[H]ow impossible is democracy save when the sphere of government is very limited.
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Author: Redactor
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December 17, Simon Bolivar, France recog
On December 17, 1777, France formally recognized the United States of America. The 17th of December, 1819, was the day Simon Bolivar declared the independence of the Republic of Gran Colombia in Angostura.
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December 16, Convention Parliament
On December 16, 1689, the Convention Parliament began, not only transferring power from one king to another, but establishing procedures and rights into the British Constitution, both of which were copied in the United States of America a century later, with the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from (disliked) speech. One contradicts the other.
Not that legal strictures against “offensive” speech would be consistently enforced even if the First Amendment were formally rescinded. In practice, whoever had the most political pull would be issuing the shut-up edicts. Although victims might well be offended by the uttering of those edicts, censors would be undeterred by the contradiction.
These thoughts are occasioned by Greg Lukianoff’s new book Freedom from Speech, and the review of same by Allen Mendenhall at Liberty. Lukianoff heads the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which fights the good fight for civil rights on campus. His book, says Mendenhall, is “a vigorous and cogent refutation of the increasingly popular notion that people have a right not to be offended.”
Lukianoff agrees that hypersensitivity to controversial speech in private institutions, too often punished by private sanctions that are arbitrary and unjust, does not per se violate anyone’s First Amendment rights. It nonetheless undermines the cultural tolerance needed for open discussion. “Only through the rigorous filtering mechanisms of longstanding deliberation and civil confrontation can good ideas be sorted from the bad. Only by maintaining disagreement at a rhetorical and discursive level can we facilitate tolerance and understanding and prevent the imposition of ideas by brute force.”
That is to say, cultural values and political values are not two isolated realms. One influences the other.
Who can disagree? I wouldn’t dare.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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J. H. Levy
Cowper’s Mahometans ate up the hog while denouncing it as an unclean thing, by judging each piece — as the phrase of the empirical Socialist goes — ‘on its merits.’ So you are being made to swallow Socialism bit by bit.
“In war,” the Greek dramatist Aeschylus told us, “truth is the first casualty.”
This came to mind when Secretary of State John Kerry testified in the Senate last week.
The new Iraq War has been pitched exhaustively to the American people as “only air strikes” and “absolutely no boots on the ground” — even as the Obama Administration continues to send additional U.S. military advisors to place their boots on Iraqi sand (and, at least once thus far, to engage ISIS directly via Apache attack helicopters hovering above Iraqi ground.)
Kerry again assured senators that the president “has been crystal clear that his policy is that U.S. military forces will not be deployed to conduct ground combat operations against ISIL.”
Strangely, however, the Secretary most adamantly urged Senators not to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that would restrict President O from doing precisely what he has so often and emphatically pledged not to do: put combat boots on the ground in Iraq.
The fact that the Obama Administration has foreclosed any possibility of putting US troops on the ground to fight, according to Sec. Kerry, “doesn’t mean that we should preemptively bind the hands of the commander in chief or our commanders in the field in responding to scenarios and contingencies that are impossible to foresee.”
Impossible to foresee? Yeah, right. The “no boots” promise provides all the stability of leaves in the wind.
Having any trust in this administration is impossible to foresee.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On December 15, 1791, the United States Bill of Rights became federal law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly. On December 15 in 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially became effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment (which had enabled the Volstead Act) that had prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol.
December 15 birthdays include that of Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad, 1861, first head of state of independent Finland, strongly anti-Communist.
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Thomas Jefferson
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
On December 14, 1819, Alabama became the 22nd state of these United States. On the same December date in 1918, Friedrich Karl von Hessen, a German prince elected by the Parliament of Finland to become King Väinö I, renounced the Finnish throne. In 1939, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland and starting the Winter War.
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Townhall: Stupid Is As Stupid Says
What we learn when an insider blurts out the impolitic truth. Click on over to Townhall. Then come back here for more reading, or discussion, below.
- Wikipedia: King v. Burwell
- Politico: “Will Jonathan Gruber Topple Obamacare?” by David Nather
- YouTube: “Lack of transparency is a huge advantage,” starring Gruber himself