Forty-five people carrying placards and handing out leaflets show up inside a shopping mall.  Their message? Boycott the mall’s stores. When mall management asks them to leave, they refuse—and so the police throw them out. The boycotters sue the mall for interfering with their speech rights. They win.

What makes such a legal outcome possible? At bottom, it’s a certain conception of rights as entitlements to the property of others. On this view, the right of free speech is empty unless someone provides the speaker with a newspaper, a blog, a microphone—or, in this case, a mall full of shoppers. But that’s a perversion of rights. In reality, the right of free speech pertains only to freedom of action, on and with one’s own property (or the property of others who agree to allow its use). Because a shopping mall is private property, every visitor is there by permission of the owner. That owner has a moral right (which should be recognized legally, but isn’t) to forbid visitors from staging a boycott campaign on that property.

The case I’m talking about is Macerich Management Co. v. United Brotherhood of Carpenters. If the Supreme Court accepts the case, what’s the chance it will apply a proper view of rights? Zero.

For one thing, the boycotters in this case are members of a labor union. The Supreme Court has long upheld federal statutes giving union members a legal right to push their agenda on company premises, even if the employer (who’s also the property owner) disagrees.

But even worse, the Supreme Court has long held that owners of commercial property get second-class treatment when it comes to First Amendment protection. For example, in a 1980 case, PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, the Court held that the First Amendment does not offer any protection to private shopping malls against California law dictating that political messages may be spread inside mall premises.

On a proper view of rights, a shopping mall owner’s rights (to free speech and property) are infringed when boycotters can take over mall property for an opposing message. But the Macerich case will be decided by a Supreme Court that has lost sight of such basics.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Echoing the sentiments of Paul Ehrlich’s environmentalist manifesto, the 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb, British columnist Alex Renton of The Guardian writes, “the worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO2 every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess.”

Mr. Renton’s opinion is shared by the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin. At a recent panel discussion titled “Covering Climate: What’s Population Got To Do With It?,” Mr. Revkin argued that “probably the single most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower their carbon footprint is not turning off the light or driving a Prius, it’s having fewer kids, having fewer children.”

Environmentalists have always urged us towards a more ascetic existence, and population control is a logical progression within the framework of the environmentalist ideology, which views “the planet” as an inherent good that must be “saved” from the plague of man. Thus neither Mr. Renton nor Mr. Revkin is at all shy in advocating their position, nor does either skip a beat in suggesting that government force is necessary to achieve it.

Mr. Renton lauds China’s one-child policy as “the most successful governmental attempt to preserve the world’s resources so far.”  Noting that China’s policy is too “draconian” for Western tastes, however, he offers this alternative: “Could children perhaps become part of an adult’s personal carbon allowance? Could you offer rewards: have one child only and you may fly to Florida once a year?” Mr. Revkin concludes “So should there be, eventually you get, should you get credit–if we’re going to become carbon-centric–for having a one-child family when you could have had two or three?”

Cap-and-trade for children? This is less draconian?

Such suggestions are indicative of the kind of authoritarian world the environmentalists would like to impose on us. This authoritarian bent is behind the omnipresent environmental bans and restrictions already in place, and is driving cap and trade legislation presently making its way through Congress. That environmentalists are led inexorably to such authoritarian conclusions should give us pause and make us question their premises.

Image attribution: Leo Reynolds on Flickr

Here’s the basic argument given for net neutrality, the idea that the government should regulate the Internet in order to ensure that all data is treated equally: The Internet belongs to society, it must be used for society’s benefit, and allowing Internet Service Providers to abuse their massive power by controlling networks for their own benefit is harmful to society; therefore, the government should step in to ensure neutrality (e.g., prevent ISPs from offering priority to users willing to pay more to guarantee, say, a reliable Skype connection).

Here’s how one recent column puts it. Approvingly citing a new book by Larry Downes, the columnist writes:

[Downes'] view is that “U.S. consumers have plenty of reasons to be suspicious of both the FCC and the communications industry.” His advice: “Consumers should ask themselves which of these powerful interests is more likely in the end to abuse its power. Who, in other words, has the greater potential to make things worse for everyone?”

Oh, wait. It turns out that both Downes and the column’s author, L. Gordon Crovitz, oppose net neutrality. They believe that the government poses the greater potential threat. Why? Well, according to the Crovitz/Downes argument, even though people are right to be suspicious of private industry, even though it has power on par with government, even though it could potentially abuse this power, people should trust industry because we believe it’s likely the government will make things even worse.

