Author: Editor

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national politics & policies political challengers

The Devil Is in the Seat Cushion

Nancy Pelosi, debates, Trump

A few weeks ago, I suggested setting up a betting pool for the upcoming presidential debates. How many would there be?

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe predicted that there would be three — “no more, no less” — but prescribed zero: “America’s quadrennial presidential debates have become an absurdity,” he wrote. 

“They long ago devolved into shallow ‘gotcha’ contests, prime-time entertainments designed to elicit memorable soundbites — tart put-downs rehearsed in advance or the unforced error of an unexpected gaffe,” which is about right, though President Donald J. Trump excels at the spontaneous put-down. 

Advisability to the side, Jacoby surmised what we all have surmised: that Democrats shouldn’t be pushing debates. That is, if they want their candidate, Joe Biden, to win the election. He is too off his game. Biden should take a hint from the name given to his generation: Silent.

Enter Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and very rarely silent herself — and indeed older than Biden but as sharp as the proverbial tack the Devil is said to need to sit upon. She says that Biden should not debate President Trump. 

“Don’t tell anybody I told you this,” she jests. “Especially don’t tell Joe Biden. But I don’t think there should be any debates.”

The president, she argues, has not “comported himself in a way . . . with truth, evidence, data, and facts. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t legitimize a conversation with him, nor a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States.” 

She dubs a debate with Trump “an exercise in skullduggery.” 

Good politics — realpolitik — but also horrific politics — setting up a transparent-but-serviceable CYA excuse. 

But it is definitely 2020 politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Herbert Spencer

Only a nature which will sacrifice everything to defend personal liberty of action, and is eager to defend the like liberties of action of others, can permanently maintain free institutions. While not tolerating aggression upon himself, he must have sympathies such as will not tolerate aggression upon his fellows — be they fellows of the same race or of other races. 

Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, Part VIII, Industrial Institutions, final chapter.
Categories
Today

Slavery Abolished

On August 28, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act received Royal Assent, formally abolishing slavery throughout most the British Empire.

Categories
crime and punishment

Hearts United

Julia Jackson, Kenosha, riots, shooting

“They shot my son seven times — seven times — like he didn’t matter,” explained a choked-up Jacob Blake, Sr., at a news conference after his son was shot and paralyzed by Kenosha police. “But my son matters. He’s a human being and he matters.”

On Sunday, Kenosha police were called to a domestic disturbance. Attending his three-year-old’s birthday party in the same neighborhood, Jacob Blake, Jr., was reportedly “trying to break up the argument” between two women. Police have provided scant details, but two cell-phone videos made public show Blake wrestling with police on the passenger side of his vehicle and then walking around to the driver’s side followed by police with their guns drawn. As Blake starts to get into the driver’s seat, an officer grabs Blake’s shirt and then fires seven shots at close range into his back. 

The Washington Post labeled it “the latest incident this summer to . . . divide a nation over the urgency of bringing fundamental change to law enforcement.” 

But we are not so divided. Not on criminal justice reform, which whopping majorities across all races and political parties fervently support. 

“The only response worthy of the moment is laws,” argued Rev. Al Sharpton. I’m with him. Let’s legally toss chokeholds, no-knock raids, qualified immunity, civil forfeiture, and police unions . . . along with their contracts hiding misconduct from the public.

Americans of all races are also united, not divided, in opposing the violence and destruction by rioters in Kenosha and Minneapolis and Portland and elsewhere. 

“As I was riding through the city, I noticed a lot of damage,” Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson, told the media. “It doesn’t reflect my son. Or my family. If Jacob knew what was going on . . . the violence and the destruction, he would be very unpleased.”

“Take a moment,” she urged, “and examine your heart.”

She continued, “Clearly, you can see by now that I have beautiful brown skin. But take a look at your hand and whatever shade it is, it is beautiful as well.”

In calling for healing, she declared, “I am not talking to just Caucasian people; I am talking to everyone.”

I hope everyone is listening.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Today

Baltic Independence

On August 27, 1991, the European Community recognized the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and Moldova after they had declared their independence from the USSR.

