Francis Hutcheson, philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and a great influence on David Hume and Adam Smith, was born in Ireland on August 8, 1694. He died on his birthday in 1746.
Followers of Mahatma Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement against the British rule on August 8, 1942.
On the same day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon resigned.
Time can’t be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Juan Muraña,” in Brodie’s Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998).
On August 5, 1861, the U.S. Army abolished flogging. The same day 23 years later, Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor received the foundation stone for the Statue of Liberty (which was featured in the rousing conclusion to Alfred Hitchcock’s wartime picture, Saboteur). The island was renamed Liberty Island, in 1956.
President Ronald Reagan fired 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers (who had ignored his order for them to return to work) on August 5, 1981.
“We thought that the White House was in charge,” explained Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), after the Democratic majority had failed to act on a key pandemic subsidy.
“Action is needed,” implored a panicky Speaker Pelosi in a statement also signed by the Democratic House leadership, “and it must come from the Administration.”
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-imposed moratorium [on home evictions] lapsed Sunday — five weeks after the Biden administration said it would extend the measure ‘one final month’ to July 31 and four weeks after the Supreme Court let the ban stand but signaled any new extensions would require Congress to act,” The Washington Post explained.
“But Congress didn’t act.”
Then, yesterday, President Biden responded to exhortations from his party’s left flank by announcing the CDC would extend the federal moratorium regardless of the unmet constitutional requirement.
“The bulk of the constitutional scholarship,” the president acknowledged, “says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.”
You don’t need to be a constitutional scholar to conclude that this sort of thing is wholly Pelosi’s bailiwick. But forget the Constitution, spending is the supreme law.
Also forgotten are the landlords devastated by the moratorium. They likewise have bills to pay.
“Congress set aside nearly $50 billion to help families . . . pay the back rent they owe and avoid eviction,” National Public Radio reported. “But that money flowed to states and counties, which . . . have managed to get just a small fraction of the money to the people who need it.”
While the political “need” for bailouts directly resulted from government action — the pandemic lockdowns — blame for the current unconstitutional mess lies squarely with the Democratic Congress.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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[P]eople who, in their corporate capacity, abolish the natural relation between merits and benefits, will presently be abolished themselves. Either they will have to go through the miseries of a slow decay, consequent on the increase of those unfit for the business of life, or they will be overrun by some people who have not pursued the foolish policy of fostering the worst at the expense of the best.
Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. III: Part VIII, Industrial Institutions (1896), Chapter XXII: “Socialism.”
La démocratie étend la sphère de l’indépendance individuelle, le socialisme la resserre. La démocratie donne toute sa valeur possible à chaque homme, le socialisme fait de chaque homme un agent, un instrument, un chiffre. La démocratie et le socialisme ne se tiennent que par un mot, l’égalité; mais remarquez la différence : la démocratie veut l’égalité dans la liberté, et le socialisme veut l’égalité dans la gêne et dans la servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville, “Discours prononcé à l’assemblée constituante le 12 Septembre 1848 sur la question du droit au travail,” Oeuvres complètes, vol. IX, p. 546.
Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville, quoted in F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944).
On August 3, 2008, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at age 90.
Solzhenitsyn’s novels, such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward, explored life under totalitarian Communism, and remain classics of modern literature. His huge survey of Soviet concentration camps, The Gulag Archipelago, was an important contribution to the demise of Communism as a popular ideology, showing just how horrifying the repression in the Soviet Union had become.
An “expensive friend” — in documents obtained by federal prosecutors, that’s how former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones sized up former Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder.
What made the Speaker so Big Ticket?
“Republican Larry Householder hatched a plan to cement his hold on power for an additional 16 years,” The Columbus Dispatch reported, “and Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. invested $2 million into the effort.”
Their scheme?
Petition a citizen initiative onto the ballot to slap lifetime term limits on legislators, rather than the current eight-year consecutive limits, as bait to hook pro-limits voters — emphasizing this toughening part, while hiding the fact that the eight-year limits in each chamber would be doubled to a 16-year limit in either.
The initiative would also set a brand-new clock, wiping out all past service so that Householder could command the House, uninterrupted, for 16 more years.
“He told me he’ll retire from [the House],” Jones joked with an associate, “but get a lot done in 16 more years.”
The pandemic stopped Householder’s scam. And then, last July, the FBI dropped the other shoe, arresting him for racketeering. Now awaiting trial, Householder has been pushed out as Speaker and then expelled from the House completely — the first time in over 150 years.
FirstEnergy fired CEO Jones — who, according to The Washington Post, “prosecutors continue to investigate” for his “involvement in a $60 million bribery scheme secretly funded by the company to win a $1 billion legislative bailout.”
Mr. Householder never liked term limits, but his corrupt attempts to thwart them serve as evidence of their importance.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable. To invade it is to usurp the prerogative of Jehovah. Every man has a right to his own body — to the products of his own labor — to the protection of law — and to the common advantages of society. It is piracy to buy or steal a native African, and subject him to servitude. Surely, the sin is as great to enslave an American as an African.
William Lloyd Garrison, “Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Convention,” speech in Philadelphia (December 6, 1833).
Paul Jacob reminds politicians of that which they tend to forget: