Recommended podcasts:
- Aaron Burr and the Challenge to Jefferson’s America, KERA Think, Dec. 1, 2011 (“Who fostered imperial dreams for the young United States of America? We’ll explore the life and story of our country’s third vice president this hour with historian David O. Stewart. His new book is American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America“);
- 238. Lew Rockwell Attacked By a Parasite, LewRockwell.com Podcasts, Dec. 2, 2011 (“Ron Smith talks to Lew Rockwell until a federal employee intervenes”. In the podcast, Lew quotes a great line from a recent Gary North column: “Europe’s game of kick the can will continue. The best summary of the outcome was made by a Spanish government worker on Sunday, November 20, the day of national elections. The socialists were thrown out of office. He said this: ‘We can choose the sauce they will cook us in, but we’re still going to be cooked.’”).
Patent and copyright apologists often get indignant when you describe the patent and copyright monopolies that they advocate as monopolies. For example here, patent lawyer and patent shill Dale Halling posts about “The Myth that Patents are a Monopoly” and writes, ” People who suggest a patent is a monopoly are not being intellectually honest and perpetuating a myth to advance a political agenda.”
But obviously patent and copyright are monopoly privileges, as I amply demonstrate in Are Patents “Monopolies”?
I just came across something interesting in this regard. In Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to James Madison, August 28, 1789 (On the liberty to write, speak, and publish and its limits), he proposes to James Madison, then in the process of drafting the Bill of Rights, that the following be incorporated into the Bill of Rights:
Art. 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature and their own inventions in the arts for a term not exceeding — years but for no longer term and no other purpose.
This was written just shortly before the Constitution itself was to be ratified. It appears to be aimed at adding a limit on how many years Congress could grant patent and copyright monopolies for. The copyright and patent clause in the then-pending Constitution had no outside limit on how long the patent and copyright monopoly grants could be, providing: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Jefferson apparently wanted the “limited time” to be capped at some maximum number of years (probably 14 or 21 years or so). If he had got his way, (a) it would be clearer to everyone that patent and copyright are monopolies, and (b) Big Media and Mickey Mouse would not have been able to extend the copyright term to its current 100+ years.
I’m reminded of a similar situation I’ve noted elsewhere that, during debate on the sixteenth amendment (income tax), a 10% cap was considered, but rejected for fear Congress might actually tax at such a high rate, and “because people thought the idea that the tax might ever rise that high too absurd to address”! If only we had had a 10% income tax cap and a 21 year patent and copyright cap!
[C4SIF]
One thing about Catholics is that, when it comes to partisan politics, they’re split pretty evenly. Only deeply ignorant people lump Catholics in with the “Religious Right” since about half of them are on the religious left. Many are admirably antiwar, and of course, there is even a nice anarchist pacifist tradition, in which one finds Dorothy Day or Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy.
Some Catholics, however, are absolutely terrible on issues of nationalism and war. This article below, written by a priest with whom I broadly agree on almost all theological and liturgical issues, was particularly tasteless. Fr. Zuhlsdorf, who is generally sound when writing about things that he actually knows something about, always ends up toeing the neoconservative line every time he ventures into foreign policy. Most clergy can be safely ignored when opining on political matters, and this case is no different. The text of his irreligious column is below with my comments in brackets.
Usama Bin Laden … Rest in… well… whatever… [How classy. Zuhlsdorf must have forgotten about Matt 5:44.]
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
Pres. Obama announced tonight, fairly late on a Sunday night, that Usama Bin Laden was killed a week ago, as it seems.
I am guessing that he made this announcement tonight, USA, time, so that people rising in other parts of the world would get the fresh news during the morning at the beginning of a week, as markets open, etc. Had it come at the end of the week, it would have been fodder for Friday evening Muslim sermons. [Because all Muslims liked Osama bin Laden, you see. This assumption that all Muslims support violence is at the heart of the neocon ideology. Always ignored is the fact that a majority of "Christian" Americans support the dropping of American bombs on Muslim women and children.] It still will be, but after several days.
Nevertheless I find the timing of both the event of his killing by a small team of US operatives in a fire fight and the release of the news interesting. One friend called me to opine that they actually found him at a Taco Bell in North Carolina and flew him back to Pakistan before… you know. [ho ho] Moreover, the President seems now to be ready to quote a standard of American patriotism, the Pledge of Allegiance, with its strong invocation of God, when for sometime he couldn’t bring himself to quote the Declaration of Independence [written by an anti-Christian Deist] correctly with its reference to a Creator who gives us our rights. [Yeah! Why can't Obama be more like Bush who once said that the Constitution "is just a goddamn piece of paper."] Color me cynical.
[Keep reading…]
