Happiness is a good flow of life.
Zeno of Citium, as quoted by Stobaeus, Anthology, ii. 77.
Author: Redactor
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Albert Jay Nock
One can hardly say that republicanism has failed, or say a priori that it is bound to fail, so long as it has not been tried under conditions essential to its success.
Albert Jay Nock, Journals.
Tim Berners-Lee released files describing his idea for the World Wide Web, which debuted on August 6, 1991, as a publicly available service on the Internet.
Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book One.
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Flogged, Founded, Fired
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.
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All Together Now
Chinese Communist Party-controlled Hong Kong — under the National Security Law — has issued arrest warrants for six democracy activists.
I was not honored with inclusion.
“But Paul,” you sputter, “you do not live in China!”
Well, neither do those activists — all six now live outside the territory.
Passed in secret in Beijing and imposed on Hong Kong, the new law basically criminalizes opposition to the CCP.
ALL opposition. Anywhere. Anytime. Ex post facto.
“The law criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference,” CNN explains, “and it applies to offenses committed ‘outside the region’ by foreigners who are not residents of Hong Kong or China.”
One fugitive from injustice is Nathan Law, a former Hong Kong lawmaker and a leader of 2014’s Umbrella Movement. “I was prepared when I left Hong Kong to be in exile,” Mr. Law said on social media, explaining his departure when the draconian new law took effect, “but . . . who can enjoy freedom from fear in the face of China’s powerful political machine?”
Hong Kong officials maintain that there is “no retrospective effect” to the law, but that seems obviously untrue in Law’s case, and others’.*
Samuel Chu with the Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council, a U.S. citizen for two decades, also graces the list. “I might be the 1st non-Chinese citizen to be targeted, but I will not be the last,” tweeted Chu. “If I am targeted, any American/any citizen of any nation who speaks out for HK can-and will be-too.”
Last year, when the protests first began, I wrote “I Am Hong Kong.” A year later? Even the CCP ominously agrees with Mr. Chu’s conclusion: “We are all Hong Kongers now.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* “Other activists targeted include Simon Cheng, a former employee of the British consulate in Hong Kong who was granted asylum in the United Kingdom after alleging that he was tortured in China and interrogated by secret police about the city’s pro-democracy protests,” according to CNN, “and Hong Kong pro-independence activists Ray Wong, Honcques Laus and Wayne Chan.”
Note: Before these indictments, Hong Kong authorities tossed a dozen pro-democracy candidates off the ballot for September’s election. And then suspended the election for a year citing the pandemic — obviously wanting to avoid another massive election defeat for the CCP-puppet government.
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Ambrose Bierce
“In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.”
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Watch: Shakes Out Like
That was the working title for this weekend’s podcast. But it is not the one we went with. Here is the actual title:
On July 26, 1533, Francisco Pizarro’s Spanish conquistadors strangled to death Atahualpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, thereby ending 300 years of Inca civilization. The conquistadors were greedy and murderous, but the Inca civilization, arguably, was worse: totalitarian and radically inegalitarian. But they made great high-mountain roads. (Arguments about infrastructure promoted by Big Government continue to this very day. And it is quite possible that an earlier civilization made the roadways, which the Inca merely renovated.)
On this day in 1948, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 desegregating the U.S. military.