Literature was not born the day when a boy crying ‘wolf, wolf’ came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying ‘wolf, wolf’ and there was no wolf behind him.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature (1980).
On December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, banning slavery in all states and territories. One-hundred-and-nineteen years later, to the day, in 1984, Paul Jacob (of ThisIsCommonSense.com, LibertyiFund.org, and the Citizens in Charge Foundation) was arrested by the FBI for his refusal to register with Selective Service System (the draft people). The Government was probably not attempting to make a commemorative point about involuntary servitude.
In 1917 on this date, Finland declared independence from Russia.
Vladimir Nabokov completed his controversial novel Lolita on the Sixth of December in 1953, and would soon find himself embroiled in censorship and related publishing difficulties, though with no trouble in the United States when it was eventually published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1958.
Washington was worthy of honor because the last thing he had done with power was to resign it. Others grasped it, even abroad. George III said his retirement from the presidency, coupled with his resignation as Commander in Chief fourteen years earlier, “placed him in a light the most distinguished of any man living,” and that he was “the greatest character of the age.”
On December 5, 1933, nationwide alcohol Prohibition in the United States ended after Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75 percent of states needed to enact the amendment that overturned the 18th.
On December 4, 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in New York City, General George Washington formally bade his officers farewell.
A leader is best when people barely know that he exists,
not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
worst when they despise him.
Fail to honor people,
They fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, who talks little,
when his work is done, his aims fulfilled,
they will all say,
‘We did this ourselves.’
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 17.
How not to get better results in school. Get “schooled” at Townhall — and come back here for more.
On December 3, 1989, the leaders of the two world superpowers, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, declared an end to the Cold War, at a summit in Malta. A little over two years later not only had the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union was itself dissolved.
The truth is a terrible thing, but not compared to falsehood.
This out-take from a formal panel debate contains some good stuff, and helps give a basic set of perspectives in current ideological argumentation: