Today, every president is the target of criticism and mockery. It is inconceivable that even the most caustic critic would be imprisoned for his or her words.
Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate; A Biography of the First Amendment (New York: Basic Books, 2007)
On Jan. 4, 1642, King Charles I of England sent soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, beginning England’s slide into civil war.
On Jan. 4, 1649, the English “Rump Parliament,” having purged those members willing to restore Charles I to the throne, voted to put Charles I on trial for high treason. Before the month was over, he was executed.
On January 3, 1933, Minnie D. Craig became the first woman elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first female to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.
On the same date in 1977, Apple Computer was incorporated.
January 3rd birthdays include that of Cicero (106 BC), Roman philosopher and theorist of republicanism, and J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 AD), English philologist and author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Both were deeply concerned about the problem of absolute power.
Yes, the U.N. does some good things. But the assumption that, if the United Nations didn’t exist, those good things wouldn’t get done is ridiculous. It’s like saying that if government didn’t pick up your garbage, garbage would never get collected. Meanwhile, the U.N. does all manner of terrible things, that wouldn’t be done if it didn’t exist.
Jonah Goldberg, “The Goldberg File: The U. N. vs. Israel,” December 30, 2016 (National Review newsletter)
War is what happens when language fails.
Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (1993), Ch. 6
On January 2, 1788, Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution.
Should we “err on the side of security”?
We shouldn’t err at all. That gets us nowhere. And unthinkingly sticking to failed notions of security is not helping avoid mistakes.
Click on over to Townhall. Then back here for more intel.
Purpose is what separates success from failure. Those with a guiding purpose, however small, can make a difference in the lives of others.
That is why I always suggest think locally and act locally. You can change the world, even if it is just your own. At the end of the day — or year — that is really all that matters.
Brion McClanahan, email newsletter for The Brion McClanahan Show, December 30, 2016
On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was banned.
Lots of people are saying that 2016 was “the worst.” Dan Hannan disagrees:
Krist Novoselic, my colleague at FairVote.org, here gives a little talk about how we can change our democratic processes for the better. “We’re getting there,” he says, about the organization’s substantial election reform — a non-partisan variety of reform that, he says, will benefit all Americans. For some reason not many people have seen this video:
But are things really all that good? A lot of folks will say that the President-elect is the most dangerous trending topic. But Professor Gad Saad suggests, in this entry of The Saad Truth, that the worst trend is the victimology cult: