November 24th marks the birthdays of philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632) and three influential Americans: ragtime composer Scott Joplin (1868), self-help writer Dale Carnegie (1888), and conservative editor, writer, and television personality William F. Buckley Jr. (1925).
Elizaveta Zlatkis could be jailed for up to a quarter century.
What heinous crime has she committed? Prepare yourself: she kept a stash of guns in her home.
Well, toy guns . . . used as props.
Not real armaments, pretend armaments.
New York City police confiscated 21 starter pistols and toy replicas that, according to the NYPD’s own lab reports, cannot fire bullets. And “one actual firearm” that the police acknowledge “was rendered ‘inoperable’ because the trigger, hand grip and internal components were all missing.”
“We do videos with them as props,” attests a rapper named Crucial.
“That’s wild,” he says of the prosecution. “They’re fake.”
NYPD cops acted on a tip — standard prelude to many a dastardly home invasion by putative officers of the law — in raiding her home in December 2019.
It’s been a nightmare for Ms. Zlatkis ever since.
She thinks she’s innocent, refusing a plea deal. Meanwhile, the prosecuting attorney, Melinda Katz, won’t drop the charges.
What’s next? Raids of toy stores and movie studio warehouses?
BearingArms.com stresses one aspect of the lunacy: Zlatkis is facing decades behind bars for heaping toy guns while thugs arrested “for actually shooting someone are quickly returning to the streets.”
The guns are fake, and the charges too — if only this story were fake! Unfortunately, it is the believable kind of unbelievable. In the increasingly creedal crusade against guns, the kookier, more cultish element appears to dominate.
The DA and everyone else pursuing this case after the guns had been examined are the ones who should face charges for hounding this woman — not that exercising the right to keep and bear fully functional arms should be a life-destroying offense, either.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On December 23, 1783, George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland.
The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.
George Orwell, letter to Malcolm Muggeridge, December 4, 1948.
Good news: New York City businessmen can no longer be threatened with eviction and forced to forfeit their rights for the crime of . . . well, for no crime at all.
Sung Cho, owner of a Manhattan laundromat, is one of many victims of an eviction-and-extortion racket perpetrated by the city.
For years, business owners have faced eviction because of offenses that occurred on the premises of their business — even if the owner was ignorant of the alleged offenses before they were committed.
In 2013, police entered Cho’s laundromat to sell supposedly stolen goods. After a couple of people unconnected to the business accepted the offer, the NYPD threatened Cho with eviction. Even though neither Cho nor his employees were accused of doing anything illegal.
Cho felt he had no alternative but to waive his right not to be subjected to warrantless searches, and grant police access to his security cameras, and forfeit his right to a hearing if ever penalized for alleged criminal offenses in the future. To avoid eviction, he accepted those obnoxious terms.
But he didn’t leave it there. In 2016, Sung Cho teamed up with the Institute for Justice to sue the city.
After many ups and downs, the final result is that the law so often used as a club against innocent business owners has been changed. Also, the NYPD must obey a binding order that it “shall not enforce or seek to enforce” the terms of agreements imposed under the old law.
A big win for lots of small businesses against tyrannical actions by government.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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[I]f two countries are placed under unequal conditions of production, it is that one of the two that is least favored by nature that has most to gain by free trade.
Frédéric Bastiat, from Economic Sophisms, “To Equalize the Conditions of Production.”
On December 22, 1989, Communist President of Romania Nicolae Ceaușescu was overthrown by Ion Iliescu after days of bloody confrontations. The deposed dictator and his wife fled Bucharest with a helicopter as protesters erupted in cheers.
The couple was quickly caught and, on Christmas day, tried by a military tribunal and executed by firing squad.
Is it okay to stop people from talking to prevent them from saying things that are possibly incorrect?
A New York Times article about Chinese censorship of discussion of COVID-19 seems to imply that the Chinese government would have been justified in choking off discussion to “debunk damaging falsehoods.”
A mass of government documents recently obtained by hackers “indicate that Chinese officials tried to steer the narrative not only to prevent panic and debunk damaging falsehoods domestically. They also wanted to make the virus look less severe — and the authorities more capable. . . .”
The government’s efforts included hiring hundreds of thousands of people to publish party-line posts on social media as well as detaining people “who formed groups to archive deleted posts” about the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, who had warned about COVID-19.
The Chinese government has also issued endless instructions to providers of nominally private social-media platforms to control what people say about the pandemic.
Thank the Gray Lady for the report confirming the known details about Chinese censorship. But how do you draw a line between censorship “only” to “debunk falsehoods” and censorship to spread official lies and suppress the very appearance of truth? You can’t.
Discussion itself helps us determine what is true and what is false.
The notion that the government (or any society-wide institution obeying the government) can neatly and unilaterally shape discussion to prevent only “bad” discussion — without inflicting massive damage on “good” discussion — is itself false.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Duplicate men are not to be found. There is in each a different balance of desires. Therefore the conditions adapted for the highest enjoyment of one, would not perfectly compass the same end for any other. And consequently the notion of happiness must vary with the disposition and character; that is, must vary indefinitely.
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics: or, The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed (London: John Chapman, 1851), Introduction, § 2.
On December 21, 1620, William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims landed on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
American settlers in Nacogdoches, Mexican Texas, declared their independence on December 21, 1826, starting the Fredonian Rebellion.
Avant-garde rock ’n’ roll guitarist, band leader, and composer Frank Zappa was born on this date in 1940. In 1985, Zappa testified before the United States Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music organization co-founded by Tipper Gore, wife of then-senator Al Gore. Zappa was a passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Describing his political views, Frank Zappa categorized himself as a “practical conservative,” or “independent.” He died in 1993.