Toronto Mayor Brings Unwanted Attention

Sometime during my adolescence in my hometown of Toronto, municipal do-gooders began referring to the place as a "world class city." The Canadian self-consciousness of the appellation was immediately apparent to critics, who pointed out that, say, Paris doesn't bang on about being "world class" because it's, y'know, Paris.

To wit, if you have to say you are a "world class city," you probably aren't.

Even so, Toronto is a splendid spot, the 4th-largest city in North America, and has plenty of which it can be proud. While it has been almost 50 years since Toronto won a Stanley Cup (that's hockey), it boasts a couple of World Series' and some Grey Cups (that's football, played properly). It also has an NBA team, named during the heady 90’s when it was assumed people would never, ever cease to be fascinated by Jurassic Park.

At last, however, Toronto is receiving the attention it craves, but for none of the reasons it wanted. City fathers (or “city parents” as they would likely prefer to be called) wish they were being recognized for their nonpareil recycling programs, or for banishing automobiles from the roads in favor of streetcars and bicycle lanes, or for a flawless, carbon-neutral hosting of the Olympics (they have had to make do with something called the Pan Am Games instead).

But no, the eyes of the world are fixed, albeit briefly, upon this sleepy Hogtown (as Toronto was known well before this current pig-fest) because its mayor has admitted to smoking crack.

To the uninitiated, it may seem incredible that a character like Rob Ford could have been elected mayor in the first place. But, as urban dwellers across North America are aware, modern cities are overtaxed and hyper-regulated, with precious few leaders willing to be frugal with public funds and prioritize the prosaic needs of municipal governing, such as ensuring snow gets cleared and trash gets collected. In Toronto, the usual parade of horribles toward the mayor's chair consists of tearful, lefty, bike helmet weenies who make New York's Bill de Blasio look like Edmund Burke.

In this context, Ford was a welcome contrast. Since winning about half the vote in a crowded field in 2010, Ford has been the bete noire of the city's leftists (essentially, the half who didn't vote for him). Unable to claim his overwhelming victory was illegitimate, they have obsessed over and magnified his failings, real and perceived.

I recall attending a home game of Toronto's NBA thunder-lizard squadron with a prominent liberal journalist pal a couple years back. Between educating me on player biographies and lamenting that they don't call traveling anymore, he peppered me with questions about my feelings on Mayor Ford. I mostly shrugged in response and my left-wing interlocutor was flabbergasted that I was not as preoccupied and outraged by the man as he was.

At that point, while we could agree Ford's bombastic style and nose-painting were a bit much, I never considered limited-government reforms at City Hall worthy of hyperventilation. In fact, I agreed with them. And, like many observers of the media, I am familiar with the phenomenon of journalists lambasting someone whose ideology they despise, while lionizing lightweights who share their values (example: George W. Bush is smarter than Barack Obama – discuss).

But smoking crack, lying about it, then claiming victimhood while clinging to your job like grim death are several bridges too far.

In May of 2013, the Toronto Star published explosive reports of a video showing Ford smoking at a known crack house. Things got very ugly, very quickly. Ford denied the allegations, saying he had not seen the video and it did not exist. During the intervening months, accusations of perfidy and harassment were hurled between both sides until, last week, Toronto’s Police Chief Bill Blair stepped forward to corroborate the Star’s claim.

Specifically, Blair says that in the course of a criminal investigation of which Ford was a target, police have obtained video footage, "consistent with what has been described in the media,"

Now, confronted with this powerful testimony, Ford allows that he “may” have smoked crack, "in one of my drunken stupors."

Ford's Homer Simpson, "I thought the cop was a prostitute" defense should be plainly problematic. The subterfuge is, in essence, "Sure, I may have smoked crack but, in fairness, I only did so because I had gotten so knee-walking plastered, as you do, that I didn't know what I was up to." Oh, well then.

In a press conference this week, Ford lamented his misfortune and said he would not wish for anyone to endure what he has had to go through. Apart from the egregious conduct itself, this attitude of Ford’s is perhaps most troubling – as though his difficulties were some disembodied quirk of fate, rather than the result of his own behavior.

Some recent polls have shown a rise in Ford's approval ratings, likely owing to sympathy among those who feel he has been hounded by the press. These people are correct, up to a point.

He's "only human" and "a man of the people," Ford’s defenders insist. These claims are true, but irrelevant.

Botching a speech, snapping at a constituent – these are the all-too-human mistakes of a prominent politician. We’re none of us perfect, but Ford’s conduct exceeds the foibles of an overworked public servant, and breaks the boundaries of liberal media bias. How many of you readers would keep your jobs after behaving in this way? (Marion Barry, you are excused from this question, sir).

Nevertheless, Ford insists he will stay on, and even seek re-election in 2014, evincing that even small-government politicians can give in to the conceit that they are somehow irreplaceable.

Toronto is tasked with navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of finding a leader who respects the value of a taxpayer dollar, but who also doesn't smoke crack. It should not be so difficult.

Theo Caldwell is the author of Finn the half-Great.  Contact him at theo@halfgreat.com

Obamacare is Settled Law like Climate Change is Settled Science

“The best way to get a bad law repealed,” Abraham Lincoln advised, “is to enforce it strictly.”  Republicans who wish to undo Obamacare may hope for a milder remedy, but Barack Obama’s re-election, along with the imprimatur of the Supreme Court, have given rise congressional Democrats’ ubiquitous defense of the legislation: It is the settled law of the land.

The huffy finality with which this is commonly pronounced is oddly familiar.  On what other issue do we hear that debate is closed?  More on that below.

What is “settled law,” precisely?  As Professor Gerard Magliocca of Indiana University recently wrote: “Lawyers use the term ‘settled law’ to describe court decisions that clearly establish a rule or a doctrine. Yet settled law also refers to legal actions that are accepted by society.”

In the summer of 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate and, to the casual observer, this would seem like an end to the law’s judicial challenges.  But this is just one of the legal concerns to which the legislation has given rise.

For example, as attorney Andrew C. McCarthy and others have noted, if the Obamacare mandate is a tax, per Chief Justice John Roberts, then the fact that the law was written in the Senate presents a problem.  New taxes, and indeed all “money bills,” must originate in the chamber closest to the people: the House of Representatives.  This is a function of Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution (“All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills”), derived from centuries of tradition, dating back to King Charles II, if not the Magna Carta of 1215. 

On this count alone, notwithstanding persistent opposition to Obamacare among the public on which it has been inflicted, the law is not settled.

But let us suppose, for a moment, that Obamacare were crafted and passed with impeccable adherence to every legal tradition right back to Runnymede; and let us further suppose that Obamacare’s recent bump in popularity on the heels of the government shutdown brings its approval rating out of the 30s.  Would that render Obamacare inviolate and “settled”?

Lots of inane things are and have been the “law of the land.”  At a Massachusetts wake, mourners are prohibited by law from eating more than three sandwiches.  In Alabama, it is illegal to wear a false mustache that causes laughter in church.   And that’s before we consider that slavery, segregation and the restriction of voting rights to white males were all once the “law of the land.”

Law is never “settled” just as science is not.  They are both in constant flux, as new realities emerge. 

To this, some might say, “Ah-ha!  You are citing the settled nature of old law – the Constitution and beyond – to suggest that law can never be settled.”  That’s fair enough, but the US Constitution has been amended and interpreted many times to change its practical applications.  Why should Obamacare be immune to such treatment?  Indeed, President Obama has unilaterally amended the law several times already, absent any legal authority to do so, which begs the question why it seems egregious that duly elected members of Congress may wish to write some changes of their own, perhaps including a repeal.

But this “settled law” stuff is merely the anodyne expression applied to the current crisis (much like the “clean” spending bill Democrats have demanded).  It is emblematic of the Left’s called-it, stamped-it, no-erasies, Black Magic, infinity-plus-one approach to policy.  To wit, once they get the result they want, it’s frozen in carbonite like Han Solo and hung in Jabba the Hutt’s palace, with no hope of rescue by rebel forces.

And that’s what seems so familiar about this (the freezing and carbon twigged our memory, and Jabba’s palace put us in mind of Al Gore’s stately pleasure-dome).  To its supporters, Obamacare is a closed case akin to the “settled science” of climate change. 

