David Boaz

Not long ago a journalist asked me what freedoms we take for granted in America. Now, I spend most of my time sounding the alarm about the freedoms we're losing. But this was a good opportunity to step back and consider how America is different from much of world history -- and why immigrants still flock here. If we ask how life in the United States is different from life in most of the history of the world -- and still  different from much of the world -- a few key elements come to mind. Rule of law. Perhaps the greatest achievement in history is the subordination of power to law. That is, in modern America we have created structures that limit and control the arbitrary power of government. No longer can one man -- a king, a priest, a communist party boss -- take another person's life or property at the ruler's whim. Citizens can go about their business, generally confident that they won't be dragged off the streets to disappear forever, and confident that their hard-earned property won't be confiscated without warning. We may take the rule of law for granted, but immigrants from China, Haiti, Syria, and other parts of the world know how rare it is. Equality. For most of history people were firmly assigned to a particular status -- clergy, nobility, and peasants. Kings and lords and serfs. Brahmans, other castes, and untouchables in India. If your father was a noble or a peasant, so would you be. The American Revolution swept away such distinctions. In America all men were created equal. Thomas Jefferson declared "that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God." In America some people may be smarter, richer, stronger, or more beautiful than others, but "I'm as good as you" is our national creed. We are all citizens, equal before the law, free to rise as far as our talents will take us. Equality for women. Throughout much of history women were the property of their fathers or their husbands. They were often barred from owning property, testifying in court, signing contracts, or participating in government. Equality for women took longer than equality for men, but today in America and other civilized parts of the world women have the same legal rights as men. Self-government. The Declaration of Independence proclaims that "governments are instituted" to secure the rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and that those governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." Early governments were often formed in the conquest of one people by another, and the right of the rulers to rule was attributed to God's will and passed along from father to son. In a few places -- Athens, Rome, medieval Germany -- there were fitful attempts to create a democratic government. Now, after America's example, we take it for granted in civilized countries that governments stand or fall on popular consent. Freedom of speech. In a world of Michael Moore, Ann Coulter, and cable pornography, it's hard to imagine just how new and how rare free speech is. Lots of people died for the right to say what they believed. In China and Africa and the Arab world, they still do. Fortunately, we've realized that while free speech may irritate each of us at some point, we're all better off for it. Freedom of religion. Church and state have been bound together since time immemorial. The state claimed divine sanction, the church got money and power, the combination left little room for freedom. As late as the 17th century, Europe was wracked by religious wars. England, Sweden, and other countries still have an established church, though their citizens are free to worship elsewhere. Many people used to think that a country could only survive if everyone worshipped the one true God in the one true way. The American Founders established religious freedom. Property and contract. We owe our unprecedented standard of living to the capitalist freedoms of private property and free markets. When people are able to own property and make contracts, they create wealth. Free markets and the legal institutions to enforce contracts make possible vast economic undertakings--from the design and construction of airplanes to worldwide computer networks and ATM systems. But to appreciate the benefits of free markets, we don't have to marvel at skyscrapers while listening to MP3 players. We can just give thanks for enough food to live on, and central heating, and the medical care that has lowered the infant mortality rate from about 20 percent to less than 1 percent. A Kenyan boy who managed to get to the United States told a reporter for Woman's World magazine that America is "heaven." Compared to countries that lack the rule of law, equality, property rights, free markets, and freedom of speech and worship, it certainly is. A good point to keep in mind this Thanksgiving Day. This article originally appeared in the Washington Times in 2004 and was included in my book The Politics of Freedom.

My friend Kelly Young notes (on Facebook) this Washington Post article on guns used in crimes:

I am awed again by the power of language. The Washingt0n Post today claims that government protection of the identity of lawful purchasers of legal weapons is "secrecy" to be "penetrated" for the sake of the paper's reporting. It is not "privacy" that is "violated," as with release of airport scans of travelers, gathering names of minors seeking abortions, and warrantless searches of homes. And how about those secret journalistic sources?

(Language cleaned up slightly, as the original was typed Blackberry-style.) He's right. The word "privacy" doesn't appear in the article. Maybe a cynics' dictionary would read, "Privacy is the ability to keep facts about myself hidden from you. Secrecy is your keeping facts about yourself hidden from me."

