Author: Redactor

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ballot access election law judiciary

A Done Decision

rock climber

We probably needn’t feel suspense about whether the Wisconsin Supreme Court will let certain sloppy voting practices continue.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and the chairman of the Racine County Republican Party filed a lawsuit alleging that Racine city officials illegally used a van to collect absentee ballots in 2022. A circuit court ruled that such mobile voting sites violate state law.

Now, “without allowing any lower appellate courts to rule first,” the state’s supreme court will decide whether the circuit court is right about that.

The high court voted 4 to 3 to accept the case. The three justices who opposed end-running the appellate courts are conservative (read: Republican); the other four are liberal (read: Democrat).

The Democrat justices voted to take the case at the request of the Democratic National Committee, which leads a political party known to be a proponent of slapdash voting procedures, slapdashery that observers tend to agree favors Democrats.

Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, who is part of the conservative bloc, has stated that the “liberal” justices proceeded in this way in order to help the Democrats politically. Ziegler knows her “liberal” colleagues, and I guess they must be the sort of progressives who don’t make conscientious adherence to the law in the service of election integrity a top priority.

So I think what’s about to happen is more of a foregone conclusion than it is a cliffhanger.

We know how the court will decide — but wouldn’t we love a surprise ending?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Leszek Kołakowski

The destructive work of totalitarian machinery, whether or not this word is used, is usually supported by a special kind of primitive social philosophy. It proclaims not only that the common good of ‘society’ has priority over the interests of individuals, but that the very existence of individuals as persons is reducible to the existence of the social ‘whole’; in other words, personal existence is, in a strange sense, unreal. This is a convenient foundation for any ideology of slavery.

Leszek Kołakowski, “Totalitarianism and the Virtue of the Lie,” as quoted in Is God Happy? Selected Essays(2013), Basic Books, p. 57.
Categories
Today

Constitution, huzzah?

On May 14, 1787, delegates convened a Constitutional Convention, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to write a new Constitution for the United States. George Washington presided over the convention.

On the same day a century later, jurist and pamphleteer Lysander Spooner — author of several important treatises, including Trial by Jury, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, and an infamous pamphlet entitled “No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority” — died.

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media and media people partisanship

Pander, Please

Washington Post, ethics, Democratic Party

The newspaper of record in our nation’s capital urges its much-preferred political party to “trim your principles, Democrats, and pander away.”

This is a very different media watchdog role, where instead of calling out bad behavior, The Washington Post calls for it.

Sure, some of President Biden’s policies “clearly pander to core constituencies,” acknowledges the editorial board, adding: “The problem is that some of these policies are quite bad — even dangerous.”

For the record, the editors explain that they much prefer “the kind of pandering that is less obviously dangerous but still violates common sense and principle.”

Well, on a ranking basis . . . but isn’t this all too rank? 

Proselytizing for a lack of principle, the Post posits that these “means” of pandering to voters — i.e. buying their votes — are fully justified by “the end” of winning the election against former President Donald Trump.

“The only thing worse than” Democracy [Dying] in Darkness (per the paper’s masthead) is, the editorial board concludes, “losing.”

So, go ahead and delay again the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on menthol cigarettes, which, if implemented, would undoubtedly cost Mr. Biden the votes of many black men who make up the majority of that product’s customer base. Even though it is simply a trick of timing — for after the election, the Biden boys will be back to snuff out menthols. 

Come’on, man! Who needs honesty, accountability, or fair media coverage when there’s an election to win?

Surprisingly, The New York Times’ executive editor Joe Kahn argues the paper should not become an “instrument of the Biden campaign,” not “stop covering those things” such as immigration and inflation “because they’re favorable to Trump,” and not “turn ourselves into Xinhua News Agency or Pravda.”

He’s not wrong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thomas Szasz

Our adversaries are not demons, witches, fate, or mental illness. We have no enemy whom we can fight, exorcise, or dispel by “cure.” What we do have are problems in living — whether these be biologic, economic, political, or sociopsychological.

Thomas Szasz, ”The Myth of Mental Illness” in American Psychologist, Vol. 15 (1960), p. 115.
Categories
Today

Brazilian slavery

On May 13, 1888, Brazil abolished slavery with the passage of the Lei Áurea (“Golden Law”).

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Update

Only Slightly Ratioed?