Attendant to both, of course, is the anger.  That is, the spittle-flecked fury directed toward those who dissent.  Born of a Manichean worldview, one wishes its adherents would consider the possibility that people oppose Obamacare or question man-made global warming out of something other than a desire to deny health coverage to the poor or watch the world burn. 

In addition, imperviousness to reality and refusal to countenance opposing views are common traits.  Obamacare remains unpopular and is thus far a mess; similarly, despite decades of warnings that we are one SUV away from birds bursting into flames in mid-air, there has been no increase in global temperatures for at least 15 years.  These are facts that can be advanced, and considered, in good faith.

Ironically, many people who embrace atheism will brook no deviation from environmental liturgies, and laud the exclusion of such heresy from civilized discussion.  Likewise, they will protest or bring suit to maintain the unblemished secularism of the public square, while insisting their faith-based interpretations of nature be foisted on every schoolchild in America.

In such a mindset, everything is open to interpretation, personal belief, free expression – except climate change and Obamacare.  Those matters are “settled” and if you offer a differing interpretation or belief, you are a fool, or in the pay of Big Oil, and probably a racist.

There is no need for this.  Any theory worth its salt, or any law worthy of the name, should welcome challenge.  “Question Everything,” as the bumper sticker says.  Americans, who enjoy the fruits of a nation founded on an idea, should not foreclose hearing the ideas of others.

Furthermore, in a nation where all are meant to be equal before the law, legislation ought to apply evenly to everyone.  If the president wishes to exempt businesses and other favored groups from law that is “settled,” then this relief ought to apply to regular people, too.  Similarly, if environmentalists insist upon restrictions and regulations for the rest of us, they should hold themselves to the same standard.

Significant to Obamacare, the politicians who passed it have effectively liberated themselves from its clutches.  Why should such a thing be a law?  Those who reference our legislative system in arguing for the “settled” nature of Obamacare should consider whether laws that bind the citizenry but not Congress are consistent with the American way.  Who works for whom, exactly?

“Change is the law of life,” observed John F. Kennedy, another president to whom Obama aspires.  If Obamacare is indeed a bad law, perhaps Lincoln’s prescription is its only remedy.  Then again, faint hope though it may be, Democrats could embrace JFK’s nostrum that some things are not so settled after all.

Theo Caldwell, host of TV’s Global Command Centre, has been a member of the New York Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, and the Kansas City Board of Trade. He can be reached at at theo@theocaldwell.com

What is Legal and What is Right

In defending the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ phone records and emails, proponents have relied heavily on the argument that these actions are legal.

Let us stipulate, for the sake of argument, that the NSA program is utterly consistent with the letter of the law. That doesn’t make it right.

When one delineates between right and wrong, the reflex of today’s relativist zeitgeist is to demand, “Who are you to judge?” The answer, which one wishes were forthcoming from more people, is, “I am (or was) a free citizen, with a God-given capacity, and duty, to make decisions.” That’s not to say every decision you make will be correct, nor is it unrestricted license to judge other people, but no amount of PC browbeating can deprive you of your innate sense of propriety.

And the government collecting telephone and email records of every citizen is just plain wrong.

To be sure, the NSA’s advocates have tried other tacks, such as claiming that only “metadata” are collected (that is, numbers, locations and durations of phone calls, excluding voice content), and that emails are not being read without a warrant. But besides that these claims strain credulity (and polls consistently show Americans do not buy them), they conflate what is permissible with what is possible.

As the Guardian newspaper has meticulously demonstrated, only a few forms and protocols stand between NSA employees and contractors and the content of online communications. While the letter of the law may mandate individualized warrants (and this is in no way clear), reading your emails requires no further infrastructure and would constitute a breach of rules without consequences.

One of the most forceful defenders of the NSA’s actions is Andrew C. McCarthy, a columnist for National Review and PJ Media, whom I have quoted favorably in other contexts.

As a lawyer, McCarthy evinces an occupational propensity to substitute precedent for common sense. To his credit, he recognizes that stressing the program’s legality has made it a tougher sell in the marketplace of ideas. Even so, his enthusiasm for NSA surveillance remains undiminished, and he avers that his side’s foundering is less a failure of philosophy than tactics.

