Author: Editor

crime and punishment ideological culture

Pushing Past Protest

A group called Jane’s Revenge is on a rampage against organizations known to oppose abortion.

“We promised to take increasingly drastic measures against oppressive infrastructures,” the manifesto declares. “Rest assured that we will, and those measures may not come in the form of something so easily cleaned up as fire and graffiti. From here forward, any anti-choice group who closes their doors, and stops operating will no longer be a target. But until you do, it’s open season.”

We don’t know how Jane’s Revenge is constituted. Maybe it will turn out to be just one woman with a keyboard. Whatever its form, though, it has acolytes, persons willing to damage the property of churches, anti-abortion pregnancy centers, and other anti-abortion organizations.

Jane’s Revenge has claimed responsibility for vandalizing the Agape Pregnancy Center in Des Moines this month. In Olympia, St. Michael Parish was spray-painted with the words “abort the church.” Dozens of similar incidents began in early May, when Wisconsin Family Action was damaged by arson and vandalism. (Family Research Center maintains a list of the attacks; Wikipedia curates a page about those attributed specifically to Jane’s Revenge.)

The Biden administration has finally made a pro forma objection to the violence being perpetrated by pro-abortion protesters. Too often, though, government officials and others have been conspicuously silent. Could it possibly be the case that they’re OK with violence as a means because they agree about abortion as an end?

This is tantamount to encouraging violence by the angry left — and not just when it comes to this particular controversial issue.

Thankfully, though there have been protests nationwide against the Supreme Court’s overthrowal, last week, of Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), there has so far been no “Night of Rage.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags abortion, Supreme Court, violence

Today

Auberon Herbert

On June 18, 1838, Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert was born.

Auberon Herbert was a Liberal Member of Parliament who, after reading the writings of Herbert Spencer, became a radical individualist, authoring essays such as “The Ethics of Dynamite,” “A Politician in Trouble About His Soul,” and “The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State.” He termed his version of the political philosophy of liberty “voluntaryism.”

defense & war general freedom meme

Tiananmen Square

“The same thing will happen in China that happened in Chile. Political freedom will ultimately break out of its shackles. Tiananmen Square was only the first episode. It is headed for a series of Tiananmen Squares. It cannot continue to develop privately and at the same time maintain its authoritarian character politically. It is headed for a clash. Sooner or later, one or the other will give.”
–Milton Friedman

Thought

G.K. Chesterton

It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Cleveland Press (March 1, 1921).

Thought

G.K. Chesterton

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, A Short History of England (1917).

Today

Slavery and Heresy

On May 18, 1652, Rhode Island passed the first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal.

On May 18, 1593, playwright Thomas Kyd’s accusations of heresy led to an arrest warrant for fellow playwright Christopher (“Kit”) Marlowe.

Kyd was the famed author of The Spanish Tragedy, and Kit Marlowe [pictured] was known for a number of plays, including The Jew of Malta and The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.

Marlowe died a few weeks later, on May 30, without having been arrested. The circumstances of his death were bizarre, suspicious — as if written by a playwright.

Today

Oregon Trail

On May 16, 1843, one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri, set off for the Pacific Northwest, blazing what became known as the “Oregon Trail.”

Today

Constitution, huzzah?

On May 14, 1787, delegates convened a Constitutional Convention, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to write a new Constitution for the United States. George Washington presided over the convention.

On the same day a century later, jurist and pamphleteer Lysander Spooner — author of several important treatises, including “Trial by Jury” and “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery,” an infamous pamphlet entitled “No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority” — died.

Thought

John Wesley

Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason. It is our part, by religion and reason joined, to counteract them all we can.
John Wesley, Letter to John Benson (October 5, 1770); published in Wesley’s Select Letters (1837), p. 207.

First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media

Will Elon Liberate Tweeting?

Post author By Editor
Post date April 7, 2022
5 Comments on Will Elon Liberate Tweeting?

Persons who skip social media or who spend their time on Twitter and Facebook discussing lunch or the weather may not realize how anti-speech such big-tech forums have become.

If you disagree about what’s better for breakfast, eggs or oatmeal, no problem.

But despite their putative pretense of providing open forums, the dominant social-media companies routinely ban discussion of touchy subjects like Hunter Biden laptops, pandemics, and and the politics of race and gender. As the satire site Babylon Bee discovered, even calling a man a man, apparently quite a controversial observation, can get you in hot water with Twitter censors.

We have ways of combatting the censorship. One is using alternative platforms that do regard open discussion as a value. Another is becoming a major stockholder and disrupting the anti-speech agenda from within.

Is this what Elon Musk is up to? Bee CEO Seth Dillon says that after Twitter suspended Babylon Bee for calling a man a man, Musk called him about the suspension and said that “he might need to buy Twitter.”

Presumably in order to put a stop to such censorious shenanigans.

Now Elon Musk, who has 80.6 million followers on Twitter, has bought the company. Or rather, he has acquired a big stake in it, a 9.2 percent stake. This apparently makes him Twitter’s largest stockholder. Maybe we can dare to hope that he will eventually become the majority stockholder.

Good first step, Mr. Musk.

Next? Get Twitter to remove the gags.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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