Wer sich aber zum Wurm macht, kann nachher nicht klagen,
dass er mit Füßen getreten wird.
However, he who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards that he gets stepped on.
Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Part two: Metaphysical Principles of Virtue page 98.
Died on this date, American founding politician, Luther Martin [pictured], in 1826.
Martin is famed among founding fathers for refusing to sign the U.S. Constitution, seeing the new compact as unduly centralizing and nationalistic.
On July 8, 1839, American industrialist John D. Rockefeller was born. On this same date in 1907, businessman and politician George W. Romney was born.
Twenty-five years into that “good system” — created when the United Kingdom signed it over to the Chinese Communist Party with the proviso it would recognize basic civil liberties in Hong Kong until 2047 — Xi was taking a victory lap.
He had successfully squelched freedom of speech and of the press.
“China’s government is,” Ian Easton writes in The Final Struggle: Inside China’s Global Strategy, “far more powerful and sophisticated than any that came before. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and Putin’s Russia all pale in comparison.”
Easton, who studies defense and security issues involving the U.S., China, Japan, and Taiwan at the Project 2049 Institute, also pointedly suggests that it is “of national importance that Hollywood begins to make movies about China that are not censored.”
Censored by Beijing, he means.
China’s long list of tyrannies has gotten so bad that even NATO — yes, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — has recognized the threat posed by the totalitarian country engaged in the largest military build-up in human history.
“NATO has listed China as one of its strategic priorities for the first time,” Al Jazeera reported weeks ago, “saying Beijing’s ambitions and its ‘coercive policies’ challenge the Western bloc’s ‘interests, security and values.’”
To which the Chinese objected, arguing the NATO statement “vilifies China’s foreign policy” and “China’s natural military development” and was “filled with . . . ideological prejudices.”
They have a point. It’s about time the West shows a bit of “bias” against totalitarianism and genocide.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word Politic, which now for ages has signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick?
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series (1844), ”Politics.”
July 7 is Independence Day in the Solomon Islands, commemorating the island nation’s political separation in 1978.
The “separation” may be over-stated, however: though self-government was achieved in 1976, and political independence for the islands obtained two years later, Solomon Islands remains a constitutional monarchy with the Queen of Solomon Islands, currently Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, as its head of state. Sir Frank Utu Ofagioro Kabui has been the Governor General since 2009, and Manasseh Damukana Sogavare has served as Prime Minister since late April.
“In an email obtained by Reason,” writes Robby Soave at, yes, Reason magazine, “Regional Health Equity Coalition Program Manager Danielle Droppers informed the community that a scheduled conversation between OHA officials and relevant members of the public would not take place as planned.”
And she offered an . . . interesting . . . excuse.
“We recognize that urgency is a white supremacy value that can get in the way of more intentional and thoughtful work, and we want to attend to this dynamic. Therefore, we will reach out at a later date to reschedule.”
While it is obvious that Ms. Droppers does not like what she calls “white supremacy,” her blithe acceptance of the notion that punctuality is a racial characteristic is rather bracing.
Referring to blacks as, generally, slow and even lazy was once a common white-racist evaluation of African Americans.
So common, in fact, that it was a joke — one constantly referenced “as a trope” by Steppin Fetchit and other actors as they portrayed the languorous and servile blacks laughed at in a now bygone era.
Then, as now, there were blacks more than capable of speed and competence in matters where time was of the essence, who valued a “sense of urgency.”
To now accept the stereotype as reason enough to extol loose scheduling is . . . almost . . . funny.
If not so disturbingly stupid and racist.
Robby Soave briefly touches on the intellectual movement that does this sort of thing consistently. We can thank, it turns out, white anti-racists.
Who are quickly establishing a new stereotype: that white anti-racists are hopelessly witless.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
William S. Burroughs, Grand Street, no. 37 & The War Universe (1992).
July 6 serves better as a “Today in Tyranny” marker than anything positive, at least when you consider these events:
Maybe.
But the “accidental” release of the private information of thousands of California gun owners is just the sort of thing that many foes of Second Amendment rights would happily perpetrate.
So we can be forgiven if we harbor doubts.
On June 27, the California Justice Department’s 2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal went live. The publicly accessible files included private details — names, dates of birth, and home addresses — about persons who had applied for concealed carry permits between 2011 and 2022. More than enough information to cause trouble.
The info was removed the next day. Attorney General Rob Bonta said that his office would investigate.
The California Rifle & Pistol Association is threatening to sue.
If the leak was deliberate, maybe the AG was not responsible even indirectly. Maybe the culprit was some anonymous clerk, akin in spirit to the clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court who leaked Dobbs.
If the leak was a pure accident, though, the degree of carelessness strains credulity. This wasn’t a hack of data that had been poorly encrypted in keeping with modern traditions of lackadaisical security. The data was out in the open for all to see.
But, sure, maybe the exposure was unintentional. Maybe what happened was just some tech guy not knowing what he was doing. And every tester of the system also screwing up. Etc.
Such blunders are not unknown. Government workers have bungled bigly before, serially and in parallel. There are precedents. Yes.
So maybe.
But if government cannot reliably keep private information confidential, then maybe it should not require the logging of such information in the first place. Maybe “concealed carry” should be a right, not a licensed privilege.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series (1844), ”Politics.”