Quoth McCarthy: “most Americans have internalized the ‘expectation of privacy’ contrivance; they now believe the Constitution gives them enforceable privacy rights in the property of others if it reflects on aspects of their personal lives. More importantly, the Fourth Amendment was never the end of any privacy argument anyway. It merely defines the minimal ambit of privacy government must respect.”

McCarthy’s precedent-based mangling of the Fourth Amendment, insisting its proscriptions against unreasonable searches of “persons, houses, papers, and effects” do not apply to phone records, since lawyers have decided those belong to “third parties”; i.e., phone companies, is a prime example of how accomplished legal minds can eschew basic reason.

Besides that telephone companies keep certain records because the government requires them to, such as which towers convey which calls (making it a bit rich for the NSA to turn around and claim those records belong to the companies, thereby justifying their untrammeled collection), the Constitution predates the telephone by almost a century. Do McCarthy and others enraptured by precedent really think the Founders would be okay with NSA surveillance? Honestly? If James Madison had a cell phone, you can bet the Bill of Rights would have been even clearer.

The question comes down to the proper role of government in a free society.

Commonly for Democrats, the government’s role could be Hamlet-sized, but they’d still want it bigger. As more of them object to the NSA’s conduct, however, including Rep. Jared Polis, who co-sponsored a House amendment to rein in the surveillance program, one wonders if their liberty-minded principles will prevail.

Republicans, meanwhile, are in the midst of a well-publicized dust-up between their traditional, security-minded old guard and their younger, libertarian wing, led by Sen. Rand Paul. The outcome of this kerfuffle could be dispositive for the future of the party, if not the nation.

The overarching rationale for NSA surveillance, of course, is to prevent terrorism, and those who support the program insist there are many successes we simply don’t know about (this is reminiscent of jazz fans who tell you to listen to the notes NOT being played).

Some, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, have summoned the spectre of 9/11, as though one horrific instance were an evergreen rationale for ubiquitous government surveillance.

But so long as our government collects and monitors every personal thing we write or say, what freedoms are left to defend?

It may be legal, it may even be well-intentioned, but it isn’t right.

Theo Caldwell, host of TV’s Global Command Centre, has been a member of the New York Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, and the Kansas City Board of Trade. He can be reached at at theo@theocaldwell.com

Chris Christie or Rand Paul?

“Every man is more than just himself.” –Herman Hesse

Mathematically, the odds are against either New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul becoming president of the United States. Of all the millions of eligible Americans throughout history, including many thousands of successful politicians, the number of individuals who have achieved the alchemy of talent, timing and luck to attain that high office is a mere 43 (counting Grover Cleveland twice).

Even among the dozen or so preferiti who get talked up on a quadrennial basis, there can be only one.

And while it seems plausible that one or both of Christie and Paul will run for president in 2016, their prospects for success are less significant than the philosophy each man represents.

As the recent, well-publicized squabble between them demonstrates, while these two men share a party, they embody vastly divergent views of America. Christie sounds much like a robust Republican of the recent past, prioritizing security and strength to counter foreign enmity; Paul, meanwhile, avers that many of the direst threats facing the nation are domestic in nature, including and especially the power and intrusiveness of our federal government.

In short, they have very different ways of defining danger, and defending freedom.

The shorthand has been that Christie represents the Republican “Establishment,” while Paul champions its “Libertarian” or, if you like, “Tea Party” faction (though the latter moniker carries sufficient misapprehensions so as to cloud discussion).

In modern parlance, you will find defenses of Christie in the columns of major publications, whereas Paul’s supporters can be read in the “Comments” section.

The recent brouhaha was touched off by comments Christie made at a governors’ forum in Colorado, in which he called Paul’s brand of libertarianism a “dangerous thought,” termed his objections to the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs “esoteric,” and dared NSA critics to present their case to the “widows and orphans” of 9/11.

Paul responded by offering Christie a dictionary, since a program that monitors every person in America is something other than “esoteric.” From there, the spate descended into unbecoming silly-bears about bacon and who has time for a beer with whom, but their initial disagreement represents a crucial question for their party, and for America. To wit, have we sacrificed too much freedom in the name of security?

This is a discussion that Republicans, and the country, must have.

Many will say that Republicans did not object to the security state when it was being constructed by President George W. Bush, and that’s fair enough. But as government surveillance expands and the militarization of American life increases in the second term of a Democratic president, perhaps we can shoulder bipartisan responsibility and ask: What would we like to do next?

“Remember 9/11” is a worthy and, one hopes, eternal commemoration of those who were killed that day, but it cannot serve as an indefinite rationale for egregious conduct. As a matter of course and reason, rallying cries are temporary. Were they not, some Canadian could say, “Remember the War of 1812” and punch you in the face.

The difference between September 10 and September 12 is less about capabilities than mindset. We were not attacked because the government was unable to track the phone calls and emails of every American. Rather, on an institutional and individual basis, Americans had taken a holiday from history through the 1990s, not recognizing that the terrorist acts of that decade represented a war already underway.

As others have noted, by the time the passengers of Flight 93 learned the fate of the other planes, and opted to overpower their hijackers, Americans had already twigged to the new reality, and inoculated themselves against similar attacks. The passengers who subdued underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day 2009 reinforce this view.

Notwithstanding these instances, are the terrorist threats we face really so vast and various that we must countenance ubiquitous government surveillance?

Freedom is the issue. As conservatives and liberals disagree over where market failure occurs, demarcating the point at which government should intervene, Paulites and Christocrats differ over which approach is most effective to safeguard liberty.

Must the security state be maintained, as Christie argues, or is that very state the principal threat to the freedom it purports to defend, per Paul?

Which man’s approach is more consistent with America’s values, and which will preserve its liberty for the future? Can there be reconciliation of their views?

For the GOP, perhaps the strongest option would be a genuinely articulate candidate who can speak the language of traditional Republicans, while embracing the vision of a rebirth of freedom (Sen. Ted Cruz, please call your office).

Then again, maybe none of this will matter. In 2016, as in 2012, perhaps Americans will opt for more of the same and send another Democrat to the White House (having said all this, watch Christie-Paul win, like, 48 states).

But regardless of who is on the ballot, the visions embodied by Chris Christie and Rand Paul present Americans with a momentous choice.

Theo Caldwell, host of TV’s Global Command Centre, has been a member of the New York Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, and the Kansas City Board of Trade. He can be reached at at theo@theocaldwell.com

Why the Surveillance State Must End

In this era of tone-deaf leadership, it seems the National Security Agency is the only government outfit that actually listens.

Congress certainly pays no mind, either to its constituents or to the words of the nation’s Founders. In narrowly defeating a House amendment introduced by Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), members of both parties evinced they do not comprehend individual freedom as codified in the Constitution, or as demanded by a growing number of modern Americans.

The Amash-Conyers amendment would have reined in the NSA’s indiscriminate collection of Americans’ phone records. Specifically, it would have limited such surveillance to people subject to investigation, per Section 15 of the Patriot Act.

The amendment was championed by liberty-minded legislators like Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), yet both Republican and Democrat leadership made it their business to see it defeated, which it was, by a vote of 217 to 205.

(Pause for a moment and consider: The Patriot Act, which for a dozen years has served as shorthand for all that offends liberal politicians, suddenly does not go far enough for Nancy Pelosi.)

And so, for now, the federal government will continue to track the phone calls of all Americans – in the form of so-called “metadata” – without probable cause and, thereby, without regard for the Fourth Amendment.

Some, including my Daily Caller colleague Julie Borowski, have averred that the relative closeness of the vote represents a partial victory for civil liberties, auguring complete success in future efforts. Here’s hoping they’re right.

A recent Pew poll found that 50% of Americans approve of the government collecting phone and Internet data for anti-terrorism purposes, while 44% disapprove. In that same poll, however, 56% of respondents say courts do not provide adequate limits on what is collected, 63% believe it is the content of calls and emails being harvested (rather than just “metadata”), and a whopping 70% believe the government is using this information for purposes other than combatting terror.

Time and again, when questioned about “anti-terrorism” government programs, people approve in the abstract, but their enthusiasm wanes when they are confronted with their practical applications.

Proper leaders do not govern by polls, but one expects them to apply common sense. And that is what is so dispiriting about this action in particular, and the national security state in general. One wishes politicians would take a step back, assess that a country constantly banging on about how free it is collects the phone records and emails of all its citizens, searches them like super-max inmates when they seek to travel, demands taxes and financial records even if they live overseas, and ask themselves one, simple question: “Are you KIDDING me?”

