On August 25, 1945, the Cold War began (some say) when, ten days after World War II ended with the Japanese surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party killed Baptist missionary Capt. John Birch (1918-1845).
To maintain that human labor will ever come to want employment, would be to maintain that the human race will cease to encounter obstacles. In that case labor would not only be impossible; it would be superfluous.
Frédéric Bastiat, first essay, Economic Sophisms.
“In war,” Aeschylus wrote in the fifth century BC, “truth is the first casualty.”
So, too, these days, in political campaigns.
Last week, in accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, Joe Biden promised to “draw on the best of us” and “be an ally of the light.” But then the 47-year Washington veteran pivoted, waving the bloody shirt from Charlottesville by claiming that President Donald Trump had declared “neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists” to be “very fine people,” and therefore “we were in a battle for the soul of this nation.”
Did Trump dub some neo-Nazis “very fine people”?
“And you had some very bad people in that group,” the president explained to a reporter. “But you also had people that were very fine people — on both sides. You had people in that group who were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statute and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”
Noting that “George Washington was a slave-owner,” Mr. Trump asked, “Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? . . .
“It’s fine, you’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people,” he continued. “And I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”
Unequivocal.
Outraged by the Democratic contender’s false contention, cartoonist and podcaster Scott Adams called Biden a “Brain-Dead Race Hoaxer” . . . and worse.
But Biden is hardly alone. The Democrats and most of the media join in ignoring Trump’s explicit statements, pushing their myopically malevolent misinterpretation.
Should this smear defeat Trump in November, an era of political truth-telling will not be ushered in.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Months ago, the Annenberg Center’s FactCheck.org determined that Mr. Biden, in asserting that President Trump had failed to condemn neo-Nazis, had made false claims against the president — ignoring numerous recordings in living color of the president making those exact censures.
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Government is naturally prodigal, for it spends other people’s money.
Yves Guyot, Principles of Social Economy (1892).
In 1814 on this day, British forces burnt down the White House. Unlike audience reaction to the 1996 movie Independence Day (pictured), there was no widespread cheering among Americans for the building’s destruction.
One year later, the modern Constitution of the Netherlands received its empowering signatures.
August 24 birthdays include that of British anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Argentine literary genius Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), and French historian and author of a magisterial study of the rise of capitalism in Europe, Fernand Braudel (1902-1985),
The Ukraine celebrates its independence from the Soviet Union with a National Day on August 24.
On August 24, 1682, William Penn received an area of territory to add it to his colony of Pennsylvania. The area comprises, today, the state of Delaware.
Paul has choice words about the biggest stories of the week:
On August 23, 1989, two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stood on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands, as part of the “Singing Revolution” that helped set the Soviet Union to its implosion.
The more opportunities there are in a Society for some persons to live upon the toil of others, and the less those others may enjoy the fruits of their work themselves, the more is diligence killed, the former become insolent, the latter despairing, and both negligent.
Anders Chydenius (1739 – 1803) was a Swedish priest and politician born in what is now Ostrobothnian Finland. This quotation is from The National Gain, §20, 1765.
On August 22, 1952, France closed its penal colony on Devil’s Island.
At first a leper colony, it had been transformed by the end of the 19th century into a prison tasked primarily with housing enemies of the French state.
Former FBI assistant general counsel Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty earlier this week to making a false statement to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) — often called the FISA court after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that created it.
“According to the court documents, Clinesmith inserted the words ‘and not a source’ into an email from a CIA liaison that described the relationship between Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page and the CIA,” reported The Epoch Times. “As a result, an FBI special agent relied on the altered email to submit a warrant application to the FISC, which described Page as a Russian asset without disclosing that he was an approved operational contact for the CIA who reported on his interactions with Russian intelligence officers.”
While one intelligence agency, the FBI, was declaring to a FISA judge that Carter Page was not a source for the intelligence community and, instead, was a likely Putin stooge, Page was briefing another intelligence agency, the CIA.
A big fib told to surveil him.
And by extension the Trump campaign.
“At the time, I believed that the information I was providing in the email was accurate,” Clinesmith told the court, “but I am agreeing that the information I entered into the email was not originally there and that I have inserted that information.”
Had the forgery been accurate, of course, it is still clearly wrong to surreptitiously alter documents being presented to a judge.
Whatever one thinks of President Trump — innocent victim of a 22-month special counsel witch hunt or Putin asset still at large — we can all agree that this is Trouble with a capital T and that . . . doesn’t stand for Trump.
It rhymes with D and that stands for Deep State.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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