It is not very logical to look over the attributes you possess and then declare that they are the most important attributes in the universe.
Robert Sheckley, “In a Land of Clear Colors,” published in Thomas M. Disch, editor, New Constellations: An Anthology of Tomorrow’s Mythologies (1976), p. 87.
On May 24, 1775, John Hancock was elected president of the Second Continental Congress.
Hancock’s involvement with Samuel Adams and his radical group, the Sons of Liberty, won the wealthy merchant the dubious distinction of being one of only two Patriots (the other being Sam Adams) that the Redcoats marching to Lexington in April 1775 to confiscate Patriots’ arms were ordered to arrest. When British General Thomas Gage offered amnesty to the colonists holding Boston under siege, he excluded those same two men from his offer.
In July 2020, police in Bellmawr, New Jersey arrested Ian Smith and Frank Trumbetti, owners of Atilis Gym, for resisting tyranny. A few months earlier, they had defied lockdown orders imposed by the administration of Democratic Governor Phil Murphy by reopening
Smith contended that the lockdown mandates were unconstitutional and especially harmed
We all remember how certain “essential” businesses, often larger ones, were allowed to function in lockdown regimes that compelled smaller, “nonessential” operations to close. Some states enforced such mandates more vigorously
The arrest was a major production, complete with handcuffs, as if the gym owners were finally-cornered mob bosses. The iansmithfitness Twitter account posted a video of the arrest, along with a message: “Welcome to America 2020, where feeding your family and standing up for your Constitutional rights
Murphy also seized the gym’s assets: $165,000, “done in the middle of ongoing litigation defending ourself against these, our 80 charges, the revocation of our business license. . . . This was never about protection, it was always about control.”
Smith and Trumbetti have been fighting the injustice all these years. Apparently, New Jersey officials could not see their way to dropping their pseudo-case voluntarily and providing an apology, maybe
Now, in May 2024, almost four years later, all charges and summonses have been dismissed. But the gym has not recovered the $269,000 in fines and court costs it’s had to pay out.
That’s a crime. And dysfunctional.
This is Common Sense. I’m
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If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal.
Paul Ricœur, “Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning” (1976), p. 79.
On May 23, 1788, South Carolina became the 8th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
Other May 23 events include:
* 1813: South American independence leader Simón Bolívar (portrait, above) entered Mérida, where he was proclaimed El Libertador (“The Liberator”), leading the invasion of Venezuela.
* 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.
While MMT is not popular here, it is gaining adherents outside the ranks of Common Sense readers like a new Ponzi scheme taking
Modern Monetary Theorists go on and on about the gospel of printing money, like they just discovered that the Fed-and-Treasury act of borrowing within the banking system isn’t the only way to inflate the
You can indeed “just print money”!
Granted, the MMTers do a lot of fancy footwork, or silver-tongue-work — the closest they get to hard money — to avoid the infamous consequences of monetary inflation, “price inflation” being just one of them. They are so enamored of the money press that they’re like teenagers discovering sex: didn’t you old folks know about this great thing?
It would be comical were it
At the present moment in history, of course, MMT is in a tricky situation: huge increases in the money supply during the COVID period resulted in no small amount of . . . huge price increases.
“Whatever you call it, MMT is printing money,” Matt Taibbi just wrote in a terrific May 18 piece, “and no matter how sure you might think you are that it will work, you aren’t, and can’t be. Sure, our leaders have been doing it, printing $4 trillion through multiple rounds of QE and $5.5 trillion more in the CARES Act, and sure, that last spree only inspired about 20% inflation so far. Still, any economist who says with a straight face he or she is sure this experiment won’t end with your kids using dollars as toilet paper is lying.”
Or just engaging in old-fashioned money-crankism.
The old get-something-for-nothing racket. MMT’s just the latest form.
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Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one’s ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonising preoccupation with self.
Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good (1968).
There isn’t just one point; it takes time to learn. You don’t have to be intelligent, but I think you have to be open to possibilities and willing to explore. The only stupid people are those who are arrogant and closed off.
Edward de Bono, as interviewed by Angela Balakrishnan in “Edward de Bono: ‘Iraq? They just need to think it through,’” The Guardian (Monday, April 23, 2007).
On May 22, 1995, in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Arkansas’s congressional term limits law, 5-4, overturning the congressional term limits then the law in 23 states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
Other May 22 events include
I am no longer sure this was ever correct, and am confident it doesn’t apply to American politics now.
First off, the enemy of conservatives may have been “liberals” 150 years ago. But not now. The proper word is “progressive,” not “liberal,” and to those who follow the to and fro of substantive policies, the most classically liberal people right now are conservatives.
And “conservatives” is not the right word, either, is it? Progressives hate hate hate the dominant strain in the Republican Party, the Trumpians. Well, Trump isn’t now, nor has he ever been, a “conservative,” though some of his actions during his term in office, were more conservative than any other Republican president of our time. What Trump and his followers now oppose is the “insider-ism” of big government, with Democrats constituting the dominant force of the administrative state and, yes, the Deep State. That is the nature of
Another problem with Krauthammer’s Law is that progressives have always looked upon conservatives and decentralist populists in the dread Republican Party as both evil and stupid.
But it’s worse: both sides, today, look upon the other as both stupid and evil.
The real question then, to anyone who ideologically distances himself from leaders on both sides, is to discern whether both sides are right about each other.
And, it follows, wrong
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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