Responding to British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies, the first session of the Continental Congress convened at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, on September 5, 1774. Virginian Peyton Randolph (pictured) was appointed as the first president of Congress. John Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay and George Washington were among the delegates.
Two tribes —
On the left, we see both iconoclasm (razing of Confederate memorial statuary) and a fixation on surface meaning (defending the actions of antifa by fixating on its name: “it just means ‘anti-fascism’!).
On the right, rallying around the flag and MAGA hats has reached fever heat.
— Welcome to Ooga Booga Time.
In other words: tribalism.
Consider the upcoming movie about Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon. The makers of this movie have made a point of not depicting the raising of the Stars and Stripes above the dust of Mare Tranquillitatis.
Why? Because, says the Canadian actor who plays the part of astronaut Armstrong, the filmmakers wished to present “Armstrong’s success as a ‘human achievement’ rather than a patriotic American victory.”
But it was, factually, very much a Cold War victory.
What the filmmakers are doing is rewriting history to conform to their cosmopolitan, internationalist tribal mindset.*
Nothing new, of course — Hollywood has been a propaganda mill for a very long time. Once it aligned itself with Washington, D.C. Not any more.
Now, apparently, even depicting a central bit of traditional American symbolism in the history being filmed is so stylistically, ceremonially offensive that actors and directors and cinematographers avert . . . our eyes.
“One thing is needful,” philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. “To add style to one’s character.” Maybe. But when it comes to politics what we need — in Hollywood and Washington and Anytown, USA — is less attention to symbolism. To style.
And more on substance. And truth.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* And, perhaps, to appease the propaganda-minded censors of Chinese government. That’s Ben Shapiro’s take.
Odoacer, a German “barbarian,” ousted Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, thus ending that empire on September 4, 476.
One thing is needful: to give style to one’s character — a great and rare art! He exercises it who surveys all that his nature presents in strength and weakness and then moulds it to an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason, and even the weaknesses delight the eye.
“…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”
–Thomas Jefferson, 1801
On September 3, 1914, Dixy Lee Ray was born. Her stint as governor of the State of Washington was a controversial one, as she economized in startling ways, and proved largely unsympathetic to environmentalist politics. Indeed, she later wrote Trashing the Planet, which took on trendy “solutions” to environmental problems, based in no small part on her own experience and perspective as a scientist. She was an early critic of the developing “global warming” pseudo-“consensus.”
Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter — with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
Still one thing more, fellow citizens — a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration.
Guess what drug enforcement officers found: a hole.
Tunnel on over to Townhall.com and read all about it.
So, what’s with the title? Well, there is this old folk/camp song…
https://youtu.be/cwTY_08TKu0
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September 2 marks the 1839 birth of American economist and reformer Henry George. George is most famous for his 1879 treatise, Progress and Poverty, but made many other contributions, including advocacy of the secret ballot and his able economic policy polemic Protection or Free Trade (1886).
PragerU makes interesting videos. But they bother some folk enough that “something must be done!”
Interesing recent PragerU vids include:
And here is the video that offended Facebook’s gatekeepers. Does it offend you?
Do you agree with some, or all, or none of it?
Note: disagreement is not offense, and taking offense is not the same thing as being harmed. And even “harm” may not be the proper standard for deciding matters of freedom. But that is an old debate to be discussed some other time.