On January 9, 1788, Connecticut became the fifth state to be admitted to the United States under the new Constitution. Connecticut was one of the first nine states of the original union, under the Articles of Confederation, to accept the Constitution, and thus officially ratify it. All 13 original states had ratified that new compact, officially, by May 29, 1790. The first state to be added to the original 13 was Vermont, in 1791.
If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.
What if “political correctness” were really a problem of rampant cowardice?
University of Massachusetts Amherst administrators removed Catherine West Lowry from her 13-year gig as an accounting lecturer because of an extra-credit project.
She had shown a previous year’s student-produced parody video using the infamous Hitler breakdown scene in the excellent 2004 movie Downfall. I assume you’ve seen dozens of these; I know I have. Their ubiquity notwithstanding, the university claims to have received student complaints about the one Ms. Lowry showed.
The proper response to a protestation of offense at a Downfall parody? Eye rolls. Were I a professor, I’d have to resist the nearly irresistible desire to reduce office hours starting immediately.
Any other response, especially dismissing the lecturer, is pure pusillanimity.
Or, make that cowardice of the impure variety, for I suppose something else could be going on here.
Lowry claims that she’d shown this particular effort in previous years and no one had complained. And I believe her.
Can we believe the university’s claim to have received complaints from students this year?
Before we accept such a statement, we should peruse the evidence. After all, in the case of the Wilfrid Laurier University mistreatment of the T.A. who had shown a Jordan Peterson video in class, administrators had simply lied — there had been no complaints.
Had UMass Amherst actually received complaints, then their response would be merely cowardice. But were there no complaints, the whole thing becomes far more ominous.
And I wonder: what would today’s university make of Hogan’s Heroes?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On January 8, 1790, George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York, New York.
In 1835, on this date, the United States federal government achieved a zero debt for the first and only time.
In 1867, African-American men were first allowed to vote in Washington, D.C.
The more opportunities there are in a Society for some persons to live upon the toil of others, and the less those others may enjoy the fruits of their work themselves, the more is diligence killed, the former become insolent, the latter despairing, and both negligent.
Anders Chydenius (1739 – 1803) was a Swedish priest and politician born in what is now Ostrobothnian Finland. This quotation is from The National Gain, §20, 1765.
We may soon be at war with Iran. Wait, in this day and age of endless conflicts without so much as a decent declaration, are we not already at war with Iran?
Clearly, the drone-strike killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, described by The New York Times as “the architect of nearly every significant operation by Iranian intelligence and military forces over the past two decades,” was an act of war. The Trump Administration predicated the U.S. assault on previous Iranian acts of war — including involvement in the recent storming of parts of the sprawling 104-acre U.S. embassy in Baghdad and, moreover, deadly attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.
Iran vows revenge. I want to bring U.S. troops home from the Middle East. And so did President Obama and so does President Trump, no? But several thousand more U.S. soldiers are now headed to the region.
The world’s policemen.
But, then, miraculously, a possible way out. News reports announced that Iraq’s legislative body, the Council of Representatives, would take up a resolution on expelling U.S. troops — er, well, asking U.S. troops to leave.
Please, Iraqi legislators, please: don’t throw us in that briar patch!
The vote was held. The measure asking all foreign troops to leave . . . passed.
It is an understandable request, one that we can only presume the U.S. will respect . . . once the legislation is signed.
Oops! The prime minister has resigned; there’s no one to sign it.
Plus, the resolution is “non-binding.”
Training the Iraqi army has been difficult, but how proud our nation-builders must be to see Iraqi politicians show a professional understanding of political sleight-of-hand.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On January 7, 1940, the Finnish 9th Division completely destroyed the much-larger Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi Road, in a crucial battle during Finland’s Winter War.
Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. . . . Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
Government organizations are here to help. How do we know this? They have names that say so!
Take the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Great name. It is all about protecting consumers, right?
Created as part of the Dodd-Frank legislation that was pushed through Congress following the 2008 financial implosion, the CFPB is tougher than the usual run-of-the-mill government agency, however. In the words of Cato scholar Ilya Shapiro, it is “the most independent of independent agencies.” It has a single director, who is almost impossible to remove, and it is empowered to make, enforce, and adjudicate its rules.
And punish violators.
The CFPB doesn’t have to answer to anybody, not even to secure funding.
If this does not raise at least a teensy sense of alarm, let me offer two words of caution: power corrupts.
We all know the ease with which regulatory agencies may abuse their power over us — and few are as insulated from the rule of law as is the CFPB; its near-immunity from oversight makes the ‘power-corrupts’ problem much worse.
The law firm Seila Law LLC — which helps clients deal with debt problems — has sued to challenge the constitutionality of how CFPB is structured. Although lower courts have not been sympathetic with Seila’s argument, the case has now been accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court.
A satirist once famously asked, who will watch the watchers?
In the United States, we should ask, who will protect us from the protectors?
By the Constitution that would be the Supreme Court.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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If the American people come to recognize that the financial crisis was caused by the housing policies of their own government — rather than insufficient regulation or the inherent instability of the U.S. financial system — Dodd- Frank will be seen as an illegitimate response to the crisis. Only then will it be possible to repeal or substantially modify this repressive law.
Peter Wallison, “The Case for Repealing Dodd-Frank,” Imprimis, November 2013 [Volume 42, Number 11].