Categories
Thought

Old Soviet Joke

“Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect.”
“Yes, it is. But it is politically correct.”

The likely origin for the term “political correctness”; old Soviet joke, as quoted in “The Rise of Political Correctness: From Marx to Gramsci to Trump,” by Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Review of Books (Fall 2016).

Categories
nannyism responsibility too much government

It’s Never Too Late to Prep?

prepper, hoarder, hoarding, emergency

That’s the theme of a discussion at reddit.com. “Someone told me it was too late last fall,” the original poster recalls. “I went on to build a moderate canned prep. . . . Someone told me it was too late to prep for the pandemic in February. I went on to gather [personal protective equipment] before the stores emptied.”

Most Redditors nodded. But one suggested that if things go kablooey and some products become scarce on shelves, “buying up those supplies is not being a prepper but being a hoarder.”

“Hoarding” is a word used to disparage somebody else’s foresight and concern for survival. If something you need is in short supply, it is reasonable to stock up, if you can. (Even if it’s toilet paper and comedians chortle.) If the market is allowed to function — so that sellers of highly demanded goods can charge what the market will bear — everyone who can scrape together the necessary extra dollars will be able to obtain those goods.

If a person buys up a supply only to resell it, not to restock his larder, he does us all a favor if the item is about to become desperately needed. He makes no money unless people can pay his price. But if we can afford the price, it is pointless to sputter about the extra expense — an expense we could have avoided had we prepared better for the future earlier on, saving more of the thing ourselves.

The cost of not being prepared can be quite high. Same with the value, hence purchase price, of necessities bought after disaster.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Suffrage

On August 26, 1920, the 19th amendment to United States Constitution took effect, giving women the right to vote in every state of the union.

Prior to the passage of this amendment, 15 states allowed women to vote. Most of them were west of the Mississippi. The territory of Wyoming was the first to extend voting rights to women in 1869.

Categories
Thought

Charles Pelham Villiers

I do not come here to haggle about the best mode of effecting compromise with a bad principle: satisfied of its badness, I oppose it entirely.

Right Hon. Charles Pelham Villiers, M.P., speech in the House of Commons, May 9, 1843.

Villiers was arguing for the repeal of Britain’s Corn Laws.

Categories
national politics & policies partisanship

Voting Like a Neo-Nazi

Richard Spencer, alt-right, white nationalist, Biden Supporter, Joe Biden

Dinesh D’Souza is tickled. You see, Richard B. Spencer, the almost-famous “alt-right”/“Sieg Heil” guy is voting, he says on Twitter, “for Biden and a straight democratic ticket.”

D’Souza, who is relentlessly pro-Republican in addition to pushing conservative values and arguments, had his dearest dream handed to him. Richard Spencer, an ethnonationalist, is loathed mightily by the left. And, frankly, by most of the right. Not to mention those looking straight-ahead and -backwards. So to have Spencer prefer the Democrats is rich.

For Republicans. (And not a few others.)

Usually, Democrats revel in lambasting Republicans for garnering support among the explicitly racist set. Now, tables turned.

Yet this is not really all that “out there.” Spencer, who is often characterized as a neo-Nazi, has admitted to many leftist sympathies in the past. His only real heresy from the left is his racist nationalism. He likes transfer programs, regulations, etcetera. Hefty-sized, all-encompassing government.

In his original tweet, Spencer explained his rationale less ideologically, though: “It’s not based on ‘accelerationism’* or anything like that; the liberals are clearly more competent people.”

Uh, what?

Oh, the heights — or depths — of irony should this election between Sleepy Joe and The Donald come down to a contest over competence. Mr. Trump’s struggles with the pandemic — as well as the economic impacts of a lockdown strategy so tightly embraced by progressives —hardly proves the competence of Democrats. Nor do riots in cities run by Democrats over alleged structural racism administered by those same Democrats.

But the Democrats were competent enough to get a Richard Spencer endorsement.

That’s something?

At least for the Republicans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

“Accelerationism” noun : the scheme to embrace one’s opponents’ ideas so that they prove themselves spectacularly bad, and one can then ride in during the ensuing chaos. [Risky maneuver.]

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