Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame, a flatterer.
Ben Jonson, Sejanus (1603), Act 1.
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Ben Jonson
Author: Redactor
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Pinafore, Formosa
On May 25, 1878, Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore opened at the Opera Comique in London. (Image is a detail from an 1879 theater poster.)
On the same date in 1895, playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde was convicted of “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” and sentenced to serve two years in prison — becoming history’s most famous prosecutions for homosexual activity.
In 1895 on the 25th of May, the Republic of Formosa was formed, with Tang Jingsong as its president. It lasted less than half a year, dissolving upon conquest by Japan.
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No Sanctuary Cities
“New Hampshire joins a growing list of states that mandate some level of local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement,” The Epoch Times tells us.
New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed a pair of bills into law that ban so-called “sanctuary” policies designed to keep local police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
“There will be no sanctuary cities in New Hampshire,” Ayotte declared at the bill-signing ceremony, flanked by lawmakers and sheriffs from across the state. “Period. End of story.”
At issue are two bill, HB511 and SB62. These curb local governments under the corporate control of the sovereign state from defying federal law on the matter of immigration — that is, “unless expressly prohibited by state or federal law, local governmental entities may not prohibit or impede any state or federal law enforcement agency from complying with federal immigration laws,” etc.
“New Hampshire now joins a growing list of states that have enacted anti-sanctuary laws,” The Epoch Times goes on to explain. “According to legal advocacy group Immigrant Legal Resource Center, more than 20 states, including Alabama, Florida, Texas, and Georgia, have laws mandating at least some level of local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.”
The idea of the state nullification of federal law — James Madison called it “interposition,” and it was a key idea of the early Jeffersonians — has been on the rise in recent years. (Cannabis legalization is a good example.) This movement of the states to rein in the “sanctuary city” movement goes in the other direction, forcing compliance with the federal government.
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William Shakespeare
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act V, scene 1, line 34.
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Toleration
On May 24, 1689, the English Parliament passed the Act of Toleration, protecting dissenting Protestants.
Pointedly, Roman Catholics were excluded from this official tolerance.
“In an extraordinary stretch of just over two weeks,” Naftali Bendavid reports in The Washington Post, “three former presidents have taken to the public stage to sound the alarm against the current occupant of the White House, despite the tradition that former presidents generally refrain from publicly criticizing their successors.”
It turns out that “Obama, Biden and Clinton did not explicitly name Trump,” admits the Post’s senior national political correspondent, though he argues “their message was unmistakable.”
Wait. The three former opposition party presidents bravely took on President Donald Trump but not one has enough courage to mention him by name?
Bad communication skills — no wonder why Trump is president.
“The three Democrats said, as much by their presence as their words,” writes Bendavid, “that these are unusual times for American democracy, that norms are being disregarded and extraordinary measures are required.”
Today’s Washington journalist!
More a psychic diviner of the deep inner meaning of a former president’s mere presence than mere observer.
Bendavid failed, however, to detail any specifics from the former commanders in chief as to the “extraordinary measures” that are somehow now “required.”
“Think of [former presidents] as a sort of advisory council to the people of the United States,” he quotes a historian from Columbia University. “And when the advisory council sounds the alarm, the people should listen.”
Wake up, people! Your former leaders have spoken: Trump = bad.
Thus we witness the national press corps continuing to miss the point. The people are not moved by these ex-presidents — at least not in their direction.
From political heavy-weights to legacy media newsmen, the more the DC establishment attacks President Trump, the more a sizable group of voters like him.
Trump is validated as the outsider.
The more popular outsider.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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George MacDonald
Not even nothingness preceded life. Nothingness owes its very idea to existence.
George MacDonald, from “Life” in Unspoken Sermons Series II (1886).
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El Libertador
On May 23, 1813, South American independence leader Simón Bolívar entered Mérida, where he was proclaimed El Libertador (“The Liberator”), leading the invasion of Venezuela.
Other May 23 events include:
1788: South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1900: Sergeant William Harvey Carney became the first African American to be awarded the Medal of Honor, for his heroism in a Civil War battle fought 37 years prior, in 1863.
1958: Birthday of American comedian and game show host Drew Carey.
Who wouldn’t want the media behind them — air-brushing the public images of their candidates; telling stories to dramatize the political agenda items they’re running on?
Back in November 2015, I agreed with then-Senator and presidential candidate (now Secretary of State) Marco Rubio’s characterization of the national news media as a “SuperPAC” for national Democrats.
How to even place a monetary value on the relentlessly one-sidedly progressive news coverage on network TV and in print outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post?
But is there a downside? Could this Super-est of all SuperPACs possibly be, on balance, less than helpful?
Let me posit that (a) the Washington press corps is ideologically to the left of the Democratic Party and, accordingly, (b) the national news media lures liberal Dems to far-out leftist positions that they’d otherwise never dare entertain — all because there exists this massive supportive left-wing echo chamber.
Then, on Election Day, national Democrats discover quite abruptly that, unlike DC’s editors and reporters, regular folks don’t like high gas prices or men winning women’s sporting events or releasing violent illegal migrants to commit more crimes. And, doggone it, they cast a lot more votes than the Beltway’s fifth column, er, Fourth Estate.
Take, for example, the current controversy regarding former President Biden’s cognitive abilities; consider, also, the decisions made by Mr. Biden and auto-pen possessing handlers.
Would a Republican president and his White House advisors ever think for a second that they could get away with keeping the press away from the commander-in-chief of the Free World, holding only heavily staged public events? For months? Forever?
I don’t think so. The mainstream media would — rightly! — question, berate, harangue and bloviate until the cognitive functionality of the POTUS had been popularly established.
But the Washington media did not hold a Democrat president to that (any?) standard.
Thus enabled, Biden kept going.
Costing Democrats!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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George Orwell
National Socialism is a form of Socialism, is emphatically revolutionary, does crush the property owner as surely as it crushes the worker. The two regimes, having started from opposite ends, are rapidly evolving towards the same system — a form of oligarchical collectivism. . . . It is Germany that is moving towards Russia, rather than the other way about. It is therefore nonsense to talk about Germany ‘going Bolshevik’ if Hitler falls. Germany is going Bolshevik because of Hitler and not in spite of him.
George Orwell, review of The Totalitarian Enemy by F. Borkenau, Time and Tide (May 4, 1940).