David Boaz

Dilma Rousseff was never as popular as the president who anointed her as his successor. Despite her intelligence and diligence in numerous official posts, she lacked his warm personality and flair for campaigning. But she ran a very professional presidential campaign, with lots of celebrity supporters, and the vigorous support of her predecessor, and she won the election and became Brazil’s first female president. In office she pursued policies of easy money, subsidized energy, and infrastructure construction, which initially boosted her popularity. As is so often the case, though, those populist programs eventually brought inflation and a slide into economic contraction. Simultaneously, allegations of corruption and cronyism hurt her reputation. Impeachment proceedings were brought against her, focused on her mismanagement of the federal budget, particularly employing budgetary tricks to conceal yawning deficits. ”Experts say Ms. Rousseff’s administration effectively borrowed some $11 billion from state banks, an amount equal to almost 1 percent of the economy, to fund popular social programs that have been a hallmark of the Workers Party’s 13 years in power.” Some said that such fiscal mismanagement and dishonesty were common in presidential administrations and should not result in impeachment. But the Senate convicted her and removed her from office, making her bland vice president the new president.

Thank goodness nothing like that could happen in our own country.

A new study says that New Hampshire is the freest state in the country, followed by Alaska, Oklahoma, Indiana, and South Dakota.

New York is the least free state by a large margin, followed by California, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Maryland.

For some readers, the immediate reaction will be that conservative states get the highest ratings and liberal states the lowest. That’s not quite true: New Hampshire and Alaska are generally regarded as libertarian-leaning more than conservative, and very conservative states such as Alabama and Mississippi score pretty far down.

It’s not that the study focuses just on economic freedom, as some analyses do. The “Freedom in the 50 States” report by political scientists William Ruger and Jason Sorens, just published by the Cato Institute, where I work, covers both economic and personal freedom, from taxes and regulation to imprisonment rates, gay marriage, and marijuana.

Maybe if the Supreme Court took economic liberties as seriously as personal freedom, the big Eastern and Western states would once again be the wide-open, fast-growing places they were when they got big and prosperous in the first place.

Those of us in cosmopolitan coastal states may still wonder if places like Oklahoma and Indiana are where we’d find the personal and economic freedom we crave.

Here’s one explanation: The federal courts prevent conservative states from taking away a lot of the freedoms they’d like to, while they’re much more tolerant of intrusions on freedom found in liberal states.

Take Oklahoma, for instance. Its personal freedom score improved in this edition of the report because in 2014 a federal judge struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. In the next edition, lots of conservative states will have better scores because of the 2015 Supreme Court decision overturning all such state laws.

Marriage bans aren’t the only thing that conservative states are prevented from doing. Another federal court found that Oklahoma’s ban on considering sharia law in judicial decisions was religious discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. In 2008 the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s law prescribing the death penalty for the rape of a child. Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, and Montana also had such laws. Fourteen states, mostly in the South and once again including Oklahoma, had laws banning homosexual acts until the Supreme Court struck them down in 2003.

Go back another generation, and we recall the Court striking down laws requiring school segregation and banning interracial marriage.

In all these cases, federal courts, interpreting the U.S. Constitution, have prevented conservative states from denying their citizens’ individual rights. And thus those states get higher scores on the “Freedom in the 50 States” ranking.

Courts have been less likely to find that intrusions on freedom by liberal states violate the Constitution. States are generally free to set their own tax and regulatory policies. In 2005 the Supreme Court notoriously declined to restrict a local government’s power to take property through eminent domain.

In two decisions, in 2008 and 2010, the Court did limit a state’s ability to impose restrictive gun control laws. The 2010 decision, striking down a law in Chicago, improved Illinois’s ranking on personal freedom. More generally, the Second Amendment and the Court’s insistence on protecting the individual right to bear arms probably prevent some liberal Democratic states from enacting gun bans.

James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, said that “independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” Judges don’t get it right in every case, but over the years they have protected Americans’ rights and freedoms from lots of intrusions by legislatures and executives.

So take heart, my coastal cosmopolitan friends. Maybe the flyover states aren’t really more libertarian in spirit than the East and West coasts. Maybe they’ve just had their own bad ideas slapped down by the Supreme Court more often. And who knows, maybe if the Supreme Court took economic liberties as seriously as personal freedom, the big Eastern and Western states would once again be the wide-open, fast-growing places they were when they got big and prosperous in the first place.

A new study says that New Hampshire is the freest state in the country, followed by Alaska, Oklahoma, Indiana, and South Dakota.

New York is the least free state by a large margin, followed by California, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Maryland.

For some readers, the immediate reaction will be that conservative states get the highest ratings and liberal states the lowest. That’s not quite true: New Hampshire and Alaska are generally regarded as libertarian-leaning more than conservative, and very conservative states such as Alabama and Mississippi score pretty far down.

It’s not that the study focuses just on economic freedom, as some analyses do. The “Freedom in the 50 States” report by political scientists William Ruger and Jason Sorens, just published by the Cato Institute, where I work, covers both economic and personal freedom, from taxes and regulation to imprisonment rates, gay marriage, and marijuana.

Maybe if the Supreme Court took economic liberties as seriously as personal freedom, the big Eastern and Western states would once again be the wide-open, fast-growing places they were when they got big and prosperous in the first place.

Those of us in cosmopolitan coastal states may still wonder if places like Oklahoma and Indiana are where we’d find the personal and economic freedom we crave.

Here’s one explanation: The federal courts prevent conservative states from taking away a lot of the freedoms they’d like to, while they’re much more tolerant of intrusions on freedom found in liberal states.

Take Oklahoma, for instance. Its personal freedom score improved in this edition of the report because in 2014 a federal judge struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. In the next edition, lots of conservative states will have better scores because of the 2015 Supreme Court decision overturning all such state laws.

Marriage bans aren’t the only thing that conservative states are prevented from doing. Another federal court found that Oklahoma’s ban on considering sharia law in judicial decisions was religious discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. In 2008 the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s law prescribing the death penalty for the rape of a child. Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, and Montana also had such laws. Fourteen states, mostly in the South and once again including Oklahoma, had laws banning homosexual acts until the Supreme Court struck them down in 2003.

Go back another generation, and we recall the Court striking down laws requiring school segregation and banning interracial marriage.

In all these cases, federal courts, interpreting the U.S. Constitution, have prevented conservative states from denying their citizens’ individual rights. And thus those states get higher scores on the “Freedom in the 50 States” ranking.

Courts have been less likely to find that intrusions on freedom by liberal states violate the Constitution. States are generally free to set their own tax and regulatory policies. In 2005 the Supreme Court notoriously declined to restrict a local government’s power to take property through eminent domain.

In two decisions, in 2008 and 2010, the Court did limit a state’s ability to impose restrictive gun control laws. The 2010 decision, striking down a law in Chicago, improved Illinois’s ranking on personal freedom. More generally, the Second Amendment and the Court’s insistence on protecting the individual right to bear arms probably prevent some liberal Democratic states from enacting gun bans.

James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, said that “independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” Judges don’t get it right in every case, but over the years they have protected Americans’ rights and freedoms from lots of intrusions by legislatures and executives.

So take heart, my coastal cosmopolitan friends. Maybe the flyover states aren’t really more libertarian in spirit than the East and West coasts. Maybe they’ve just had their own bad ideas slapped down by the Supreme Court more often. And who knows, maybe if the Supreme Court took economic liberties as seriously as personal freedom, the big Eastern and Western states would once again be the wide-open, fast-growing places they were when they got big and prosperous in the first place.

Twenty-five years ago today I was driving back to Boston from Cape Cod. Two stories dominated the radio news that morning. Hurricane Bob was headed straight for New England, putting my return to Washington in doubt. And Russian hard-liners had staged a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, who was being held incommunicado in his dacha in Crimea. Eventually I got back to Washington, by a very slow train rather than by plane. The other story had more lasting consequences.

