“The will of the majority, the natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. Perhaps even this may sometimes err; but its errors are honest, solitary and short-lived.”
Categories
Author: Redactor
Categories
Townhall: No Fight Club
Guess: What is the first rule of No Fight Club? For the answer, go to Townhall.com. Then come back here to check the source material:
Categories
Muhammad Ali
“I know where I’m going and I know the truth and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.”
On April 28, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched an invasion of the Dominican Republic by more than 20,000 U.S. troops, claiming the military action prevented a “communist dictatorship.” Johnson’s evidence was flimsy, but U.S. military power dominant.
On April 28, 1967, boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. Army and was immediately stripped of his heavyweight title. Ali, a Muslim, cited religious reasons for his decision to forgo military service, and added, “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.”
Categories
Video: Don’t crucify me, EPA dude
Strained analogy or “giving away the game”?
This video, brought to public attention by Sen. James Inhofe, has received no small amount of attention:
Categories
Herbert Spencer
“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”
Categories
Brits pass Tea Act, Spencer born
On April 27, 1773, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Since it lowered the price of tea in America, British Prime Minister Lord North couldn’t imagine that the colonists would protest cheaper tea. He was mistaken. Within the year, the East India Company’s tea was dumped into Boston harbor in what became known as the Boston Tea Party.
On April 27, 1820, Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England. Spencer became a philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist. An “enthusiastic exponent of evolution,” even writing about it “before Darwin did,” Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest.” He was considered “the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.”
“The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child labor laws to children working on family farms,” Daily Caller’s Patrick Richardson reported on Wednesday, “prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.”
Somewhere, farm kids high-fived each other.
But not Rossie Blinson of Buis Creek, NC. Now in college, Blinson expressed concern that the new rule would shortchange young people. “I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around eight,” Blinson declared. “It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.”
Minnesotan John Weber, 19, argued that the proposed regulation would “prevent a lot of interest in agriculture. It’s harder to get a 16-year-old interested in farming than a 12-year-old.” Weber is majoring in Agriculture at college and credits working on his grandparents’ and uncle’s farms with instilling a “work ethic” in him. “It gave me a lot of direction and opportunity in my life.”
In high school, Weber took out a loan to purchase a few steers to raise and sell. “Under these regulations, I wouldn’t be allowed to do that.”
Further, the regs would forbid groups like 4-H and FFA from providing safety training, mandating, instead, a 90-hour federal government course.
Oh, but wait a second . . . it must be an election year or something! “Citing public outrage,” informs a notice posted on the Daily Caller story after business hours last night, “the Department of Labor has withdrawn the controversial rulemaking proposal described in this article.”
My goodness, that’s actually common sense! I’m Paul Jacob.
Wait for it: There’s another financial bubble ready to pop.
I’m not an economist, so I could be as wrong as, uh, a Keynesian strung out on (and pushing) “economic stimulus.” But the usual signs of an over-priced market sure seem to apply to higher education, today. After all, colleges and universities are sustained and over-fed by massive debt . . . in this case, government-guaranteed student loans, now passing the trillion-dollar mark.
From your local community college to the Ivy League, the whole industry reeks of insider advantages, constricted supply and inflated demand. So of course prices rise.
Beyond all reason.
The latest sign on the way to the bubble’s bursting comes from Harvard. That august institution’s Faculty Advisory Council for the Library issued a memorandum last week declaring that the cost of subscribing to peer-reviewed journals has become too great to bear. Robert T. Gonzaleaz, writing at io9, puts this news in perspective:
What does it say about the world of academic publishing, the accessibility of knowledge, and the flow of information when the richest academic institution on the planet cannot afford to continue paying for its peer-reviewed journal subscriptions?
When I look at the prices of textbooks and journals and academic books, I wince. Were this industry marked by laissez-faire policies and free markets, the typical leftist “anti-greed/anti-business” attitude might make sense. But this is an industry riddled with government intrusion, as far-reaching as the intrusions into housing and banking that led to 2008’s financial debacle.
How could the over-sold, over-subsidized, over-controlled college-university industry remain immune to a similar catastrophic deflation?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Marcus Aurelius
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”