Celebrating work and laborers in late summer, rather than — as anti-capitalist radicals did — on May First, was a big win when in 1894 Congress made, the first Monday of September “Labor’s Holiday.” This small win over communism and murderous anarchism alone is worth a “Happy Labor Day” greeting!
On September 7, 2021, Bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador. This status was rescinded in 2025. El Salvadorans generally did not use it.
Today Germans vote, and the German government does not approve of how the votes in the former East Germany are likely to turn out.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been declared extremist by the German government, will almost certainly win the most votes. It is polling at over 40%, with the closest party in the low 20s. In some scenarios, it could win an outright majority of seats.
It would be the first far-right party to control a German state since World War II. This matters not just because of the historical echoes, but because it would represent a dramatic failure of the postwar German order. German government, culture, and education have been carefully crafted in recent decades to prevent precisely this scenario.
Mark Sappenfield, ”Why one state election could rattle modern Germany,” The Christian Science Monitor (September 04, 2026).
The Christian Science Monitor takes special pains to tell you why the election is important, and why it covers it in the manner it does:
The paper does understand that the AfD is not on board with the common characterization of it as being “far right,” much less fascistic and against democracy: “The AfD denies it is antidemocratic, but it relishes the idea of putting Germany on a new path.”
The party, it should be observed, calls itself an Alternative for Germany, not to the still-universally valorized democracy. Paul Jacob, in his coverage (see, for example, here), of the party, has noted that some of the government’s handling of the organization has itself been anti-democratic.
The fear is “nationalism,” a term variously used, but embarrassing for Germans because of the imperialistic nationalism of the Nazi period. According to the Christian Science Monitor:
At the AfD’s final preelection rally Thursday in the state capital, Magdeburg, a crowd of 6,000 is buzzing. For many Germans, flying the national flag brings a sense of discomfort — a fear of nationalism run amok. At the rally, German flags fly everywhere.
Is it worth noting that the United States, which in World War II sided with the totalitarian Soviet Union to defeat totalitarian Germany, did so as a nationalist enterprise with much waving of flags.
Perhaps there is more than one intention behind flag-waving.
At issue in this fascinating article is what it calls “remembrance culture,” the hyper-focus on Germans being bad because of Nazism. AfD supporters are less than thrilled about the pall this culture casts upon the country’s politics, and are amused by the “firewall” approach of all the other parties uniting against the AfD:
For Ronald Gläser, Saxony-Anhalt is just the beginning. The AfD member of parliament from Berlin sees the scales tipping — and the firewall is helping, in a way.
“The firewall made us the only real opposition in Germany,” he says. “Anyone who is upset turns to us.”
The question is whether the party is a threat to German democracy. Mr. Gläser rejects the charges against his party as an attempt to unfairly control the political discourse. “The AfD is just a party like all the others — more libertarian and more conservative, but not fascist,” he says.
The article can be read on Apple News, and on the paper’s own website.
Our age is an age of moderate virtue
Thomas Stearns Eliot, Choruses from The Rock (1934), VIII.
And moderate vice
On September 6, 1492, Christopher Columbus left his final port of call in the Canary Islands before crossing the Atlantic for the first time.
On September 6, 1522, the Victoria returned to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition to circumnavigate the world.
In 1620 on the Old Style date of September 6th, the Pilgrims set sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower. Their aim? To settle in North America.
Last Wednesday, Paul Jacob wrote, in “Maddened in Michigan,” of a group he chairs, Americans for Citizen Voting – Michigan, and its problems with that state’s Board of State Canvassers. The board consists of “two appointed Democrats and two appointed Republicans.” The four members “deadlocked repeatedly, 2-2” — on partisan grounds — “on counting petition signatures even when they agreed that the signer was a registered Michigan voter, and then, on whether to certify the issue” for the November ballot.
What was going on in Michigan was an attempt to throw out perfectly acceptable petition signatures. Why? Apparently to make sure that a ballot measure would not be voted on by Michigan voters. The measure would require that only citizens vote in elections.
“Two unelected members of an obscure state board,” [Sen. Ruth Johnson] concluded, “cannot be allowed to strip away the constitutional rights of nearly one in 10 adults in our state who signed a petition to place this issue before voters.”
