If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
J. S. Mill, On Liberty (1859), Chapter Two: “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.”
On March 17, 1780, General George Washington granted the Continental Army a holiday “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence.”
On March 17, 1941, the U.S. Selective Service held its first lottery for the draft, in preparation for World War II. (Image, above, from the Morning Oregonian, from that year.)
On March 16, 1995, the state of Mississippi formally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state of the Union to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment had been officially ratified in 1865, one hundred thirty years earlier.
James Madison, fourth President of the United States and “Father of the Constitution,” was born on this date in 1751.
“When will the check arrive?”
That’s what “voters want to know,” former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace yesterday.
Not whether President Joe Biden is dodging the media’s questions, as Wallace had inquired of his panel of Washington experts, after explaining that Biden now holds the modern record for longest time as president without facing reporters in a news conference.
“Well, it’s no surprise,” offered Jonathan Swan, national political correspondent for Axios. “It’s an extension of what he basically did throughout the campaign, which was very minimal — he basically didn’t subject himself to extended, tough questioning.”
GOP strategist Karl Rove went further, arguing, “he’s just not up to it . . . at the age of 78 he’s lost a few steps and he’s not going to look good in a news conference.”
But Brazile was having none of it. Citizens are laser-focused, she contends, on being shown the money . . . and really aren’t too concerned as to whether their commander-in-chief, the sleepy fellow in possession of the nuclear codes, might be suffering something approaching early dementia.
People do like money. But to what degree is she really correct? With palms greased will the public look the other way? How many votes have Democrats bought?*
Don’t think Brazile is alone, either; as I pointed out recently (“Big Bucks Buy Votes”), too much of Washington actually thinks purchasing apathy, support, votes is how Washington should work.
They marvel as modern political statecraft transcends the hubbub of bread and circuses with electronic direct deposits of spendable cash into bank accounts. But with the same hoped-for result.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* And ask the same question of Republicans who voted for sending similar checks to everyone when they controlled the Senate and the White House last year.
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Today we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution, the final revolution, where man can act directly on the mind-body of his fellows. Well needless to say some kind of direct action on human mind-bodies has been going on since the beginning of time. But this has generally been of a violent nature. The techniques of terrorism have been known from time immemorial and people have employed them with more or less ingenuity sometimes with the utmost cruelty, sometimes with a good deal of skill acquired by a process of trial and error finding out what the best ways of using torture, imprisonment, constraints of various kinds.
But, as I think it was Metternich said many years ago, ‘you can do everything with bayonets except sit on them.’ If you are going to control any population for any length of time, you must have some measure of consent, its exceedingly difficult to see how pure terrorism can function indefinitely. It can function for a fairly long time, but I think sooner or later you have to bring in an element of persuasion an element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them. It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy (who have always existed and presumably will always exist) to get people to love their servitude. This is the . . . ultimate in malevolent revolutions….
Aldous Huxley, speech,“The Ultimate Revolution,” March 20, 1962.
March 15 was “the Ides of March” in the Roman calendar. On that date in 44 BC, Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a handful of prominent senators.
On the same date in 1783, General George Washington eloquently entreated his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. His plea was successful and the threatened coup d’état never took place.
On March 14, 1900, the Gold Standard Act was ratified, ending the long practice of bimetallism by placing the United States Treasury — and banking and currency — on the gold standard.
On March 13, 1862, the U.S. federal government forbade all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.
Our lives are getting to be more and more regulated from without, with the effect that we are becoming drained of our individuality and drilled into mere machines. The passive attitude of mind induced by this regime will, if that regime grow in intensity, be fatal to all manliness of thought and manliness of conduct. Discrimination, as any competent psychologist will tell you, is the most fundamental of our mental faculties. Our intellectual and moral natures come into play only when we discriminate and decide for ourselves.
Joseph Hiam Levy, The Outcome of Individualism (Third Edition, 1892), Conclusion.