On that morning of August 19, 1991, as the coup plotters issued a declaration of a new Soviet president and seized control of Russian media, supporters of democracy gathered at the Russian parliament. And Boris Yeltsin, the new president of the Russian Soviet Socialist Federal Republic, decided to go out and speak to the soldiers and people outside the parliament building. He climbed up on a tank and rallied opposition to the coup. Two days later it collapsed, and Yeltsin was a national hero. As I wrote when Yeltsin died in 2007:

More than any other man, Boris Yeltsin moved the Russian people from tyranny to a rough approximation of freedom. For that he is one of the authentic heroes of the 20th century.

In a way he personalizes Mikhail Gorbachev’s accidental liberation of the Russian and Soviet people. Gorbachev intended to reform and reinvigorate communism. He brought Yeltsin from the rural region of Sverdlovsk in 1985 to shake up the stagnant party as the Moscow party boss. But Gorbachev set in motion forces that he couldn’t contain. Once people were allowed to criticize the communist system and glimpse an alternative, things moved rapidly–partly because of Yeltsin’s unexpectedly radical leadership.

Two years later Gorbachev and the party hierarchy pushed him out of the Politburo. But he turned around and ran for the Congress of People’s Deputies, won, and then was elected to the Supreme Soviet. He created Russia’s first parliamentary opposition (in the Supreme Soviet) and then won election to the new Russian parliament. Against the continuing opposition of Gorbachev, he was elected to the chairmanship of that body, thus becoming president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.  He stunned politicos by resigning from the Communist Party.

And then in 1991, less than four years after being pushed out of politics by Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin became the first elected leader in a thousand years of Russian history, winning a popular election for president. Six weeks later he hit his high point. When hard-line communists tried to stage a coup, Yeltsin courageously raced to parliament to rally opposition.  He jumped on a tank to address the crowd, creating one of the iconic images of the collapse of communism.

He went on to effectively dismantle the Soviet Union and to let 14 of the Soviet republics go their own way. He set about freeing prices and privatizing state property, the largest privatization in the history of the world. It was far from an ideal privatization process. But there weren’t many models for wholesale transformation of a communist economy into a market economy. As I wrote in 2007,

Yeltsin wasn’t perfect. He was often boorish and apparently had an excessive taste for alcohol. Despite letting the other Soviet republics go, he launched the devastating war in Chechnya. He unconstitutionally dissolved parliament in 1993; when communist lawmakers defied him, he sent tanks to shell parliament.  But it should be noted that Yeltsin at that time was seeking to defend liberal democracy against a return to communism. Imagine if Nazi legislators had stayed in the German parliament into 1949, resisting Adenauer’s policies and threatening to bring back National Socialism. Would it be undemocratic to call out the military to counter them? Fareed Zakaria’s worry in 1997 that Yeltsin’s creation of a “Russian super-presidency” might be abused by his successors looks all too prescient now. But a reversion to communism would have been worse.

And finally, after becoming the first elected leader in Russia’s history, he became something even more important–the first Russian leader to voluntarily give up power. True, he turned Russia over to Vladimir Putin, making him more like Ronald Reagan, who delivered the United States to the Bushes, than George Washington, who left us in the capable hands of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Still, the words that President Reagan addressed the American soldiers who invaded Normandy could also be applied to Boris Yeltsin: “These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”

For all his mistakes, Yeltsin helped to free a continent and end the Cold War. And 25 years ago today was his finest hour.

Twenty-five years ago today I was driving back to Boston from Cape Cod. Two stories dominated the radio news that morning. Hurricane Bob was headed straight for New England, putting my return to Washington in doubt. And Russian hard-liners had staged a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, who was being held incommunicado in his dacha in Crimea. Eventually I got back to Washington, by a very slow train rather than by plane. The other story had more lasting consequences.

