Even paranoids have real enemies.
Delmore Schwartz, as quoted in Jon Winokur’s collection of aphorisms, The Portable Curmudgeon (1987).
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Delmore Schwartz
Author: Redactor
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Rome’s Last
For the final time in Roman history, Rome’s Senate chose an emperor, electing 75-year-old Marcus Claudius Tacitus on September 25th, A.D. 275. This is yet another milestone on the road to the collapse of republicanism in the much-discussed “decline and fall of the Roman Empire.”
Last Sunday on Meet the Press, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) addressed two areas where President Trump has stumbled in recent days, losing many conservatives and civil libertarians: censorship and lawfare.
“Senator,” Kristen Welker asked, “do you believe that President Trump is sending the message that he only supports free speech when it’s speech that he agrees with?”
“Well, I can’t control everything the president says. And I don’t think that having the FCC weigh in on licenses is right. I will fight that,” the junior senator from Kentucky declared. “But I can tell you that throughout government, the censorship apparatus that Biden had put in place is gone.”
Under President Biden, the senator explained, employees and ex-employees of both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security set up offices inside Twitter, while “Facebook was told to take down information concerning the origins of the Covid virus” under threat of “being broken up by antitrust. So we have had official censorship going on for many years now, and everybody on the left just looked the other way.
“They actually had an office, an office of censorship.”
Welker then inquired if he thought it was “appropriate for the president to direct the attorney general to go after his political opponents”?
“I think lawfare in all forms is bad,” Rand Paul replied. “What they did to Donald Trump was an abomination. But yes, it is not right for the Trump administration to do the same thing.
“We need to get politics out of the judicial system as much as we can. But we can’t do it without acknowledging that the king of lawfare was Biden.”
True enough, with the full title: Marionette Censor Joe, King of Lawfare, First of His Name If Not of His Kind.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Samuel Johnson
Of all the noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
Samuel Johnson, as quoted in Jon Winokur’s compilation of aphorisms, The Quotable Curmudgeon (1987).
Western civilization’s first passenger-carrying airship, the Giffard dirigible, traveled under its own power 17 miles, from Paris to Trappes, on September 24, 1852.
The image is of a model on exhibit in the London Science Museum.
Last Friday (and Saturday), we supported the right of ABC’s corporate leaders to ignore bullying comments by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr and produce the late-night show, “Jimmy Kimmel Love!” to their heart’s content.
I’m happy to hear that ABC will bring Kimmel back tonight.
Not glad because I like him or will watch his show. I don’t. I won’t. I’d cancel him were it up to me. But freedom’s tops, so I get especially jazzed when people stand up to demand it.
And concerned when those in power attempt to take it away.
The very potent public backlash against the idea that ABC was muscled by the Trump administration into suspending Kimmel’s show is why it has returned. That’s a healthy sign of our political culture. Plus, take note that this pushback against the FCC chairman and President Trump hasn’t come just from the Left but also, as The Wrap reports, from many prominent conservatives including “Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro and Ted Cruz.”
What Kimmel alleged — that the murderer of Charlie Kirk was somehow MAGA — was not only “without evidence” but clearly contradicted by the evidence. As well as being asinine on its face. And more than a bit callous.
Still, freedom of speech means the freedom to say what you think, no matter how boneheaded, whether those in power like it or not.
Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of the largest chain of ABC affiliates, has already announced that its stations will not be airing Kimmel’s program. As is their right.
Stick with freedom of speech, Mr. President. For all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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George Santayana
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
George Santayana, as quoted in Jon Winokur’s compilation, The Portable Curmudgeon (1987).
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Sweden minus Norway
On September 23, 1905, Norway and Sweden signed the “Karlstad treaty,” peacefully dissolving the union between the two countries.
The UK police picked the wrong elderly cancer patient to badger for exercising her right to freedom of speech.
Whatever Deborah Anderson said on social media, it wasn’t harsh enough to justify clapping on the irons and hauling her away. Just a knock on the door and a polite request to Do the Right Thing. But polite in the way a mailed fist in a marshmallow glove is polite.
Anderson: “I’m a member of the Free Speech Union and I’m an American citizen. . . . I’ll have Elon Musk on you so quick your feet won’t touch. . . . You’re here because somebody got upset? Is it against the law? Am I being arrested?”
Officer: “You’re not being arrested.”
Anderson: “Then what are you doing here?”
“My plan was, if you were admitting that it was you who wrote the comment, you could just make an apology to the person.”
“I’m not apologizing to anybody. I can tell you that.”
“The alternative would be that I have to call you in for an interview. . . .”
Somebody complained to the police, and somehow that’s enough all by itself, regardless of the nature of the complaint, for the police of the United Kingdom to leap into nonsensical action.
Anderson then asked whether there are “no houses that have been burgled recently? No rapes, no murders?” Good question, but ineffectual. Not his task at the moment, the officer said.
At least we can be proud of one of these two interlocutors.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Wilson Milzner
Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
Wilson Mizner, as quoted by Jon Winokur, ed., The Portable Curmudgeon (1987).