On June 14, 1777, U.S. Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the United States Flag.
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Stars and Stripes
Author: Editor
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Aldous Huxley
Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter one, p. 14.
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Anti-slavery
On June 13, 1774, Rhode Island became the first British colony in the Americas to prohibit the importation of slaves.
Retired Chinese soccer superstar Hao Haidong “stunned his country,” The Washington Post reported last week, “after he called for the downfall of the ruling Communist Party and the formation of a new government.”
Certainly, Hao — “the Chinese national team’s all-time top goal scorer and an idol in the 1990s and early 2000s” — startled the country’s rulers, not to mention their multitudes of censors. Hard to say, however, how much information reached the average citizen before silence was enforced.
“The Communist Party’s totalitarian rule in China has caused horrific atrocities against humanity,” the expatriate declared in a YouTube video released on the 31st anniversary of China’s brutal Tiananmen Square massacre.
The Butchers of Beijing are a tad sensitive about that.
Working with “fugitive billionaire Guo Wengui, one of the Chinese government’s most reviled opponents,”* Hao and his wife, Ye Zhaoying, once an Olympic medalist and badminton champion, offered that their dangerous stand against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was “the biggest and most correct decision in our lives.”
“It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented,” noted CNN, “for a successful Chinese sports star to unleash such a blistering public denunciation of the Communist Party and openly call for its downfall.” Adding, of course, that, “Dissidents who publicly criticize the party or demand democratic reforms often face lengthy prison sentences.”
Though China blocks YouTube, news of Hao saying the CCP should be “kicked out of humanity” was spreading on Chinese social media. Hao’s account has since been deleted.
“Hao Haidong has made a speech that subverts the government and harms national sovereignty and uses the coronavirus epidemic to smear the Chinese government and spread falsehoods about Hong Kong,” said a statement by a popular sports website. “We strongly condemn this behavior.”
Soon, the statement replaced Hao’s name with only the Roman letter “H.” Hours later, the entire statement and all mention of the incident had been erased. Poof!
“Within 24 hours,” The Post disclosed, “Hao’s name had become the most heavily censored term on Weibo.”
It didn’t stop there. “Following his father Hao Haidong’s public criticism of the Chinese Communist Party,” informed Taiwan News, “Chinese soccer player Hao Runze has reportedly been released by his Serbian team due to heavy pressure from Beijing.”
The firing came “after an impressive debut performance,” in which the young Hao scored a goal. So “all Chinese news agencies have now removed any mention of the young rookie.”
This is the dystopian world with which 1.4 billion Chinese are stuck.
For now.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Billionaire Guo Wengui has hired former Trump advisor Steve Bannon to assist in the effort.
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Richard Overton
To every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature not to be invaded or usurped by any. For every one, as he is himself, so he has a self-propriety, else could he not be himself; and of this no second may presume to deprive any of without manifest violation and affront to the very principles of nature and of the rules of equity and justice between man and man. Mine and thine cannot be, except this be. No man has power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man’s. I may be but an individual, enjoy my self and my self-propriety and may right myself no more than my self, or presume any further; if I do, I am an encroacher and an invader upon another man’s right — to which I have no right. For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like propriety, liberty and freedom. . . .
Richard Overton, An Arrow against all Tyrants from the prison of Newgate into the prerogative bowels of the arbitrary House of Lords and all other usurpers and tyrants whatsoever (1646)
In 1776, on June 12, the Fifth Virginia Convention at Williamsburg, Virginia, unanimously adopted a Declaration of Rights, several weeks prior to the adoption of the state’s constitution. George Mason (pictured above), who drafted the document, stated clearly in the preamble that rights must be “the basis and foundation of Government.”
The first four planks run as follows:
I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
II. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.
III. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community; of all the various modes and forms of government that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration; and that, whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
IV. That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge be hereditary.
“For every bullet the German police fired on duty in 2016, American police killed 10 people,” writes Jason Brennan for MarketWatch. “Even overwhelmingly white states like Wyoming and Montana imprison citizens at higher rates than authoritarian Cuba.”
What is going on here?
And by here I mean “these United States of America.”
Well, Brennan, who is the Robert J and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, has an answer.
“What matters even more than black and white is green,” he writes, referencing the current protests and riots sparked by coverage of the George Floyd killing by Minneapolis police. “Fixing our criminal justice system means fixing the incentives.”
Professor Brennan points the finger at a number of federal programs:
- The 1981 Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act “authorized and incentivized the U.S. armed forces to train police in military tactics” while the 1990 National Defense Authorization Act established a pipeline from the military industrial complex to local police forces.
- The drug war set up police theft of private property via civil asset forfeiture, and encouraged federal drug warriors to share the loot with local police departments.
- In many localities, direct election of prosecutors leads to campaign boasts about prosecution stats and long sentences, even when these policies make us less safe.
There’s a lot here to mull over, and you may not agree with everything Brennan argues, but the basic point is quite clear: “Even if we magically erased all racism overnight, the U.S. would still be harsh and violent” — and that because our politics has skewed incentives all wrong.
Getting rid of programs and laws that disincentivize good policing is a must.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Declarations
On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman to draft a declaration of independence from Great Britain.
In 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, doused himself with gasoline and set himself aflame in a busy Saigon intersection as a protest against South Vietnam’s lack of religious freedom.
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Aldous Huxley
Propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with enlightened self-interest appeals to reason by means of logical arguments based upon the best available evidence fully and honestly set forth. Propaganda in favor of action dictated by the impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete evidence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scapegoats, and by cunningly associating the lower passions with the highest ideals, so that atrocities come to be perpetrated in the name of God and the most cynical kind of Realpolitik is treated as a matter of religious principle and patriotic duty.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter four, p. 33.