Author: Editor

Vaclav Havel

The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless”

Louder in Loudoun

“The drama that played out in upscale Loudoun County, Virginia over the last year or so,” Matt Taibbi writes at Substack, “cost Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe the governorship. . . .”

McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and previously governor (2014-2017) under Virginia’s one-term consecutive limit, lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin by 2 percentage points in Tuesday’s off-year election. That’s big news because Virginia is a blue state where just a year ago Democrat Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump by a 10-point margin.*

“[T]he Loudoun County story,” notes Taibbi, “involves furious disputes between local parents and the school board over a variety of issues, including a pair of sexual assaults.”

Those two attacks involve a “skirt-wearing teen who raped a female classmate in [the] girls’ bathroom.” Convicted in juvenile court on two counts of sexual assault for the first incident, the lad has been accused of attacking another young female student — also in a school bathroom, but in a different school (having been transferred).

Yet, during a school board meeting discussion on transgender bathroom policies, one month after the assault occurred, school officials claimed there had been no incidents.

The lie was exposed only after the girl’s father, in attendance, became angry.

And was arrested.

“It was the woke cover-up that electrified the Virginia governor’s race,” declares the UK’s Daily Mail headline on their Election Day exclusive interview with the rapist’s mother.

That school officials would attempt to hide such incidents speaks to the crying need for accountability.

And for the right of parents to control their kids’ education.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Republicans triumphed across the board, sweeping all three statewide offices — which breaks a Democratic Party streak dating back to 2012 — as well as winning back the Virginia House of Delegates. The GOP Lieutenant Governor-elect Winsome Sears will be the first black woman in that position and the Attorney General-elect Jason Miyares will become the state’s first Latino AG.

NOTE: Decided is this question: “How much say should parents have in what their child’s school teaches?” In a Washington Post exit poll, a majority of Virginians answered, “A lot.” Of those, 77 percent voted for Youngkin.

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general freedom international affairs national politics & policies

Taiwan in Two Words

“Two words from Taiwan’s leader threaten to upend U.S.-China ties,” headlined The Japan Times’ story.

Weeks ago, China’s totalitarian leader Xi Jinping mentioned his itch for peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan.* Or else. No pause in his warplanes crossing into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, nor withdrawal of the continual threat of military invasion.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen offered that the two countries were “not subordinate” to each other — which deeply hurt Xi’s feelings because . . . well, his Chinazis have their hearts set on subordinating Taiwan. In fact, the only thing preventing that deadly, freedom-suffocating Sino-subordination is the united weight — military and economic — of allied countries.

Japan, for instance. And the European Union, too — which just voted to deepen ties to Taiwan, ignoring Beijing’s demand to shun the island nation.

At a CNN “town hall” last week, President Joe Biden vowed the U.S. would defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. Diplomatic folk tried to walk that back to “strategic ambiguity,” but billions of Asians heard him say it.

“To whom does Taiwan belong?” asked Pat Buchanan earlier this year, in a column trudging through 70 years of weaselly-worded communiqués and diplomatic understandings.

But comedian John Oliver counters that “people who aren’t Taiwanese making decisions for Taiwan is a bit f***ing played out, historically.”

“So maybe the best thing we can do is move past talking about Taiwan like it’s some kind of poker chip in a never-ending game of us versus them,” he concluded on his HBO show Last Week Tonight. “Because the fact is Taiwan is not a plucky bulwark against the Red Menace, nor is it some island-sized Viagra to rejuvenate the Chinese nation. Taiwan is 23 million people who, in the face of considerable odds, have built a free democratic society and very much deserve the right to decide their own future in any way that they deem fit.”

Let’s call it: Not subordinate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Since Taiwan has never been a part of the People’s Republic of China, there can be no prefix “re” in the threatened unification — by missiles and machine guns.

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Thought

Stephen Covey

Values are social norms — they’re personal, emotional, subjective, and arguable. All of us have values. Even criminals have values. The question you must ask yourself is, Are your values based upon principles? In the last analysis, principles are natural laws — they’re impersonal, factual, objective and self-evident. Consequences are governed by principles and behavior is governed by values; therefore, value principles!

Today

Uprising(s)

On October 23, 1850, the first National Women’s Rights Convention began in Worcester, Massachusetts.

On the same October date 106 years later, thousands of Hungarians rose up against Soviet rule.

Today

Sartre Doesn’t Take the Prize

Post author By Editor
Post date October 22, 2021
1 Comment on Sartre Doesn’t Take the Prize

On October 22, 1964, philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turned down the honor — establishing a precedent that should have been followed by numerous Peace Prize winners, including Barack Obama and the European Union.

Only one other recipient of the award has turned it down voluntarily, namely Henry Kissinger’s co-winner in 1973, Le Duc Tho. Four other recipients were coerced by their governments from accepting the prize’s monetary award: Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt and Gerhard Domagk, by the Nazi government, and Boris Pasternak, by the Soviet Union.

Today

Harding Spoke Out

On October 21, 1921, President Warren G. Harding delivered the first speech by a sitting U.S. President against lynching in the deep South.

education and schooling ideological culture

Burning Down the House

A sign of the times: in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, the Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, is brazenly telling voters: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Presumably, parents should just sit back, relax, and let their children be indoctrinated at will, including with the latest “anti-racist” racism.

Of course, we’re being assailed on many fronts. Things seem to be cracking up faster than ever, which is the theme of a recent Legal Insurrection post, “Gradually and Then Suddenly,” published on the blog’s thirteenth anniversary.

William Jacobson argues that for years now, “all the ‘progressive’ pieces were in place but needed a spark to burn the house down.”

The spark was the death of George Floyd in May 2020, followed by “state-sanctioned lawlessness, rioting, and looting; a vicious cultural purge from academia to corporations to the military to historical monuments; gaslighting and burying of news by a corrupt and dishonest mainstream corporate media and Big Tech; and the solidification of our post-truth world . . . where telling facts some people don’t like can get you fired, denounced, and boycotted.”

In addition to fighting back, Jacobson advises that we prep for the worst. This means, for one thing, stocking up on food with a long shelf life. (The preppers were “early,” not wrong.) We should also rely more on each other rather than on institutions.

Jacobson provides a bonus tip (one I’ve also advised): If at all possible, get your kids the heck out of the public schools.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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