Categories
Update

Make D.C. Square Again?

The Virginia redistricting story got a new wrinkle on April 22: “Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) introduced legislation to repeal the 1840s retrocession that delivered the other side of the Potomac River to the Commonwealth of Virginia,” according to The Epoch Times.

“Influential conservatives who back the idea now include Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, and Mike Howell, president of The Oversight Project, a government watchdog group.” The report quotes Cato Institute’s Roger Pilon, who “has repeatedly testified to Congress on the issue of D.C. statehood, agreed with activists that Congress never had the authority to retrocede the Virginia portion of the district in the first place.

Rather than Congress doing this, an executive order from the president sure seems . . . easier. “Pilon sees Trump as the likeliest president to force the issue, despite the political risks of stripping thousands of Virginians of political power.” Since the move to re-incorporate very populated parts of Virginia would in effect disenfranchise its inhabitants, Pilon is not alone to question the “optics,” as The Epoch Times phrased it.

Paul Jacob last published on the Virginia redistricting brouhaha on April 23.

Categories
Thought

Gore Vidal

Apparently, “conspiracy stuff” is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.

Gore Vidal, “The Enemy Within,” The Observer (October 27, 2002).

Categories
Today

A Border Dismantled

On May 2, 1989, the Hungarian government began dismantling its border fence with Austria, allowing a number of East Germans to defect.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture public opinion

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

may day, communism, socialism, capitalism

Long time ago, May Day was about celebrating Spring — for which rejoicing is appropriate. Over the last century, it has become International Workers’ Day. 

“In 1889, an international federation of socialist groups and trade unions designated May 1 as pro-workers day,” informs the Wikidates.org website, “on the anniversary of the Haymarket Riots in Chicago (1886).”

Five years later, clearly opposed to cavorting with socialists, the U.S. established Labor Day on September 1, an alternative date to honor workers.

Today, political rallies and protests are expected in major cities across the country.  “On May 1, 2026, workers, students, and families rally, march, and take action across the country to demand a nation that puts workers over billionaires, with many refusing business as usual through No School. No Work. No Shopping,” says May Day Strong, the umbrella group organizing events.

These are the revolutionary slogans of a General Strike, intended to shut down society. Or perhaps, since the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) are big supporters, just provide teachers a day off. 

And considering Cato Institute’s graph of student performance in public education charted against tax outlays to the cause, any teachers’ union suggestion of skinflintery on the part of Mr. Moneybags The Taxpayer is obscene. 

“Workers over billionaires” is the sort of un-American class-warfare slogan that is not only divisive but also badly misguided: billionaires create jobs, without which being a worker really loses its luster. Plus, it’s ineffective: Demonizing the rich never made a society any richer.

Apter for the day? The international distress call: Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Christopher Morley

It’s a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.

Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop (1919).

Categories
Today

Truly Antifascist

The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, written by philosopher Benedetto Croce in response to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals by Giovanni Gentile, declared the unreconcilable split between the philosopher and the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, to which he had previously given a vote of confidence on October 31, 1922. 

The manifesto was published by Il Mondo on May 1, 1925, which was Workers’ Day, symbolically responding to the publication of the Fascist manifesto on the Natale di Roma, the founding of Rome (traditionally celebrated on April 21). The Fascist press claimed that Croce’s manifesto was “more authoritarian” than its Fascist counterpart — a typical leftist dismissal of what used to be called “liberalism.”

Categories
government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies

Die, DEI, Die!

DEI, Texas, discrimination, quota, race, racism, sexism

Banning DEI doesn’t necessarily end DEI. 

So-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies mandate guilt-inducing collectivist indoctrination about race and sex and/or impose race and sex quotas. The Texas legislature rightly concluded that DEI indoctrination is pernicious and required that it be removed from public universities in the state.

Suspecting that the law would not be obeyed with perfect grace, the organization Accuracy in Media (AIM) has been doing undercover work to gather evidence on whether university staffers formerly determined to propagandize for DEI and impose DEI-based requirements are now backing off.

Many are not.

Two of the renegades recently caught on video:

“Rest assured, the work that we do is still the same. It’s just classified differently,” bragged Melissa Cruz, an academic recruiter at the University of Texas at Arlington at the time the AIM investigator talked to her. “The intention is still the same. The research is still the same. The practice is still the same. It’s just called something different now. Our job is to push back and to cause some good trouble and all of those things.”

At the University of North Texas, Paige Falco, gave the same explanation. “Our class might be titled something a little different to just not specifically have DEI as the class name,” she told the AIM investigator. “But it’s still an element that’s taught. It’s definitely still a focus.”

These two have been fired. 

Thankfully.

But while these two were caught in the sting, many more no doubt exist, breaking the law of the state that employs them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Alice Sheldon

What if a person is sure of his identity but it isn’t his identity?

Science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr. — the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon — in the short story “Beam Us Home,” Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home (1973), p. 305.
Categories
Today

Adolf & Eva & the End

According to official records and all the respectable historians, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun — after being married for less than 40 hours — committed suicide on April 30, 1945. Nevertheless, rumors about Hitler’s survival in South America, until the 1960s, continue.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture too much government

Unhealthy Kid Stuff

AOC, healthcare, Milton Friedman, education

Julian Shapiro-Barnum is the host and creator of Recess Therapy, where he regularly records conversations with kids. Recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) joined his program to discuss healthcare policy. 

“The children agreed with AOC,” a Washington Post editorial noted, “and brought the same level of sophistication to political and economic questions that Americans have come to expect from the four-term congresswoman.”

AOC and the youngsters shown think healthcare should be free, which The Post used as a jumping off point to have an adult conversation about government-run healthcare, specifically the National Health Service in the United Kingdom.

“Despite the government funding and running a universal health care system, private hospital admissions in the United Kingdom reached their highest level ever in 2024,” readers were informed. 

“The number of people opting to buy private health insurance rose to 6.5 million in 2024, the highest number in a quarter-century, according to the Association of British Insurers.”

The Brits “have learned the hard way that the promise of ‘free’ care is only as good as their ability to get an appointment,” wrote the editors. 

The editorial further explained that “government systems can only stay afloat when they are rationed, often with backlogs that can leave people waiting months for serious procedures.”

“America’s health system is a mess,” The Post concluded, “but the belief that a full government takeover would lead to better outcomes is just childish.”

One of the nation’s largest newspapers appears to be growing up. 

AOC? 

Not so much. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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