Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Last Thing Needed

Taiwan, China, foreign policy, ally, war, defense

“I think the last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9,500 miles away.”

Just place a period after the word “war” in President Trump’s comments to reporters, after last week’s summit with Chinese ruler Xi Jinping and discussion about China’s democratic neighbor, Taiwan, the Republic of China.

Which raises the question: How best to avoid war over Taiwan?

U.S. military policy requires being capable in this very theater. The Taiwan Strait (7,900 miles from Washington, not 9,500) is closer to the U.S. than is the Philippines, with whom we have a military defense treaty, and not much farther than Japan and South Korea, also treaty-entitled to our defense. One Japanese island sits less than 70 miles from Taiwan.

Communist China, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), claims Taiwan as a province, demanding “reunification” — by force as soon as they can get away with it. Yet, the PRC has never governed one inch of Taiwan.

As Ambassador Alexander Yui, Taiwan’s representative to the U.S., explained on Face the Nation yesterday: “We’re not the ones creating all this trouble.”

The People’s Liberation Navy — now the world’s largest — has sunk Vietnamese boats and regularly harasses Filipino ships. Though Xi had promised President Obama that China would not militarize islands in the South China Sea, the PRC now boasts 10,000 Chinese soldiers on 27 illegal military outposts.

In the wake of the summit, where Xi sought to talk Trump out of completing a $14 billion dollar arms sale to Taiwan, our president must determine if placating the Chinese will make them behave peacefully.

Or will strength, specifically military strength, better serve the cause of peace?

Taiwan’s and ours.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Tags ally, China, defense, foreign policy, Taiwan, war

Thought

Henry Hazlitt

It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it. But the basic reason for this ought not to be mysterious. The reason is that the demagogues and bad economists are presenting half-truths. They are speaking only of the immediate effect of a proposed policy or its effect upon a single group.
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson (1946), “The Lesson,” Chapter 1.

Today

Le Morte d’Marlowe

On May 18, 1593, playwright Thomas Kyd’s accusations of heresy led to an arrest warrant for fellow playwright Christopher (“Kit”) Marlowe.

Kyd was the famed author of The Spanish Tragedy, and Kit Marlowe was known for a number of plays, including The Jew of Malta and The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.

Marlowe died a few weeks later, on May 30, without having been arrested. The circumstances of his death were bizarre, suspicious — as if written by a playwright.

On May 18, 1652, Rhode Island passed the first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal.

Update

79Au / 16 Psyche

What happened to 3I/Atlas — so often mentioned in these updates? Did it swing around Jupiter? Did it leave anything behind? Actually, its trajectory was altered by Jupiter’s gravitation, making it look awfully suspicious, as in a trillion-to-one shot. That being said, the interstellar “comet” entered our solar system from the direction of Sagittarius and is now departing in the opposite direction, toward Taurus.

Public discussion of the object has dropped off, however, replaced by sexier discussion of UFO disclosure files and, uh, gestures towards disclosure.

Which many people dismiss as a “distraction” — but from what? The war?

But what if the war serves a distraction from UFOs?

Meanwhile, there’s the eternal element of distraction, gold.

You’ve probably been hearing that there exists an asteroid in our solar system with enough gold to “make everybody billionaires.”

There is such an asteroid, but this billionaire angle would be true only were the world on a gold standard — but then inflation would bring down the value of gold to nothing, leaving all those new billionaires no better off. Inflation of the money supply doesn’t make us richer.

But forget the meming of the asteroid. We aren’t on a gold standard: gold serves neither as a medium of exchange nor unit of account. So bringing earthside all that heavenly gold home would merely mean that our gold hoards would decrease in value, allowing lamposts and dog houses to be efficiently plated in gold.

The real story is that NASA is indeed aiming to take a close look at the situation:

“NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has just flown closer to Mars than the planet’s own moons en route to the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche,” explains the aptly named Marielle Moon. “It was a planned maneuver so that the spacecraft can get gravity assist from the red planet and conserve fuel, specifically the xenon gas propellant its solar-electric ion thruster system uses. The flyby gave Psyche a speed boost and changed its trajectory so that it’s now aligned with its target asteroid’s orbit around the sun.”

But don’t dishoard your yellow metal just yet: “Psyche started its six-year, 2.2-billion-mile journey towards its namesake asteroid in late 2023. It’s expected to reach its destination in July 2029 and to start working on its objectives the next month. The spacecraft will spend two years orbiting the asteroid ‘to take pictures, map the surface and collect data to determine Psyche’s composition.’”

Thought

Walter Williams

We should view our government the way we should a friendly, cuddly lion. Just because he’s friendly and cuddly shouldn’t blind us to the fact that he’s still got teeth and claws.
Walter E. Williams, Conservative Chronicle (August 30, 1995).

Today

Watergate Hearings

Fifty-three years ago, on May 17, 1973, televised hearings regarding the Watergate scandal began in the United States Senate, Sen. Sam Ervin presiding.

Thought

Walter Williams

But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you — and why?
Walter E. Williams, All It Takes Is Guts (1987).

Today

Oregon Trail

On May 16, 1843, one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri, set off for the Pacific Northwest, blazing what became known as the “Oregon Trail.”

ideological culture media and media people

Trying Souls

Jack T. Chick, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, tracts

“Could this be the Antichrist?”

So wondered out loud today’s most popular conservative voice . . . about President Donald J. Trump.

That commentator, Tucker Carlson, then answered himself: “Well, who knows?”

Later, speaking to Lulu Garcia-Navarro with The New York Times, Mr. Carlson denied (thrice) ever verbalizing that eschatological question.

Of course, as Scott Jennings points out, Tucker contextualized the matter by asserting that the president was “more of a hostage” to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in deciding to go to war against Iran. “Seems to me it has to be one or the other,” offered Jennings. “Are you a supernatural evil being or are you some weak hostage or slave to other people?”

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Tom Paine once wrote; today, it’s more “fry their sensibilities.”

Consider the recent NewsGuard/YouGov survey that found 36 percent of Democrats believe the recent shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was staged, while a whopping 42 percent of Democrats fancy the failed Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt against then-candidate Trump a false flag operation. Eerily, this dovetails with Hal Lindsey’s speculations, in his 1970 bestseller, The Late, Great Planet Earth, that the Antichrist would make his play for power after appearing to survive a mortal wound.

“There’s really not a lot of evidence that these social media users are citing or relying on,” explains Sofia Rubinson, NewsGuard’s senior editor. “It’s really just this belief and this distrust that the government is acting honestly and is giving us accurate information.”

Has distrust of our leaders and the media, both well earned, metastasized into a widespread belief that the End Times are here?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Tags Donald Trump, Jack T. Chick, tracts, Tucker Carlson

Thought

James Mill

Demand and supply are terms related in a peculiar manner. A commodity which is supplied, is always, at the same time, a commodity which is the instrument of demand. A commodity which is the instrument of demand, is always, at the same time, a commodity added to the stock of supply. Every commodity is always, at one and the same time, matter of demand, and matter of supply. Of two men who perform an exchange, the one does not come with only a supply, the other with only a demand; each of them comes with both a demand and a supply. The supply, which he brings, is the instrument of his demand; and his demand and supply are of course exactly equal to one another.
James Mill, Elements of Political Economy (1821; 1844), Chapter 4, “Consumption” Section III, “That Consumption Is Co-Extensive With Production.”