Author: Redactor

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incumbents national politics & policies term limits

The Age of Octogenarians

Senator Chuck Grassley

As someone who fervently hopes to some day reach the age of 88 — and still actively contribute — I have only heartfelt well-wishes for Chuck Grassley, the senior U.S. Senator from Iowa.

Grassley celebrated his birthday earlier this month. Then, last week, after 59 consecutive years in elected office (six in the U.S. House, 41 years thus far in the Senate, along with 12 prior in the state legislature), the Republican incumbent announced he will be seeking re-election to the U.S. Senate next year.

At 88, Mr. Grassley isn’t the oldest Senator — Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is three months his elder, and U.S. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) owns the title of Oldest Octogenarian in Congress, born 13 days before Feinstein back in 1933. 

We all remember Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) turning 100 while supposedly still “serving” in the Senate. That wasn’t pretty. 

Grassley, on the other hand, appears in great shape, both mentally and physically — doing 22 push-ups before cameras and a crowd at a recent event.

He would be only 95 years old when completing that full term. And he is very likely to be reelected.

“Grassley has proved to be the most reliable vote-getter in Iowa for the entirety of his four decades in the Senate,” The Washington Post informed, concluding: “Grassley’s candidacy effectively then takes Iowa off the board as a competitive race.”

I have no problem with Sen. Grassley’s age. I do have a problem with the power of incumbency, a system that allows one man to wield power for decades and leaves our elections so much less competitive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Voltaire

Aime la vérité, mais pardonne à l’erreur.

Love truth, but pardon error.

François-Marie Arouet (pen name “Voltaire,” 1694-1778), “Deuxième discours: de la liberté,” Sept Discours en Vers sur l’Homme (1738).
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Thought

Lord Acton

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

Letter (January 23, 1861), published in Abbot Gasquet, Lord Acton and his Circle (1906), Letter 74.
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Thought

Voltaire

On doit des égards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la vérité.

We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth.

François-Marie Arouet (pen name “Voltaire,” 1694-1778), Letter to M. de Grenonville (1719).
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Thought

James M. Buchanan

We live in a society of individuals, not a society of equals. We can make little or no progress in analyzing the former as if it were the latter.

James M. Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan (1975).
Categories
education and schooling First Amendment rights

Combatting Campus Cancel Culture

education, wisdom, cancel culture

We keep hearing how students and professors are being targeted for saying stuff they’re not supposed to say — from the perspective of the hard-left students, professors, and off-campus third parties who launch most of the attacks, that is.

Which seem to be happening more and more often.

The numbers confirm it. New research by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) indicates that attacks on professors for impolitic speech have increased since 2015. Most of the attacks — 74 percent — have resulted in sanctions against the accused.

According to FIRE, “calls for sanction” of a professor rose from 24 in 2015 to 113 in 2020.

Three fourths of the tallied incidents, 314 out of 426, have led to punishments like suspension or termination.

The attacks tend to occur on university campuses with “severely speech-restrictive” policies. Like many Ivy League schools.

One of the researchers, Komi German, says that university administrators and presidents must “explicitly state that the protection of free speech and academic inquiry supersedes protection from words that are perceived as offensive.”

Good idea. Let them do that.

Why aren’t the censorious administrators doing it already, though? 

Probably because they lack allegiance to the value of freedom of speech on campus.

Until these academics all have Damascus-level conversions, parents and students must do what they can themselves to discourage these censorious policies. This means, abstaining from attending and paying tuition at schools that penalize professors and others for wrongspeech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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cancel/wisdom

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J. H. Levy

Socialism has its black sheep. What cause has not? But that which fills me with grief is that it has so many white ones. The most miserable circumstance of our time is that much of its devotion and self-denial is running into Socialistic channels. It is this misdirected self-abnegation, characteristic of the Dark Ages, which is carrying us back to them.

Joseph Hiam Levy, introduction to the first English edition (1894) of Yves Guyot’s The Tyranny of Socialism.

Categories
government transparency

Unidentified Non-Disclosure

Elon Musk, UFO

Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and genius behind Tesla Motors and SpaceX, is someone who really knows how to get government subsidies and contracts — as well as elicit investor enthusiasm — for his extraordinary endeavors. And his Twitter account is often interesting.

“I’m not saying there are UFOs,” he tweeted a little over a week ago, “but there are UFOs.”

Musk was riffing off a popular joke meme, featuring wild-haired Giorgio A. Tsoukalos of Ancient Aliens fame: “I’m not saying its aliens. But it’s aliens.” It’s a funny photo, encapsulating the genius of an obsession from the early 1970s: Erich von Däniken’s ultra-popular Chariots of the Gods. 

“This sparked a huge response on Twitter, with many asking [Musk] if he knew more about the existence of aliens,” explains Patrick Knox of The U.S. Sun.

The day before Musk’s amusing tweet, “a UFO was spotted near the International Space Station during a live feed, sparking a new wave of alien conspiracy theories” — giving Musk the news peg for his quip.

Now that the U.S. Government has admitted that there have been plenty of encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena that have no official, public explanation that makes any sense, you might think we were beyond the “conspiracy theory” charge.

But most ufologists, I glean, believe some people within the military-industrial complex know a great deal more about these phenomena than they are saying. So “conspiracy” is not entirely out of the blue. 

Worth mentioning, though, is that Elon Musk has multiple ongoing contracts with NASA, and undoubtedly has signed more than one non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

So he must walk the jocular tight-rope.

It would be interesting to learn what the heck is really going on. 

NASA’s NDA’s should be voided.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Elon

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Lord Acton

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877).
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Thought

James M. Buchanan

Social stability requires agreement on and enforcement of a structure of individual rights, whether these rights be over the disposition of privately partitionable goods, over the usage of common facilities, or over ordinary patterns of interpersonal behavior, and whether the enforcement be externally imposed or internally monitored.

James M. Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan (1975).