Author: Redactor

George Orwell

By Bernd Pohlenz - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16224670 — George Orwell by Bernd Pohlenz

[I]f all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control,’ they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink.’
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), chapter 3.

Note: illustration by Bernd Pohlenz — CC BY-SA 3.0.

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Listen: What’s Between Anarchy and Tyranny?

Post author By Redactor
Post date June 6, 2020
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Paul Jacob reviews the big stories of the week:

This Week in Common Sense, June 1 – 5, 2020

general freedom U.S. Constitution

Thoughts in Slo-Mo

“Oh my God,” my wife gasped after that eerie instant of calm when things stopped. She told me to call 911 just as I was pressing “9.”

We had been navigating the less-than-usually-clogged interstates up the East Coast when suddenly dirt and debris swept across the asphalt. As we quickly stopped, a small vehicle flipped back onto Interstate-84, rolling over twice, throwing its occupant — a 21-year-old woman — out of the car and onto the road some 30 feet in front of us.

As another man and I got to her, we saw she was breathing. Thankfully, a nurse came forward from the traffic, which would be stopped for hours. Within minutes, emergency personnel were on the scene.

The woman was airlifted to a hospital; she later died.

Those slow-motion seconds of the accident stay with me, along with the surrealism of the aftermath, standing on a stopped superhighway — helpless — feeling amazingly connected to someone’s precious life.

And death.

Back on the road, after giving a statement to police, my wife wondered aloud if, what with the current pandemic, the young woman’s parents would even be able to get into the hospital to see her.

Throughout this coronavirus crisis we have heard stories of people dying all alone because of policies designed to “keep us safe” — by keeping relatives and even spouses out.

We like safety, but if either my wife or I lies dying in a hospital, regardless of the COVID-19 risk, each of us would wish to be with the other.

It’s “till death do us part,” not “till quarantine do us part.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags coronavirus, covid, epidemic, pandemic

crime and punishment folly

Qualified Backlash

Extreme forms of protest — that is, rioting, looting, and street violence, as well as chanting about killing people, carrying torches, and the like — don’t help the cause of those who engage in it.

You know it; I know it — but is it common knowledge?

So, as a contribution to the common wisdom of Homo (hopefully) sapiens politicus, let us stress the truth, which we can now back up with a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Eric W. Dolan, writing on PsyPost, explains that six experiments involving 3, 399 participants “assessed how different types of protest behaviors influenced support for a variety of progressive and conservative social causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the anti-abortion movement. They found that more extreme behaviors — such as the use of inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and vandalism — consistently resulted in reduced support for social movements.”

While “extreme protest behaviors” garner media attention, they turn away more people than they bring in.

“We found extreme anti-Trump protest actions actually led people to not only dislike the movement and support the cause less, but to be willing to support Trump more,” the researcher who talked to Dolan, said. “It was almost like a backlash.”

Almost?

Protest organizers have to understand that their enemies also know this backlash effect, and have incentives to corrupt peaceful protests by sparking extremism. Infiltrators from governments as well as opposing groups have been known to incite riots or cause destruction simply to discredit protests.

While destruction and mayhem by some do not negate the crying, dying need for criminal justice reform,* the tragedy remains: violence does spoil good will.

And calling in federal troops, as the president threatens, discredits almost everything. What a mess.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Much better than the turn to violence? Protest morphing into specific legislative and administrative reform. Ending “qualified immunity” for public officials, mentioned here Friday, and proposed by Representative Justin Amash (L-Mich.), would be a great start.

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Tags backlash, brutality, police, protests, race, riots

Today

Kentucky and Tennessee

On June 1, 1792, Kentucky was admitted as the 15th state of the United States. Four years later, Tennessee became the 16th state.

Thought

John Milton

Revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.
John Milton, Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England (1644).

Today

Greek voters

On May 28, 1952, the women of Greece gained the right to vote.

Today

The Model T Era Ends

On May 27, 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi began his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian unification.

In 1927 on this date in May, the Ford Motor Company ceased manufacture of the Ford Model T (pictured above), the last of this model coming off the line the day previous. Over 16 million Model T Fords had been sold; it was a world-transformative product. On the 27th, the company began to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.

Exactly 70 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Paula Jones could pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he was in office.

In 2015 on the 27th of May, the commercial space company SpaceX was approved as a contractor to the U.S. military for satellite launches; SpaceX has since led the world in its use of re-usable booster rockets which, after sending up orbital rockets, return to a sea surface platform for a safe vertical landing.

Today

Freedom of Religion

On May 26, 451, the Sassanid Empire defeated the Armenians at the battle of Battle of Avarayr but guaranteed them the freedom to openly practice Christianity.

On May 26, 1328, scholastic philosopher and Franciscan friar William of Ockham and other Franciscan leaders secretly exited Avignon, fearing a death sentence from Pope John XXII. On the same day in 1538, the city of Geneva expelled John Calvin and his followers, who headed to exile in Strasbourg.

Today

John Hancock

On May 24, 1775, John Hancock was elected president of the Second Continental Congress.

Hancock’s involvement with Samuel Adams and his radical group, the Sons of Liberty, won the wealthy merchant the dubious distinction of being one of only two Patriots (the other being Sam Adams) that the Redcoats marching to Lexington in April 1775 to confiscate Patriots’ arms were ordered to arrest. When British General Thomas Gage offered amnesty to the colonists holding Boston under siege, he excluded those same two men from his offer.