You’ll forgive me for the confusion. The Crovitz/Downes argument grants virtually every premise invoked by the supporters of net neutrality. It says that we face two threats to the Internet, government and industry, and asks us to quibble over which is worse. This is a total concession and a terrible injustice. The truth is the communications industry is not a villain that threatens the Internet: it is in large part responsible for the constant improvements and innovations that make the Internet so valuable. Yet, in the name of ensuring net neutrality, the government is poised to violate the industry’s rights.

A proper critique of net neutrality would reject this entire approach. It would reject the notion that the Internet is some collective product of society’s that “consumers” have the right to dispose of however they choose. It would recognize that the Internet is, in fact, the product of voluntary associations between millions of individuals and companies, all of whom have the right to use their private property as they see fit. It would recognize that an Internet Service Provider has a right to manage its network according to its own judgment, and that its only power is the power to offer willing customers a service more valuable than its competitors. A proper critique of net neutrality would say that the government has no right to place shackles on the Internet, and that its only legitimate function is to protect Internet freedom. You can find just such a critique, written by my colleague Alex Epstein, here.

Image: flickr

Yet even as Tehran’s rejections piled up, a view developed that all would be well if only the U.S. would drop the harsh rhetoric and meet with the Iranians face-to-face. So President Obama began making one overture after another to Iran, including a videotaped message praising its “great civilization.” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei replied that Mr. Obama had “insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day.”

But there’s far more to this story. If we expand the timeframe from six to 30 years, it is not just Obama’s administration that ought to be rebuked.

Thirty years ago tomorrow, November 4, 1979, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was invaded and its personnel taken captive. That turned out to be the first act of war against us by what became the Islamic totalitarian regime in Iran.

Jimmy Carter’s handling of that crisis was abysmal: Washington was humiliated publicly as the hostages remained captive for more than a year, and then it caved. The next Iranian attack (in Lebanon) was lethal — and the next one after that, even more so.

There followed a spiral of aggression — some attacks funded and directed by Iran, some carried out by Islamist groups inspired by its advances. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all failed to connect the dots to see in the attacks a distinct enemy pursing an ideologically driven war: the Islamic totalitarian movement. None took the steps necessary to defeat it.

Instead the pattern unrolled like this: (1) Iran and/or its surrogates carry out some heinous attack; (2) it is met with a limp response from the West; (3) Tehran grows more confident and ramps up its belligerence. Restart the cycle at step (1). (I explore this grim story, and the underlying reason for the U.S. policy failure, in chapter one of Winning the Unwinnable War.)

What about George W. Bush? His administration’s policy is the focus of my book, and there’s a lot to say about it, but in a nutshell, consider this: after eight-plus years in a so-called war on terror, the most active state-sponsor of Islamist terror — Iran — is still in business, more self-confident, and within reach of a nuclear weapon.

image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/an0nym0usmuse/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

• Although Congress has been working for months on a climate change bill that would impose a carbon rationing scheme (cap and trade) on the U.S. economy, and although the House version passed by a narrow margin in June—the Senate version is struggling badly.

• The world is gearing up for a major climate conference in Copenhagen (Dec. 7-18)—which has long been anticipated by climate activists as the chance to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol before it expires in 2012. But it’s looking less and less likely that the conference will produce any sort of strong, binding agreement.

• A recent Pew poll suggests that fewer Americans see global warming as a “very serious” problem, and the more people hear about cap and trade, the less they support it. (Those who describe themselves as having “heard a lot” about cap and trade tend to oppose it by two-to-one.)

Does this mean that those of us who oppose green climate policies are winning? Is the battle over this issue almost over? Far from it.

It shouldn’t be too surprising that—as the Pew poll reported—fewer Americans see “solid evidence the earth is warming” when global temperatures have been declining for the last few years. Shifting temperatures, by themselves, don’t say anything about the causes of those shifts, but that’s a subtlety that often gets lost in the rhetoric. So if temperatures start to rise, will people just jump on the global warming bandwagon once again?

And much of the opposition in the Senate has to do to with how quickly Barbara Boxer is trying to ram through the legislation. One of the Republicans fighting the bill, Sen. George V. Voinovich (Ohio), said “Why are we trying to jam down this legislation now? Wouldn’t it be smarter to take our time and do it right?”  What’s the “right” way to impose a massive new energy tax on every sector of the U.S. economy?

These political delays are just a temporary setback for climate activists. But this debate will continue as long as people continue to embrace the deeper green premises underlying it. These are what really need to be debated to bring the fundamental issues to light.