On that morning of August 19, 1991, as the coup plotters issued a declaration of a new Soviet president and seized control of Russian media, supporters of democracy gathered at the Russian parliament. And Boris Yeltsin, the new president of the Russian Soviet Socialist Federal Republic, decided to go out and speak to the soldiers and people outside the parliament building. He climbed up on a tank and rallied opposition to the coup. Two days later it collapsed, and Yeltsin was a national hero. As I wrote when Yeltsin died in 2007:

More than any other man, Boris Yeltsin moved the Russian people from tyranny to a rough approximation of freedom. For that he is one of the authentic heroes of the 20th century.

In a way he personalizes Mikhail Gorbachev’s accidental liberation of the Russian and Soviet people. Gorbachev intended to reform and reinvigorate communism. He brought Yeltsin from the rural region of Sverdlovsk in 1985 to shake up the stagnant party as the Moscow party boss. But Gorbachev set in motion forces that he couldn’t contain. Once people were allowed to criticize the communist system and glimpse an alternative, things moved rapidly–partly because of Yeltsin’s unexpectedly radical leadership.

Two years later Gorbachev and the party hierarchy pushed him out of the Politburo. But he turned around and ran for the Congress of People’s Deputies, won, and then was elected to the Supreme Soviet. He created Russia’s first parliamentary opposition (in the Supreme Soviet) and then won election to the new Russian parliament. Against the continuing opposition of Gorbachev, he was elected to the chairmanship of that body, thus becoming president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.  He stunned politicos by resigning from the Communist Party.

And then in 1991, less than four years after being pushed out of politics by Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin became the first elected leader in a thousand years of Russian history, winning a popular election for president. Six weeks later he hit his high point. When hard-line communists tried to stage a coup, Yeltsin courageously raced to parliament to rally opposition.  He jumped on a tank to address the crowd, creating one of the iconic images of the collapse of communism.

He went on to effectively dismantle the Soviet Union and to let 14 of the Soviet republics go their own way. He set about freeing prices and privatizing state property, the largest privatization in the history of the world. It was far from an ideal privatization process. But there weren’t many models for wholesale transformation of a communist economy into a market economy. As I wrote in 2007,

Yeltsin wasn’t perfect. He was often boorish and apparently had an excessive taste for alcohol. Despite letting the other Soviet republics go, he launched the devastating war in Chechnya. He unconstitutionally dissolved parliament in 1993; when communist lawmakers defied him, he sent tanks to shell parliament.  But it should be noted that Yeltsin at that time was seeking to defend liberal democracy against a return to communism. Imagine if Nazi legislators had stayed in the German parliament into 1949, resisting Adenauer’s policies and threatening to bring back National Socialism. Would it be undemocratic to call out the military to counter them? Fareed Zakaria’s worry in 1997 that Yeltsin’s creation of a “Russian super-presidency” might be abused by his successors looks all too prescient now. But a reversion to communism would have been worse.

And finally, after becoming the first elected leader in Russia’s history, he became something even more important–the first Russian leader to voluntarily give up power. True, he turned Russia over to Vladimir Putin, making him more like Ronald Reagan, who delivered the United States to the Bushes, than George Washington, who left us in the capable hands of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Still, the words that President Reagan addressed the American soldiers who invaded Normandy could also be applied to Boris Yeltsin: “These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”

For all his mistakes, Yeltsin helped to free a continent and end the Cold War. And 25 years ago today was his finest hour.

Hillary Clinton declares on the campaign trail, “Donald Trump simply doesn’t have the temperament to be president and commander in chief of the United States.” Thankfully, he isn’t going to be – not because of his standing in the polls, but because there is no such position as “commander in chief of the United States.”

This is a constitutional republic, and we don’t have a commander in chief. According to Article II of the Constitution, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”

That’s an important distinction, and it’s disturbing that any candidate for the presidency would miss it. Hillary Clinton may want to be commander in chief of the whole country, of you and me, and to direct us and our economic activities the way the president directs the officers and soldiers of the armed forces. But if so, she needs to propose an amendment to the Constitution – an amendment that would effectively make the rest of the Constitution irrelevant, since it was designed as a Constitution for a limited government of a free people.

Much as they might both wish it, neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton is going to be my commander.