Imagine stealing everyone’s money and still being $36 trillion in debt.
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Just Imagine
Author: Editor
“Did the seed of tyranny ever bear good fruit? And can you expect liberty to undo in a moment what oppression has been doing for ages?” (From anarchistquotes.com)
Voltairine de Cleyre
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Sir Robert Peel
On February 5, 1788, Robert Peel was born. He would become one of the United Kingdom’s most important prime ministers, ushering in some reforms that led to the liberalization of England in the 19th century.
Peel is also regarded as the father of the modern British police — the popular term “bobbies” refers to “Bob” Peel — and as one of the founders of the modern Conservative Party.
Robert Peel died in 1850.
As January closed, the CIA changed its story on the origin of the SARS-CoV‑2 virus.
But was it big news?
Most people had given up any hope of finding a natural origin, and evidence favoring the virus’s creation in Wuhan, China — partly funded by U.S. taxpayers courtesy of Big Pharma bureaucrat Dr. Antony Fauci — has been clear for a very long time.
So the CIA saying it now “believes” that COVID-19 was leaked from the Chinese lab looks, suspiciously, like a convenient change of opinion upon the beginning of the 47th presidency.
New beliefs for a new president!
Note that the CIA certainly offers plenty of reasons to make light of the turn.
- The agency expresses “low confidence” in the new opinion.
- The spokesman admits that no new evidence was behind the shift.
- The spooks say they continue “to assess” both theories of coronavirus origination.
Very political.
The change of mind looks like this: the CIA had pushed the natural origination story because it had an agenda, and Americans have largely given up on that agenda. Left pushing a wet noodle, the CIA now tries to recover some of its cachet — or prevent further erosion of public opinion in the institution — by siding with the once-derided belief.
And the “low confidence” warning is there to allow mainstream news media to downplay the story. The whole thing smacks of propagandistic manipulation rather than honestly informing the president, Congress, the Pentagon, or the American people.
Oh, and what of that agenda?
Let’s just say that the agency always seeks to keep us ill-informed.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The rich…
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Dis Democracy?
Starting the new year and awaiting a new administration, do we deserve to ‘get it good and hard’?
In the winter issue of Cato Institute’s Regulation, economist Pierre Lemieux acknowledges H.L. Mencken’s famous line — “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard” — and sympathizes with “disappointed voters” following last November’s election.
“The common person does know what he wants,” argues Lemieux, explaining that “he succeeds so well in his private life.”
Of course, our economic marketplace and our political marketplace are markedly different.
“The electoral choices presented to voters are typically a confused mix of unreliable promises and obscure policies,” Lemieux writes. “Contrast that with the clarity and variety of market choices.”
He notes the ways regular folks are being politically disempowered: “The value of lying as an electoral asset seems to be on the rise. The public education system appears to have not had much success in encouraging the quest for truth. And the common people have been infantilized by their own governments …”
Lemieux worries that “when the common person is given the power to decide what his fellow humans should want … things can go very wrong.”
He’s correct, of course. But it isn’t a problem unique to democracy or the participation of regular folks. When any government has such enormous power over “fellow humans,” yes, things go wrong. Enormously wrong.
Yet, in democracies, the problem of political tyranny is far less pronounced than in anti-democratic regimes, and more effectively remedied. Democratic government is messy, woefully imperfect and can lead to awful policies and real tyranny. Still, it lacks a superior alternative.
Until then, give me democracy.
Good and hard? Preferably good.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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