Category: ideological culture

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

Phil of It

Elizabeth Warren,

If Punxsutawney Phil peaks out and sees his shadow, are we doomed to another six weeks of political pall?

And speaking of palls, Senator Elizabeth Warren, slipping in the polls, has unveiled YET ANOTHER PLAN.

Contemplate that very fact for a moment. The Distinguished Pocahontas Professor of Planning proposes to “combat disinformation by holding big tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google,” Sunny Kim regales us from CNBC, “responsible for spreading misinformation designed to suppress voters from turning out.”

Warren vows to “push for new laws that impose tough civil and criminal penalties for knowingly disseminating this kind of information, which has the explicit purpose of undermining the basic right to vote.” 

Notice her flip of America’s script? 

Swapping free speech for policed speech doesn’t upgrade politicians, regulators and judges to philosopher king status, able or justified to distinguish true information from mis– or dis-.

And is our basic right to vote really being undermined by “memes”? 

Give me a break. 

Confusing rights with influence, or some virginal lack thereof, is pure political poison.

Or it would be if anyone took Warren seriously anymore.

Meanwhile, PETA is horning in on Punxsutawney’s celebrated Groundhog Day.

“People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is calling on the keepers of the weather-forecasting groundhog to let him retire,” CNN tells us, “and to be replaced by an animatronic groundhog.”

PETA got what reads like a Babylon Bee article into the news. “By creating an AI Phil,” the group’s letter to the Pennsylvania operation runs, “you could keep Punxsutawney at the center of Groundhog Day but in a much more progressive way.”

Is Elizabeth Warren’s notion also ‘progressive’?

Seems the opposite. But animatronics might be involved.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Revolutionaries for Bernie

Jurek, Bernie Sanders, gulags, USSR, Soviet Union, socialism,

It seems like just last week we were arguing about how it is not OK to go around “punching Nazis.” 

Now we have a Bernie Sanders campaign employee fuming about putting people he disagrees with into “re-education camps.”

“The only thing that fascists understand is violence,” said a Field Manager in the campaign’s Iowa office, as caught on all-too-candid camera by Project Veritas. “So, the only way you can confront them is with violence.”

It is one thing to get called a “fascist!” or “Nazi!” by a leftist for disagreeing with a leftist, it is another thing to be sucker-punched by a leftist for disagreeing with a leftist — and something far, far worse to be put into a concentration camp for expressing non-leftist-approved views.

His name is Kyle Jurek. Project Veritas has certainly not dubbed him a typical Bernie voter. His views are described as “extreme left-wing fringe,” and the utility of the clandestine recordings, taken over months, said to lie in the insight they provide “into the mentality of many Sanders staffers and what they truly believe.”

Jurek’s beliefs include extra-legal violence and Soviet Gulag revisionism, expressed with f-bombs and mf-barrages. “You want to fight against the revolution, you’re going to die for it, mother—” Jurek lashes out at “fellow” Democrats . . . and MSNBC . . . and Trump voters. He talks about setting Milwaukee afire. And not rhetorically.

 We’ve long worried about the Vermont senator, who has defended horrific Soviet and Cuban rule throughout his long history of communist apologia.

I guess the real test is how Jurek’s comrades — er, fellow Sanders supporters — react to the revelations. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. As this commentary posts, the only official response has come from the Iowa state director for the Sanders campaign, Misty Rebik, who dismissed the video, saying, “The hundreds of thousands of Iowans we’ve talked to this caucus season don’t care about political gossip . . .” Jurek has not been dismissed. A search of the Washington Post and New York Times websites show neither paper has reported on the story.

The Babylon Bee made the obvious “democratic gulag” joke.

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ideological culture too much government

Disemploying Des Moines

baby, pacifier, nanny state,

Remember during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, when she promised “to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”? 

She seemed surprisingly surprised that coal miners were so displeased. 

Have no fear, however — quickly she highlighted her $30 billion plan to provide sustenance and re-training to these soon-to-be displaced miners.

Leading in the latest Iowa poll, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vt.) opines his own deep commitment to enacting “Medicare for All” and, by the magic of Washington statecraft, summarily executing private health insurance in these United States.

“The private health insurance business employs at least a half a million people, covers about 250 million Americans, and generates roughly a trillion dollars in revenues,” reports The New York Times. “Its companies’ stocks are a staple of the mutual funds that make up millions of Americans’ retirement savings.”

In last night’s debate, CNN’s Abby Phillip read the Vermont senator a question from an Iowa Democratic voter: “Des Moines is an insurance town. What happens to all . . . the health insurance industry here if there is ‘Medicare for All’? What happens to all the jobs and the livelihoods of the people that live in insurance towns like Des Moines?”

“We build in to our ‘Medicare for All’ program a transition fund of many, many billions of dollars,” Sanders explained, “that will provide for up to five years income and health care and job training for those people.”

Come on, don’t get uptight about whether your job — or your whole industry — is terminated. Uncle Bernie will set you up with a new gig, and some cash to hold you over. 

