On December 20, 1740, Arthur Lee — Revolutionary Era diplomat, spy, and Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress — was born. He practiced law in London from 1770 to 1776, where he wrote polemics against slavery and in defense of the American colonies’ resistance to the Townshend acts and other tyrannical British policies.
He was brother to Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee.
The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party
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On December 19, 1776, Tom Paine published one of a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled The American Crisis. Exactly one year later, George Washington’s Continental Army went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
On December 19, 1828, Vice President of the United States John C. Calhoun penned the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828, a key moment in what became known as the Nullification Crisis.
There exist many sneaky ways to get other people to do what you want, voluntarily — effectively blurring the line between legitimate persuasion and fraud.
When large, almost unavoidable private companies apply those techniques to targeted groups of voters, that blur might look something very much like election fraud.
Harvard psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein has been studying hidden online persuasion techniques. Interviewed by Tom Woods last Friday, the doctor explained several sub rosa persuasion techniques, especially the fascinating Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME), which he says has been replicated in studies by other researchers.
SEME, he argues, is a “genuinely new” way to manipulate masses of people — without them realizing it.
And it sports “one of the largest effects ever to be discovered in the behavioral sciences.” Google, it turns out, can influence voter and consumer behavior merely by ordering search results in specific ways. Going into his first study, he suspected he might discover a 2 percent influence on voter behavior. He got 48 percent, instead.
There is more: not only can Google do this, the behemoth does do this — Epstein has documented that Google did it in the last election.
Supporting, or to the benefit of, Hillary Clinton.
Understandably, Epstein scoffs at the “fake news” panic as something insubstantial in comparison. The potential impact of this online manipulation dwarfs the allegations of Russian influence.
I wonder: Did Mrs. Clinton know that her very special high-tech friends were pressing their very big thumbs onto the scale of democracy?
It seems a very old tech — the Electoral College — effectively counteracted the manipulation.
This time.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.
On December 18, 1777, the United States celebrated its first official Thanksgiving, marking the then-recent October victory by the Americans over General John Burgoyne [pictured, above] in the Battle of Saratoga.
It’s been quite the furor — over the FCC’s removal of the Net Neutrality regime that the Obama Administration FCC had placed upon the Internet. Is it really an expression of legitimate outrage over a grave policy . . . mis-step? Injustice? Faux pas?
Could it be the end of the Internet?!?!?!?
Maybe it is something else.
Click on over to Townhall for a conjecture. Then come back here for more . . . than . . . conjecture.
On December 17, 1777, France formally recognized the United States of America.
The 17th of December, 1819, was the day Simon Bolivar declared the independence of the Republic of Gran Colombia in Angostura.
Separating the wheat from the chaff in the tax reform bill.
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.