Photo credit: flickr/kevindooley

In fact what distinguishes the Wellpoint study is its detailed rigor. Take Ohio, where a young, healthy 25-year-old living in Columbus can purchase insurance from WellPoint today for about $52 per month in the individual market. WellPoint’s actuaries calculate the bill will rise to $79 because Democrats are going to require it to issue policies to anyone who applies, even if they’ve waited until they’re sick to buy insurance. Then they’ll also require the company to charge everyone nearly the same rate, bringing the premium to $134. Add in an extra $17, since Democrats will require higher benefit levels, and a share of the new health industry taxes ($6), and monthly premiums have risen to $157, a 199% boost.

Meanwhile, a 40-year-old husband and wife with two kids would see their premiums jump by 122%—to $737 from $332—while a small business with eight employees in Franklin County would see premiums climb by 86%. It’s true that the family or the individual might qualify for subsidies if their incomes are low enough, but the business wouldn’t qualify under the Senate Finance bill WellPoint examined. And even if there are subsidies, the new costs the bill creates don’t vaporize. They’re merely transferred to taxpayers nationwide—or financed with deficits, which will be financed eventually with higher taxes.

In my last post I talked about how insurance mandates benefit select groups while driving the cost of health insurance premiums out of reach of many others. Here it is in real time. Does ObamaCare repeal the existing programs, laws and mandates that are driving up the cost of health care and health insurance? No. It imposes new taxes, mandates and regulations that will exacerbate the very problems it’s trying to solve. It’s a downward spiral of doom with a full government takeover of the health care system at the bottom, where the government has its hands in every aspect of medicine and no one is free.

That’s what makes ObamaCare so dangerous. There’s been a lot of talk about a “public option” and the damage that would cause to the private market. But whether or not that mechanism is in the final bill, whatever passes is going to drastically expand the role of government in our health care system. The Wellpoint studies document one negative consequence of that expansion. It surely won’t be the only one.

The surge was supposed to create the space necessary for the sectarian factions to come together. That was its critical definition of success. So far: surge fail. And if the parties cannot hammer out an agreement now, with 120,000 US troops still in country, what chance once the US leaves?

The situation is actually far worse than Sullivan’s rhetorical question implies. Hype about the so-called success of the surge has enabled people to cast out of mind the fact that Washington’s mission in Iraq was a fiasco.

Remember the original “definition of success” for Iraq — and how it was progressively downgraded in the face of failures? Bush launched a fanciful mission to bring democracy and elections to the region (a goal that my colleagues and I argued at the time was inimical to U.S. security). Then Bush’s fantasy vision of Iraq as a beacon of “democracy” was pared-down to the idea of an Iraqi government that can at least stand on its own, so America can stand down. Then it dissolved to something like, If we give the ethnic-sectarian factions in Iraq some space to talk, instead of butchering each other by the truckload, then that would be progress. That was the goal of the surge. Yet the centuries old feuds and hatreds that divide Iraqis cannot be wished away; nor is there reason to think they will ever go away. If anything, as I argue in Winning the Unwinnable War, aspects of the surge may well have sown the seeds for greater strife: Washington’s policy was to empower Sunnis, who harbor long-standing grudges against Shiites, and in some cases hope for an opportunity to settle old scores. Now they’re armed.

For more on my view of the surge and the Iraq war, you can read an interview I took part in here and here (part one; part two); I also address it in chapter 6 of my book.

There are plenty of real problems with health insurance today. Many are frustrated by the ever-increasing cost of health insurance, the seemingly impossible task of figuring out what their insurance covers, the fear of losing their job and with it their insurance. But as my colleague Jeff Scialabba has been pointing out, these sorts of problems are the result of government interference in the health insurance market. The less-regulated life insurance market, for example, does not have spiraling costs, miles of bureaucratic red tape, or a pervasive employer-sponsored system tying people to their jobs.

But there is another category of charges leveled at health insurance companies that is not legitimate. These complaints brand insurance companies as evil because they engage in an array of discriminatory behaviors, which ObamaCare promises to end. The Baucus bill (PDF here), for instance, contains guaranteed issue and modified community rating provisions. This means that insurance companies will be forced to insure everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and must charge everyone in the same age range identical premiums. The idea is that treating different consumers differently is unfair.

But in actual fact, it is eliminating health insurance discrimination that is unfair. Forcing insurance companies to take all comers, and to charge all customers similar fees can accomplish only one thing: to force some health insurance customers (primarily the young and healthy) to subsidize other health insurance customers (the elderly and the sick). That’s not insurance–that’s welfare.

The overall effect of eliminating health insurance discrimination is to drive up the costs of health insurance. As the Wall Street Journal points out, states that currently prevent insurance discrimination through community rating and guaranteed issue rules have the most expensive individual insurance markets in the country. “In 2007, the average annual premium in New Jersey was $5,326 for singles and in New York $12,254 for a family, versus the national average of $2,613 and $5,799, respectively.”

