Category: general freedom

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crime and punishment general freedom international affairs moral hazard

Thank Omicron? Or Hypocrisy?

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, covid, masks, mandates

It was not immediately clear what had changed regarding “the science,” when, midweek, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson lifted the Queen’s government’s mask mandates and other coronavirus restrictions.

The case for and against mask efficacy has been about the same for a very long time. There’s no obvious statistical evidence for mask mandates working. And pre-2020 studies showed ambiguous results for preventing virus transmission by wearing masks — and certainly not for the cloth masks most people wear.

So what changed?

Well, Johnson cited the omicron variant. “Our scientists believe that the omicron wave has now peaked nationally,” he said, adding that hospital admissions had stabilized and that London admissions were falling. 

So he lifted mask requirements in schools, too.

This takes some pressure off him. The vast majority of Brits are tired of masks, especially on students.

Predictably, however, some school masters appear to be clinging to the cloth. 

Regardless, why the change?

Spokespersons for the beleaguered opposition party, Labour, argue it’s mostly political, since Boris was caught at two bigwig parties where no one was wearing masks. “Can the PM share the evidence,” asked one, “behind his decision and that he’s not just protecting his job?” 

And Johnson says that “the scientific evidence is there for everybody to consult” — but, face it, everything these politicians say is half-assessed and untrustworthy.

Still, at least the people of Britain will receive a little let-up from the oppressive “scientific” tyranny of their government.

Not all states to the west of the Atlantic can say the same.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom too much government

The Young and the Unmasked

your rulers, your child, masks, Covid

It wouldn’t surprise me if Tiffany McHugh, former director of the Foothills Christian Church Preschool in San Diego, wishes now that she had been running a preschool in a slack state like Florida.

Florida doesn’t penalize such malefaction.

It doesn’t even prohibit it. Yes, things have gotten pretty bad in states like Florida. They let the two-year-olds breathe: unthinkable! The policymakers in these states apparently labor under the presumption that the COVID-19 pandemic is not Bubonic Plague 2.0 and that, for kids, the risk of serious COVID-19 disease has always been very low.

Well, in California they take these risks seriously!!!!!!!

The Golden State’s Department of Social Services has shut down the preschool McHugh was directing and pulled her license. The problem? She couldn’t get the tykes to stay masked.

“There were a lot of children who were just too young to wear masks,” McHugh confesses,“they pull them off. It’s really difficult.”

This makes it sound as if she didn’t even try handcuffing the kids so that they could not remove their masks. Talk about dereliction of duty.

Other area preschools have not been similarly targeted, and so many suspect selective enforcement. But hold on. When you’re going after flouters of regulations, somebody has to be brought to book first. 

Rest assured, all other San Diego and California preschools will be outlawed momentarily.

McHugh’s school has appealed the decision to ban her forlife from working with children. The hearing will be held on February 11.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

A Sometimes Thing

Constitution, preamble, freedom, rights, revolution, government

One in three Americans claim that “violence against government can be justified,” The Washington Post warned last weekend. The Post-University of Maryland public opinion poll, done in anticipation of today’s one-year anniversary of the January 6th Capitol Riot, was heralded as “a window into the country’s psyche at a tumultuous period in American history.”

“The percentage of adults” so claiming “is up, from 23 percent in 2015 and 16 percent in 2010 in polls by CBS News and the New York Times.” 

And the results are more partisan, with 41 percent of independents and 40 percent of Republicans agreeing that violence can sometimes be justified, only 23 percent of Democrats concurring.

Here’s the precise question: Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?

“Never” is a very extreme term. How can anyone — much less the 62 percent majority in this poll — conclude such political violence could “never” be warranted?

Our country was born in a revolution which declared “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” And further contended, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”

Such “throwing off” (here and around the globe) has often necessitated a degree of violence. Why? Call it self-defense — as governments so often go on the offense, refusing to relinquish power when called to do so.

The 34 percent answering “Yes — sometimes” does not constitute a violent cadre, contra the “Oh, My” reactions from the media’s fainting couch set. The Yes-Sometimes Americans merely understand the nature of human rights. (And hypotheticals.)

Worry about those who answer “No — never.” What atrocities would they ever oppose?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism social media

Tom Paine Sues Facebook

Thomas Paine, truth, offense, censorship

The ghost of Thomas Paine is suing Instagram and Facebook.

Mr. Paine, the eloquent champion of the American Revolution who penned such zeitgeist-capturing volumes as Common Sense, The American Crisis, and The Rights of Man, is going to court to protest the indignity that these social-media forums recently inflicted upon his spirit by censoring his statement that “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

The statement comes from an op-ed Paine published in the April 24, 1776 issue of the Pennsylvania Journal: “Cato’s partizans may call me furious; I regard it not. There are men too, who, have not virtue enough to be angry, and that crime perhaps is Cato’s. He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

Mr. Paine seems to be saying that persons of craven mettle often eschew the challenge of being standard-bearers of truth, especially when controversial matters are involved. Articulating such views forthrightly tends to offend — somebody.

The particular mentalities of censorious Facebook flunkies and algorithms are new to Mr. Paine, of course. But he is ready to fight.

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” he declares when asked to assess his prospects, “yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. . . . [I]t would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

If that be hate speech, Mr. Paine seems to suggest, make the most of it.

This is Common Sense. Happy New Year! I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom

Against the Regime

NYC, vaccine, little boy, police

Recently, a tyke and his mommy were booted from a Big Apple Applebee’s because the little boy lacked a vaccine passport.

That is, the mother possessed no proof that her son had been vaccinated against the disease of the day.

Now, parents have every right to refrain from getting their kids injected — especially given the low risk that kids will become seriously ill from COVID-19 and the non-negligible risk of harm from vaccine side effects.

But such considerations didn’t prevent a gang of police — no students of Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor — from ordering the expulsion. (There’s video.)

Residents of New York City’s vaccination regime can at least move to another town. People elsewhere, in larger jurisdictions — Austria, Australia, England — face greater difficulties escaping pandemic tyranny. But, like us, they can protest and they can sue.

In England, a group called Big Brother Watch is challenging the COVID Pass Scheme imposed by the government of Boris Johnson. Their lengthy “pre-action letter” argues that no evidence exists that the passes will reduce the spread of the virus and that the scheme is “unnecessary and disproportionate.”

Amidst so much “information” under dispute, we know three things.

One, for all the suffering and death it has inflicted on the most vulnerable, the current pandemic is hardly the Black Death. It isn’t even the Spanish flu.

Two, being “vaccinated” against COVID-19 does not prevent one from becoming infected or from infecting others.

Three, shutting down society also inflicts suffering. Great suffering. As must shutting down whichever segments of society decline Draconian mandates.

Maybe the scourge of tyranny isn’t the best balm for the scourge of COVID-19.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense general freedom

Merry Christmas!

Christmas, 2021, Washington

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general freedom international affairs

Very Free?

Peng Shuai, China, freedom

“Why would I be monitored?” Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai queried a reporter last Sunday. “I’ve always been very free.”

Yet governments the world over do certainly spy on citizens, and nowhere more virulently than in China, or with less accountability. 

As for being “free,” or “very free,” that’s the real issue, the very reason those who love tennis along with all who love freedom — and life itself — have been so worried about Peng. 

She’s not free. Not even close. Nor are 1.4 billion others living under Chinazi rule. 

It’s a big problem.

To recap the story from last month: On November 2, Peng posted a statement on her official Weibo page, her country’s state-monitored-and-censored equivalent of Facebook* (which is banned there). According to The Washington Post, she “claimed that former vice minister Zhang Gaoli had pressured her into having sex with him.”

That’s a scandal — and possibly a crime.

Followed by another crime: Her post was removed. She was silenced. And then Grand Slam doubles tennis champion Peng Shuai was summarily erased from the Chinese Internet. 

Gone. Disappeared. Nary a trace.

As weeks passed with neither sight nor sound of Peng, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) started to raise the alarm, threatening to withdraw from their quite lucrative activities in China if her safety could not be guaranteed.

That’s when Chinese media clumsily hyped an email wherein Peng supposedly said she was peachy-keen. Then the International Olympic Committee, on the CCP’s payroll, held a staged video call with her without bothering to even inquire about her allegations. Followed by a second silly call.

Now the update: last weekend, Peng appeared in a supposedly impromptu interview, telling a pro-Beijing newspaper in Singapore, “I have never said or written that anyone has sexually assaulted me.” 

But more than her original allegation, which remains unproven and uninvestigated, it is the totalitarian treatment of this one professional tennis player post-allegation that has caught the world’s attention. Perhaps Peng’s plight is easier to get one’s head around than two million Uighurs in concentration camps or China’s organ harvesting exploits.

None of it will apparently lead to an Olympic boycott by the U.S.

