Category: general freedom

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education and schooling general freedom

Top School Fails

Common School, education, values, American, public school, law, lawyer,

Illiteracy, innumeracy, low standards, grade inflation — signs of a general failure of education, sure, and of public schooling in particular. But for the worst failing, look no further than Harvard University.

The Ivy League school just caved to a student mob. 

“Harvard said on Saturday that a law professor who has represented Harvey Weinstein would not continue as faculty dean of an undergraduate house after his term ends on June 30,” explains Kate Taylor at the New York Times, “bowing to months of pressure from students.”

The lawyer in question, Professor Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr., has served with his wife, law school lecturer Stephanie Robinson, at one of Harvard’s residential houses for undergraduate students. 

Now, the African-American couple has not been fired from faculty. Just as deans. No great tragedy, if the official Harvard statement be true — that there were multiple reasons for not renewing their contracts.

But the context: pressure from students who expressed horror — “trauma-inducing”! — at Sullivan’s legal defense of the former Mirimax mogul accused of numerous sex crimes.

We expect lawyers to defend even the worst criminals. Everyone is entitled to a legal defense. It’s sad that not only do some students fail to accept this but also that this crimson-colored college plays along with their uncivilized complaint. Harvard has, in effect, denied one legal foundation of a free society. 

Remember that the “common school movement” for government schools was started to inculcate republican values. Horace Mann’s great big excuse for government control and taxpayer funding of schools was to promote civilized American liberties.

Schools, generally, have failed. And Harvard has just accepted their worst failure as the new passing grade. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common School, education, values, American, public school, law, lawyer,

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general freedom individual achievement

Motherhood, Baseball & Life

baseball, mom, mother's day,

“Baseball is life,” say fans, meaning not merely that “the rest is just details,” but also that there are broader lessons to be gleaned from the game.

Yesterday, on Mother’s Day, I told my mom how big a fan of hers I am, and the two of us Detroit Tigers fans mulled over the latest brouhaha. A man in the cheap seats caught the homerun ball hit by Albert Pujols . . . and wouldn’t “give it back.”

That hit and resulting run gave the Los Angeles Angels and former St. Louis Cardinals slugger his 2,000th lifetime “run batted in,” or RBI, putting him in a very exclusive club: fifth on the all-time RBI list.* 

Law student Ely Hydes, who caught it, claims stadium security and team representatives descended, pressuring him to give them the ball in exchange for, say, a picture with Pujols and some autographed swag. Hydes, a Tigers fan, wanted to think about it, however. He left. 

The Twitterverse erupted. 

The charge?

Selfishness — for not turning over a baseball “that would mean so much more” to Pujols. 

At EconLog, David Henderson was having none of it: “[E]ven to suggest that Hydes, a law student in debt, is immoral for not giving some of his wealth to a very wealthy man, is breathtaking.” That baseball is likely worth at least $25,000 and could fetch more. 

Asked by reporters, Pujols was clear: “[Hydes] has the right to keep it. The ball went in the stands, so I would never fight anybody to give anything back.”

“Pujols’s attitude is admirable,” notes Henderson. “He defended a stranger’s property rights.”

As diehard Tigers fans, Mom and I still take issue. The Angels won that game 13-0. Following tradition, Hydes should have thrown the opposing team’s homerun back onto the field.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Almost emblematic of our national pastime, there is disagreement over whether Pujols moved into third or fifth place. Major League Baseball says third, because RBIs weren’t officially counted until 1920. Babe Ruth batted in over 200 runs prior to that, and the Chicago Colts’ poor Cap Anson retired after the 1897 season. Thankfully, Baseball-Reference calculated those previously unaccounted for RBIs. Here’s the all-time list:

  1. Hank Aaron (2,297)
  2. Babe Ruth (2,214)
  3. Alex Rodriguez (2,086)
  4. Cap Anson (2,075)
  5. Albert Pujols (2,000)

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baseball, mom, mother's day,

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general freedom international affairs Popular

Bellicose Exclusions

Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, war, MSM, mainstream media,

“Jones and his Infowars nutritional supplement sales empire are having a bit of a rough moment,” wrote Justin Peters last year at Slate, “since the bellicose conspiracist has recently been banned from several social media and podcast platforms due to his hostile and hateful behavior.”

Like much of the commentary on Alex Jones, as well as on his colleague Paul Joseph Watson, there is something . . . off . . . about the characterization.

Bellicose?

Sure, he pushes bizarre accounts of conspiracies,* and on a personal level Alex Jones shouts and yells and blusters and worse.

But there is one way he is not bellicose. Alex Jones is almost consistently against war in general and America’s world-policing in particular.

And so, too, has been Paul Joseph Watson — who along with Jones was kicked off Facebook last week.**

If you are generally against war, being called “bellicose” and “hostile” must be galling, especially when personalities at CNN and MSNBC stand hand-in-hand with most at Fox in their obvious onscreen lust for actual warfare, drone bombings, and “tough choices.”

Yes, I know: Watson has been a withering critic of First World immigration policies and of the illiberalism he sees in Islamic cultures, and he relentlessly mocks Third Wave Feminism. That must be his “hateful” — and “hostile”? — element. 

Yet, this seems less about hate and more about ideological disagreement.

More importantly, just whose interests are being served by social media’s current deliberate policy of marginalization?

