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Common Sense defense & war general freedom Today

Last Monday of May

memorial day, 2026, war, foreign policy, freedom

Once called Decoration Day, this last Monday of May is a federally designated holiday set aside from the normal course of days for solemn reflection on the sacrifices made by soldiers — many with their very lives — in past wars of the United States of America.

In past episodes of Common Sense with Paul Jacob, you can find

“In Memory of the Fallen” — May 25, 2025 — “Don’t we owe them our freedom? I certainly believe we owe it to the fallen to keep that freedom alive.”

“Memorial Day Questions” — May 25, 2015 — War in the time of President Obama. “Vets deserve, and we all need, more (not fewer) questions of presidential candidates, such as the hypothetical inquiry of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Iraq, and the hypothetical Libya question Sen. Rand Paul suggests should be posed to Mrs. Clinton.”

“Disneyland vs. Politicians” — May 30, 2016 — “Do congressmen wait months to get a medical appointment? No. Then why not close the VA and give veterans the same healthcare coverage as our (pardon the term) representatives?” 

“Of Horror and Honor” — May 25, 2020 — “Last year, when the public relations wing of the U.S. Army asked, on Twitter, “How has serving impacted you?” the bulk of the responses were not what was hoped for. What came like tear drops and bursts of rage were thousands of horrific tales, expressions of sorrow, bitterness and despair.”

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Thought

Joanna Russ

Ignorance is not bad faith. But persistence in ignorance is.

Joanna Russ, author of The Female Man, in How to Suppress Women’s Writing (1983).

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Today

Operetta

On May 25, 1878, Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore opened at the Opera Comique in London.

Image is a detail from an 1879 theater poster.

In America and in most of the world, Gilbert and Sullivan’s works are considered operettas, but in Britain they are usually referred to as “Savoy operas” or “comic operas.” Another term is “light opera.”

On the 25th of May in 1895, playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde was convicted of “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” and sentenced to serve two years in prison — becoming history’s most famous prosecutions for homosexual activity. It is perhaps worth noting that had Wilde not himself sued the Marquess of Queensberry, John Sholto Douglas, for criminal libel, and had not the Marquess demonstrated the truth of his offensive-to-Wilde statement, the prosecution would never have even commenced, and he would never have been sent to Reading Gaol.

The statement in question was Douglas’s note on a calling card: “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite [sic].”

Five years after Wilde’s death in 1900, his Salomé was adapted as an opera, music composed by Richard Strauss. It was most definitely not any form of light opera.

In 1895 on May 25, the Republic of Formosa was formed, with Tang Jingsong as its president. It lasted less than half a year, dissolving upon conquest by Japan.

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Update

Massie Lost

Paul Jacob’s assessment of Donald Trump’s success, last Tuesday — “King and Kingslayer” — was kept a tad open-ended, considering the Trumpian juggernaut’s biggest challenge was in Kentucky’s Representative District No. 4, where incumbent Thomas Massie was meeting Trump’s man in electoral battle. Massie lost. Here is the start of WLWT5’s report:

Reactions to the race have been . . . mixed. Or, divided.

On one side, we can witness Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire assessing the situation in . . . uh, what kind of terms are these? What’s the right adjective for this?

Thomas Massie versus President Donald Trump. Online versus reality. Woke right versus traditional Trump right.

And Trump won. Reality won.

It turns out the future still belongs to the rational Right.

It belongs to President Trump.

Reality? From that fabulist fibber, Trump?

Others are astounded at how someone who barely campaigned at all (except with TV ads) — this Ed “No Debater” Gallrein — increased voter turnout so astoundingly:

And is this yielding positive results for the mid-terms? And how about Trump’s approval ratings? Here are the latest results on that, from Friday’s aggregations:

But remember, Thomas Massie is still in office, and he is still on X:

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Thought

Henry Adams

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907).