Musing on the latest abuses of the Transportation Security Administration, George F. Will recalls a column by the late William F. Buckley Jr. Faced with disastrous service on a commuter railroad, Buckley wrote, "In a more virile age, I thought, the passengers would have seized the conductor and strapped him down on a seat over the radiator to share the fate of his patrons." But he had "nonchalantly walked down the gauntlet of eighty sweating American freemen, and not one of them had asked him to explain why the passengers in that car had been consigned to suffer." Buckley went on:

Every year, whether the Republican or the Democratic Party is in office, more and more power drains away from the individual to feed vast reservoirs in far-off places; and we have less and less say about the shape of events which shape our future. From this alienation of personal power comes the sense of resignation with which we accept the political dispensations of a powerful government whose hold upon us continues to increase.

And here's the part that sent me looking for the anti-depressants: Buckley wrote this jeremiad in 1961.

Talk about Sarah Palin running for president continues to mount -- in the liberal media. Conservatives smile and look away when the topic is raised. They want to watch her on TV, they want to turn out for her lively speeches, but they don't see her as a president. Liberals, on the other hand, are jumping up and down at the prospect of a Palin candidacy. She could win! they urgently insist to skeptical Republicans; you should get behind her. Don't throw us Democrats in that Palin briar patch! The latest example is the star columnist of the New York Times, Frank Rich. His Sunday column is titled "Could She Reach the Top in 2012? You Betcha." Palin's got a huge television presence, Rich says -- 5 million viewers for her new TLC series. Which is slightly less than the 65 million it would take to win a presidential election. She's running, he says; her upcoming book tour "disproportionately dotes on the primary states of Iowa and South Carolina." Well, yes, she's going to both those states, along with 14 others. But the link that Rich generously provides -- a citation, like an old-fashioned footnote -- indicates that she will not go to New Hampshire. If I were advising her putative presidential campaign (bargain rates, Governor!), I would tell her that New Hampshire is kind of important in the Republican primary process. So is Florida, which she's also not visiting. You could almost get the impression that Frank Rich is seeing what he wants to see -- a Sarah Palin presidential campaign. He's not the only one. On Huffington Post just before the election, Jeffrey Feldman told Democrats, "The key to busting through election rhetoric gone stark raving mad might well turn out to be two words so simple that they have eluded the usual Democratic Party language consultants: 'President Palin.'" Richard Cohen of the Washington Post wrings his hands over her potential. New York magazine's cover blares "PRESIDENT PALIN." NPR jumps on the bandwagon, as does Mark Halperin in Time. Meanwhile, as Rich acknowledges, Republicans know as well as he does what a Palin nomination would do:

Politico reported just before Election Day that unnamed “party elders” were nearly united in wanting to stop her, out of fear that she’d win the nomination and then be crushed by Obama. Their complaints are seconded daily by Bush White House alumni like Karl Rove, Michael Gerson, and Mark McKinnon, who said recently that Palin’s “stock is falling and pretty rapidly now” and that “if she’s smart, she does not run.”

Peggy Noonan spoke for a lot of Reaganites when she responded to Palin's suggestion that being a Fox-TLC celebrity was a reasonable platform for seeking the presidency, since after all "Ronald Reagan was an actor":

Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin. Reagan people quietly flipped their lids, but I'll voice their consternation to make a larger point. Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president. The point is not "He was a great man and you are a nincompoop," though that is true. The point is that Reagan's career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him.

I made a similar point back in February when David Broder was pushing Palin's prospects. And two months before that I noted that the Washington Post had run two op-eds "by" Sarah Palin in the space of five months, so that one "might almost think the Post wanted Palin to be seen as a leader of Republicans." In the coming months, watch for it: Democrats, liberal journalists, and red-state bloggers will talk up Palin's chances. Republicans and conservatives who want to defeat President Obama in 2012 will try to change the subject.

The National Transportation Safety Board is calling on states to require motorcycle riders to wear federally approved helmets.

"Too many lives are lost in motorcycle accidents," Christopher A. Hart, NTSB vice chairman, said in announcing that helmets had been added to the board's annual "most-wanted list" of safety improvements. "It's a public health issue."

No, it's not. Motorcycle deaths are not a public health problem. If motorcyclist A doesn't wear a helmet, that has no impact on cyclist B. Riding a motorcycle without a helmet may be a bad idea, but it is an individual and non-contagious problem. The meaning of "public health" has sprawled out lazily over the decades. Once, it referred to the project of securing health benefits that were public: clean water, improved sanitation, and the control of epidemics through treatment, quarantine, and immunization. Public health officials worked to drain swamps that might breed mosquitoes and thus spread malaria. They strove to ensure that water supplies were not contaminated with cholera, typhoid, or other diseases. The U.S. Public Health Service began as the Marine Hospital Service, and one of its primary functions was ensuring that sailors didn't expose domestic populations to new and virulent illnesses from overseas. Those were legitimate public health issues because they involved consumption of a collective good (air or water) and/or the communication of disease to parties who had not consented to put themselves at risk. It is difficult for individuals to protect themselves against illnesses found in air, water, or food. A breeding ground for disease-carrying insects poses a risk to entire communities. The concern back in 2007 over a tuberculosis patient on an airplane raised public-health issues. You might unknowingly find yourself in an enclosed space with a TB carrier. But nobody accidentally rides a motorcycle without a helmet. And your helmetless ride doesn't threaten me. That's why riding a motorcycle without a helmet is not a public health issue, even though it may be a bad choice for an individual. As I wrote before,

