Whether it does any good or not, a law enforced must hurt someone.
ISABEL PATERSON The God of the Machine (1943), p. 92.
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Isabel Paterson
Author: Redactor
On August 27, 1828, the South American states of Brazil and Argentina recognized the sovereignty of Uruguay in the Treaty of Montevideo.
The Democrats lost a presidential election where the biggest issue, shared by both contenders, was The Other Side Is Off-putting, Icky and Crazy.
Third Way, a think tank pushing for “moderate” policy, almost acknowledged this in a widely-shared memo: “For a party that spends billions of dollars trying to find the perfect language to connect to voters, Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying.”
So it’s not without reason that Third Way suggests Democrats drop the “therapy-speak,” for example — words like privilege, violence (“as in ‘environmental violence’”), othering, etc. Also to be nixed? “Seminar room language,” featuring jargon like subverting norms, systems of oppression, heuristic, etc.
Then there’s the far-out lefty nonsense, like chest-feeding and Latinx, along with the “criminal-excusing phraseology” — elaborate euphemisms like incarcerated people.
The upshot? “Communicating in authentic ways that welcome rather than drive voters away would be a good start.”
Meanwhile, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin seems to think his party failed by trying too hard to persuade.
“After six months as chair, I’ve learned that a lot of people, especially folks in DC, think they can change things by winning arguments,” Martin explained. “You know what winning the argument gets you? Maybe a nice round of applause and a few likes on Instagram. But the reality is, it doesn’t make life any better for any person. We have to stop settling on winning arguments with each other. We have to win elections.”
This is covered in an Epoch Times article that also shows the Democrat leader pressing the Too Virtuous to Win meme: “We cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore. We’ve gotta stand up and fight. We’re not gonna have a hand tied behind our backs anymore.”
This pose, that “our side” is too good and noble and rule-following is, of course, echoed among Republicans.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Ben Bankas
“That’s the one thing good about ‘woke’ is that it is fake. Right? The natives are like ‘land back’; and then the white people are like ‘land back’ — right? And the natives are like ‘so we’re gonna get it back?’ and then we’re like ‘not . . . not really. It’s kind of just a thing we say — we do t-shirts.’”
Ben Bankas, comedy bit placed on Facebook.
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A Flag, a Vote, a Scandal
On August 26, 1863, the Swedish-language liberal newspaper Helsingfors Dagblad proposed the current blue-and-white cross flag as the flag of Finland.
In 1920 on the 26th of August, the 19th amendment to the United States Constitution — giving women the same access to voting as men — was certified.
In 2014 on this day in August, The Jay Report into the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal was published.
“There is an easy way to end the gerrymandering wars,” a new video by The Recount asserts, “and no one is talking about it.”
Except them. And us. And others.
“We need more members of Congress,” the anonymous male narrator continues. “This might sound weird, especially since most of us don’t exactly love the ones we have now. But the reality here is simple: the U.S. has the worst ratio of citizens to elected representatives of every developed democracy in the world.”
It’s true. Congressional districts have been capped at 435 since 1929’s Permanent Apportionment Act. That year, the average congressperson represented 243,000 people. That’s too many. But today, the average congressperson represents 761,000 people.
“So uncap the house,” Jeff Mayhugh and A.D. Tippet argue in The Hill, “and rein in gerrymandering at least a bit.
“Our founders believed that smaller congressional districts would lead to a better relationship between citizens and their government,” the authors contend. “Gerrymandering undermines this idea by splitting neighbors from each other or packing them in districts with others from the same party to secure a seat for the political party in control.”
And then there’s this: “Smaller districts are more representative and also harder to manipulate.”
“With more seats, districts can be smaller and more representative of smaller enclaves and communities,” explains the video presentation, “and when that happens, the chances of Republicans winning seats in Massachusetts or Democrats winning seats in South Dakota goes up.”
Entitled “Why Expanding Congress Would End Gerrymandering,” The Recount’s video also correctly points out that creating a smaller representative-to-voter ratio by increasing the size of the House is “fully within Congress’s power” and “doesn’t take a constitutional amendment.”
But it would take a great deal of citizen . . . push.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Robert A. Heinlein
No government has yet been able to repeal natural laws, though they keep trying.
Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham’s Freehold (1964).
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Galileo’s Telescope
On August 25, 1609, Galileo Galilei first demonstrated his new invention, the telescope, to Venetian lawmakers. Magnifying distant images by about eight or nine times, it quickly became a profitable sideline for Galileo, who sold his telescopes to merchants who found them useful both at sea and as items of trade. He published his initial telescopic astronomical observations in March of the next year.
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Only One Thing Worse Than Global Warming
The current stretch of history dominated by Trump, war, a reverse in fortunes in the culture war, and AI, have the Greta Thunberg brigades champing at the bit to bring back “climate change” as the main driver of conversation and policy.
So gird up your loins and remember the real big picture in climate change: the regularity of the cycle of glaciation/deglaciation in our current era, the current interglacial of the Ice Age.
And of course there is always John Stossel to throw some cold water on global warming:
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Doris Lessing
It is our habit to dismiss the Old Testament altogether because Jehovah, or Jahve, does not think or behave like a social worker.
Doris Lessing, Shikasta (1979), p. x.