In defending NSA practices, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) insisted, “Somebody leading up to the September 11 attacks who was a terrorist overseas, called a terrorist living amongst us in the United States, and we missed it because we didn't have this capability.”

What crippling nonsense this is. Besides that the US government had already “missed” repeated opportunities to nab Osama bin Laden during the 1990s, are we to believe we can only stop terrorists by monitoring absolutely everyone? And incidentally, when was this fateful phone call we missed, and how would we have found it among every other call across, into and out of the country? The Congressman does not say.

A notable defender of the NSA regime is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is often mentioned as a front-runner for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. Christie called the bipartisan strain of libertarianism that objects to such programs a “dangerous thought” and challenged those opposed to make their case to families of those killed on 9/11. Quoth Christie: “I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation.”

What’s “dangerous” is another potential president who sees nothing wrong with expanding the surveillance state, and whose ready argument in its defense is a shameful appeal to victimhood.

Christie’s argument is a non sequitur, much like the policy he purports to defend. What, exactly, does he dare us to say to these widows and orphans? “Sorry for your loss but, not to worry, we will collect the phone records of every single American to honor your loved ones”?

There will always be people, from somewhere, who wish to harm us. This is an historical maxim. Another is that you cannot prevent bad things from happening. One takes precautions, certainly, but evil does not rest, screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place. The issue becomes one of degree: How much security will we tolerate in order to mitigate risk?

Security expert Bruce Schneier has observed that terrorism itself cannot end our way of life – only our reaction to it can.

If it helps, think of the War on Terror as a bad cold – the worst one you ever had, lasting 12 years with no end in sight. The most unpleasant symptoms – stuffy nose, chest congestion, etc. – are not caused by the virus, but by your own immune system going Balzac trying to protect you.

This column does not dispute that al-Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups wish to do us harm, and they have succeeded on occasion. But a greater danger is posed by the world’s most powerful government, with unlimited resources, including an unsurpassed arsenal and the literal ability to print its own money, making vassals of its citizens in the name of security.

The question we must ask ourselves is: How do we wish to live, day to day? Will we accept that not every aspect of life can or should be controlled, and still go confidently in the direction of our dreams? Or will we yield our liberties, incrementally and indefinitely, to a centralized power that offers vainglorious promises of safety?

If we choose the latter, by what right do we call ourselves Americans?

And this is why these surveillance state silly-bears must end: Because so long as they persist, this is not America – at least, not in the freedom-minded sense it has always been perceived. It will remain a grand expanse, with a rich history, but with none of its founding ideals of liberty, and lacking any aspiration to them. To avoid this fate, we must tolerate less from our government, and expect more of ourselves.

Theo Caldwell, host of TV’s Global Command Centre, has been a member of the New York Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, and the Kansas City Board of Trade. He can be reached at at theo@theocaldwell.com

Securing the Canadian Border

America’s recent obsession with border security provides politicians with plenty of opportunity to engage in populist rhubarb. Most often, Republican lawmakers clamor for robust policing of the US-Mexico demarcation, as they have done throughout the current immigration debate in Congress.

Sometimes, however, a legislator opts to be contrarian, for political or pecuniary reasons. Such a one is Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who recently enthused to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the prospect of deploying “low-level radar” and in-ground security defenses to secure America’s northern border.

Alas, the proposition that America’s borders with Canada and Mexico are equally problematic is dunderheaded political correctness, often deployed by the willfully benighted. We were inured to this sort of thing by the outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security, the breathtakingly ignorant Janet Napolitano, who entered that disgraceful office claiming the 9/11 hijackers came through Canada.

This is how the Left gets tough – rather than confront actual problems or genuine malefactors, they hyperventilate about invented ones, at the expense of innocent people.

As to Tester, he presents an object lesson for red state voters: When you elect a down-home, g-droppin’, deer-skinnin’, ramblin’ man like Jon Tester, you’re still getting a Democrat. That means, for example, when it’s time to cast the deciding vote in favor of Obamacare, Tester will be there. His Grizzly Adams façade is just that; silly-bears leftism is his guiding principle.