That’s why we and the 700,000 Michiganders who signed our petition want our day in court. Left without any response at all from Michigan’s Democrat-dominated Supreme Court, on Monday we filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Paul closed his report by noting that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had “ordered the Michigan Secretary of State, Bureau of Elections and Board of State Canvassers to respond to our appeal by noon today.”
Were the corrupt decisions of Michigan countered with by Justice Kavanaugh? He did review them to some extent.
But no.
What happened next is explained by Joseph Lord in an Epoch Times article from yesterday:
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant an emergency request from a group seeking to put a proof-of-citizenship measure on Michigan’s November ballot.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Thursday rejected the request from Americans for Citizen Voting. The group has been pushing for a state vote on a constitutional amendment requiring state officials to confirm that voters in the state are U.S. citizens.
Kavanaugh provided no explanation of the decision.
A few hours later, the Michigan Supreme Court also rejected a bid from the group to place the measure on the November ballot.
The required date for Michigan election officials to finalize the ballot in the state is Sept. 4, leaving the petitioners with little hope of getting judicial approval before the deadline.
Americans for Citizen Voting claimed in its emergency petition that it was making the request because state officials refused to certify that the measure had received enough signatures to move forward.
“The Michigan Board of State Canvassers refused to certify a petition for Michigan’s November 3, 2026 election despite the petition garnering more than 700,000 signatures and needing only 446,198,” the group wrote.
The group has concentrated its effort against instances of noncitizens voting in municipal and school board elections. These elections, with the agreement of local legislators, allow voting by some noncitizens—often requiring a green card or lawful residency.
Note that two-thirds of the 24 cities that allow noncitizens to vote do not require the noncitizen to be legally present in the United States.
The article then makes a dutiful nod to the official story about non-citizen voting: “Outside of these exceptional elections, outcome-altering voting by noncitizens is practically nonexistent in the United States, according to the American Immigration Council.”
Wait, should people wait until enough noncitizens are voting to alter the outcome of the election before making reforms?
The Michigan campaign for requiring citizenship for voting and checking the voter list for noncitizens and requiring voter ID has never claimed that noncitizens are voting in massive numbers.
The idea that precautions should be taken to prevent such influences on elections — you might call it “election integrity” — never seem to be accepted among the ruling class.
Bureau Admits Another Error in Invalidating Signatures
Board Ignores Sworn Notarized Voter Affidavit
Handwriting Expert Ignored & Unqualified Bureau Staff Invalidates
Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Parnassus (1874) Preface.
Responding to British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies, the first session of the Continental Congress convened at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, on September 5, 1774. Virginian Peyton Randolph (pictured) was appointed as the first president of Congress. John Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay and George Washington were among the delegates.
His Monday brainstorm was for the federal government to get into the movie business. In a Truth Social post, Mr. Trump floated the notion of creating a “Federal Production Incentive to create Entertainment Jobs in America.” So this isn’t exactly a socialist proposal — where the government would seize the means of production and go about making movies — it’s a subsidy proposal: tax breaks; to “benefit ALL
Trump posts as if he has worked the math out, where the booty the government loses in direct taxation “will be made up tenfold by the money pouring into the Treasury’s coffers.”
A familiar rationale. But does it work? Do tax credits incentivize producers so much that taxes downstream of the productions make up for all the bother and paperwork?
Well, no need for theory. States already have such programs.
Tosin Akintola, in his Reason article — “State Film Subsidies Lose Money. Trump Wants To Try the Idea Nationally.” — found that “the film and TV industry in eight states returned between 3 cents and 31 cents for every dollar.”
Entertainment projects do not create that many jobs.
We used to talk about the states as “laboratories of democracy,” by which we meant “laboratories for policy.”
The point isn’t to take the failed experiments and run them at the federal level, hoping for something different.
Sure, Hollywood is lame. But don’t make Washington the new entertainment capital of the world. It’s doing bad enough as the capital of more serious business.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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What strange arts necessity finds out.
Christopher Marlowe, speech of Venus in Dido (c. 1586), Act I, scene i, line 169.