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Update

Seriously Funny?

It was, the president said, “the largest group of Trump Derangement Syndrome people ever put together at one time.” 

Donald J. Trump dominated the night at 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. An event known for its roasts of politicians and media figures, this year was not an exception save for one thing: this time the chief comedian appeared to be the president himself.

“This year the association decided not to have a comedian, so they considered using Jimmy Kimmel,” Donald Trump quipped. Earlier, he had declared that this second attempt at the event — the April date having been scuttled by an assassination attempt — would be better than the first, just as his second administration was better than his first. “The second time is always better,” he said, and then pushed the wry statement into a joke: “And the third time will be better yet.”

The Wall Street Journal’s coverage attempted to give contrast: “‘I gave up on traditional press,’ he said, boasting about how popular he is on TikTok.”

His jokes about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have been funnier, if more awkward. Like in most of politics, opinions differ.

But can we all agree that the Babylon Bee’s story was far, far funnier?

Categories
Thought

Thaddeus Stevens

There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion — in the bloody religions of the heathen. There are fanatics in superstition. But there can be no fanatic, however warm their zeal, in the true religion, even although you sell your goods and bestow your money on the poor, and go on and follow your heart your Master. There may, and every hour shows around me, fanatics in the cause of false liberty – that infamous liberty which justifies human bondage, that liberty whose ‘corner-stone is slavery.’ But there can be no fanaticism however high the enthusiasm, in the cause of rational, universal liberty – the liberty of the Declaration of Independence.

Representative Thaddeus Stevens (R.-Penn.), “The California Question” (June 10, 1850), as quoted in The Selected Works of Thaddeus Stevens.
Categories
Today

Only to Preserve the Union?

On July 25, 1861, the U.S. Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, stating that the war with the seceded states — those of the then-recent Confederacy — was being fought to preserve the Union, not to end slavery.

In December, Congress attempted to reaffirm the resolution, but it failed after a motion advanced by abolitionist Representative Thaddeus Stevens (R-Penn.).

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First Amendment rights litigation national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Visas for 1st Amendment Foes?

Marco Rubio, censorship, travel visas, foreign policy, 1st Amendment, free speech

Last December, the U.S. State Department imposed visa bans on five persons who, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”

But is it okay for the U.S. government to withhold visas from foreigners acting to undermine the freedom of speech of Americans?

Not okay! says a judge trying to put a halt to the administration’s withholding of visas from foreign officials and others who push for such censorship.

Why? Because noncitizens “could reasonably understand the policy to place their immigration status at risk — not because they wield foreign sovereign power or facilitate ​its censorship, but simply because they work in content moderation.” 

The don’t-attack-freedom-of-speech requirement is said to unlawfully burden noncitizen speech.

Of course, to withhold or revoke a visa does not stop anyone’s speech. The persons thus deprived are at liberty to keep demanding the curtailing of online U.S. speech. They’re not being tossed in the hoosegow.

The judge’s stance could be used to waylay any attempt to counteract specific coercive actions by noncitizens to undermine U.S. freedoms, whether originating from Brussels or Beijing. All such attacks manifest the actors’ often-articulated viewpoints.

Indeed, some persons contend that ejecting formerly visa-equipped foreign students from the U.S. for terrorizing Jewish students and vandalizing campuses are suffering from violations of freedom of speech. This is incorrect. No foreign-based soldiers in a war against U.S. freedoms possess an inalienable right to condition-free visas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Destutt de Tracy

It is scarcely two hundred years since the progress of civilization, of industry, of commerce, that of the social order, and perhaps also the increase of specie, have given to governments the facility of making loans; and in this short space of time these dangerous expedients have led them all either to total or partial bankruptcies, sometimes repeated, or to the equally shameful and more grevious resource of paper money, or to remain overburdened under the weight of a load which daily becomes more insupportable.

But I go farther. I maintain that the evil is not in the abuse; but in the use itself of loans, that is to say that the abuse and the use are one and the same thing; and that every time a government borrows it takes a step towards its ruin. The reason of this is simple: A loan may be a good operation for an industrious man, whose consumption reproduces with profit. By means of the sums which he borrows, he augments this productive consumption; and with it his profits. But a government which is a consumer of the class of those whose consumption is sterile and destructive, dissipates what it borrows, it is so much lost for ever; and it remains burdened with a debt, which is so much taken from its future means.

The Count Destutt de Tracy, in the penultimate chapter to A Treatise on Political Economy (1817), Thomas Jefferson, trans. ed., pp. 243-244.
Categories
Today

The Infamous Tapes

On July 24, 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court told President Richard Nixon that he lacked constitutional authority to withhold the infamous “Nixon Tapes” from Congress.

On July 24, 1487, citizens in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, went on strike against a ban on foreign beer.

On the same day of 1823’s calendar, slavery was abolished in Chile.

July 24 serves as Pioneer Day in Utah and as Simón Bolívar Day in Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.

Categories
defense & war general freedom international affairs

To the Teeth

China, Taiwan, South China Sea, foreign policy

“A good move in Ukraine would have been to arm it to the teeth,” says historian Frank Dikötter. “A good move today with Taiwan would be to arm it to the teeth.”

Dikötter was responding to Peter Robinson, host of Hoover Institution’s Uncommon Knowledge program, who asked if the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, published last November, was “a good move.” The document states that “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan . . . is a priority,”

Note how quickly “the most widely read living historian of modern China” bee-lined from the published strategy paper to the question of actual military might. 

“Taiwan is essential,” Dikötter added emphatically. “Absolutely essential.”

But why, though? The National Security Strategy explains it is “partly because of Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductor production” — everyone brings that up — “but mostly because Taiwan provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theaters.” 

If you are thinking that’s just war talk, think again: “Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the U.S. economy.”

And the world’s, I might add.

Later, Robinson asked if the historian had any advice to offer President Trump. He touched on containment and reciprocity and then offered a third bit of counsel regarding China . . .

Dikötter: Stand up. Stand Up. Stand up. This is a big bully that huffs and puffs but its aircraft carriers aren’t all that great, its economy isn’t all that great, its political stability isn’t all that stable. 
Robinson: So you would recommend a president . . .  
Dikötter: Be a little tougher.
Robinson: . . . call them out, like Ronald Reagan called out the Soviets?
Dikötter: Yes, exactly!

It may very well be that the more we Americans call out the CCP — the more we stand up against the bully — the more our leaders will follow.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Thought

Angus Deaton

The greatest escape in human history is the escape from poverty and death

Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (2013), p. 23.
Categories
Today

Ne Win Loses Power

After pro-democracy protests, General Ne Win resigned as leader of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma’s only legal political party on July 23, 1988.

Categories
Today

Huxleyian A.F.

On this day in 1903, the Ford Motor Company sold its first car.

Less than 30 years later, Aldous Huxley satirized Ford’s assembly line procedures in his novel Brave New World. Arguably, both the assembly line and the satire advanced freedom.

Today is July 23, A.F. 162. The “A.F.” is not what “af” means in popular online abbreviation, but “in the Year of Our Ford” — “After Ford,” specifically.