Perhaps, in this case, the goal is simply to bring federal dollars to Montana. This is equally disquieting.

The more one scrutinizes Congress, the more dispiritingly clear it becomes that decisions are almost never made for the good of the American people. Instead, it is usually nonsense like this, pertinent to local favors or fundraising, with little defensible value to the country. This is a bipartisan condition, often noted, and overdue for correction. To wit, it’s almost never about you, it’s about them.

To those of us from the northern side of the border, this talk of beefing up security seems a tad ungracious. Canada and the United States enjoy the largest bilateral trading relationship in the history of the planet and, notwithstanding some unpleasantness about 200 years ago, the dynamic has been largely cordial. We gave you the telephone, Velcro and Bryan Adams (you’re welcome).

Entering the United States from Canada by land, sea or air is already one of the most miserable border crossings in the civilized world.

One need not plumb the documented horror stories of US Customs officers’ rough treatment of foreigners, including journalists, or their institutional obsession with confiscating Kinder Eggs, to outline this point. Even Americans returning home are struck, with rare exceptions, by the imperious and dyspeptic default of their own border agents. It bears questioning where such people come from, and if they are aware that other First World nations do not treat travelers in this way.

Someone told these Eugene Tackleberrys at their sleep-away camp training weekend that they are the last line of defense, or the first, or some nonsense that makes them behave as though they’re guarding the Gates of Vienna against Ottoman hordes.

We Canadians are not a violent race. Our civil war took place in a Tim Horton’s and was over in about 20 minutes. No one was injured, and afterward we all went curling.

Absent any physical danger from septuagenarian snowbirds or day-shopping hosers, how to explain the excesses of America’s over-caffeinated sentries? Do they suppose they’re halting illegal immigration?

What Canadian would be sneaking into the US today? And for what, exactly? Higher unemployment? Steeper taxes? Violent crime? Obamacare?

Having gone through every stage of the US immigration system, from visitor to citizen, I contend that America needs to get over itself. The presumption that everyone, from anywhere, would crawl over broken glass to partake of the American Dream is decades out of date.

This anachronistic stance is reminiscent of leftists and academics who used to insist the Berlin Wall was erected to keep those in the West from breaking into the East and availing themselves of the many free services in the socialist paradise.

Sometimes it takes someone from overseas – or at least, from across Lake Ontario – to provide perspective. And this comes not a moment too soon, before some Northeastern member of Congress gets it in his head to appropriate DHS funds for sharks with laser-beams attached to their heads to secure the Great Lakes.

For a self-styled Land of the Free, America seems awfully intent on erecting barricades. Tester says enhanced Canadian border security, “could prevent drug smuggling and terrorism.” Ah, of course: The nebulous “War on Terror” and “War on Drugs” are used to justify most every tin-pot crackdown on daily life.

Even on the southern border, the proposed fence is unbecoming a nominally free nation. It would be a hideous scar across the landscape; a grotesque contradiction, visible from space.

America has problems, but a lack of security is not among them. As some free advice from an immigrant: The last thing the US needs is more walls.

Also, you can keep Jim Carrey, no charge.


Theo Caldwell, host of TV’s Global Command Centre, has been a member of the New York Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, and the Kansas City Board of Trade. He can be reached at at theo@theocaldwell.com

The Non-Compliance Revolution

“This is America – everything’s illegal.” – New York City attorney

With Independence Day come and gone, and in light of populist uprisings elsewhere in the world, some have asked if America might undergo its own revolutionary upheaval. Specifically, with the exponential growth of government, including the regulating or outlawing of ever-more areas of daily life, liberty-minded Americans wonder when and if their countrymen will say, “enough is enough.”

But armed insurrection is so 18th Century. It went out of style with muskets and pantaloons. It is possible, however, that America’s rebirth of freedom could take a more benign form – that of citizens simply refusing to obey the encroaching demands of their government. There is a surprising amount of power to be found in two little letters: “no.”

Alas, “no” is hard to come by. When security check-points appear at subway stations during morning rush hour, or federal workers indecently paw at passengers boarding a plane, or natural resources officers demand licenses before you can drop a line in your favorite fishing spot, almost no one resists.

