Judge Andrew Napolitano

Pretend the U.S. is as free as the Founding Fathers intended it to be. In this authentically (and classically) liberal America, no one can tell free men and women what to do with their property, namely their bodies, their abodes and their businesses.

The individual living in America as it was meant to be is free to run his business as he wishes, associate with those he likes, dissociate from those he dislikes or disapproves; hire, fire, rent to or evict from, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will.

This hypothetical free man is at liberty to bruise as many feelings as he likes, so long as his mitts stop at the next man’s face. So long as he harms nobody’s person or property, our mythic man may live as he wishes to live.

Americans have been propagandized for so long; they no longer grasp the basic building blocks of liberty. A crude reductio ad absurdum should help:

A retail store selling Nazi memorabilia opens its doors in my neighborhood. I enter in search of the yellow Star of David Jews were forced to wear during the Third Reich. The proprietor, decked out in Nazi insignia and regalia, says, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve Jews.” “Don’t be like that,” I say. “Where else can I find a pair of clip-on swastika earrings?” The Nazi sympathizer is polite but persistent: “Ma’am, I mean no disrespect, but back in the Old Country, Jews murdered my great grandfather’s cousin and used his blood in the leavening of the Passover matzah.” “Yeah,” I reply. “I’m familiar with that blood libel. I assure you my own mother’s matzo balls were free of the blood of brats, gentile or Jewish. No matter. I can see where you’re coming from. I’m sorry for your loss. Good luck.”

There! Did that hurt?

Did I rush off to rat out my Nazi neighbor to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice? Not on your life. A principled Jewish libertarian (with a sense of humor)—who believes in absolute freedom of association and the rights of private property—would doff his Kippah and walk out.

Similarly, if a restaurant refused to serve a gay family member and her partner; why would we wish to compel its sincere owners to wait on us? Why make them uncomfortable? Why not take our business where it’s wanted?

Ultimately, anti-discrimination law banning the private discrimination just described is inconsistent with freedom of association and the right of private property.

“That right to discriminate is the very essence of freedom,” remarks Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute. “That’s why people came to this country, to escape forced associations—religious, economic, political, or otherwise.”

Not all jurists have a good understanding of liberty.

While poor, hapless Governor Pence has a far better handle on freedom than legal positivist Judge Andrew Napolitano—the Judge condemned the spirit of a law that grants a defendant a legal standing to argue his case in a court of law—Pence lacks the TV persona’s bombast.

Get off your knees Gov. Pence; you’re not in a gay bathhouse (where only gays are, presumably, welcome). Muster a coherent defense of the bedrock of a free republic—and of civilization itself: the rights of private property and freedom of association.

Why do men like Mr. Pence, who understand these principles all too well, buckle before a mob of lobotomized tyrants with the intelligence of a Miley Cyrus?

I’ve read Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. I believe the relevant section is a modest thing: “… the court or other tribunal shall allow a defense against any party and shall grant appropriate relief against the governmental entity.”

This small clause came as a surprise, unaware as I was that American courts deny a manifestly religious defendant the right to mount a faith-based defense. The legal defense reclaimed by the Indiana law is thus almost pitiful. How illiberal have U.S. courts become if a defendant has no legal standing to argue his religious convictions?

Canada operates an extra-judiciary Human Rights Tribunal that, likewise, affords its victims none of the traditional defenses Canadian courts usually allows. For example, mens rea, or criminal intention—the absence of the intent to harm—is no defense in this Tribunal. Neither does “truth” qualify as an argument in a “court” that prosecutes thought crimes. If he denies the Holocaust, a defendant in these Canukistan courts cannot assert a sincere belief in this conspiracy.

The absence of due process in Canada’s Human Rights apparatus makes it one of the most oppressive instruments at the state’s disposal. Not for nothing is it referred to as a Kangaroo Court.

And it is a Kangaroo Court that says yes to the Twinkie Defense, and no to the faith-based defense.

by Ilana Mercer

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The logic is as simple as it is foolproof. An “air-tight free-market argument,” according to WND:

“If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men as a group would have long-since priced themselves out of the market. That entrepreneurs don’t ditch men en masse for women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women.”

The logic is not, however, female proof.

It’s been the week of the weaker sex: filled with baseless whining. The Week of the Womin culminated with Facebook billionaire Sheryl Sandberg grumbling to Fox News millionaire Megyn Kelly: “I think it’s good that the president took some steps on equal pay, but it’s not enough.”

About women’s work Sandberg holds humdrum feminist views. She learned the hard way, having dared, at first, to share the aggregate reality she had encountered in the workplace: Men were wont to be as driven as demons. Women needed to be driven. For that observation, the Pussy Riot Sisterhood threatened to sandbag Sandberg. Facebook’s chief operating officer quickly corrected course. Ms. Sandberg started mouthing the only acceptable meme: Saddle “society” and the “patriarchy” for any and all female failures and preferences.

As her politically pleasing, mainstream opinion currently has it, society and the patriarchy have conditioned women to be nurturing and to apologize for any male-like, go-getter ambitions they harbor. While men will attribute their success to their own core skills; women “attribute their success to luck and help from other people,” carps Sandberg. The girls are too nice. They don’t take credit for their greatness. They don’t raise their hand enough. They don’t “Lean In”—the trite title of Sandberg’s serialized book. Yes, there’s a follow up for advanced nudniks.

While she should seldom be taken seriously, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was perfectly serious when she too, in 2012, inveighed against the same debunked myth of “income disparity between men and women” that Democrat Sandberg is perpetuating.

For their part, Republicans will seldom deploy economic logic to dispel distaff America’s claims of disadvantage. To counter Pelosi, Republicans called on a teletart who is front-and-center on GOP TV because in possession of what TV takes: Big hair, big boobs and Chiclets for teeth—a pretty package that more than compensates for a lack of cerebral agility or originality. (Yes, why is it that nobody dares to comment on the overwhelming, overweening dominance the fair sex has in the anchor’s chair? Does anyone imagine that this advantage is bestowed at Fox Business, because “Kennedy” is more brilliant than Judge Andrew Napolitano? The reader doesn’t need me to spell out the profit-generating advantages women hold in visual media.)

Although this column did not name her at the time, one Michelle Fields, I believe, “pioneered” the tit-for-tat, rudderless case the Republicans excel at making on wage parity. Incapable of argument, Fields thus condemned Pelosi—not for her bogus theory of payinequality, but for her hypocrisy. Pelosi, it was revealed, had been silent about Democratic senators who were paying women staffers less than male staffers.

The lesson is equally applicable to the revelation, this week, that women working in the “executive mansion” are also getting paid less, on average, than their male counterparts. As this column advised in 2012 (well before Chuckie Krauthammer cottoned on), the T & A Republican TV contingent ought to have responded as follows:

“We’re glad that Barack Obama has finally understood that the length of time a woman has been in the workplace, her age, experience, education; whether she has put her career on hold to marry and mother—all factor into the wage equation. Good for you, Mr. President, for showing in practice that you comprehend that women are more likely than men to have had an interrupted career trajectory and to opt for part-time and lower-paying professions—education instead of engineering, for example.”

Now, Mr. President, please put down your pay-parity executive order and step away from that pen, slowly.

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Tag: Judge Andrew Napolitano

Ilana Mercer: Get off your knees, Gov. Pence! (you’re not in a gay bathhouse)

The week of whining womin