The foremost, or indeed the sole, condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835), as quoted in Robert Nisbet, The New Despotism (1976).
I checked the U.S. Debt Clock last night. The federal government was, at that time, $200 billion shy of owing that amount, $32 trillion.
It’s such a big number that it doesn’t seem real.
Maybe that’s why politicians ignore it. And keep spending, adding to it.
All spending that seems fishy contributes to that debt. But so, alas,does spending that a majority of Americans may want. When you are over-spending, all spending contributes to the red ink.
Still, to witness elected government officials throw money around with reckless abandon is especially irksome. Consider all the taxes that pay for that debt, continually as well as eventually. And the misdirected investments that get derailed from productive activity just to fund that debt.
Today’s example of idiotic spending? A mere $500,000. Half a million bucks. Chump change — next to the trillions on budget lines.
So this half-a-million is slotted to go to Pakistan.
To train Pakistanis to speak, read and write in English.
But the kicker’s in the headline, courtesy of The Epoch Times: “Biden Earmarks $500,000 for Transgender Youth, Other Groups in Pakistan.” The blurb makes the obvious point I wish to drive home: “Biden ‘hell-bent on spending money we don’t have,’ said Rep. Ralph Norman’s office.”
Biden’s prodigality will provide “intensive professional development courses for Pakistani transgender youth.”
The old saw about such foreign aid runs, “Don’t we have transgender youth in this country to help?”
But better to join Rep. Norman and point to the debt clock. And shake our heads.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.
Jerry Pournelle & Larry Niven, Lucifer’s Hammer (1985).
Institutions of higher learning where foes of free speech flourish include purported bastions of intellectual discourse like Harvard University. In 2022, Harvard ranked 170th out of 203 schools with respect to free speech on campus in an assessment by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
According to a 2023 College Pulse survey, 26 percent of Harvard students say it’s sometimes okay to use violence to stop speech on campus. Only 27 percent say it’s always wrong to shout down a speaker.
“Many, many people are being threatened with — and actually put through — disciplinary processes for their exercise of free speech and academic freedom,” says Janet Halley, of Harvard Law School. “Many people think that they’re entitled not to be offended.”
Jeffrey Flier, medical school professor, says free speech has been in decline at Harvard at least since 2007.
Halley, Flier, and more than 100 other Harvard faculty members have newly formed the Council on Academic Freedom.
Flier says it’s been too hard for professors to simply “[put] their head above the parapet [and say] ‘I think this is wrong.’ There hasn’t been any network of people from across the spectrum that could be able to do this. But that’s what we now have in the council.”
The Council seems to be off to a good start. Now let us see how many of the rest of the school’s 2,400 or so faculty members join up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Life is the true mystery, not because impenetrable by thought, but because thought penetrates it to the infinite with power equal to its own.
Benedetto Croce, The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic (1913; 1967), Douglas Ainslie, trans., p. 590.
On May 2, 1989, Hungary began dismantling its border fence with Austria, allowing a number of East Germans to defect.
Mid-month, the administration barred Catholic priests of the Holy Name College Friary from providing “pastoral care” to servemembers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The government contract had been granted, instead, to Mack Global LLC, which the archdiocese characterizes as “a secular defense contracting firm that cannot fulfill the statement of work in the contract.”
Not convinced that this Daily Signal story amounts to “a war on Christianity”?
Well, try The Epoch Times. In “Christians Say Government Targets Them Because They Oppose Left-Wing Agenda,” Kevin Stocklin lists a number of federal government policies that favor left-wing politics over the social and political activism of Catholics and other Christians.
Abortion activists, pro- and anti-, do occasionally engage in what might plausibly be called “terrorist” activities, but the FBI appears avid in hounding pro-life protesters, yet uninterested in doing any actual work to curb the string of “violent attacks, including assaults and firebombings, against pro-life individuals and institutions.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)’s “subpoena to the FBI earlier this month demanding information on its alleged program to surveil Catholics for ‘signs of radicalization,’” spurred Stocklin’s reporting about the government’s increasing conflict with Christianity.
Why see traditional Christians as enemies of the State? Because they are.
Potentially, at least.
In part, simply because those who worship God see a worshipful attitude towards the State as something akin to idolatry. And apparently vice versa. But sociologists such as Robert Nisbet regard religion as a countervailing power against ever-growing government.
If you are looking for a jealous god, the modern total State fills the bill.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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They say princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom.
Ben Jonson, Timber: or, Discoveries (1641).
Starting with Voltaire, Paul Jacob moves on to Tucker Carlson and even more important matters:
The fact is: almost everything is funny. You just have to have a way of looking at it.