July 3 marks the 1947 birthday of Dave Barry, American columnist and author.
Five years later on the same date, Puerto Rico’s Constitution was approved by the Congress of the United States.
Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances. That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.
The Lee Resolution, [enacted] July 2, 1776
The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.
John Adams to his wife Abigail, July 3, 1776
Minimum wage hikes are very popular. But the debate over them is old — and odd. It has gotten more ideological in recent years. It used to be that nearly every economist admitted (if not proclaimed) that prohibiting work below a too-high-for-productivity wage rate would cause unemployment . . . somewhere. And yet, there have been a few much-publicized studies that “looked for consequences” of minimum wage law hikes and found no or scant unemployment effects.
Well, the big news last week was the Seattle Minimum Wage study, by a team of University of Washington economists. We briefly touched on it on Tuesday and expanded on the issue in a related story on Wednesday. Now, there’s more — click on over to Townhall.com.
Oh, Elizabeth!
For all the talk of the evils of the American system of health care, at least we promote freedom of choice, and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment [to Charlie Gard] said, in court, ‘if Charlie had been ill at any institution in the United States, they would have immediately begun the treatment.’ But in the U.K., a socialized medicine country, where individual needs come second to the preservation of the system, there’s less concern with parental rights. In the U.S., we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator. In the U.K., they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it is better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the National Health Service (the NHS) makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it? But that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine — the difference being, it’s not about you not being able to afford it, it is about the government not being able to afford it.
Ben Shapiro, on The Ben Shapiro Show, June 29, 2017, discussing the case of Charlie Gard, whom the government would not release to his parents to take him to America for an innovative treatment that might have saved his life — for which they had privately raised a small fortune.
On June 30, 1801, Frédéric Bastiat was born. Bastiat became one of the most important French Liberal School economists, following Condilliac and Jean-Baptiste Say, best known for his books Economic Harmonies and Economic Sophisms and two monographs, “The Seen and the Unseen,” and “The Law.” He was a brilliant stylist and perceptive critic of state-managed trade. His influence on conservative, libertarian and “limited-government thought” has been vast.
The emergency number of “999” was introduced in London, June 30, 1937, the first of its kind — arguably the best innovation in better government service in modern times.
Tolerance only extends as far as the Left wants it to extend, which is not to say ‘very far.’
Ben Shapiro, on The Ben Shapiro Show, June 26, 2017, summarizing an LGBT march organizers’ attitudes towards “the Juden,” upon the occasion of their disallowing gay and lesbian Jews from parading with a rainbow flag featuring a Star of David on it.
Iris Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), Ch. 9, p. 137.
The role of philosophy might be said to be to extend and deepen the self-awareness of mankind.
On June 29, 1914, the day after the shooting of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Austrian interrogations confirmed that the Serbian government was behind the assassination. Serbia denied involvement.
Thus continued the series of events that led to “The Great War,” now known as “World War I.”
“Is the majority morally supreme, or are there moral rights and moral laws, independent of both majority and minority, to which, if the world is to be restful and happy, majority and minority must alike bow?”