The day the U.S. military draft ended:
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Author: Redactor
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Draft ends
On Jan. 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-Volunteer Force. However, the Selective Service System, the federal agency that would administer a military draft, continues to be funded and American males continue to be forced to register for the draft.
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Auschwitz liberated
On January 27, 1945, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp built by the Nazis.
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Alexander Cockburn
A “just war” is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
Jan Ellison is grateful for the low-wage jobs she had as a kid.
“The difference from the way my own children are being raised is that I was acutely aware of the financial burden of these [educational and other] pursuits. . . . I made money of my own from age 11 onward. I had a paper route. I cleaned houses and swimming pools. I took clerical temp jobs. . . . I can’t say that any of this was important work, but the act of doing it mattered.”
She learned to “work for the ticket” that would take her to better things.
That minimum wage laws make it harder to gain such experience is a problem raised not by Ellison but by a Cafe Hayek reader, Mike Wilson, who calls her memoir “as powerful a case against raising the minimum wage as I have encountered.” (Strictly speaking, against establishing or enforcing any wage-rate floor.)
Wilson’s sensible point is that when you’re just starting out in the work force, you must develop the habits and skills needed to do a job well and to then go beyond it. These include punctuality, mastering procedures, accepting corrections with grace, being civil, staying productive and careful when you’re tired, and more.
What you can bring immediately to a job is willingness to learn what’s necessary. But the higher your pay must be before you’ve made yourself worth that pay, the harder for employers to give you the chance to make yourself worth it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Kirkpatrick Sale
Everyone is shy — it is the inborn modesty that makes us able to live in harmony with other creatures and our fellows. Achievement comes not by denying shyness but, occasionally, by setting it aside and letting pride and perspiration come first.
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January 26, Russia nukes
On January 26, 1992, Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia would stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.
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Niels Bohr
“Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.”
—Niels Bohr
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Niels Bohr
There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.
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January 25, 1787
On January 25, 1787, Shays’ Rebellion experienced its largest confrontation, outside the Springfield Armory, with four of the rebels dead, and 20 wounded. The rebellion was a key moment in United States history. Daniel Shays and his followers objected to Massachussetts’ high taxes and rampant cronyism. The revolt, which was completely suppressed, led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution and drawing George Washington from his retirement.