Still, the WTA, to its enormous honor, has stuck to its guns, forfeiting millions in revenue by canceling all events in China and making clear that “these appearances [by Peng] do not alleviate or address the WTA’s significant concerns about her well-being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion.”

Because Peng Shuai is not very free. Or safe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Of course, Facebook is a U.S. Government-encouraged corporate censor. That’s terrible, as regularly noted on these pages, but not nearly as suffocating and brutal as the CCP’s system.

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folly general freedom nannyism national politics & policies

Faucists on the March

Fauci, fascist, authoritarian, Covid

While many experts, including Southwest Airline’s CEO, think that the air filtration systems on jetliners are so good that wearing protective face coverings (“masks”) is pointless, our Doctor Anthony Fauci will have none of it.

When the National Institutes of Health head honcho and Big Pharma Pusher No. 1 was asked about whether we can ditch masks on airplanes, he responded predictably: no. “I think when you’re dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step. . . .” He says that even with first-rate filtration systems, “masks are a prudent thing to do, and we should be doing it.”

This was on ABC News’s This Week on Sunday. 

“As Christmas approaches, COVID-19 again threatens to upend American life, driving the spread, Omicron,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl narrated. “At least 43 states now have confirmed cases of the latest and by far most contagious variant yet. On Saturday alone, New York state reported nearly 22,000 new COVID cases, breaking a single-day record set just the day before.” And then Karl mentioned total COVID deaths in the United States — but not the number of Omicron deaths. 

See how the propaganda is pitched? The breathless relaying of statistics, but nothing like a sense of the science.

Contra Fauci, these once-discouraged and now-forever-exalted masks are not nearly as effective as made out. And they have severe “unintended” effects.

I put marks around “unintended” because for some people in power, the psychological effects of mandatory masks in a situation of perpetual or seasonal alarm might be the whole point: the inducement of a mass delusional psychosis. How very fascist.

We can appreciate the name “Fauci” both by rhyme and reason: Faucism is medical fascism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies social media

Should I Sue?

Senator Amy Klobuchar, censorship

Well, why not? According to some politicians, I have a perfect right to. 

But, you ask, on what grounds?

Because of the emotional injury I suffer when I listen to these bozos.

Legislation being considered in Congress would permit social-media companies to be sued for causing physical or “severe emotional injury,” a provision of the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act.

This legislation would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act so as to make Internet service providers liable if they algorithmically recommend content that results in “severe emotional injury to any person.”

The text of the legislation is — you guessed it! — vague and murky. And would doubtless be applied with extreme selectivity if enacted.

Other bills being pondered would tackle things like “health misinformation.” Senator Amy Klobuchar declares that it is “our responsibility to take action.” 

Uh, what action?

The action of penalizing social media for inadequately censoring those with whom the senator disagrees.

Such rationalizations of assaults on freedom of speech are severely emotionally injurious to me.

Will I sue? Nah. I wouldn’t win. I doubt I would be one of the ones allowed to collect such bounties. Nor would any successfully passed legislation ever permit congressmen to be sued for their own psyche-pummeling lies, psy-ops, and blather.

Perhaps more importantly, it’s wrong to seek to penalize others merely for exercising freedom of speech, no matter how lousy or dispiriting that speech.

Lousy legislation, though — yes. If only we could sue for that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense free trade & free markets general freedom property rights responsibility

Farming Is Fundamental

garden, food, freedom

If you live in Maine, you may now grow your own food. The right to do so has been safeguarded in the state constitution.

If you have the right to life and to sustain your life, surely you have a right to farm. As we all know, though, governments regularly find excuses to interfere with all kinds of peaceful activities.

So this past November, Maine voters passed a constitutional amendment authored by Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham (whose energetic campaigns for freedom have previously caught Common Sense notice) and proposed by the legislature. 

Maine’s Right to Food Amendment makes clear that “All individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable . . . right to save and exchange seeds and the right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume . . . as long as an individual does not commit trespassing, theft, poaching or other abuses of private property rights public lands or natural resources in the harvesting, production or acquisition of food.” (So there’s no California-style de facto “right” to loot.)

Foes of the amendment worry that it will enable people to bypass regulations.

Let’s hope so. 

Don’t we want the new law to ban governments in Maine from banning agriculture for the sake of “esthetics,” protecting Big Milk, or any other rationalization for foiling farming on a person’s own property?

And for the idea to spread to the other states, where far too often the scales of justice don’t properly consider the citizen’s right to produce food against the bureaucrat’s regulations frustrating same. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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