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.”
Germany’s three-party coalition government, led by “center-left” Chancellor Olof Scholz, fell apart when he fired the “pro-business” party’s biggest name in the government, Finance Minister Christian Lindner.
Musk wrote a piece for Welt am Sonntag in which he expressed his support for Alternative für Deutschland, which is considered “far-right” for opposing Die Grünen, the (“pro-business”) Freie Demokratische Partei, and Scholz’s own Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. “The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country,” asserted Musk*.
“The Tesla Motors CEO also wrote,” explains ABC, “that his investment in Germany gave him the right to comment on the country’s condition.”
Musk must mean “a right” as in manners, not in law. In a free country, anyone has a legal right to speak up and comment on government.
But what is the significance of the editor who quit? She has every right to work only with news outfits that marginalize the AfD as promoters of “anti-democratic” ideas. Hers is a matter of strategy: shunning, marginalization — no-debate/no-cooperate — are what she thinks journalists must marshal against the “far right.”
This journalist’s political tactic mirrors Germany’s practiced politics. ABC News explains that the AfD’s polling strength doesn’t much help its candidate, Alice Weidel, to “becom[e] chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the far-right party.”
The non-cooperation strategy goes full anti-democratic when election results are suppressed. In Romania, for example, elections have basically been overturned because of how “far-right” they are.
All very anti-democratic, these “democrats.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* To be clear, his piece was published in German, of course, and above I’m quoting the English translation.
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Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you will find the real tinsel underneath.
Oscar Levant, as quoted in Theodor Reik‘s Jewish Wit (1962), p. 104.
On December 30, 1919, Lincoln’s Inn in London, England, admitted its first female bar student.
Senator Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) has published his annual “Festivus Report” on federal government spending, and it doesn’t look good. The federal debt is on a multi-trillion-dollar spree, yet politicians keep throwing money around:
These are just a few highlights. Read the full report for more juicy boondoggles and drunken-sailor prodigality.
“This year, I am highlighting a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12,” explains the senator. “That’s over $1 trillion in government waste, including things like ice-skating drag queens, a $12 Million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082 on Ukrainian influencers, and more! No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.”
The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891).