The best Christmas movies can trace their roots to A Christmas Carol. They ask us to examine our lives, reflect on our choices, and discover changes that can lead to happier futures.
Jo Ann Skousen, “The Strange Case of the Christmas Movie” (December 9, 2021), Liberty.
On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was banned.
Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third — [“Treason!” cried the Speaker] — may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.
Patrick Henry, speech on the Stamp Act, Virginia House of Burgesses (May 29, 1765), according to John Burk in The History of Virginia: From Its First Settlement to the Present Day (Dickson & Pescud, 1805), Volume 3, p. 309. Contemporary accounts vary.
On December 31, 1695, Englanders received a new tax, a window tax. One of the main responses to this was the bricking up of many British windows.
This last day of the year in 1991 marked the complete cessation of all institutions of the Soviet Union.
New Year’s Eve 1992 saw the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This has been dubbed the “Velvet Divorce.”
Recently, a tyke and his mommy were booted from a Big Apple Applebee’s because the little boy lacked a vaccine passport.
That is, the mother possessed no proof that her son had been vaccinated against the disease of the day.
Now, parents have every right to refrain from getting their kids injected — especially given the low risk that kids will become seriously ill from COVID-19 and the non-negligible risk of harm from vaccine side effects.
But such considerations didn’t prevent a gang of police — no students of Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor — from ordering the expulsion. (There’s video.)
Residents of New York City’s vaccination regime can at least move to another town. People elsewhere, in larger jurisdictions — Austria, Australia, England — face greater difficulties escaping pandemic tyranny. But, like us, they can protest and they can sue.
In England, a group called Big Brother Watch is challenging the COVID Pass Scheme imposed by the government of Boris Johnson. Their lengthy “pre-action letter” argues that no evidence exists that the passes will reduce the spread of the virus and that the scheme is “unnecessary and disproportionate.”
Amidst so much “information” under dispute, we know three things.
One, for all the suffering and death it has inflicted on the most vulnerable, the current pandemic is hardly the Black Death. It isn’t even the Spanish flu.
Two, being “vaccinated” against COVID-19 does not prevent one from becoming infected or from infecting others.
Three, shutting down society also inflicts suffering. Great suffering. As must shutting down whichever segments of society decline Draconian mandates.
Maybe the scourge of tyranny isn’t the best balm for the scourge of COVID-19.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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When politicians seeking to stay in power use distortionary policies to force out their political opponents, the more elastic response renders bad policies more, rather than less, attractive.
Edward L. Glaeser and Andrei Schleifer, “The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 21 (1): 1-19, (2005). The article’s abstract identifies the principle’s namesake: “James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections.” See David Henderson, “Curley Effect in California” (May 4, 2012).
On December 30, 1919, Lincoln’s Inn in London, England, admitted its first female bar student.
In a virtual meeting, online, the National Governors Association talked with President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., last week. The biggest issue? COVID.
About COVID tests, “I wish I had thought about ordering a half a billion two months ago,” Mr. Biden confessed.
While serious people are taking this seriously, blah blah, the truth may be that tests do more harm than good. There have always been problems with the tests: too many false positives; they induce panics at mere “case” levels, thus feeding propaganda and unworkable government “solutions” to the “crisis.”
About which Biden now admits he’s got . . . nothing.
Having run against Donald Trump and his alleged lack of a plan, boasting how the Democrats would conquer COVID, Biden now declares defeat: “Look, there is no federal solution.
“This gets solved at a state level,” acknowledged the president, “. . . and it ultimately gets down to where the rubber meets the road and that’s where the patient is in need of help, or preventing the need for help.”
That last phrase is odd.
“Preventing the need for help” sounds like he might mean patients taking control of their health care and their own immune systems. Could Mr. Biden be alluding to Vitamin D, Vitamin K, zinc, HCQ, Ivermectin, and many other immune system boosters and virus blockers?
Or Biden could merely be fumbling. He’s made much of the Omicron Variant, including at the governors’ meeting. But instead of addressing the actual trend of the latest iteration, politicians and propagandists push the idea that Omicron is deadly, when the evidence is clear: it is much less deadly than previous variants.
The great danger of COVID remains the governmental response.
Including, alas, Biden’s.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Look at what’s happening in the U.S. It is now one of the biggest omicron hotspots. The U.S. is running out of everything: testing kits, hospital beds, health workers and now nursing home staff. There’s a shortage of everything in America. And these shortages are getting worse by the day. . . . The Biden Administration was clearly not prepared for this.
Palki Sharma, reporting for WION (The World Is One News), an Indian-based media company (Dec. 28, 2021).
On December 29, 1911, Mongolia gained independence from the Qing Dynasty.