was never signed into force and is therefore not an active law in Honduras. But under the Lacey Act, David was convicted of violating a foreign law and sentenced to eight years in prison — for using plastic instead of paper.

Visit the site and read some of the other truly insane case studies. You will most likely find yourself shocked at the sad state of American jurisprudence. Then, please, call your congress critters and tell them to fix these travesties against justice.

Government Paper Pushers Are Paid More than You

Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute devoted the time and and effort to analyze salary and benefits information published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This is the kind of reporting we don’t get from the mass media, because it requires critical thinking.

Chris’s results are depressing, if not surprising:

“In 2008, federal worker compensation averaged a remarkable $119,982, which was more than double the private sector average of $59,909.”

In short, our “public servants” are fleecing us.

If you ignore their plush taxpayer-funded benefits packages, these civilian paper pushers are still being paid almost $30k more than the poor schmucks who are paying their salaries.  The average American is paid $49,935, while the average bureaucrat is paid an astounding $79,197.

These federal government bureaucrats are paid more than Americans in such competitive and difficult fields as:

• Computer system design
• Computer manufacturing
• Legal services
• Information and data processing
• Publishing and software

While I am certain that it is exhausting and complex work to process forms and hand out welfare checks, I do not believe that it requires a level of skill which justifies these ridiculous levels of compensation.

The federal deficit is now well above thirteen trillion dollars and rising at a record pace .  The Obama administration recently proposed a freeze on some federal salaries. This is not enough. Most private sector salaries have been in an effective freeze since Obama took office. We need to see serious pay cuts for federal workers until they achieve parity with the private sector.

Free Kareem

Kareem Amer is a young Egyptian blogger.  Much like other young people, Kareem is unhappy with certain parts of the society in which he lives.  Like many young people, Kareem posted these thoughts to his blog.

For this crime of self-expression, Kareem has now been imprisoned for 1,470 days.

Here’s how Kareem described himself on his blog:

I am down to earth Law student; I look forward to help humanity against all form of discriminations… I am looking forward to open up my own human rights activists Law firm, which will include other lawyers who share the same views. Our main goal is to defend the rights of Muslim and Arabic women against all form of discrimination and to stop violent crimes committed on a daily basis in these countries.

You can read many of Kareem’s posts which have been translated to English at What Kareem Said, on the Free Kareem web site.

The Egyptian government has resisted all international pressure to free Kareem and domestic sentiment is against him.  Students and security police at the university from which he was expelled for blogging teamed up in an attempt to beat him to death and he barely escaped with his life.  Egypt has no social history which supports freedom of speech.  His own father publicly announced that Kareem should be murdered for insulting Islam.

I don’t think that the Egyptians have any idea just how bad this sort of behavior makes Islam look.  When someone accuses you of being intolerant and violent, it doesn’t generally help your reputation to respond by threating to murder them.

We probably can’t do anything to help Kareem, but what we can do is make sure that the Egyptian government’s attempt to censor him generates the exact opposite effect.  If we make sure that every attempt to censor a human being results in that persons writing becoming well-known globally, governments will eventually understand that censorship doesn’t work.

It’s important to remember that this isn’t just a global problem from which Americans are exempt.  The Obama administration has threatened Americans with actions from the FCC and the Justice Department for exercising the rights guaranteed to them under the First Amendment.  The America of tomorrow could very well be the Egypt of today.

Employee Free Choice Act

The “Employee Free Choice Act” is another weasel-worded bit of newspeak from the Obama administration and their sycophants in the U.S. Congress.

As per usual, the act contains a lot of provisions written in language that seems specifically designed to obfuscate it’s true meaning.  But one thing about this bill is clear — it is designed to prevent employees from making free choices.

This bill removes the protection employees currently receive from the right to the secret ballot — one of the most important rights developed by western civilization. As Congressman John Kline has stated, “It is beyond me how one can possibly claim that a system whereby everyone — your employer, your union organizer, and your co-workers — knows exactly how you vote on the issue of unionization gives an employee ‘free choice’ … It seems pretty clear to me that the only way to ensure that a worker is ‘free to choose’ is to ensure that there’s a private ballot, so that no one know how you voted. I cannot fathom how we were about to sit there today and debate a proposal to take away a worker’s democratic right to vote in a secret-ballot election and call it ‘Employee Free Choice.’”

If the leftists are able to railroad this bill into law, Americans will no longer have the right to vote privately for or against union control of their workplaces.  Instead, union bosses will be given free reign to pressure and terrorize individual employees into voting for unionization.

Labor unions and big government have almost killed the ability of Americans to compete in the global economy.  This bill could give them the power to finish that task.  Gangs of union bosses would be able to harass each individual worker until they got a “card check” approving unionization.

Frankly, I think it’s too late for America.  A majority of Americans has abandoned “responsibility” for “entitlement”.  The last election showed clearly that America doesn’t deserve to be the freest and most prosperous nation on Earth.  But, if you’re not ready to give up the fight, join the folks at the Workforce Fairness Institute in fighting this latest assault on your rights.

Effective Federal Tax Rates

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has published an interesting document titled Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2005.

This is a fascinating document, because it breaks down taxes by who pays them. It shows us, for example, that the lowest earning quintile (20%) of taxpayers pay only .8% of all Federal taxes. On the other side, the top earning quintile of all taxpayers pay 68.7% of all federal taxes. The top 1% pay 27.6% of federal taxes.

Send this document to your liberal “friends” next time they complain to you that hard working Americans are not paying enough taxes to support the poor and unfortunate.