What if a person is sure of his identity but it isn’t his identity?
Science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr. — the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon — in the short story “Beam Us Home,” Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home (1973), p. 305.
According to official records and all the respectable historians, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun — after being married for less than 40 hours — committed suicide on April 30, 1945. Nevertheless, rumors about Hitler’s survival in South America, until the 1960s, continue.
“The children agreed with AOC,” a Washington Post editorial noted, “and brought the same level of sophistication to political and economic questions that Americans have come to expect from the four-term congresswoman.”
AOC and the youngsters shown think healthcare should be free, which The Post used as a jumping off point to have an adult conversation about government-run healthcare, specifically the National Health Service in the United Kingdom.
“Despite the government funding and running a universal health care system, private hospital admissions in the United Kingdom reached their highest level ever in 2024,” readers were informed.
“The number of people opting to buy private health insurance rose to 6.5 million in 2024, the highest number in a quarter-century, according to the Association of British Insurers.”
The Brits “have learned the hard way that the promise of ‘free’ care is only as good as their ability to get an appointment,” wrote the editors.
The editorial further explained that “government systems can only stay afloat when they are rationed, often with backlogs that can leave people waiting months for serious procedures.”
“America’s health system is a mess,” The Post concluded, “but the belief that a full government takeover would lead to better outcomes is just childish.”
One of the nation’s largest newspapers appears to be growing up.
AOC?
Not so much.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Nano Banana
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
The moral of this story is, anything you don’t understand is dangerous until you do understand it.
Science fiction author Larry Niven, “Flatlander” in Neutron Star (1968).
On April 29, 1945, U.S. troops of the Seventh Army liberated the Dachau concentration camp.
Now, the shocking accusation that “the SPLC’s paid informants (‘field sources’) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, and the National Alliance” is not what the SPLC is being prosecuted for. Neither is the SPLC’s distribution of over $3 million to such secret agents. Like the SPLC’s public strategy of lying and calumny, undercover support of infiltrators (as the SPLC defends its agents) isn’t illegal.
Of course, those same agents encouraging crimes does implicate the SPLC in conspiracy to commit acts of terror, but that’s not the crime being prosecuted.
The charges come, instead, from the methods allegedly used to keep these disreputable methods secret.
Not everyone’s impressed with the case; the DOJ may lose. So the bigger question becomes, will the progressive media continue to exalt the SPLC?
And for the SPLC itself, will anti-racist benefactors still give money to an organization shown to gin up hatred the better to soak in donations?
Upon learning that the organization you funded to fight the evil, violent racists turned around and funded the evil, violent racists, would you continue to donate?
Yet the lines of ideological loyalty remain clear. In normal fraud cases, it is the defrauded who feel the most aggrieved. But here it is their political enemies who express the outrage that the defrauded should be feeling.
That may be the saddest element of this sick situation.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Grok Imagine
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
I learned centuries back that there is no privacy in any society crowded enough to need IDs. A law guaranteeing privacy simply insures that bugs — microphones and lenses and so forth — are that much harder to spot.
The character Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’sTime Enough for Love (1973), Prelude I.
On April 28, 1788, Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the new United States Constitution.
Nevertheless, in 2013 the Department of Justice and FDIC began pressing banks to cut off services to certain “high risk” industries, like the gun industry. The initiative was called — with laudable candor — Operation Choke Point. The pressure was an expression of the Obama administration’s hostility to Second Amendment rights and various views and advocacy, not a response to alleged lawbreaking by the debanked customers.
The Trump administration first sought to end this practice in 2017. But the urge to censor and punish viewpoints, including by debanking, resurged during the Biden administration.
In 2025, President Trump, in his second shot at heading the executive branch, issued a new executive order directing federal agencies to review the situation and issue new regulations to protect customers. It was to be made clear to banks that despite the impression conveyed by other administrations, so-called “reputational risk” — which boils down to hostility to certain views and enterprises — is not a warrant to fire customers.
A finalized and, one hopes, truly final rule has just been issued. It prohibits relevant agencies from criticizing or penalizing a supervised institution based on “reputation risk” or from instructing institutions to kill accounts because of customers’ constitutionally protected speech or activities.
The proper functions of government do not include acting to punish people directly or indirectly for their speech . . . or other exercise of their rights. The fact that just such a squarely improper (and illiberal) policy endured through several administrations shows just how shaky constitutionally guaranteed freedoms are in the current ideological climate.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Grok Imagine
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right!
Larry Niven, as quoted by Arthur C. Clarke in “Meeting of the Minds: Buzz Aldrin Visits Arthur C. Clarke” by Andrew Chaikin, Space.com (February 27, 2001).