Author: Redactor

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video

Prager Universe

The Prager University’s videos are many and varied. Have you seen them? Here are three examples. The first is from Antonia Okafor, who supports the right to bear arms:

And here is a more recent video, about “your right to health care”:

Prager U is the project of conservative columnist and author Dennis Prager. He does a regular “fireside chat” — here is his latest, defending something called “nationalism”:

These videos seem thoughtful. Even when you disagree, it is hard not to like Dennis Prager and his “University” of videos. They spur thought.

Categories
Today

Cry of Independence

On November 10, 1821, the First Cry of Independence in the small, interior town of Villa de los Santos, occurred in Panama. The November 10 date has since become Panama’s “Cry of Independence Day” in the country. November is a month of independence celebrations in Panama, but the November 10 celebration marks the first signs of the struggle for separation from Spain.

Categories
Thought

John Bright

The moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may not come at once, it may not come in our lifetime; but, rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says: ‘The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite, Nor yet doth linger.’

John Bright, from a speech in Birmingham (October 29, 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 275.

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture

Normal & Not

Tucker Carlson

“Most people are not lunatics,” Tucker Carlson reminded viewers last night on his Fox News program, adding that “normal people don’t like this.”

By “this,” the conservative television host meant what can only be described as an attack on his home by Smash Racism DC, an Antifa-like group comprised of people who are not normal.

Carlson wasn’t home Wednesday night, nor were his four young children, thank goodness, but his poor wife was. After hearing shouting and a man throwing himself into their front door so hard that he cracked it, she locked herself in a pantry and called 911.

“But it wasn’t a home invasion,” The Washington Post reported. “It was a protest.”

“What are they protesting?” asked Mr. Carlson. “They’re not trying to change my mind. They’re trying to threaten my family to get me to stop talking.”

The Carlson’s home and cars were vandalized by the mob of about 20 hoodlums. There were also chants of “Racist scumbag, leave town!” and “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!”

“Mail bomb,” one man shouted. And, of course, they doxxed Tucker Carlson by publishing his home address for the possible benefit of the next James Hodgkinson or any mail-bomber.

Instead of focusing on the political divide or the fear of further violence, a vacationing Tucker Carlson called in to his show last night to express gratitude . . . for an outpouring of concern, support, solidarity from across the political and media spectrum, expressing that it has “actually been really nice and affirming.”

Enough normal goodness remains in America, spread throughout the political spectrum, to unite us . . . at least against such behavior.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
Today

Close Call

On November 9, 1979, NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland, detected an apparent massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert was cancelled.

Continue reading “Close Call”
Categories
Thought

Wendy McElroy

Freedom means self-fulfillment. It also means putting up with others’ irritating pursuit of the same. It means being confronted with disturbing images and ideas.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies term limits

Electing a Better Way

domino, power, election, term limits, initiatives

For the seventh time in the last 22 years, the Metro Nashville Council put a measure on the ballot to weaken or abolish their own term limits. And for the seventh time voters said no. 

Term limits were under attack elsewhere in Tennessee — along with Ranked Choice Voting. The Memphis City Council foisted three dubiously worded ballot questions on voters. The measure to weaken the council’s limits, neglected to explain that to voters. The other two misleading measures sought to repeal or block Ranked Choice Voting from going to effect.

Voters put down all three. 

Speaking of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), after several squeaker U.S. Senate races, perhaps Republicans and Democrats will reconsider the reform. 

The Arizona race is still too close to call. Republican Martha McSally leads with 49.3 percent of the vote against Democrat Kyrsten Sinema with 48.4 percent. But Angela Green, the Green Party candidate, took 2.2 percent of the vote. Sinema used to be a Green Party activist, so it’s not unreasonable to think those folks would have preferred her to the Republican.

In Montana, incumbent Democrat Jon Tester has won. He garnered 49.6 percent of the vote, while Republican challenger Matt Rosendale received 47.5 percent and Libertarian Rick Breckenridge racked up 2.9 percent, more than the margin of difference. 

Last week, the Libertarian seemingly endorsed Rosendale. “I am here today to support Matt and his candidacy,” Breckenridge told reporters. “And endorse him in his continuing effort to be the front man in the cause of liberty.”

Using RCV, voters can rank their choices and, were their first choice eliminated, their votes would go to their second choice until some candidate achieves an actual majority.

Thus ending “spoilers” — and giving voters more say-so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
Thought

Averroës

“Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.”

Categories
Today

JFK

Montana was admitted into the United States federal union as the 41st state on November 8, 1889. On the same date in 1960, John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the 20th century, becoming the 35th president of the United States.

Categories
ideological culture individual achievement local leaders national politics & policies term limits

THRO

Jack Gargan

What can one person do?

I wish Jack Gargan were here to answer that question — I can almost hear his characteristic chuckle, see the glint in his Irish eyes, in preparation. But sadly, Jack passed away late Sunday night or early Monday morning in Thailand, where he had retired. He was 88 years of age.

This loss, coming on the cusp of yesterday’s election, transported me back 28 years ago — to the 1990 election, when the anti-incumbency, pro-term limits movement was in its infancy.

I had worked all year in Illinois on my first-ever ballot initiative campaign, the Tax Accountability Amendment. Though polls showed our issue at 75 percent support, the Illinois supreme court tossed it off the ballot. I was pretty bummed.

That’s when I saw a full-page newspaper advertisement with a picture of a regular-looking fellow next to a big, bold headline (borrowed from the 1976 movie, Network): “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.”

The ad took politicians in Congress to task for “arrogantly [voting] themselves the biggest pay raise in history,” having “abetted” the Savings & Loan crisis, and turning the United States into “the world’s biggest debtor nation.”

Citizen Gargan pulled $50,000 out of retirement funds to purchase those first advertisements.

And my nerve wasn’t the only one touched. Hundreds of thousands of Americans contributed to allow his all-volunteer organization — Throw the Hypocritical Rascals Out (THRO) — to run, as Wikipedia records it, “633 full-page newspaper advertisements in nearly every major newspaper in the nation.”

In addition to earning the title “the father of the term limits movement,” Jack Gargan also served as the driving force, Richard Winger’s Ballot Access News notes, in getting Ross Perot to run for president in 1992.

What one person can do!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Jack Gargan

 

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