On May 26, 451, the Sassanid Empire defeated the Armenians at the battle of
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.
The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state’s power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin to dispute the sacred right of the individual ruler or authority without being aware that at the same time they are playing into the hands of a colossal state power.
Jacob Burckhardt, Reflections on History
May 25, 1818, the Swiss historian and academic Jacob Burckhardt was born. Burckhardt’s best-known work is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860
Burckhardt died on August 8, 1897.
Karl Kraus, about his newsletter, Die Fackel.
I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don’t say what it wants to hear.
“The biggest topic in British political circles on Monday . . . was milkshakes,” writes Mike Ford in The New Republic, “or, rather, one milkshake in
Milkshake, you ask?
Yes. Milkshake.
The shake in question “was lobbed by a bystander in Newcastle at Nigel Farage, a Brexit Party candidate in the European Parliament elections later this week.” And Mr. Ford goes on to note that infamous Internet figures Tommy Robinson and Carl “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin (the latter inaccurately dubbed “alt-right”) have received multiple hits of thrown cold, frothy confections.
It is “a thing.” A meme — a replicable operation.
Burger King has even encouraged the fad, if in a bizarrely mercenary way.
“Throwing a milkshake at someone is rude at worst,” Ford asserts. “It may also qualify as assault in some jurisdictions, especially in the United States.” That second sentence contradicts the first. It is assault “at worst.”
Ford’s op-ed, entitled “Why Milkshaking Works,” has a tagline: “The far right fears nothing more than public humiliation.”
Really? Look, no one wants the inconvenience of these stupid attacks, but it is the unhingedness of the left that shines through, here — a threatening, punching, shouting-down, spilling-upon movement that I suspect mainly grows the ranks of the anti-left.*
The New Republic has long been a progressive rag: the “new” in the title referred to the magazine’s support for progressivism.
Fitting, then, to see it cheer on, this week, the idiotic, unkind extremism of current progressive culture.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Of course, to some on the left all non-leftists are “far right.” This is called the phenomenon of “the left pole.”
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Nothing in the world is better suited to laziness than orthodoxy. If you gag your mouth, stop up your ears and put a blinder over your eyes, you can sleep peacefully.
Jacob Burckhardt was a teacher and reserved, cautious mentor to Friedrich Nietzsche.
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.
Hear that?
It’s the faint sound made by an incredibly perfunctory effort to get to the bottom of the yearbook scandal that has cast, shall we say, a blackface shadow over Virginia Governor Ralph Northam.
Back in February, news broke that the governor’s personal page in the 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) yearbook contained a photograph of one person in blackface next to another wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hood.
“That photo and the racist and offensive attitudes it represents does not reflect that person I am today. . . .” Gov. Northam offered. “I am deeply sorry. I cannot change the decisions I made, nor can I undo the harm my behavior caused then or today.”
The next day, Northam recanted, claiming that neither the painted nor hooded head was his, and bafflement as to how the photo got onto his page.
The media hasn’t been digging into the story, but the McGuireWoods law firm was hired by EVMS to “independently” investigate.* Yesterday, the firm released a 55-page report that couldn’t say one way or the other about the who or the how of his yearbook page photo — while acknowledging that “one witness has reported to us that he recalls reviewing the Governor’s personal yearbook page with the Governor in 1984.”
Apparently, Northam’s staff had provided various options for responding to the “chaotic” media frenzy, including a “full denial” and “full acceptance.”
Talk about zeroing in on a plan.
“I always rely on my communications people,” Northam told investigators. “I don’t know why the statement went in the direction it did.”
There may be many courses of action, but only one truth. Which is what Gov. Northam should have chosen.
This Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The Portsmouth NAACP’s James Boyd expressed “zero trust” in the investigation, calling the law firm “attorneys for Ralph.”
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Cranks are a byproduct of free thought and a consequence of liberation from orthodoxies.
Michael Malice, The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics (2019), p. 5.
On May 23, 1788, South Carolina became the 8th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
Other May 23 events include: