Category: general freedom

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Common Sense general freedom obituary

Waiting for the Day

freedom, Independence Forever! Liberty

Towards the end of their lives, former President John Adams asked former President Thomas Jefferson whether he would live his life over again. 

The third president answered in the affirmative: “I think with you, that it is a good world on the whole; that it has been framed on a principle of benevolence, and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us.”

Not everyone agrees, of course. Jefferson called these people “gloomy and hypochondriac minds,” who “always count that the worst will happen because it may happen.”

Jefferson has a challenge to those whom we today call “the black-pilled”: “How much pain have cost us the evils that have never happened!” Jefferson confessed to lacking hope sometimes, but not as often as the perpetually gloomy.

Those of us who follow the news often have occasion for gloom — or alarm. But on July Fourth it is appropriate to remember the council of these two leaders of Independence. 

In 1826, as Jefferson and Adams approached their inevitable demises, both struggled — and succeeded — in their final goals: to make it to Independence Day. 

On the Third, Jefferson inquired, more than once, about whether it was the Fourth yet, wrote Albert Jay Nock at the end of his Jefferson (1926), “and when told at last that it was, he appeared satisfied. He died painlessly at one o’clock in the afternoon, about five hours before his old friend and fellow, John Adams; it was the only time he took precedence of him, having been all his life ‘secondary to him in every situation,’ except this one.”

According to Adams family lore, when Adams died a few hours later, he said, “Jefferson survives.” 

Wrong, as a point of fact. But in spirit?

On Independence Day, we should ask ourselves what of the founding survives.

Unlike the actual lives of those who made our Independence, and, to paraphrase Tom Paine, we can start Independence anew. And as John Adams definitely said on his last day, “Independence forever!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

Chinese Individualism

individualism, collectivism

“You’re not the center of the story — at least not everywhere.”

That’s the tagline of a video featuring the late President Lee Kuan Yew, described as the “founding father of Singapore,” elsewhere affectionately referred to as LKY.

The social media account responsible runs under the moniker Office of the Director of Intelligence & Strategy, which sounds like a propaganda bureau. It’s an excerpt from a 25-year-old hour-long interview with Charlie Rose.

Entitled “Not Every Culture Believes Success Starts with One Person,” the clip goes on to say that LKY “shares his understanding of a key divide between the West and many Asian societies: Where the West centers the individual and leading your own path, many Asian systems prioritize the group — family, obligation, cohesion, survival together.”

The familial and communal aspects of traditional Chinese society are not in doubt. But LKY makes two crucial errors. 

“You believe in the individual as the creator of all things,” he says of Americans. 

That is not even close to how American individualism views the world. For starters, most Americans continue to believe in a capitalized Creator “of all things,” and it’s not the individual. Furthermore, even the most rugged individualist understands the role of families in raising children and communities in helping humans flourish.

American liberty, as imperfect and diluted as it is, can accommodate family-values traditions and communitarian folkways as well as free radicals. The point of individualism is not that The Individual creates success ex nihilo, but that government must make no exceptions for some individuals over others based on group membership.

Which is why Chinese-Americans do so well: they are helped by their family orientation as well as freedom. They do much better here than in China, but Chinese do even better in Singapore, which sports a lower tax burden. 

The kind of tax burden individualists prefer.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Excellence in Success

space, freedom, NASA, SpaceX, DEI, quota

The NASA Jet Propulsion Lab has “parted ways with” — I’m guessing fired, despite the glowing words that attended the parting — DEI officer Neela Rajendra.

The Free Beacon reports that NASA seems to have been nudged in this direction by a Beacon report that despite the anti-DEI policies of the new U.S. administration, the Jet Propulsion lab had tried to retain Rajendra by changing her title. She still had many of the same responsibilities, including managing “affinity groups” like the Black Excellence Strategic Team.

The propulsion lab is now replacing its DEI department with a new one called “Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success.” 

Even assuming that race and gender consciousness are now no more — probably not a safe assumption — we may wonder why such a department, solely devoted to “excellence and success,” is necessary.

If it is, how did the NASA of the 1960s, including Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, ever manage to reach and land on the moon? Surely this kind of accomplishment must have required pervasive excellence. Maybe, back then, commitment to excellence was one of the requirements for getting and keeping NASA jobs to begin with?

Among Rajendra’s own excellences: hostility to deadlines and criticism of SpaceX for being “fast-paced” and failing to promote DEI, as she complained in 2022. 

A few years later, it was a SpaceX capsule that enabled the rescue of NASA astronauts stranded on the International Space Station. 

Now that’s “team excellence”!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs media and media people

Europe, Land of the Free?

Europe, censorship, mind control, freedom, government

The Economist has declared Europe the Land of the Free.

One proof is that in Europe, no tech oligarchs are “spending their weekends feeding bits of the state ‘into the wood chipper.’”

This is an ill-considered allusion to the efforts of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to reduce the bloat and fraud in U.S. government spending. And the trillions in U.S. federal debt. Which are unsustainable. Because magic doesn’t work.

“Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice.” 

In Britain you can be arrested or jailed for praying, tweeting a wrong-thinking tweet, reading from the Bible, holding up street signs.

Nor is freedom of speech safe in Germany. To prove the continent’s theoretical and practical freedom of speech, The Economist piles up carefully unelucidated half-truths but declines to cite, for example, the conviction of German journalist David Bendels.

In February, Bendels, the editor in chief of Deutschland-Kurier, published a satirical post slamming a German minister, Nancy Faeser, for opposing freedom of speech. An obviously doctored photo showed Faeser with a sign saying “I hate freedom of speech.” Faeser, who loves freedom of speech, filed a criminal complaint after being alerted by German police, who also love freedom of speech.

Bendels has been fined 1,500 pounds, given a suspended prison sentence of seven months, and ordered to apologize. 

He is appealing the verdict, and others are fighting the law under which he was prosecuted.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense general freedom national politics & policies

President Veto Remembered

Grover Cleveland, veto, limited government

This week, here at Common Sense, we did not celebrate the birthday of Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837–1908), whom some of my friends regard as the last great president of these United States. It wasn’t even mentioned in Tuesday’s Today feature.

Is there any reason to devote a column to him? 

Sure:

  • He was the only president, prior to Trump, to serve two non-consecutive terms, designated as the 22nd and 24th president in the history books.
  • Like Trump, and like presidents Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, he was born in New York; like Van Buren and the Roosevelts, he had, before his presidency, served as governor of that state.
  • Also like Trump, he weathered a major sex scandal. Accused of fathering a child out of wedlock, he admitted to it. And still got elected.
  • Grover Cleveland also made history by being the first president to get married in the White House. He married his former ward — itself something of a scandal — in the Blue Room during his first administration.*

The main truth about Grover Cleveland, though, was that he was a great believer and practitioner of honesty in government, and was the last real limited government man in the office — though, like all presidents, he was hardly consistent on this issue. He supported sound money, and opposed (but could not stop) the imperialist move of annexing Hawaii. He could be called President Veto, for his 584 vetoes held the record until the first four-term president stretched out enough years in office to beat it. 

He also knew his place: “Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters.”

He was the only Democrat President in the half-century following the Civil War, when the Republican Party dominated, and was — consequently — super-corrupt.

Today we have a Democrat-turned-Republican fighting an ultra-corrupt Democrat-dominated federal government. 

Donald Trump could learn a lot from Grover.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* This made his bride, Frances Folsom, the youngest First Lady in history — at the age of 21. There was a 27-year difference between them.

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Greatest Man in the World

George Washington, great man, freedom

Today, while we prepare our family’s feast or exchange our fastidiously purchased Presidents’ Day gifts or even find ourselves kissing under the cherry tree, let us take just a moment to consider the history of this momentous day.

When I was a kid, we celebrated Washington’s Birthday on February 22nd, each year. That officially recognized day honored George Washington, first president and the ‘father of our country,’ began in the 1880s (even before I was born). Then in 1968, someone discovered that Abraham Lincoln also had a February birthday and was apparently feeling slighted. 

So, what could we do but get the two big guys together for a mega national holiday? Lincoln was a pretty consequential president, after all.

But the holiday came to be known as Presidents’ Day . . . and as the Encyclopedia Brittanica notes, “is sometimes understood as a celebration of the birthdays and lives of all U.S. presidents.”

Is this some sort of “everyone gets a trophy” thing?

No. “Washington deserves a day to himself,” wrote David Boaz years ago, “because he did something no other person did: He led the war that created the nation and established the precedents that made it a republic.”

Boaz also wrote of King George III, who, when told that Washington would not cling to power but return to his farm after winning the Revolutionary War, mocked the general. “If he does that he will be the greatest man in the world.”

But “no joke” — as a recent president was fond of saying — Washington did exactly that, handing back his commission as commander of the army. 

Just as years later he stepped down after two terms as president, setting the tradition that ultimately led to the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment: presidential term limits.

So, Happy Washington’s Birthday!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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American History Month

Thomas Sowell, Morgan Freeman, race, America

When we think of Black History Month, whom do we tend to think of?

One person I think of is Morgan Freeman, who “detests” this commemoration, “the mere idea of it. . . . You are going to celebrate ‘my’ history?! The whole idea makes my teeth itch. . . . My history is American history.”

He also dislikes the term “African-American,” calling it a misnomer.

“Most black people in this part of the world are mongrels. And you say Africa as if it’s a country when it’s a continent, like Europe.”*Freeman regards his skin color as only one attribute, and not one that goes very far to distinguish him as an individual.

What events and which achievers might we ponder in addition to Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Martin Luther King, other champions of civil rights, great inventors, scientists, educators, business, artists, even actors like Freeman and Denzel Washington? The list of celebration-worthy black Americans is endless.

In a proclamation about Black History Month, the new White House mentions a name that doesn’t always make the list: scholar Thomas Sowell.

Highlighting Sowell may make the teeth of many progressives itch, for he advances unconventional perspectives and reasoning about race and the real impact of racism on economic as well as other features of American life and our global civilization. He has done this for decades, especially in books featuring provocative titles, including Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? (1984), The Vision of the Anointed (1995), Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005), and Discriminations and Disparities (2018), often criticizing policies such as “affirmative action.”

Black history is American history — and vice versa — every month of the year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Of course, in this part of the world, most of us are “mongrels.”

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

A Whistleblower’s Ordeal

Eithan Haim can finally start to put it behind him, the nightmare that began after he helped to expose the fact that a hospital was lying about no longer performing sex-change surgeries on minors.

Reacting to bad publicity about these operations, in March 2022, the Texas Children’s hospital declared that they would no longer perform them. But Haim was among the residents there who quickly learned that hospital was simply not telling the truth and continued to inject puberty blockers into kids as young as eleven.

That the destructive “gender-affirming care” on minors was continuing was first reported by Christopher Rufo at City Journal, relying on documents provided by Haim. These were redacted medical records of the supposedly discontinued “care.” The names of the victims were concealed.

One result of the story was a state ban against performing such operations on minors.

Another was federal prosecution of Haim for allegedly violating the Health Insurance and Accountability Act. The Department of Justice’s case was weak. The DOJ had to keep refiling its court papers because of errors. And it had to replace the initial prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari, when it turned out that she had a conflict of interest.

At PJ Media, Rick Moran points out that even if Haim were not ultimately convicted, he was being forced to suffer a huge financial and personal toll as he fought the charges.

Haim: “I was facing a kangaroo court in a few weeks.” 

Not anymore. The Trump DOJ dismissed the case with prejudice — meaning Haim cannot be re-charged.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability deficits and debt general freedom meme

Millionaires

meme, budget, debt, millionaires

The rich…

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general freedom Voting

Dis Democracy?

Democracy

Starting the new year and awaiting a new administration, do we deserve to ‘get it good and hard’?

In the winter issue of Cato Institute’s Regulation, economist Pierre Lemieux acknowledges H.L. Mencken’s famous line — “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard” — and sympathizes with “disappointed voters” following last November’s election.

“The common person does know what he wants,” argues Lemieux, explaining that “he succeeds so well in his private life.”

Of course, our economic marketplace and our political marketplace are markedly different.

“The electoral choices presented to voters are typically a confused mix of unreliable promises and obscure policies,” Lemieux writes. “Contrast that with the clarity and variety of market choices.”

He notes the ways regular folks are being politically disempowered: “The value of lying as an electoral asset seems to be on the rise. The public education system appears to have not had much success in encouraging the quest for truth. And the common people have been infantilized by their own governments . . .”

Lemieux worries that “when the common person is given the power to decide what his fellow humans should want . . . things can go very wrong.” 

He’s correct, of course. But it isn’t a problem unique to democracy or the participation of regular folks. When any government has such enormous power over “fellow humans,” yes, things go wrong. Enormously wrong. 

Yet, in democracies, the problem of political tyranny is far less pronounced than in anti-democratic regimes, and more effectively remedied. Democratic government is messy, woefully imperfect and can lead to awful policies and real tyranny. Still, it lacks a superior alternative.

Until then, give me democracy. 

Good and hard? Preferably good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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