When free-born citizens capitulate in this way, one expects they do so out of surprise at the officious overkill, or they make the quick calculation that compliance will minimize immediate hassle and allow them to go about their day.

But ever-expanding government makes it more and more difficult to comply, even if citizens want to. This applies to all manner of bureaucracy, seen and unseen. For just one example: You, gentle reader, cannot know if you filed your federal taxes correctly.

You cannot know this because the tax code is simply too complex and arbitrary. Within such a system, there can be no objective verification. Therefore, if it comes up for review, the accuracy of your return will be determined on a subjective basis by a bureaucrat who will not deign to divulge their first name.

When compliance becomes impossible, well-meaning citizens may just stop trying. Precedent can be found in the government’s own behavior. When IRS agents refuse to answer questions about their conduct, even as they spend taxpayer money on “business expenses” that would not survive one of their own audits, citizens rightly wonder why they should bother keeping their own books in order.

Or when the Obama administration decides to suspend problematic portions of its own health care law – as though legislation were a buffet, from which the Executive can take or leave what it likes – citizens may decide it’s too onerous to fill out that 20-page form, or apply for that required license, and they would have a valid point.

At times, non-compliance can carry a heavy price, exacted by authorities whose dearest hope is that you will not comply: namely, over-eager officers of the law.

As a law-abiding citizen, and a law-and order conservative, I have a hard time trusting the police. This applies particularly to today’s ubiquitous, militarized variety, outfitted in “the full Robocop,” as Mark Steyn puts it.

My mistrust has been a long time coming. Bit by bit, seeing abuses of petty authority and the relentless transformation of police departments into paramilitary units, I have ceased to see them as keepers of the peace. Instead of disrupting crime, it seems they prioritize controlling and harassing innocent people.

Specifically, as noted in Radley Balko’s new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, militarized police increasingly see civilians as the enemy, rather than the employers they are paid to protect. SWAT teams are dispatched to serve warrants on non-violent suspects, or to perform routine safety inspections.

My jaundiced eye is also directed at the quasi-constabulary brigades assembled by every federal, state and local agency, patrolling all aspects of American life from the airport to the fishing pond.

These are government apparatchiks who, by their wardrobe and mien, falsely claim the authority of law enforcement. Perhaps the most obvious example are the blue-shirted Paul Blarts of the TSA, who prowl America’s airports dressed as though they’re about to invade Poland, complete with tin badges blaring “Officer,” strongly implying they are police when, in fact, they are nothing of the kind. And always, always, we are told their excesses are about keeping us “safe.”

As a handy reminder, be suspicious whenever someone says they’re doing something “for your safety.” Doubtless, there are situations in which the statement is sincere. But in today’s nanny-cop America, “safety” is the elastic subterfuge employed to confiscate freedom.

More directly, whenever someone claiming to be a policeman, or some other kind of enforcement “officer” comes hulking up to you in the full get-up – knee-pads, Kevlar, Velcro and so on – you, as a free citizen and inheritor of God-given, enumerated liberties dating back at least to the English Bill of Rights of 1689, if not the Magna Carta of 1215, have an obligation to laugh in that person’s face. If the best you can do is laugh into their Bane-mask, so be it.

Don’t get angry, or go for one of their many guns. That could get ugly and, in many cases, they hope it does (as Leonardo DiCaprio cynically exclaimed of cops in The Departed, “They signed UP to use their guns!”). Someone who feels the need to weaponize themselves in order to interact with the general public may be monumentally insecure, but they can also cause tremendous damage. Think of Barney Fife in an Iron Man suit. Or, for younger television viewers, imagine Dwight Schrute’s later iterations of Recyclops, only with live ammunition.

Compliance is demanded daily of Americans, accompanied by the implicit or overt threat of force. One should neither expect nor desire violent insurrection in response. But, as a people to whom freedom was bequeathed by generations who pledged their lives to win it, today’s citizens need only learn to say no.

Does the spirit of 1776 abide within modern Americans? Or will they continue to cede their liberties, preferring simply to get through their days – that is, until they awake to find their days are no longer their own?


Theo Caldwell, host of TV’s Global Command Centre, has been a member of the New York Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, and the Kansas City Board of Trade. He can be reached at at theo@theocaldwell.com