Freedom is to be found only in the sphere in which government does not interfere. Liberty is always freedom from the government.
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Ludwig von Mises
Author: Redactor
principle: prin·ci·ple /ˈprinsəpəl / noun 1. a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.
This week Nancy Pelosi showed she would do almost anything to get back on top. Including . . . the right thing. Shocking! Click on over to Townhall. Come back here for more information.
- Nancy Pelosi agrees to House Speaker Term limits (SF Chronicle)
- Term Limits Group Reminds Nethercutt (Spokesman)
- Dennis Hastert (Wikipedia)
- Term Limits Talks Roil House Democrats (Roll Call)
- Republicans Seek Sweeping Changes in House’s Rules (New York Times, 1994)
- Term-limit hypocrites (Washington Post, 1995)
- A Victory for Congressional Reform (Heritage Foundation, 1995)
- House Turns Back Measures to Limit Congress (New York Times, 1995)
- Senators Move to Repeal Committee Term Limits (Cato Institute, 2002)
- House GOP lifts term limits on speaker’s job (CNN, 2003)
- US Term Limits Applauds Democrats (US Term Limits, 2007)
In a few days, this column will be archived here on This Is Common Sense.
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The Convention Parliament
On December 16, 1689, England’s Convention Parliament began, not only transferring power from one king to another, but establishing procedures and rights into the British Constitution, both of which were copied in the United States of America a century later, with the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
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It’s (not) a Gas: the “Yellow Jacket” Riots
While in America we are not immune to government-induced too-high prices for fuel, in France it is worse. The rioting there got a rise out of the now much-despised President Macron, this week. But is all the tumult over just gasoline prices? It has become much more.
And dangerous. But what should we expect? The French people have been treated very poorly by their government:
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Karl Jaspers
Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process…
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Rights, Wets, and Whites
On December 15, 1791, the United States Bill of Rights became federal law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.
On December 15 in 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially became effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that had, by enabling the Volstead Act, prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for any other than medical and industrial uses.
December 15 birthdays include that of Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad [pictured above], 1861, first Head of State of independent Finland, serving in this capacity first as leader of the Senate and then as Protector, or Regent. In 1930 he became Prime Minister, and in 1931 was elected President, leaving office in 1937.
During the Civil War of 1918, his anti-socialist refugee government, Valkoiset, or “Whites,” opposed the “Reds,” a Social Democrat Party faction, for control of the government as it transitioned from Russian rule as a Grand Duchy, to independent status.
He died in 1944.
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Hugo Grotius
A man cannot govern a nation if he cannot govern a city; he cannot govern a city if he cannot govern a family; he cannot govern a family unless he can govern himself; and he cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to reason.
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A King Resigned
On December 14, 1819, Alabama became the 22nd state of these United States.
On the same December date in 1918, Friedrich Karl von Hessen, a German prince elected by the Parliament of Finland to become King Väinö I, renounced the Finnish throne.
In 1939, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland and starting the Winter War.
Donald Trump’s “drain the Swamp” promise was good rhetoric, great politics — because nearly everybody knows that the federal government just cannot restrain, constrain, or re-train itself.
So it would have to take an outside force.
Along comes said Outside Force — the current president — yet the Swamp remains.
Unfortunately, too few of the president’s most ardent supporters see the deepest part of the Swamp.
That is, the Department of Defense.
“Less than a week after calling the Pentagon’s $716 billion budget ‘crazy’ and indicating that he wanted to trim it, President Donald Trump is reportedly proposing to push America’s military spending to greater heights,” writes Eric Boehm at Reason. “Trump told Mattis to submit a $750 billion budget request for next year — well in excess of the $733 billion level that had been previously planned.”
And he does this despite the fact that just recently this military establishment failed to give a competent accounting of its spending.
Sadly, poor accounting is rigged into the Department of Defense, as demonstrated in an important exposé last month.
“For decades, the DoD’s leaders and accountants have been perpetrating a gigantic, unconstitutional accounting fraud,” The Nation explains, “deliberately cooking the books to mislead the Congress and drive the DoD’s budgets ever higher, regardless of military necessity.”
Even the imperiled Social Security juggernaut is not run as badly as the Pentagon. We at least know where its funds go and have gone.*
It may be that a real leader — with substantive ideas, reliable information, and a sense of the enormity of governmental carelessness — will inspire Americans and challenge the Deep Swamp, er, State, before catastrophe.
Unfortunately, Trump is looking less and less like that drainer.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* One recipient of Social Security “contributions” has been, in fact, the Pentagon, since budget deficits have been at least partially covered by congressional borrowing from Social Security’s “surpluses.”
Photo credit: Puck, 1909
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The 1636 Militia
On December 13, 1636, the Massachusetts Bay Colony organized three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians.
The National Guard of the United States traces its heritage back to this event.