by Bob Barr | Apr 27, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallTexas is home to the Alamo. It has given America such patriotic heroes as Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, both of whom died at the Alamo. Iconic business entrepreneurs, such as Ross Perot and Boone Pickens rose to riches in Texas. Many license plate frames warn tailgaters, “Don’t Mess With Texas.” Everything about Texas was over-sized, including its rugged individualism.But things are changing, and not in favor of the Lone Star State’s cowboy legacy. Earlier this month, for example, the Houston City Council approved an ordinance forcing businesses, including bars, nightclubs, sexually oriented businesses, convenience stores, and game rooms, to install exterior security cameras and government-approved lighting, and turn over captured video footage to law enforcement on demand and without any warrant. An ordinance like this would not be a shock were it enacted by Nanny Staters in New York City or San Francisco, but in Texas? Even considering the liberalism that has taken hold in almost every major American city today, a privacy-invasive ordinance such as this becoming law in Texas illustrates just how far leftward the state has shifted. Storied Texas politician Billy Clayton once said, “A born Texan has instilled in his system a mindset of no retreat or no surrender” – clearly not a political perspective that would succumb to a city government’s mandate forcing private businesses to serve as snoops for the police. It would be easy to blame policies such as this on the influx of refugees from California, or the hipsters who frolic in Austin, but it is not just urban liberals who are pushing Texas into the arms of Big Brother. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has revealed himself to be...
by Bob Barr | Apr 25, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerFew people realize that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was founded in the immediate aftermath of World War II for a limited and very specific purpose – to eradicate malaria. In recent decades, however, the Atlanta-based bureaucracy has become the poster child for regulatory mission creep.Its huge regulatory wings need to be clipped.CDC was established in 1946 to attack and control malaria, which at the time was endemic in the southern United States (hence the agency’s being headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, rather than Washington, D.C.). The bureaucracy set out to accomplish its limited mission with 369 employees and a budget of $1 million. The CDC actually was quite successful at eradicating malaria as a significant health concern, largely by attacking breeding areas for mosquitos with the insecticide DDT (which, since the early 1970s has been banned by the EPA).After achieving its statutorily defined goal within a few years, like any worthy bureaucracy, the leadership of the CDC set about searching for new responsibilities to assume, and for which – of course – more taxpayer funding was needed. Thus was launched one of the great examples of government “mission creep.”From that early staff of 369 employees, the CDC has mushroomed into a sprawling bureaucratic behemoth with myriad components, populated by more than 21,000 full-time employees and a budget as proposed for FY 2023 of nearly $47.5 billion. Along the way it has managed to pull into its bureaucratic orbit such non-disease related responsibilities as traffic accidents, obesity, and, of course, gun control.The bureaucratic staying power wielded by the CDC is best illustrated in the fact that, despite repeated and successful efforts by Republican-led...
by Bob Barr | Apr 20, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallBy any reasoned measure, Elon Musk should be a liberal icon. Among other accomplishments, he single-handedly moved electric vehicles from niche product into the automotive mainstream (granted, with a not-insignificant amount of government incentive), built what could be a cheap and efficient solution to internet connectivity in rural areas, and is the living embodiment of John F. Kennedy’s vision for the future of America’s space industry. Yet, the Left treats Musk like the villain from Harry Potter – he who should not be named! What reason has Musk given liberals to hate him so? None, other than growing wealthy from the products of his genius and labor. In the liberal world, where “profit” is a four-letter word, this is a cardinal sin. There are exceptions, of course, for members in good standing of the liberal tribe, where you can be fabulously rich so long as you kowtow to the party line, or stuff your wallet with mega speaking fees a la Stacey Abrams or misdirect donor funds to personal use like the former leaders of Black Lives Matter. Musk is a visionary entrepreneur and unapologetic capitalist who refuses to bow at the altar of liberalism.The South Africa-born naturalized U.S. citizen actually has contributed greatly to furthering many of the erstwhile goals of the Left, such as electric vehicles to replace those powered by fossil fuel, and in many ways more than any Democrat in the modern era. Still, he is treated by them as a pariah. Take, for instance, Musk’s appearance on Saturday Night Live last year. Despite the ratings bump he would bring to a wholly mediocre era of the show, cast members rushed to social media in protest, citing his wealth...
by Bob Barr | Apr 18, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerJust as “communism” is no longer seen in a negative light by many younger Americans, “atheism” no longer carries with it the adverse connotations that it held in the 1960s. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of American Atheists, won the sobriquet the “most hated woman in America.” In fact, according to recent studies, atheism, Wicca and other forms of paganism are growing faster among Millennials and Generation Z than any other demographic groups.Emory Professor Mark Bauerlein has studied these matters at length, and as noted in his new book, “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up,” America’s youth clearly seem to no longer possess the “spiritualism” that Alexis de Tocqueville recognized as a national strength in his seminal work, “Democracy in America.”As the “metaverse” increases in popularity and as the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans increases, the trend about which Bauerlein writes is likely to accelerate, and with it, the further erosion of an historic and moral underpinning of our representative democratic political system.Regardless of whether one practices or is affiliated with one or another of the world’s great religions, being thus affiliated provides at least the nucleus of morality and ethics on which a freedom-based political and social system can grow and prosper. Becoming unmoored from both history and religion will, again as Bauerlein posits, result in citizenry, particularly the younger generations, searching for “happiness” in all the wrong places, especially the digital world.Interestingly, there already are emerging debates about whether “committing” criminal acts in the metaverse can, or even should be punished. Regardless of how such a question as this may be answered, the simple fact that users immersing themselves in the metaverse are committing acts that would be considered punishable as...
by Bob Barr | Apr 13, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallGun control measures enacted in recent decades have failed to stop mass shootings. This has baffled Democrats in much the same way a dog chases its tail but never quite catches it. Even the liberal Los Angeles Times appeared exasperated by the latest criminal mass shooting near the state Capitol in Sacramento, lamenting that, while state “lawmakers have enacted the nation’s toughest gun control laws [they] remain confounded by how to stem mass shootings.” At least this one Democrat mouthpiece actually seemed for a brief moment to recognize that gun control is not the answer to criminal gun violence. Yet, they remain afraid to say so out loud. In this conundrum, what does the Left do? That’s an easy question to answer — they call on President Biden (as they did with presidents Obama and Clinton before him) to propose more gun control. This scenario confirms once again the definition of “insanity” often attributed to Albert Einstein, as “doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.”The latest gun-control boogeyman for the Left is the “ghost gun” — an apparition with no more actual substance than were the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future that tormented Ebenezer Scrooge. Unlike the ghosts in A Christmas Carol, however, the “ghost gun” apparition on which Biden now has seized, is a political maneuver rather than a morality play.The term “ghost gun” is a moniker conjured by gun control advocates to scare the uninformed into believing such devices are extremely dangerous, are the weapon of choice for mass murderers, and that if regulated, will stem the tide of such criminal activities as took place recently in...
