The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
Denis Diderot, “Refutation of Helvétius” (written 1773-76, published 1875).
On November 24, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was shot and killed by Jack Ruby while in custody.
The ongoing UFO/UAP disclosure movement, covered periodically in this space, has made some headway in the last year, with a few stories coming out of the congressional hearings led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. But the biggest current publicity push for disclosure is the new documentary The Age of Disclosure, directed by Dan Farah and released on November 21, 2025, via Amazon Prime Video following limited theatrical runs in New York and Los Angeles.
It features interviews with over 30 former U.S. government officials (including figures like ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, ex-Pentagon UFO program head Luis Elizondo, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio) alleging an 80-year cover-up of non-human intelligence, reverse-engineered alien craft, and a global “secret war” over such technology.
But all is not sweetness and light shimmering from an upward spiral of increased government transparency. Not a few of the subject’s most interesting figures have upped their skepticism level, uttering dark and disturbing thoughts about the veracity and agendas of the disclosure movement’s current key figures. These dissenters in the UFO/UAP watcher community — ufologists, whistleblower advocates, and disclosure activists — suggest that the current disclosure movement is adding a fresh and disturbing layer of government deception:
These critiques may be gaining traction in real-time X conversations among thousands of followers in the UFO niche. Liszt’s posts, for example, appear to be doing well enough, if not showing cultural domination, with 9K–12K views each in the past week.
Could the government be lying via the documentary itself? That notion is largely absent from mainstream news and review outlets, finally (after decades) allowed to treat the subject as respectable — consecrated, as it seems to be, by the government itself.
Tel est le malheur de notre siècle, les plus étranges
égarements même ne guérissent pas de l’ennui.
This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.
Marie-Henri Beyle, writing as Stendhal, in Le Rouge et le Noir translated as The Red and the Black (1830), Vol. II, ch. XVII.
On November 23, 1644, British poet John Milton published Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship.
Revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.
John Milton, Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England (1644).
The name “Areopagitica” references a speech by Isocrates, the “Areopagitikós” that itself referenced a hill in Athens, Greece, the Areopagus, which had been the site of an important tribunal that the Greek orator had hoped to restore. It may also refer to the defense that St. Paul made before the Areopagus against charges of promulgating alien gods and outré teachings (see Acts 17:18–34).
After a record-tying federal government shutdown, Congress is held in even lower repute than before:
Voters have a less favorable opinion of House and Senate leaders in the aftermath of the 43-day government shutdown, with House Speaker Mike Johnson suffering the worst decline.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 36% of Likely U.S. Voters have a favorable impression of Johnson – down from 45% in May – including 19% with a Very Favorable opinion of the Louisiana Republican. Forty-one percent (41%) now view Johnson unfavorably, including 30% with a Very Unfavorable impression. Twenty-three percent (23%) are not sure.
“After Shutdown, Congressional Leadership Less Popular,” Rasmussen Reports (November 21, 2025).
But do most people focus on President Trump, however, blaming him for the shutdown? Apparently not. While Rasmussen Reports indeed showed Congress’s approval plummeting to historic lows post-shutdown, President Trump’s job approval ratings proved more resilient but still took a hit. Based on daily tracking from Rasmussen — America’s most frequent presidential pollster — Trump’s numbers held steady in the low-to-mid 40s through early October but eroded gradually as the 43-day shutdown dragged on, bottoming out around November 12, the day it ended. Disapproval climbed, driven by independents and even some GOP softening on his handling of the crisis. Post-shutdown, there’s been a modest rebound.
On November 22, 1307, Pope Clement V issued the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.
This was a little over a month after France’s King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The liquidation of the order of the Templars was a major event of the late Middle Ages.
Back in March, Reason magazine observed that listings on the Argentinian real-estate platform Zonaprop had increased from 5,500 before Milei’s deregulation “to 15,300 today, a staggering 180 percent rise.”
Why the big jump?
Strict national rent controls had been imposed in 2020, by the previous administration. When Milei lifted them, replacing them “with nothing,” tenants and landlords could then make whatever arrangements they could agree upon.
One method of evading the punishing controls had been switching to an Airbnb model of renting, with contracts renewable every three months. Such expedients were almost mandatory . . . given Argentina’s galloping inflation. But they introduced their own kinds of uncertainty.
Owners also took units off the market.
Annual rentals plummeted under this anti-market regime. In late 2023, Valentina Morales saw maybe “12 apartments advertised in the entire Palermo neighborhood,” a region with a population of almost 250,000.
Rents on the few apartments available with annual contracts skyrocketed. Tenancies were required by regulation to last for three years, with arbitrary and unrealistic caps on rent increases. And rent had to be paid only in pesos. But since inflation did not pause under the pre-Milei regime, owners were forced to guess how high inflation would go over the three years . . . and they charged accordingly.
Now? All such nonsense is gone.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On what we would now render as November 21, 1620, Plymouth Colony settlers signed the Mayflower Compact. In the Old Style calendar, the date was November Eleventh.
Bring in the dough. Efficiently.
“Saudi Crown Prince Pledges $1 Trillion Investment in US During Meeting with Trump,” an article at The Epoch Times tells us. The Saudi potentate is boosting, the story runs, an “investment partnership with the United States from $600 billion,” and the prince in question, Mohammed bin Salman — his reputation previously sullied by the part he played in the gruesome assassination of a journalist — explains that the “investments will focus on what he described as ‘real opportunities’ in areas such as artificial intelligence and magnets.”
The article notes that the “Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a Nov. 17 post on X that the crown prince, widely known as MBS, would meet Trump ‘to discuss bilateral relations, ways to strengthen them across various fields, and issues of mutual interest.’”
Now, that latter discussion of diplomatic issues appears normal. That is, what we expect two heads of state to do when conferring.
But all this talk of extra investment? Micromanaging foreign investment within the United States?
That’s never been the recipe for republican governance and can so easily and quickly devolve into plutocratic socialism-for-the-rich. There’s no shouting “limited government” about what Trump boasts of regarding “the deals” he makes for the U.S.
For “us.”
But it does fit what many had hoped he would be: a businessman taking charge of the corporation that is the unitary “United States.” A fix-it man for the federal Leviathan.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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