The grave will fall in upon him who digs it.
Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Author: Redactor
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New Amsterdam
On April 20, 1657, freedom of religion was granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (which was later renamed New York City).
Does it matter that Netflix will premiere, on May 10, a “docudrama” depicting Cleopatra VII Philopator as black?
She was, after all, a direct descendent of a Macedonian general — and pal of Alexander the Great — “Ptolemy the Savior.”
European, in other words. White.
Anthony Brian Logan, a conservative African-American YouTube commentator, notes Netflix’s woke race-swapping as habit, a trend — which he takes as a “meme” and a “joke” — with the most egregious recent example being Anne Bolyn being portrayed as a “sub-Saharan African woman.” Mr. Logan argues that this “is the equivalent of casting Tom Hanks to play Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Cannot we have movies “that make some kind of sense”?
The answer may be No; the reason, not at all mysterious.
After all, race hustlers and ideologues have been spewing out misinformation about ancient Africa for a long time, trying to get ignorant, public-school-educated Americans to think of “the dark continent” as a place of one race.
I’m sure many people, reading the above, might wonder if the Ptolemies might not have inter-married native Egyptians. Well, the Egyptians weren’t sub-Saharan blacks, either. They were basically lighter-skinned Mediterranean types.
But, as Anthony Brian Logan observes, previews of the upcoming series have darkened up some images, suggesting that the producers (one of whom is Will Smith’s notorious wife, Jada Pinkett Smith) may be messing with us. Nevertheless, the big issue remains the “underlying effort to try to change historical fact.”
“Who controls the past controls the future,” Orwell wrote. “Who controls the present controls the past.”
Race isn’t really the issue. It’s lying. For political reasons.
And yes, it matters.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Murray Rothbard
There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian.
“A Conversation with Murray N. Rothbard,” Austrian Economics Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 2 (Summer 1990).
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The Revolution Begins
On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began when the “shot heard around the world” was fired between the 700 British troops on a mission to capture Patriot leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock and to seize a Patriot arsenal and the 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the Lexington town green. The Battle of Lexington ended with eight Americans killed and ten wounded, along with one wounded British soldier.
In Concord, a couple of hours later, British troops were encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. The British commander ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans, but on the 16-mile journey they were constantly attacked by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. By the time the British reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.
On April 19, 1782, John Adams secured the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government.
Thanks to renewable-energy mandates and other regulations, California muddles along with crippled power markets in which rolling blackouts are routine when demand for electricity is high and sun and wind are unavailable.
Apparently, this and other burdens on energy usage in the Brownout State are insufficient to fully immobilize everybody who relies on things that need to function. So the state’s utilities are preparing to also impose socialist billing on its customers.
Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Edison are proposing that the flat-rate component of power bills be based on income. Once regulators sign off, there is to be an ongoing transfer of wealth from richer to poorer.
The utilities aren’t acting independently.
They’re obeying a legislative mandate.
In addition to a flat-rate component of utility bills that would be $15 for the poorest customers and $85 for the wealthiest customers, there would still be a component based on power consumption. So the impending looting of nonpoor customers could be worse.
The socialism isn’t full bore yet.
But I doubt that initial limits on this redistribution agenda would remain intact were the scheme implemented and to persist.
In addition to other objections, there is also the matter of how utilities will know their customers’ incomes. Will customers be required to report and prove these incomes? The central planners presumably regard this invasion of privacy as not worth fretting about.
They’re too busy creating perfect equality . . . of brownouts.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
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David Ricardo
April 18 marks the 1772 birthday of David Ricardo, English political economist and one of the most influential thinkers in economic theory. An advocate for free trade and the abolition of slavery, Ricardo’s most famous work is his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817).
In America in 2022, April 18 is the date income taxes are due to be filed.
Journalist Alex Berenson is suing members of the Biden administration — and others, inluding Pfizer officers — for pressuring Twitter to ban him for what he wrote about the COVID-19 vaccines.
The best-known of his heretical tweets says, “It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”
In the months since August 2021, when Twitter expelled him “for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules,” such hardly intemperate observations have become less controversial. Vaccine proponents have retreated, typically claiming, at most, that the putative vaccines reduce the risk of severe illness and death.
Berenson first sued Twitter to challenge its ban. The suit succeeded; eleven months after Twitter banned him, it reinstated his account.
But Twitter had not been acting independently; it had succumbed to a lengthy campaign by the Biden administration to censor Berenson. Any such actions by government officials are, of course, unconstitutional.
The defendants in Berenson’s new lawsuit include President Biden, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, and former White House official Andrew Slavitt (“at the center of the conspiracy”). Two Pfizer officers are also named: board member Scott Gottlieb and CEO Albert Bourla.
Berenson’s detailed complaint alleges that “after months of public and secret pressure, Defendants succeeded” in getting Twitter to ban him.
The private pressure is attested by internal documents released by Twitter and government documents produced during the course of Missouri and Louisiana’s lawsuit against censorship by the Biden administration.
In defending his rights, Alex Berenson is helping us all retrieve freedoms we lost in the pandemic panic.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Rights may be universal, but their enforcement must be local.
Murray N. Rothbard, “Just War” (1970), as reprinted at LewRockwell.com.