So there is the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination Senate hearings. The big news is about the charges of sexual assault. Of course. And it is not just about the Christine Blasey Ford accusation: there are even more bizarre charges against the judge.
But the biggest story probably should be not the circus of accusations and defenses about apparently unverifiable events long ago, but, instead, about the judicial philosophy of the nominee himself:
On September 29, 1789, the first Congress of the United States under the new Constitution adjourned.
On the same date in 1881, economist Ludwig von Mises was born in Lemberg, Galicia, of the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Lviv, Ukraine).
Live as on a mountain. . . . Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, X, 15.
In Hawaii, those who would compel others to promote abortion have suffered a well-deserved setback.
A U.S. District Court tossed a law requiring pregnancy centers to post ads for abortion clinics. Among the centers that would have been affected was one run by a church opposed to abortion. Of course, whether we’re religious or non-religious, we have the same rights.
The president of National Institute of Family & Life Advocates (NIFLA), Thomas Glessner, hails the decision as a “major victory for free speech and freedom of religion.” For its reasoning, the district court relied on a Supreme Court decision, NIFLA v. Becerra.
“In NIFLA v. Becerra, the Supreme Court affirmed that we don’t force people to say things they don’t believe,” says Kevin Theriot, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom who argued that case before the Supreme Court. Thus, “the district court was correct to permanently halt Hawaii’s enforcement of Act 200’s compelled speech requirement.”
You shouldn’t be forced in any way to abet any conduct that you regard as morally wrong — not if the rest of us respect your rights as a moral agent. And it is worth remembering that a lot of people have moral qualms about all sorts of issues, and that many of the people running Hawaii’s non-church-sponsored centers doubtless also oppose abortion.
Obvious? To you and me, maybe. But some people disagree. They appear eager to compel others to join their various causes.
The noble cause of leaving other people alone isn’t on the list.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On September 28, 2008, SpaceX launched the Falcon 1, the first private spacecraft to go into orbit around planet Earth.
For the true author of the subjugation of a people is not so much the immediate agent, as the power which permits it having the means to prevent it.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I, 69.
Lancaster, Pennsylvania — home to James Buchanan, Jr., the nation’s 15th president, and to congressman, abolitionist and “Radical Republican” Thaddeus Stevens — served, during the American Revolution, as the capital of the United States for one day, on September 27, 1777.
This occurred after the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia, which had been captured by the British. The revolutionary government then moved still further away, to York.
We can get some idea of a whole from a part, but never knowledge or exact opinion. Special histories therefore contribute very little to the knowledge of the whole and conviction of its truth. It is only indeed by study of the interconnexion of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history.
All things are subject to decay and change.
Polybius, The Histories, trans. James Hampton (1762), Vol. II, pp. 177-178.
Good Google’s evil twin, Bad Google, is at it again.
In addition to doing bad things to advance its political agenda, Google is willing to work with bad governments do bad things.
For example, the authoritarian Chinese government.
Google is working on a mobile version of its search engine, code-named Dragonfly, which would censor search results the way the Chinese government wants. The company is doing so even though it shut down its Chinese-mainland search engine back in 2010 because it “could no longer continue censoring our results” in China. At the time, I praised Google for moving in the right direction.
Now it’s regressing.
And more than regressing. The Intercept reports that Dragonfly goes beyond censorship. How? By linking a user’s search results to his phone number. Critics note that this would abet human rights violations, since users could easily be detained and even jailed for searching for the “wrong” terms.
At least five Google employees have resigned in protest. One, Jack Poulson, a research scientist, says that he regards “our intent to capitulate to censorship and surveillance demands in exchange for access to the Chinese market as a forfeiture of our values and governmental negotiating position across the globe.”
Google no longer promotes what used to be its motto and guide: “Don’t be evil.”
To be sure, that motto did not put a very positive spin on the company’s moral stance. “Always be good” might be better. But I agree with both.
Be good, not evil.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
In the constitution of that rational animal I see no virtue which is opposed to justice, but I see a virtue which is opposed to love of pleasure, and that is temperance.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, VIII, 39.