On December 31, 1695, Englanders received a new tax, a window tax. One of the main responses to this was the bricking up of many British windows.
This last day of the year in 1991 marked the complete cessation of all institutions of the Soviet Union.
New Year’s Eve 1992 saw the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This has been dubbed the “Velvet Divorce.”
Bumper stickers. Now that’s free speech. Which I love. But that doesn’t mean I love all bumper stickers. Sure, some are cute, funny, occasionally brilliant. Others are just crude.
But my least favorite bumper sticker might surprise you. The bumper strip that ticks me off the most reads:
“Practice Random Acts Of Kindness And Senseless Acts Of Beauty.”
Now, most folks who put this one on their car are nice. They’re thinking about “kindness” and “beauty” — so, I’m certainly not gonna say anything if I see them at the market.
But . . . why waste kindness by doing it randomly? The random implies heedlessness, thoughtlessness. How much better to be provident in kindness, thinking ahead and in context.
Should the purse-snatcher really benefit as much or more from our kindness as the little girl in the neighborhood who is always helping us with our groceries?
Should our lazy, good-for-nothing brother-in-law get what time we have for kindness or should it go to someone who will take our kindness and turn it around into even more kindness?
Now, I’m not suggesting anyone be unkind to anyone. But precisely because practicing kindness is so important — it’s the glue that holds a friendly society together — it is worth taking the time to recognize and reward good behavior. Rather than bad. Or just sticking the dial on “random.”
And how can beauty ever be senseless?
How about a new bumper sticker: “Practice Thoughtful Acts of Kindness and Sensible Acts of Beauty”?
Happy New Year!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
This installment of Common Sense first aired in November 2006.
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.
Scientologists celebrate December 30 as Freedom Day.
U2 singer Paul David Hewson, best known by his stage name Bono, has come to recognize that capitalism is crucial in lifting people out of poverty in any permanent way.
He now calls institutionalized charity like foreign aid only a “stopgap,” not a basic cure for poverty — an understanding perhaps still too generous, since such aid can prevent needed economic and other reforms and thus help entrench poverty.
In any case, for decades Bono has both raised money from individuals for international charity and chastised government officials whose policies seemed too stingy (in spending other people’s money). Now he is surprised to be touting the pivotal virtues of money-making and entrepreneurship.
“Rock star preaches capitalism. Wow. Sometimes I hear myself and I just can’t believe it. But commerce is real. That’s what you’re about here. It’s real. Aid is just a stopgap. Commerce — entrepreneurial capitalism — takes more people out of poverty than aid. Of course we know that.” (See a clip of these words.)
The rock star’s epiphany came after a TED talk a few years ago by George Ayittey, in which the speaker “made a special effort to rip into the foreign aid establishment,” knowing that Bono was in the audience. When the star came up after the talk to express his disagreement, Ayittey gave him a copy of his ideology-changing book Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Development.
Perspectives unchained by myth and politics are a good idea too.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.
On December 29, 1911, Mongolia gained independence from the Qing Dynasty.
Selling Obamacare turns out to be not as easy as its devisers thought. The folks at PJ Media have some thoughts:
Among the natural rights . . . are these: first, the right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. Those are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
On December 28, 1832, John C. Calhoun resigned as Vice President of the United States, the first to do so.