Tom McCaffrey is the author of Radical by Nature: The Green Assault on Liberty, Property, and Prosperity.
California governor Gavin Newsom has moved the covid lockdown goalposts for a second time. Per last week's decree, larger counties in the state must "address inequity in communities such as low-income, Black, Latino, Pacific Islander and essential workers."
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. (George Orwell, 1984)
Recently Americans were told that it was imperative during the coronavirus epidemic that all persons remain at home. All “non-essential” businesses would be closed indefinitely. Persons who had to leave home on essential business should wear a mask, keep six feet away from other persons, and avoid large gatherings. Violators would be prosecuted.
Among the more disturbing images to come out of the recent street violence following the killing of George Floyd are those of police officers and white civilians kneeling "in solidarity" with the protesters.
Finally, someone is in control.
For too long, Americans have been free to come and go as they pleased. They could climb into their cars and drive anywhere they wanted, at any time of day, for any reason they chose, or for no reason at all. And they never had to justify themselves to anyone. It was a deplorable situation.
The owner of a gym in Troy, Missouri recently asked army vet Jake Talbot not to wear his “Trump 2016” shirt to her gym in the future. The owner did so in response to complaints from other customers that the shirt made them feel “uncomfortable.”
Mitt Romney renewed the familiar charge last week that President Trump has been dividing Americans rather than uniting them. But it is not Mr. Trump who is dividing America.
Without secure rights of private property, no other rights are possible. Consider: I may erect a Christmas creche in my own front yard, but not in the town square. I may carry a concealed gun on my own land, but not on the public streets of most American cities. I may smoke in my own home, but not in a "public" restaurant in most states.
To make any sense of this, one must visit the fever swamps of "white supremacy" scholarship. In the good old days, "white supremacy" referred to the ideology of groups like the Aryan Nation and the Ku Klux Klan. No more.
"We know that the desire for freedom is not confined to, or owned by, any culture; it is the inborn hope of our humanity." (NPR, Oct. 19, 2017) So said former president George W. Bush in his recent criticism of fellow Republican, President Trump. The idea that, by their very nature, all human beings desire freedom is an unquestioned premise of modern liberalism. It underlay Mr. Bush's efforts at nation-building in Iraq, and it has underlain a century and a half of U.S. immigration policy. And it is false.
