On May 30, 1989, student demonstrators unveiled a 33-foot high “Goddess of Democracy and Freedom” statue in Tiananmen Square.
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Paul-Emile de Puydt
Today we have ruling dynasties as well as fallen ones; princes wearing a crown and others who certainly would not mind a chance of wearing one. Each has his party, and each party is primarily interested in putting spokes in the wheels of the coach of the State, until they have tipped it up, thus gaining the chance of climbing into it themselves, risking the same fate in turn. It is the charming game of seesaw, which people pay the price for and yet never seem to tire of. . . .
Paul-Emile de Puydt, “Panarchy” (1860).
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Greek voters
On May 28, 1952, the women of Greece gained the right to vote.
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Thomas Babington Macaulay
Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals, with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.
Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Machiavelli” (March 1827), a review of Oeuvres completes de MACHIAVEL (J. V. Perier: 1825), in Critical and Historical Essays: Contributed to the Edinburgh Review (Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans: 1843).
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The Model T Era Ends
On May 27, 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi began his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian unification.
In 1927 on this date in May, the Ford Motor Company ceased manufacture of the Ford Model T (pictured above), the last of this model coming off the line the day previous. Over 16 million Model T Fords had been sold; it was a world-transformative product. On the 27th, the company began to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.
Exactly 70 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Paula Jones could pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he was in office.
In 2015 on the 27th of May, the commercial space company SpaceX was approved as a contractor to the U.S. military for satellite launches; SpaceX has since led the world in its use of
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Freedom of Religion
On May 26, 451, the Sassanid Empire defeated the Armenians at the battle of
On May 26, 1328, scholastic philosopher and Franciscan friar William of Ockham and other Franciscan leaders secretly exited Avignon, fearing a death sentence from Pope John XXII. On the same day in 1538, the city of Geneva expelled John Calvin and his followers, who headed to exile in Strasbourg.
A journey of a thousand leagues starts with a single step.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 64, line 12.
When it comes to public schools, “no city has experienced the level of discord as that in San Francisco,” reports The Washington Post.
That’s because, as The Post posits, “the San Francisco school board has been operating” with “a heavy focus on controversial, difficult racial issues, and slow progress on school reopening.”
A sampling:
- “In January, the school board voted to rename 44 schools” with purported “connections to slavery, oppression and racism” — though The Post notes “the alleged ties were thin or, in some cases, historically questionable or inaccurate.”*
- One of the most controversial moves by the board was “[c]hanging the admissions process for the elite Lowell High School — eliminating grades and test scores and admitting students by a ranked-choice lottery.” As The Post explains, “the change means that students with the best grades and scores may not be admitted.”
- The school board removed Commissioner Alison Collins as Vice President in March, after her anti-Asian tweets from 2016 came to light. She called Asian Americans (who happen to disproportionally earn entry to Lowell) “house n****rs” who employed “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’”**
“Through all this, the city’s school buildings remained closed,” notes The Post, “even as private schools in the area and public schools elsewhere in the region operated in person.”
Thankfully, San Franciscans have launched a recall campaign against three members of the seven-member school board: President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga and Commissioner Alison M. Collins.
The best thing for public education in Frisco will be to school these “first” recall targets in the power of the citizenry.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Facing a lawsuit, the board voted unanimously to rescind their renaming of those “‘injustice-linked’ schools” — just a few months after the original vote.
** In response, Collins is suing the board for $87 million.
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Jacob Burckhardt
May 25, 1818, the Swiss historian and academic Jacob Burckhardt was born. Burckhardt’s best-known work is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), but is remembered here as the author of Reflections on History (1905).
Burckhardt died on August 8, 1897.
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John Hancock
On May 24, 1775, John Hancock was elected president of the Second Continental Congress.
Hancock’s involvement with Samuel Adams and his radical group, the Sons of Liberty, won the wealthy merchant the dubious distinction of being one of only two Patriots (the other being Sam Adams) that the Redcoats marching to Lexington in April 1775 to confiscate Patriots’ arms were ordered to arrest. When British General Thomas Gage offered amnesty to the colonists holding Boston under siege, he excluded those same two men from his offer.