I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. - Thomas Jefferson
United Nations
The United Nations is far removed from the daily grind of domestic politics, where seemingly more pressing ‘bread and butter’ issues are debated. Its relative immunity from oversight can be attributed to a brilliant strategy of enshrouding itself in a veil of do-gooder spirit. Publicity campaigns routinely proclaim noble objectives such as substantially reducing poverty by 2015, helping achieve world peace, and bringing about inter-cultural dialogue. Being sceptical about the U.N. is similar to questioning the worth of Mother Teresa – decent, politically correct people just don’t do things like that. But when it comes to international stability, the cumulative effect of the United Nations is a disastrous one.
April 15th is once again approaching and with it the necessity of filling out your tax return. It is a good time to reflect on the taxes you do pay – and especially on the taxes you may soon be forced to pay. Throughout the year you paid federal taxes through withholding, including Social Security payroll taxes. You also paid state income taxes, unless you’re fortunate enough to live in Texas or another state without an income tax. You paid local property taxes. You paid local sales taxes and numerous miscellaneous taxes on your vehicles and gasoline and so many other things. Like most people, you probably feel taxed to death by all these layers of taxes. Well, hold on to your wallets, because the United Nations once again has launched a plan to impose a whole new level of global taxes on us.
Liberals generally wish to preserve the concept of "rights" for such "human" rights as freedom of speech, while denying the concept to private property. And yet, on the contrary the concept of "rights" only makes sense as property rights. For not only are there no human rights which are not also property rights, but the former rights lose their absoluteness and clarity and become fuzzy and vulnerable when property rights are not used as the standard. In the first place, there are two senses in which property rights are identical with human rights: one, that property can only accrue to humans, so that their rights to property are rights that belong to human beings; and two, that the person's right to his own body, his personal liberty, is a property right in his own person as well as a "human right." But more importantly for our discussion, human rights, when not put in terms of property rights, turn out to be vague and contradictory, causing liberals to weaken those rights on behalf of "public policy" or the "public good." As I wrote in another work: |
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