On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the ceremonial dedication of the military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, appropriating an old phraseology for republican government — “of the people, by the people, for the people” — and giving it its most memorable usage.
On the same date in 1955, National Review published its first issue.
On November 18, 1307, William Tell shot a crossbow bolt to pierce an apple, toppling it off his son’s head. He was forced to do this by the local Austrian authority, whose hat hung on a pole in the Altdorf town square Tell had refused to bow to when entering the village. Tell endures as a Swiss folk hero, and provides the subject of a famous opera by Rossini — the music of which is associated with, in many ears, Bugs Bunny and the Lone Ranger.
In 1926, George Bernard Shaw formally refused to accept the money for his Nobel Prize for Literature, saying, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”
“Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance.”
Thomas Jefferson, from his Argument in the Case of Howell vs. Netherland (April 1770)
“Always drink upstream from the herd.”
Will Rogers, in The Friars Club Bible of Jokes, Pokes, Roasts, and Toasts (2001), by Nina Colman, p. 316
“Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.”
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-83)
There is more to the Jon Woods story than previously essayed here on Common Sense. So click over to Townhall and learn. Some of it will be familiar, but the new information is interesting too.
Oh, and some background reading:
Wicked Mr. Woods is Out
Saving Term Limits
A Thoroughly Unethical Politician
On November 15, 1777, the Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation — after 16 months of deliberation.
“As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. Never think of taking a book with you.”
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr (August 19, 1785)
A moment in the fight against murderous tyranny and the forces of inhumane ideology:
On November 14, 1918, Czechoslovakia became a republic. Born on the same date in 1947, American writer P. J. O’Rourke.