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Today

Toleration

On May 24, 1689, the English Parliament passed the Act of Toleration, protecting dissenting Protestants.

Pointedly, Roman Catholics were excluded from this official tolerance.

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Update

Tranche No. 2 — Are We Getting Anywhere?

The War Department released another tranche of UFO files, yesterday. The first tranche was released on May 8. And they seem, for the most part, old hat: blips and lights and odd video of not-very-distinct things. Or audio about astronauts seeing “fireflies” in space, back in the Mercury days. (A not-very-exciting explanation is offered as definitive.) Most of the new video is from recent military sightings, but there are other things, too, such as a report from 1973 about a Soviet sighting of bright green object in the skies.

Most news reports covered the batch release like this:

Worth noting from this specific report is the relaying of an Avi Loeb comment that these initial releases are just the low-hanging fruit of UAP/UFO data. Later ones, we hear, will get more definitive and much stranger.

What does it all mean?

Eric Weinstein, who used to be a UFO denier got on board a few years ago, and now says that the UFO, Epstein, and nuclear science stories are likely going to converge:

But in case this all seems too objective and two-steps-removed from actual data, expand the scope and we discover that Bigfoot and mysterious disappearances are involved somehow in this, too:

Was anyone asking for a Bigfoot connection?

Meanwhile, Rep. Eric Burlison (R.-Mo.) relates that when President Trump was first briefed about UFOs and an alien presence on the planet, in his first term, he “joked in the briefing, whenever they said there were these halfbreeds, he joked that Adam Schiff must be one of them.”

Categories
Thought

Joanna Russ

The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That’s the trouble with women, too.

Joanna Russ, author of The Female Man, in Existence (1975).
Categories
Today

El Libertador

On May 23, 1813, South American independence leader Simón Bolívar entered Mérida, where he was proclaimed El Libertador (“The Liberator”), leading the invasion of Venezuela.

Other May 23 events include:

1788: South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1900: Sergeant William Harvey Carney became the first African American to be awarded the Medal of Honor, for his heroism in a Civil War battle fought 37 years prior, in 1863.

1958: Birthday of American comedian and game show host Drew Carey.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Welcome the Revolutionaries?

Declaration of Independence, freedom, communism, leftism, universities, education, schools, anti-Americanism

Attending his son’s commencement ceremony at the University of Michigan, Judge Michael Warren came away . . . concerned. 

“In stark contrast to several speakers who dutifully acknowledged that the campus sits on land ceded by the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi Nations by the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs (or Treaty of the Foot of the Rapids),” the judge lamented in The Detroit News on Monday, “not a single speaker dared to acknowledge the birthday of our own nation.”

The ceremonies, writes Judge Warren, “could have occurred in any country without missing a beat.” 

Warren, a U of Malumnus, sadly notes how thoroughly “in thrall” to the “well-documented anti-West, anti-American sentiments” his old school has become. He also highlights how very different they were from the ceremonies, a half century ago, during the Bicentennial, when the keynote speech was entitled “Welcome to the Revolution.”

Nowadays, any Revolution extolled on campus might best be symbolized not by fife and drum or quill on parchment, but by a raised red fist.

Or hammer and sickle — perhaps painted in rainbows.

Lost on the university class? Any charm to the “near magical words” of the Declaration of Independence. Before the Declaration, Warren explains, all governments “were unequivocally opposed to recognizing that the people had the right to reform or start government anew.”

Today’s university folk, expressing the typical pieties of the center-left, in fact mimic our familiar American model to justify their own, much less impressive and far more dangerous notions of never-ending revolution.

In April, Republic Book Publishers came out with The Revolutionary Words that Forged America: The Definitive Guide to the Declaration of Independence by this very same Judge Michael Warren. I bought a copy. It looks great. 

For he takes the founders’ seriously good ideas seriously.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTE: Judge Warren also happens to be a very serious candidate for the Michigan Supreme Court. And, in full disclosure, my friend.

PDF for printing

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