On Friday, Paul Jacob provided some vivisection services to a review of Jerry Seinfeld’s stance on what the woke have done to comedy, in “The French King Flip Flap.” On May Day, in “They Don’t Get It,” Paul had dealt with the same subject, Mr. Seinfeld’s long-running beef with the woke.

But the current context — the one that led to Friday’s target, an article in The Washington Post by Brian Broome — is the new movie on Netflix, Unfrosted, directed by Seinfeld and co-written by him with Spike Feresten, Andy Robin, and Barry Marder.

Is it funny?

This is of course something everyone must judge for him- or herself. The intent is clear, a retelling of the “wars” between the breakfast cereal companies to create a new breakfast product — what has become known as a “Pop Tart” — in a zany, cartoonish fashion. It is designed as a silly movie. Mostly good clean fun. Family fare.

But a survey of critics and audiences at Rotten Tomatoes gives us an indicator to how it’s doing: Early reactions were that the movie stinks. But now that more people have seen it, we are seeing something like a “ratioed” split, with an average of critics’ responses placing it in the splatted green tomato (rotten tomato) range, at 40 percent approval, while audience scores have run higher, at 55 percent.

In recent years, the audiences have split with critics at much wider margins, on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics giving low scores for unwoke creative products, while audiences have given ultra-high scores, and vice versa.

Sometimes it’s not Wokianity at issue, but simply orthodox religion: Aronofsky’s Noah (2014), for example, which yielded a 75 percent positive for the critics and a 41 percent negative for the audience. Noah owed as much to The Book of Enoch as to Genesis.

But 2019’s Captain Marvel was indeed about the woke issue, and audiences judged the movie at a weak 45 percent, while critics placed it pretty high, at 79 percent. Even more dramatic, in the same vein, went on with Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi (2019), which critics raved about at 91 percent, but audiences yawned at 42 percent.

But the ultimate split between audiences and critics may be Amy Schumer’s 2023 Netflix stand-up special, with critics granting the comic a whopping 100 percent approval, while audiences scorned her product with jeers at a mere 18 percent. The split in appreciation was an epochal moment in the current culture wars.

Ms. Schumer plays Marjorie Post in the new Seinfeld flick.

Categories
Thought

Gnaeus Naevius

Semper pluris feci ego
potioremque habui libertatem [multo] quam pecuniam.

I have always valued and preferred my liberty far beyond money.

Gnaeus Naevius (c. 270 – c. 201 BC), translated by W. F. H. King, Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 2388.
Categories
Today

Axis in Africa

On May 12, 1943, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.

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FYI Update

Let’s Play “Who’s the Fascist!”

The problem of the Left Pole is, who’s not a Nazi who’s not leftist? This is a consequence of the game leftists play, calling everyone not leftist the very worst names they can think of.

The latest casualty is Javier Milei, libertarian president of Argentina. He’s been called a fascist.

Benjamin Williams clears this up in “No, Milei Is Not a Fascist,” over at Mises Wire.

The dictator Benito Mussolini and his close comrade Giovanni Gentile were indisputably fascists. They invented fascism, wrote fascist literature, and called themselves fascists. So it stands to reason that if you want to see if Javier Milei is a fascist, you’d compare him to these fascists. The critics never make these sorts of comparisons because they’re aware it would expose their ridiculous accusations for what they are: ahistorical and ignorant.

Mussolini viewed the state as almost something to be worshipped, with his works riddled with references to its greatness and importance. He summarized his view with the mantra, “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” In stark contrast, Milei’s speeches, debates, and rants are filled with insults and criticisms directed at the state. One of his most famous quotes, “wipe my ass with the state,” encapsulates this disdain. Milei does not hold the state on a pedestal like Mussolini did.

Mussolini believed that capitalism was deeply flawed and needed to be abolished. In “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” he states that the state was “the force which alone can provide a solution to the dramatic contradictions of capitalism” and that fascism would replace capitalism with “a system of syndicalism.” On the other hand, Milei holds a contrasting view. He frequently praises capitalism as morally and economically superior. In his World Economic Forum speech—dubbed a ‘fascist rant’ by socialists—he declared that people should resist the state, asserting, “The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself.”

Milei’s policies are certainly not fascist either. Mussolini’s dictatorship supported the socialization of industry, not privatization. His dictatorship mandated union membership, harshly regulated industries, and socialized over eighty firms.

Leftists need to see the world as it is, not as they think it should be — sequestered, as their minds are, at the Left Pole, from which all roads out are “far right.” Ideological geography is more complex than that.