Author: Redactor

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Today

Rep. Craig

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.

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Thought

Jonah Goldberg

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).
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Thought

Margaret Atwood

War is what happens when language fails.

Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (1993), Ch. 6

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Today

Fourth to Ratify

On January 2, 1788, Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution.

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links

Townhall: Terrorists in Plain Sight

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.

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Thought

Brion McClanahan

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

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Today

Slave Trade

slave dance

On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was banned.

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video

Video: 2016 — best year ever?

Dan Hannan, Krist Novoselic, and an image provided by Gad Saad

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:

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Thought

Thomas Sowell

The old are not really smarter than the young, in terms of sheer brainpower. It is just that we have already made the kinds of mistakes that the young are about to make, and we have already suffered the consequences that the young are going to suffer if they disregard the record of the past.

Thomas Sowell, “Random Thoughts, Looking Back,” his final syndicated column upon retirement, National Review (December 27, 2016).

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Today

Bricked Windows

On December 31, 1695, Englanders received a new tax, a window tax. One of the main responses to this was the bricking up of many British windows.

This last day of the year in 1991 marked the complete cessation of all institutions of the Soviet Union.

New Year’s Eve 1992 saw the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This has been dubbed the “Velvet Divorce.”