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Thought

Mark Twain

When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic—for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the Republicans and Mugwumps know it. All the Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats and Mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. When I look around me, I am often troubled to see how many people are mad.

Mark Twain, Christian Science (1907), Book I, Chapter V.
Categories
Today

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

On August 3, 2008, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at age 90.

Solzhenitsyn’s novels, such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward, explored life under totalitarian Communism, and remain classics of modern literature. His huge survey of Soviet concentration camps, The Gulag Archipelago, was an important contribution to the demise of Communism as a popular ideology, showing just how horrifying the repression in the Soviet Union had become.

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Today

Declaration signed!

The Declaration of Independence was signed by members of the Continental Congress of the United States, on August 2, 1776.

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Thought

Daniel Defoe

I have since often observed, how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases — viz. they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent. Not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which can only make them be esteemed wise men.

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 1, “Start in Life.”
Categories
Today

Slavery Ends

On August 1, 1834, Great Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 took force, freeing slaves throughout the British empire.

Technically, it freed slaves under the age of six. On the August 1 date in 1838 and 1840, the rest of the empire’s slaves were freed, practically speaking.

August 1 births include Francis Scott Key (1779), composer of the poem “The Star-Spangled Banner”; American authors Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815) and Herman Melville (1819); and Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (1972), historian and popularizer of Austrian economics, podcaster of the Tom Woods Show.

Categories
Thought

Solomon

He that diligently seeketh good procureth favour: but he that seeketh mischief, it shall come unto him.

Proverbs 11:27, King James Version.
Categories
general freedom national politics & policies

Masking Upside Down

upside down, inside out, masks, surveillance

After initially being downgraded as worthless, perhaps even harmful, masks are now heavily promoted. There are even demands that the federal government step in to make mask-wearing mandatory.

Nationwide. 

Bad idea. And I could marshal a number of arguments to make the case. Indeed, one really sticks out: when the CCP virus is no longer the fear, but a bad flu season strikes at an unsuspecting populace, will the masks be required then, too? What’s the threshold? How do we decide when to go into all-panic mode?

How much better it would be to argue for mask-wearing as a matter of manners — consideration for others during pandemics or simply if ill — than as policeable government policy. 

And maybe we should look at it upside down. You know, like we can reflect on school closures in perpetuity as a possible blessing — because they encourage private and communal responses.

Maybe it is a downside up, but the current pro-mask state mandates mean that governments cannot stop you from wearing masks when they don’t want you to wear masks.

All around the world, but especially in Britain, and increasingly in the United States, mass surveillance with face-recognition AI is turning free peoples into the subjects of Big Brother’s watchful gaze.

Frightening.

And the easiest way to throw a monkey wrench into face-recognition systems is to wear masks when we are out.

They can hardly stop us when they are requiring masks because of contagion fears. So even if the forces of totalitarian control fail to mandate masks nationally, take the “new normal” as an excuse to mess up their larger agenda.

Big Brother?

You may lose this one after all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Daniel Defoe

Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 11, “Finds Print of Man’s Foot on the Sand.”
Categories
Today

Pelted with Flowers

On July 31, 1703, Daniel Defoe — who would later become famous as the author of Robinson Crusoe and other literary works — was placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel. The sedition pertained to a satirical pamphlet he had published, “The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church.” The mob pelted him with flowers.

On the same date in 1912, Milton Friedman was born. Friedman became one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, and one of the most effective advocates of free markets, as well. His books include Capitalism and Freedom and two famous collaborations, A Monetary History of the United States (with Anna Schwartz) and Free to Choose (with his wife, Rose Friedman).

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

The Limits of Corruption

Republican Speaker, Larry Householder, bribery

Another corrupt, term-limits-hating, careerist politician bites the dust. 

“Federal prosecutors say Republican Speaker Larry Householder and four others — including a former state GOP chairman — perpetrated a $60 million federal bribery scheme,” reports the Dayton Daily News, “connected to a taxpayer-funded bailout of Ohio’s two nuclear power plants.”

Last year, a citizen-initiated referendum campaign sought to give voters the final say on the legislature’s $1.5 billion baby. “The relentless machinations of HB 6’s backers,” Cleveland Plain-Dealer columnist Thomas Suddes points out, “kept [that] repeal effort launched against the bill off Ohio’s ballot.”

At a news conference to explain the arrest of Householder and his co-conspirators on racketeering charges, federal prosecutors detailed some of the ways the scheme illegally blocked last year’s referendum effort. 

Now, the rush is on to repeal House Bill 6.

Mr. Suddes is correct that “[t]he legislature also won’t be OK till voters amend the Ohio Constitution to make it easier to place issues on the statewide ballot for up-or-down votes.” 

But when he goes on to argue that term limits are “part of that problem”?

The only thing Ohio’s term limits need is to make the limits lifetime — forbidding legislators from returning after a timeout. Householder had previously been speaker from 2001 to 2004. “While he officially left office due to term limits,” informs the Plain-Dealer, “he departed Columbus amid an FBI investigation that closed without charges.”

Householder also came to our attention back in March, when he called Ohio’s eight-year limits “pretty oppressive.” Before the pandemic, he was pushing a ballot measure designed to weaken the term limits law and serve until 2036 — foreshadowing what Putin* did later in Russia. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I referred to them as “two pols in a pod,” but now, Householder reminds me more of former Arkansas State Sen. Jon Woods, who after sponsoring a deceptive ballot measure to weaken term limits was convicted on multiple felony charges and is serving his current term in prison.

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