We abhor racial discrimination, not because it is discrimination, but because race has no bearing on a person’s intellect or character. But when it comes to insurance, it is obviously relevant whether someone has pre-existing conditions, or is otherwise at greater risk to need medical care. That’s not to say that on a free market people at risk for disease would not be able to buy insurance. They would simply have to pay more than people without such risks. (John Cochrane has an interesting discussion of how preexisting conditions might be handled on a free market in the Wall Street Journal.)

Think about it this way. If we can painlessly ban health insurance discrimination, then why don’t we end all discrimination for all forms of insurance? Why should we have to buy car insurance before we get in an accident? Why should Geico be able to drop Robert Downey, Jr. after his fifteenth DUI? Why should a three-pack-a-day smoker have to pay more for life insurance than Michael Phelps?

Insurance is inherently discriminatory. An insurance company cannot function without assessing risk, charging greater fees for greater risks, and refusing to provide “insurance” to those for whom the outcome in question is certain. It is by carefully assessing risk and discriminating accordingly that insurance companies enable us to protect ourselves against some of life’s unknowns. That is a crucial benefit, and those who provide it should not be smeared, but thanked.

Image: Flickr

The proposed law had sparked what the Times called a “revolt” among more than two hundred New Jersey doctors who signed a resolution opposing the bill. Observers noted a “movement that is spreading among New Jersey doctors in threatening to refuse to treat medical patients under the provisions of the King-Anderson bill.” The movement’s leader, Dr. J. Bruce Henriksen, was quoted as saying: “As far as I’m concerned as an individual, of course, I won’t practice under socialized medicine. I’ll quit. I’ll refuse to see all patients. Maybe they’ll put me in jail.”

Someone then asked former President Harry Truman what he thought about the New Jersey doctors’ revolt. Replied Truman: “I think they ought to be hit over the head with a club.”

What difference has forty-seven years of ever-expanding government control over health care made? Well, for one thing, not much opposition has surfaced among doctors opposed to ObamaCare. On the contrary, the American Medical Association has meekly indicated that it’s “committed to achieving health system reform this year” that “provides health insurance for all.”

As a result of this timidity, politicians haven’t needed to be as brutally frank about their tactics as Truman was in 1962. But you’d better believe that if any significant opposition among doctors were to emerge, the legal equivalent of that club would quickly be brandished. After all, doctors are acutely aware that government authorities control their licenses to practice, the prices they can charge for their services, the patients they can treat, the drugs they can prescribe, and the insurance companies they typically look to for income.

With power like that, who needs an old-fashioned caveman’s club?

The Goldstone Report on the 2008/09 Gaza war brings to light genuine horrors — not pertaining to Israel’s conduct in the war, but horrors indicative of the U.N.’s basic character.

What events led up to the Gaza war? Perhaps it had something to do with the 10,000+ rockets and mortars fired into Israeli towns from Gaza during an eight-year period. But that salient fact is given no weight in the report. The report actually seems to be calculated to absolve Hamas of guilt for its aggression, while smearing Israel for “war crimes” for defending itself. E.g. the report cites an admission by a Hamas official that the Islamist group “created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against the Zionist bombing machines” — but dismisses that admission in concluding that Hamas did not exploit human beings as shields. Facts in the report appear to have been bent into submission to advance a pro-Hamas agenda.

The problem is not simply that the report is blatantly biased; the entire venture is morally warped. It fully reflects the ugly spirit of the body that launched the “fact-finding” investigation, the U.N. Human Rights Council. That (ironically named) Council includes some of the world’s most viciously anti-rights regimes (Cuba, which has enslaved its own citizens to carry out state-directed labor; Russia, where the fascist-in-all-but-name regime brutally crushes dissenters; Saudi Arabia, where the “morality” police roams the streets enforcing religious orthodoxy). Under the powerful sway of such regimes, the Council frequently acts to deflect attention from the trampling of rights by its corrupt members and to vilify regimes, like Israel, that do respect rights. That country has routinely been the focus of more criticism by the so-called Human Rights Council than any other — more even than actual violators of rights like Sudan, or Iran. The Council does all this with the air of moral legitimacy (bestowed on it by the membership of the United States and other decent regimes, whose presence at the table abets the Council’s odious behavior). It’s like allowing criminals to run the police force.

A common view holds that the HRC (and other U.N. bodies) are aberrations, that the U.N. is basically noble but in need of “reform.” Isn’t it time, though, to consider seriously that what we’re witnessing are not aberrations, but the manifestations of the U.N.’s fundamental corruption: its legitimization and complicity in the crimes of dictatorial, militant regimes and organizations . . .  under the guise of advancing peace and rights?

image: flickr/denmar