Language matters. Calling something a "public health problem" suggests that it is different from a personal health problem in ways that demand collective action. And while it doesn't strictly follow, either in principle or historically, that "collective action" must be state action, that distinction is easily elided in the face of a "public health crisis." If smoking and obesity are called public health problems, then it seems that we need a public health bureaucracy to solve them — and the Public Health Service and all its sister agencies don't get to close up shop with the satisfaction of a job well done. So let's start using honest language: Smoking and obesity are health problems. In fact, they are widespread health problems. But they are not public health problems.

UPDATE: An astute reader asks: But what about the costs to the taxpayer if an uninsured, helmetless motorcyclist is injured? That's still not a public health problem, and it's not the claim NTSB is making. It might be a public finance problem, but libertarians have generally argued that a free market in health insurance is a better response to that problem than a smothering nanny state that bans all dangerous behavior on the grounds of socialized medical costs.

The movie "Mao's Last Dancer" is a sleeper hit, says the Los Angeles Times:

It features no big-name stars, drew mediocre reviews and traffics in the esoterica of Chinese ballet. And yet "Mao's Last Dancer," the true story of a ballet performer who defected to the United States in 1981, has become one of the season's biggest art-house hits. Bruce Beresford's Australian-produced film tells of Li Cunxin, an 11-year-old Chinese boy plucked from his rural village in 1972 under the reign of Mao Zedong to dance for the Beijing Ballet. While in residence at the Houston Ballet a decade later, he defected to the United States after a politically charged standoff that involved the FBI and diplomats from China and the U.S.

It's been in theaters for three months, and I finally saw it this weekend. You can't usually wait that long to see an indie film, but this one's been hanging on under the radar. It's a great story about Chinese communism, politically controlled art, and one individual who chooses freedom. In a climactic scene, the Chinese consul tells Li "the Party knows what's best for you" and Li responds, "I know what's best for me." (The language is a little different in Li's autobiography.) The New York Times dismisses the movie as "nothing more than an old-fashioned tear-jerker," complaining that it is

stuck in an earlier era of heavy-handed clichés about Chinese innocence and American experience. The juxtaposition of wide-eyed villagers and labored aphorisms with shopping malls and casual sex may accurately reflect Mr. Li’s book, but on screen it feels absurdly outdated.

Um, yes. The movie is set between 1972 and 1981. That was Mao's China, even the China of the Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four, and then the very earliest days of the liberalization under Deng Xiao-ping. Today it looks dated, as do most movies set 30 or more years in the past. Anyone who has visited China recently might not realize just how stunning the Houston skyline would have looked to Li in 1981. But I saw the Shanghai skyline seven years later, in 1981, and I know that Houston would have seemed a different world to Li at that time. No doubt the Times reviewer also disliked the scenes in Chinese schools where students are told that China has the highest standard of living in the world, while the "capitalist and imperialist nations" live in unimaginable horror. And maybe the scene of Madame Mao visiting the Beijing ballet academy and demanding that the students perform only revolutionary ballet. But that was the reality of Maoist China. I've written before about the remarkable dearth of anti-communist movies in Hollywood, especially when you consider that communism lasted far longer and killed far more people than national socialism, about which there have been many movies. Of course, this movie wasn't produced in Hollywood; it was produced in Australia by the Australian director Bruce Beresford ("Breaker Morant," "Tender Mercies," "Driving Miss Daisy"). And "Mao's Last Dancer" is as much a story of individualism and breaking out of a world that would hold you down (not unlike "Billy Elliott" or "October Sky") as it is a political movie. The fact that Li was allowed to visit the Houston Ballet temporarily in 1981 was a sign of the changes that were happening in China, and the country has made much more progress since then. But China is still not comfortable with this story, and the producers were forced to shoot some scenes in secret after being denied permission to film in China. With Christmas movies coming, "Mao's Last Dancer" won't be in theaters much longer. See it now.