The biggest cheers for ousting Jones and Watson — outside major media — echo from the left. But how is cheering on the consolidation of the military-industrial complex in leftists’ interest? 

The current “war against Internet freedom” looks very bad for . . . dissent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * One of which he has even confessed to be “psychotic.”

 ** Others ousted include racial nationalists such as Paul Nehlen and Louis Farrakhan, gay conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, and Laura Loomer. Their stances on military interventionism are less clearly anti-.

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Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, war, MSM, mainstream media,

Photo Credit: Tyler Merbler from USA

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general freedom national politics & policies The Draft

Hypothetical Cowardice?

Congressman Joe Heck, draft, selective service, volunteers, national service

We must treat real threats realistically. 

But what to do with bizarrely hypothetical ones?

Last week, former Congressman Joe Heck (R-Nev.), chairman of the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service, addressed witnesses at a hearing in Washington: “So I want to pose a hypothetical scenario and ask your response.”

“We are in the Red Dawn scenario being attacked from both Canada and Mexico,” he related. “There is no Selective Service System. The All Volunteer Force is insufficient. There’s been a presidential and congressional call for volunteers, for people to step up. However, the response has not been enough to meet the threat, the actual threat to our homeland.” 

“How would you propose to meet the demand?” inquired the chairman.

Seriously? We must prepare for military conscription because of the likelihood that Canada and Mexico will launch a joint invasion?

Leaving one ridiculous supposition, during the public comment period, I confronted the other: hypothetical American cowardice.

“This is really all about trust,” I told the commission.

“Do you trust the American people to step up in times of crisis — from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 — or do you not? I submit that all evidence points to the fact that they will, because they have. 

“Or should we trust Congress with the awesome power to take our sons and daughters away because they choose to, because there’s a ‘big emergency’ or maybe just because we figure it will help with ‘social cohesion’? I submit that all evidence points to the fact that we cannot trust Congress.”

I urged commissioners “to tell Congress: trust the American people — end draft registration, don’t extend it to women, and do not force any sort of national service.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Congressman Joe Heck, draft, selective service, volunteers, national service

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general freedom national politics & policies Popular The Draft

No Need

“So, my bottom line is there is no need to continue to register people for a draft that will not come; no need to fight the battle over registering women, and no military need to retain the MSSA.”

The MSSA is the Military Selective Service Act. It authorizes the Selective Service System (SSS) to register young men for a possible draft and, should conscription resume, manage that process. The law allows the government to imprison those who do not register.* I know, I violated the Act 38 years ago by refusing to sign my name on a draft registration form.

But the quoted statement, above, wasn’t mine. No sirree. That was testimony from Dr. Bernard Rostker, the director of Selective Service back in 1980, when President Carter re-instituted mandatory registration. 

Rostker made two cogent points at yesterday’s National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service hearing:

  • First, the modern military neither needs nor wants a massive manpower infusion, which would only dilute the quality of the All-Volunteer Force. 
  • Second, the list of young men registered with SSS is woefully inadequate, “systematically lack[ing] large segments of the eligible male population and for those that are included, the currency of information contained is questionable.”

Come some future emergency, the former director contends that a draft could be instituted just as quickly without this ongoing registration program. Sure, but that misses the bigger picture: This country has never needed conscription to raise an army. Americans — from Pearl Harbor to 911 — have always stepped up voluntarily.

Mr. Rostker advises “suspending draft registration.”

He took the words right out of my mouth — though I prefer “abolish.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The maximum penalty is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but no one has been prosecuted for decades. Most of the enforcement effort comes in denying driver’s licenses, college loans and government jobs to men who don’t register. Commission Chairman Joe Heck explained at yesterday’s hearing that 75 percent of registrants do so in order to complete a license or college application.

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First Amendment rights general freedom local leaders

Deep Show-Me State

Ron Calzone, Missouri, free speech, lobbying, 1st Amendment,

Worried about the Deep State undermining democracy in Washington? What about the Deep State in Missouri?

Today, Ron Calzone will sit in a St. Louis courtroom with his wife, Anne, intently listening to arguments in his case, Calzone v. Missouri Ethics Commission, before the entire Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. 

In what sort of evil corruption has Mr. Calzone been engaged? 

Good citizenship. 

Talk about an open-and-shut case! For zero pay, Calzone and others — organized through Missouri First — track legislation and communicate their viewpoints to their state representatives, urging legislators to follow a constitutional, limited government philosophy. The group gives no gifts to legislators, only their opinions, and spends no money. Doesn’t even have a bank account.

This is the sort of wholesome citizen participation envisioned in civics textbooks. But politicians see engaged citizens, like Ron, as pests, infesting their capitols. 

In 2014, angered by the grassroots input Calzone had generated, two state legislators convinced the Missouri Society of Governmental Consultants (the state’s “lobbyist guild”) to file an ethics complaint against Ron, demanding he register as a lobbyist. At the measly cost of $10 a year.

Calzone can afford the Hamilton, but refused, on principle, to pay it or to register as a lobbyist. Thankfully, great lawyers at the Freedom Center of Missouri and the Institute for Free Speech have come to his defense.

Laws regulating lobbyists have been enacted to check the influence of rich, powerful special interests. Or so the powerful interests tell us.

Instead, politicians and bureaucrats are twisting the law, trying to block grassroots citizens.

It is time to deep six Deep States.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Ron Calzone, Missouri, free speech, lobbying, 1st Amendment,

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