Author: Redactor

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Thought

Alec Ryrie

Once the most potent moral figure in Western culture was Jesus Christ. Believer or unbeliever, you took your ethical bearings from him, or professed to. To question his morals was to expose yourself as a monster. Now, the most potent moral figure in Western culture is Adolf Hitler. It is as monstrous to praise him as it would once have been to disparage Jesus. He has become the fixed reference point by which we define evil. 

Alec Ryrie, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt (November 2019). See also “The End of the Age of Hitler,” First Things, November 2024.
Categories
Thought

A Pharaoh, a Source, a Satirist

November 14:

332 BC — Alexander the Great was crowned pharaoh of Egypt.

1770 AD — James Bruce discovered what he believed to be the source of the Nile.

1947 AD — P. J. O’Rourke, American libertarian political satirist and journalist (d. 2022) was born.

Categories
Today

The Articles

On November 14, 1777, after 16 months of debate, the Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation.

Categories
national politics & policies partisanship

Abolish. Or Set in Stone

Senate, Filibuster, Senators

The filibuster is racist. 

That’s what Progressive House Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) claimed . . . as long as Democrats were to control the U.S. Senate. 

“The choice is clear,” she once tweeted. “Abolish the Jim Crow filibuster.”

The filibuster demands a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-seat Senate in order to shut off debate and vote on most legislation. Yet, in recent times, both parties, when in the majority, have carved out exceptions.

To be clear, the majority party could at any time kill the filibuster. It is simply a Senate rule — not a law, not a constitutional provision.  

Why get rid of it?

If “we had the trifecta” (meaning control of both chambers of Congress and the White House), Jayapal urgently supports ending it: “because we have to show that government can deliver.”

Why keep the rule?

She wants to use the 60-vote threshold against Republicans; she certainly wants to block them from delivering.

Mock Jayapal’s hypocrisy, as we may, but it is ubiquitous in the capital. Besides, there are more consequential issues to address. 

Either the United States Senate should have a filibuster rule or not. Let’s debate and decide. But one thing is clear: the Senate should not have a 60-vote majority requirement that either majority party can jettison whenever it so desires. 

Put the filibuster into the Constitution. 

Or — because an amendment is such a long, arduous process — pass a statute establishing the filibuster in law. This would at least provide a presidential check on Congress monkeying around with it. 

And on this one matter, abolish the hypocrisy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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A. E. van Vogt

When a people lose the courage to resist encroachment on their rights, then they can’t be saved by an outside force. Our belief is that people always have the kind of government they want and that individuals must bear the risks of freedom, even to the extent of giving their lives.

Lucy Rail, a character in A. E. Van Vogt’s The Weapon Shops of Isher (1951).
Categories
Today

Shooting Stars

On this day in 1833, Denison Olmsted was alerted by his neighbors to something truly amazing, a night sky filled with shooting stars.

Not just a one or two or a dozen or a hundred: 72,000 or more per hour. Though recognizing where among the constellations meteors came from was ancient knowledge, it had not been recorded by modern-era scientists, at least in this case. What Olmsted noticed was that the meteors were coming from one point in the sky, the constellation Leo. This regular meteor event is now called the Leonid meteor stream.

In the morning, Olmsted wrote a brief report on the meteor storm for the New Haven Daily Herald newspaper, which elicited correspondence from around the country, thus beginning a social storm, in a sense: crowd-sourced science.

Categories
free trade & free markets regulation tax policy

Destroying Dane Farming

Europe, climate, global warming, cows, bureaucrats

In February, Denmark’s farmers were worried “that plans to levy a carbon emission tax on farming” in the name of global weather control “would force them to reduce production and close farms.”

In the same month, farmers across Europe protested against assaults on their livelihood.

Meanwhile, a report by a government commission concluded that the carbon tax could cause Denmark’s agricultural production to decline by as much as a fifth. The central planners made clear that this was a price they were willing to pay in order to indulge their ideological-meteorological fantasy.

And also, not incidentally, in order to collect more tax dollars.

But the concern and the estimates of the severity of the blow on farmers — to be penalized for providing food, a requirement of survival — availed naught.

The carbon emissions tax is being enacted and will take effect in 2030. The levy will initially be something like $96 per cow, rising to $241 per cow in 2035.

Insane. But cows produce methane “through their burps and manure,” CNN reports. So what can tyrants do but tax farmers into oblivion?

The fantasists may claim success no matter what global climate turns out to be in years to come. Or they may claim that their measures haven’t yet fixed the global climate only because the rest of the world’s countries haven’t yet followed suit and appropriately penalized their farmers for farming.

Only when civilization is fully destroyed will we be able “save” it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Gene Wolfe

People who fear death . . . live no longer than those who don’t, and live scared.

Gene Wolfe, The Knight (2004), p. 384.
Categories
Today

New Monarchy, New Republic

On November 12, 1905, Norwegians established, by referendum, a monarchy — not a republic. Exactly 14 years later, to the day, Austria became a republic.

Categories
insider corruption scandal

Disaster Relief Pass-Over

FEMA, Trump, Homeland Security, disaster, Hurricane Milton

It’s the kind of scandal that makes you wonder, briefly, whether somebody made it up.

But nobody made it up. 

In the wake of Hurricane Milton, a sub-boss of the Federal Emergency Management Agency named Marn’i Washington told FEMA workers who had the job of assessing storm damage in Lake Placid, Florida, to skip any houses with Trump signs.

A Microsoft Teams memo outlining “best practices” for performing the work included injunctions like “not one goes anywhere alone” and “avoid homes advertising Trump.” No one can peruse the latter instruction and not know the kind of animus informing Washington’s memo.

Thanks to whistleblowers distressed by these orders, which were delivered both in writing and verbally, the Daily Wire obtained the revealing internal communications.

At least twenty Trump-advertising homes were passed over by FEMA workers who complied with the memo.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others have announced investigations of the incident.

Regarding what went down in this one Florida town, at least, there is currently no cover-up by FEMA. We don’t know whether similar orders were given to damage assessors in other hurricane-hit regions. But had there been, let’s hope that somebody would have spoken up.

A FEMA spokesman admitted that the agency is “deeply disturbed” by Washington’s actions. According to a Daily Wire update, the agency has now fired her.

“This employee has been terminated and we have referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel,” says FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.

This is how to handle partisanship in federal bureaucracies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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