On March 13, 1862, the U.S. federal government forbade all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.
Author: Redactor
We like to think we have the facts on our side. When we are confused, or do not know what to do, we seek facts. The Fourth Estate says that it is ideally situated to find those facts for us, and disseminate them.
But, as we all know now, “Fake News” is a real problem. Sometimes untruths are deliberately spread. Other times it is the result of error. But, whether a factoid be true or not, it remains a “meme,” replicable in our many heads often regardless of truth value.
But if you wonder if you are paranoid for thinking that the media’s established fact-checkers are pointing at your head and shooting … memes … well, you aren’t paranoid enough: the government shoots too.
Click over to Townhall. Then come back here. For memes about memes about memes:
- “The Deep State Exposed,” yesterday’s video on this site
- An image from the Vault7 release
- Politifact on Rand Paul
- Daily Wire summary of fact-checking fails
- NBC gets in on the fake fact check farce
- Washington Examiner: Emily Jachinsky on a literal truth downgraded
- “Effrontery Propaganda” from this very site
- “The Revenge of the Gatekeepers,” more from the same familiar source
- “Fact Checking for Partisan Fun and Profit,” from Yours Truly (again!)
Categories
Two Criminals
On March 12, 2009, financier Bernard Madoff pled guilty to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in U. S. history. One year earlier to the day, in the same city, New York, the state’s governor, Eliot Spitzer, resigned a mere two days after reports had surfaced that he was listed as a client in a high-end escort/call-girl prostitution ring. The cause of freedom is advanced with every criminal nabbed and every hypocritical illiberal politician disgraced.
Categories
Mary Wollstonecraft
Surely there can be but one rule of right, if morality has an eternal foundation, and whoever sacrifices virtue, strictly so called, to present convenience, or whose duty is to act in such a manner, lives only for the passing day, and cannot be an accountable creature.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindicaton of the Rights of Woman (1792).
Categories
The Deep State Exposed
The latest WikiLeaks exposure has now presented us with a fuller picture of our government than we had before. The trendy term for this, right now, is “the Deep State.” But we are talking, here, merely about the secret wing of the administrative state that has been building up for over a century, conceived by Progressives (scornful of the Constitution) and fed by Republicans and Democrats.
Here is a fairly thorough overview of what is in #Vault7 by a famous British YouTuber:
https://youtu.be/D6BdaoyJe-Q
Categories
Herbert Spencer
Whoso remembers that, among quite simple phenomena, causes produce effects which are sometimes utterly at variance with anticipation, will see how frequently this must happen among complex phenomena. That a balloon is made to rise by the same force which makes a stone fall; that the melting of ice may be greatly retarded by wrapping the ice in a blanket; that the simplest way of setting potassium on fire is to throw it into the water; are truths which those who know only the outside aspect of things would regard as manifest falsehoods. And, if, when the factors are few and simple, the results may be so absolutely opposed to seeming probability, much more will they be often thus opposed when the factors are many and involved. The saying of the French respecting political events, that “it is always the unexpected which happens” — a saying which they have been abundantly re-illustrating of late — is one which legislators, and those who urge on schemes of legislation, should have ever in mind.
Herbert Spencer, “Specialized Administration,” The Fortnightly Review(December 1871).
Categories
Daily Courant
On March 11, 1702, The Daily Courant, England’s first national daily newspaper, was published for the first time. It was a one-sheet, concentrated on foreign news, sans commentary. The reverse side sported advertising. It was produced by Elizabeth Mallet (1672–1706), a printer and bookseller who lived, and published the paper, next to the Kings Arms tavern at Fleet Bridge in London.
Categories
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft, from Hints originally intended to have been placed in the second part of A Vindicaton of the Rights of Woman (1792).
I am more and more convinced, that poetry is the first effervescence of the imagination, and the forerunner of civilization.
Categories
The Mahatma
On March 10, 1922, Mahatma Gandhi was arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released nearly two years later for an appendicitis operation.
Categories
William Cobbett
March 9 marks the 1763 birthday of British pamphleteer and activist William Cobbett. Cobbett was known for his lifelong opposition to authority, and his later-in-life “radicalism,” which included his opposition to Britain’s protectionist Corn Laws, and his support for Catholic Emancipation. Cobbett died in 1835.
In 1776 on this date, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith first published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which became the first widely accepted landmark work in the field of economics. It was not the first general treatise on the subject, however; that designation almost certainly belongs to banker Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général, cited by Smith in his more famous book. It is also worth noting that Étienne Bonnot de Condillac’s systematic treatise, Le Commerce et le Gouvernement, also saw publication in 1776.
On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fought to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships. The Virginia was built on the remains of the USS Merrimack, and the battle is often referred to as between “the Monitor and the Merrimack.”