French Senate votes to enshrine abortion rights in constitution. Really!

I am not sure the right to kill a human life belongs in any constitution of a civil society! I hope the French parliament will vote no!

It also confirms that President Macron is more like a moron!

A legal compromise in form of a regular law is enough to deal with this controversial issue in a flexible and democratic fashion.

"France is one step closer to enshrining abortion rights in its constitution after French senators overwhelmingly endorsed the change on Wednesday.

A total of 267 senators voted in favor of the change, with 50 voting against it. The constitutional amendment faces a final test next Monday when it needs to secure the backing of three-fifths of lawmakers at a joint congress of parliament, which will see both houses vote together.

“I am committed to making women’s freedom to have an abortion irreversible by enshrining it in the constitution,” Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X, celebrating the Senate vote. ..."

French Senate votes to enshrine abortion rights in constitution | CNN

Ohio Right to Make Reproductive Decisions Including Abortion Initiative approved as a constitutional amendment

To include the right to kill an unborn human life into a constitution is a low point in the history of human civilization! To call it reproductive decisions is a horrible euphemism.

To pass laws permitting abortion under certain circumstances is sufficient to deal with this contentious issue.

"Election results

Ohio Issue 1

Result                Votes        Percentage

Approved Yes    2,186,962    56.6%

No                    1,675,728    43.4%"

Ohio Issue 1, Right to Make Reproductive Decisions Including Abortion Initiative (2023) - Ballotpedia

Repeal The 17th Amendment Of The U.S. Constitution

Posted: 9/11/2016

Trigger

Just came across this future and interesting event of the Claremont Institute, i.e. Checks and Balances? State Sovereignty and the 17th Amendment.

This awful Amendment has irked me for some time. How could a majority of states (or the people behind it) back in 1913 be so stupid to give up federalism or sending Senators to the U.S. Congress?

I am shocked to learn that my current home state Arizona was the second state to ratify this Amendment.

Notes

The 17th Amendment is one of those monsters that were introduced in the U.S. Constitution during the socialist/progressive era that need to be undone! This Amendment has certainly upset the carefully crafted checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution.

Other highly questionable Amendments were the already failed Prohibition (18th Amendment of 1920), women’s suffrage (19th Amendment of 1920, a largely superfluous Amendment at the time), federal income taxation (16th Amendment of 1913).

It should have been left to the sovereignty of each state to decide how U.S. Senators are elected or to regulate women’s suffrage.

I am with the Utah legislature that “On March 2, 2016, ... approved Senate Joint Resolution No. 2 asking Congress to offer an amendment to the United States Constitution that would repeal the Seventeenth Amendment.”

John Dingell Or Why Strict Term Limits Are Overdue

Posted: 2/27/2014 Updated: 11/10/2014

Trigger

The Cato Institute just published this article “Not These Guys Again! The Case for Term Limits” about term limits.

Just read “Abgeordneter John Dingell hört auf/Ein Leben im Kongress” (Loosely translated, Representative Dingell spent his whole life in the U.S. Congress).

When Representative John Dingell retires this Labor Union friendly, leftist/progressive U.S. Representative from a bygone time will have served a total of 59 years of his life from age 29 to age 88.

Dingell Dynasty

He succeeded his father John Dingell, Sr.

We learn from this article above that Representative Dingell (D) wants his much younger wife Deborah Dingell (30 years his junior) to succeed him. Outrageous or is it an old fashioned shame!

Strict Term Limits For Every Public Servant

Representative Dingell is a recoiling example that public service should not be a lifetime occupation.

It is high time for the U.S. Constitution to be amended as follows, no public servant or public sector employee or judge is to serve more than let’s say 10 years total.

Distribution Of Idiots

No matter how you slice it there are more idiots than wise and smart people around at any given time. Thus, if you introduce strict term limits, at least the idiots can not accumulate or just stay on in politics and government as they do now in the current systems in Western countries without term limits.

Fresh Ideas

Strict term limits would offer a chance to for false ideologies or persistent biases etc. to be replaced quicker with better solutions.

Previous, Related Blogs

Here, here, and here.

Democracy In Crisis

History Is Littered With Fallen Empires

The title of this blog post is intentionally patterned after the famous book “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville.

Democracy is arguably the best form of government humans have ever come up with, but democracy is by far no guarantor that such governments will not share the fate of decline by their own doing.

The Great Recession

First, the global housing crisis, then the financial sector crisis, followed by a sovereign debt crisis of overextended welfare states all have exposed the ineptitude of our elected politicians. Politicians who understand how the free market economy works are extremely rare. Most of them are as clueless as the current two-term US President Obama.

First of all, our elected politicians are responsible for all these crisis by having implemented over decades flawed policies like affordable housing for everyone; financial sector overregulation and bailout; recklessly low interest rates over long periods; a major ever expanding monetary union (EMU) at any price and by breaching key contracts; and so on.

Inherent Expansion Of Soft Despotism In Democracies

The term soft despotism is believed to be coined by Alexis de Tocqueville. Almost 200 years after his death we can note that the trajectory of soft despotism lead to the big governments we all are now so familiar with in western democracies. This unhealthy growth of paternalism is to be reversed. The sooner, the better.

Long forgotten are the ideals of the founders of America such as individual liberty and limited government.

In Tocqueville’s own words:

“It [big government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.

By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large.”

“Democracy, Tocqueville argued, was capable of breeding its own form of despotism, albeit of the “soft” variety. He spoke of “an immense protective power” that took all responsibility for everyone’s happiness—just so long as this power remained “sole agent and judge of it.” This power, Tocqueville projected, would “resemble parental authority” but would try to keep people “in perpetual childhood” by relieving people “from all the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living.”” (source).

Restore Limited Government

1.       Amend the constitution to limit the size of all government to less than 33% of GDP.

2.       Amend the constitution to require balanced, comprehensively defined government budgets except in times of major emergencies or war.

3.       Privatize the public sector to the maximum extent possible. No exceptions!

4.       Amend the constitution, for as long as government is responsible for monetary policy, that short-term nominal interest rates cannot be set lower than the inflation rate plus productivity growth.

Strict Term Limits For The Entire Public Sector

What is good for the diplomatic corps, i.e. the rotation of diplomats and staff every so often is good for elected politicians, police officers, judges, and bureaucrats.

Anybody involved in public service ought to be term limited no matter which branch of government, legislative, administrative, law enforcement, or judiciary. If appointed or elected or hired in the public sector you will be in public service for a limited time only. Nobody should plan on a lifelong career in public service.

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Democracy of all forms of government that have been tried before has a better chance to heal itself.

Missing Constitutional Amendments

In order to establish a society of free, responsible, and self governing individuals following amendments are missing from the US Constitution:

1.       For as long as government runs a central bank the function of this central bank should only be concerned with internal and external monetary stability. Nominal interest rates cannot be set lower than the inflation rate plus some factor (e.g. long-term trend of real GDP growth). The central bank is strictly prohibited from direct or indirect financing of government.

2.       Supreme Court justices should be randomly drawn from a considerable pool of suitable candidates, which ought to include people without judiciary experience or law degrees. Term limits for Supreme Court justices are overdue.

3.       The size of federal government as measured by revenue or expenditures should be limited to a maximum of let’s say 20% of GDP except for extremely extraordinary events. For this purpose, federal government should be defined in a comprehensive way, e.g. including off budget items, Social Security, Medicare etc.

4.       Federal government debt should be limited to maximum of let’s say 30% of GDP except for extremely extraordinary events. For this purpose, federal government debt should be defined in a most comprehensive way, e.g. including promises to future retirees etc.

5.       Federal government needs to completely stay out of providing subsidies to businesses, education, health care, welfare, unemployment insurance, and retirement security except perhaps for the most needy individuals. Free individuals and free markets are capable of handling these areas without government meddling. Besides, if these areas need government intervention at all these areas are prerogatives of the individual states.

6.       Federal taxes should never be confiscatory and should only serve as a source of revenue and not to implement any social or economic policies. Ideally, taxes should be paid exclusively by voluntary choice of free individuals. Confiscatory taxes are defined as cumulative taxes exceeding let’s say 30% of a person’s income irrespective of the form of taxation (e.g. income or sales taxes). The tax code has to be kept very simple. A person’s wealth should be tax free. Businesses should not be taxed.

7.       It is overdue to reign in the many abuses of the Commerce Clause by the federal government and the US Supreme Court. It is quite clear that the original meaning of this clause was limited to commerce in the narrow sense of economic exchange like foreign trade or trade between states.