Much of the media discussion of the massive tax increase that looms on January 1 uses terms like "extending the Bush tax cuts" or "tax breaks for the wealthy." In fact, American taxpayers have faced a particular range of personal income tax rates for the past eight years. If the 2001 and 2003 tax laws are allowed to expire, then Americans will see increased tax rates on income, dividends, capital gains, and estates. So the issue is not "tax cuts" or "tax breaks," it's whether we should increase taxes in 2011. It's good to see that President Obama understands this. At a news conference at the end of the G-20 Summit on Friday, he said:

I want to make sure that taxes don't go up for middle class families starting on January 1st.

That's the right way to understand it. Taxes are about to go up. Of course, the problem is that President Obama does want taxes to go up for business owners, corporate executives, and investors on January 1, the very people whose decisions have the most immediate impact on economic growth and job creation. And that's the issue we should be debating: Is it a good idea, especially in a time of continuing high unemployment and slow growth, to raise taxes on investors and entrepreneurs?

Drawing on new census data, Newsweek finds that seven of the 10 richest counties in America, including the top three, are in the Washington area. Newsweek's former sister publication, the Washington Post, summarizes the data. Only three counties in the United States have a median household income over $100,000, and they're all Washington suburbs. As we've reported here before, these trends began even before the Obama administration started concentrating job creation on the federal sector. In the middle of the Bush bubble, the Washington Post reported:

The three most prosperous large counties in the United States are in the Washington suburbs, according to census figures released yesterday, which show that the region has the second-highest income and the least poverty of any major metropolitan area in the country. Rapidly growing Loudoun County has emerged as the wealthiest jurisdiction in the nation, with its households last year having a median income of more than $98,000. It is followed by Fairfax and Howard counties, with Montgomery County not far behind.

This of course reflects partly the high level of federal pay, as Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven have been detailing. And it also reflects the boom in lobbying as government comes to claim and redistribute more of the wealth produced in all those other metropolitan areas. To slightly amend a ditty I posted a few years ago,

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys, Don’t let ‘em make software and sell people trucks, Make ‘em be bureaucrats and lobbyists and such.

Joel Klein was able to impose his will on the Microsoft Corporation, much to consumers' detriment, but he made less headway against the Education Blob. Perhaps ironically for someone who had served as an antitrust enforcer, his first great accomplishment as chancellor of the New York City schools was to centralize control in his own office. Calculating test scores accurately revealed that they barely budged during his eight-year tenure. As for the "rubber rooms," where teachers accused of gross misconduct sit around for months or years, drawing full pay -- made famous in the documentaries "The Rubber Room" and "Waiting for 'Superman'" -- Klein got them formally eliminated. But teachers who can't be fired are now making six figures for doing clerical work. Maybe, in the words of "Waiting for Superman," Klein changed the system from "rubber rooms" to "dance of the lemons."

The Wall Street Journal reports, "From New York to Florida to Arizona, some taxpayers are opposing agreements to fund baseball projects after a decadeslong boom in publicly financed ballparks. The fights are complicating plans for stadiums, pitting residents against one another and driving some local governments to turn to U.S. stimulus programs." Well, it's good to know that if local taxpayers don't want to line the pockets of millionaire players and billionaire owners, the U.S. government's stimulus program stands ready to oblige. Several Cato studies over the years have looked at the absurd economic claims of stadium advocates. In “Sports Pork: The Costly Relationship between Major League Sports and Government,” Raymond Keating finds:

The lone beneficiaries of sports subsidies are team owners and players. The existence of what economists call the “substitution effect” (in terms of the stadium game, leisure dollars will be spent one way or another whether a stadium exists or not), the dubiousness of the Keynesian multiplier, the offsetting impact of a negative multiplier, the inefficiency of government, and the negatives of higher taxes all argue against government sports subsidies. Indeed, the results of studies on changes in the economy resulting from the presence of stadiums, arenas, and sports teams show no positive economic impact from professional sports — or a possible negative effect.

In Regulation magazine, (.pdf) Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys found that the economic literature on stadium subsidies comes to consistent conclusions:

The evidence suggests that attracting a professional sports franchise to a city and building that franchise a new stadium or arena will have no effect on the growth rate of real per capita income and may reduce the level of real per capita income in that city.

And in “Caught Stealing: Debunking the Economic Case for D.C. Baseball,” Coates and Humphreys looked specifically at the economics of the new baseball stadium in Washington, D.C., and found similar results:

Our conclusion, and that of nearly all academic economists studying this issue, is that professional sports generally have little, if any, positive effect on a city’s economy. The net economic impact of professional sports in Washington, D.C., and the 36 other cities that hosted professional sports teams over nearly 30 years, was a reduction in real per capita income over the entire metropolitan area.