After two months of vigorous revolutionary acts — from “social democratic” reforms to public executions — the Paris Commune fell on May 28, 1871.
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Communards Ousted
With roughly 200,000 soldiers serving on 700 military bases in 80 countries throughout the world as well as on the high seas, the United States sure has its hands full.
While many Americans protest our government’s world policeman job, here we are, where we’ve been for decades . . . addressing commitments to militarily defend 67 countries.
What with the new Iran War, Israel’s actions in Lebanon, and the ongoing Ukraine War — not to mention continued Yemeni attacks on Red Sea shipping and bloody conflicts raging throughout Africa — it almost seems like World War III has started unannounced.
And all this before we even consider Asia, where, as The Economist bluntly puts it, “China has been bullying America’s allies.” China’s increasing harassment and invasion threats against Taiwan, its claim to 90 percent of the entire South China Sea, its regular attacks on Philippine and Vietnamese fishermen, deadly clashes with India, and less than peaceful behavior toward Australia and Japan has put the entire region on edge.
For my six decades, the United States has been the dominant military power in the world. Yet, with China’s massive military buildup that is now an open question in Asia. Which is why failure to help Taiwan defeat a Chinese attack would destroy U.S. credibility there . . . and likely far beyond.
So, how do we ever relinquish the badge of world’s policeman? One word: Allies.
As much as the USA has been the indispensable nation leading the free world, that does not mean we can go it alone against authoritarians globally. We need strong allies, so we don’t have to.
We know that a NATO-type alliance in Asia scares the daylights out of the Chinese Communist Party.
Surely that would be a better deterrent than just the singular U.S. cop.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
Aesop, Fables, “The Wolf and the Lamb.” Illustration: Aesop, with a fox, from the central medallion of a kylix, c. 470 BC; in the Gregorian Etruscan Museum, Vatican City.
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FDR Was Not Pleased
The Supreme Court of the United States unanimously declared key portions of the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional, in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (295 U.S. 495), on May 27, 1935.
And President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not pleased in the slightest.
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Driving VPNs South
Public Safety Canada, an agency responsible for safety, security, emergency preparedness and this kind of thing, recently urged Canadians to protect themselves when using public Wi-Fi by also using a VPN.
“Using a VPN protects your data,” the agency said.
True.
Unless — unless others in the government succeed in requiring VPN companies to uniformly sabotage the privacy of their customers.
The mechanism for crippling VPN’s? That would be the pending legislation to force VPN providers to retain personal data which users expect them not to retain, in this way killing these companies’ very reason for being as well as Canadian Internet users’ reasons to employ these companies.
We netizens want some security. A VPN required to track and store information on customers seeking security is, ipso facto, insecure.
Bill C-22, or the Lawful Access Act, introduced by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness in March, would require customers’ data to be retained for a year. Everybody’s data, mind you, not just the data of persons suspected of a crime.
“Oh this is just rich,” says Windscribe, a VPN provider based in Toronto. “Bill C-22 is driving VPN businesses like ours out of Canada because of the required user logging. And in the same breath you tell people to secure their data with VPNs.”
If things go on like this, Ottawa’s impulse to destroy or try to destroy online privacy will override any contrary impulse to help people preserve online privacy. Thereby obliging Canadians who do value it to figure out a way to override the override.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Henry Adams
Those who seek education in the paths of duty are always deceived by the illusion that power in the hands of friends is an advantage to them. As far as Adams could teach experience, he was bound to warn them that he had found it an invariable disaster. Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had been always tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards.
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907).
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Market Milestones
Capitalism’s 26th of May milestones:
- On May 26, 1896, Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
- The last Model T rolled off of Ford Motor Company’s assembly line on May 26th of 1927, after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.
- The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on the 26th of May, 1967.
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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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).
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.