Trust Washington to take good care of you. 

Or use Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Globes Off

Ricky Gervais, Michelle Williams, abortion,

They cannot help themselves. The actors and filmmakers who give and receive awards are driven against all advice to do two things:

  1. Express their political opinions when receiving awards and
  2. Turn off vast swaths of the movie- and TV-viewing public when they do so.

Ricky Gervais, hosting the Golden Globes last weekend, put them in their place, rubbing their noses in Hollywood sexual misconduct (with Dead Jeffrey Epstein jokes) and greed (Chinese sweatshops) and tagging on an admonishment: “So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.”

The implied equation of “real-world knowledge” with school-time notwithstanding, the advice was sound. Later in the week Gervais explained. He shares their politics, he tweeted, but he “roasted them for wearing their liberalism like a medal.”

Gervais didn’t go deeper than that, but as a comedian — an actual funny one — I think he can see how poisonous many Hollywood stars are to their cause.

The futility of Hollywood Hyper Holiness can be seen in the earnest religiosity of Michelle Williams, who did not, alas, follow Gervais’s advice. In a stellar foray into pure cringe, she talked about women and choices and all but unfurled a banner for abortion.

A banner’s worse than a mere medal.

Suffice it to say, she didn’t do her “pro-choice” cause any good.

Maybe she should hire Gervais as a political consultant.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

The Awful Strain of Insurmountable Parody

Hitler, Downfall, parody,

What if “political correctness” were really a problem of rampant cowardice?

University of Massachusetts Amherst administrators removed Catherine West Lowry from her 13-year gig as an accounting lecturer because of an extra-credit project. 

She had shown a previous year’s student-produced parody video using the infamous Hitler breakdown scene in the excellent 2004 movie Downfall. I assume you’ve seen dozens of these; I know I have. Their ubiquity notwithstanding, the university claims to have received student complaints about the one Ms. Lowry showed.

The proper response to a protestation of offense at a Downfall parody? Eye rolls. Were I a professor, I’d have to resist the nearly irresistible desire to reduce office hours starting immediately. 

Any other response, especially dismissing the lecturer, is pure pusillanimity.

Or, make that cowardice of the impure variety, for I suppose something else could be going on here.

Lowry claims that she’d shown this particular effort in previous years and no one had complained. And I believe her.

Can we believe the university’s claim to have received complaints from students this year?

Before we accept such a statement, we should peruse the evidence. After all, in the case of the Wilfrid Laurier University mistreatment of the T.A. who had shown a Jordan Peterson video in class, administrators had simply lied — there had been no complaints.

Had UMass Amherst actually received complaints, then their response would be merely cowardice. But were there no complaints, the whole thing becomes far more ominous.

And I wonder: what would today’s university make of Hogan’s Heroes?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture

Served and Disserved, New York Style

Pizza, DeBlasio, New York, New Year,

“Jacking up your prices on people trying to celebrate the holidays? Classy, @dominos,” tweeted former presidential aspirant and current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“To the thousands who came to Times Square last night to ring in 2020,” continued  Hizzoner’s New Year’s Day message from his official city Twitter account, “I’m sorry this corporate chain exploited you — stick it to them by patronizing one of our fantastic LOCAL pizzerias.”

Were you standing there in the Big Apple on New Year’s Eve getting “exploited”?

For the last 15 years, a Midtown Manhattan Domino’s franchise has been delivering hot pepperoni, cheese and onion pizzas for $30 each — “more than twice the regular $14.49 price of a large cheese pie” — to the “hungry tourists waiting in holding pens for the ball drop,” The New York Post reported.

“I have a lot of orders. I’m very busy,” remarked Ratan Banik, the Domino’s delivery man. The paper explained that he was “mobbed by starving tourists . . . many having camped out overnight.”

“He is our Santa,” offered one New Jersey man, who had not thought to bring any food with him into the city. “It’s absolutely worth it. It was hot. It seems like it just came out of the oven.

“If he comes back,” he added. “I will buy some more.”

“How is this different to a million other things? Airlines, Uber, property,” noted one of many tweets mocking the mayor’s. “It’s called supply and demand.”

If this be exploitation, make the most of it — with or without the extra toppings. 

Just hold the snipes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture Popular

A Deplorable Christmas

Michael Moore, dark side, racism, race,

Just in time for Christmas, Rolling Stone released a recorded interview of Michael Moore showing the Roger & Me filmmaker in pure Scrooge mode.

Shortly before Election Day, 2016, Moore had famously characterized a likely Trump win as middle America’s rebuke of the establishment. “They’re not racist or rednecks,” he sympathetically said of the Trump voters he had talked to, “they’re actually pretty decent people.”

But white men, he now proclaims, are “not good people.”

What’s the ‘deplorable’ ratio? 

“Two-thirds of all white guys voted for Trump,” offers Moore. “That means anytime you see three white guys walking . . . down the street towards you, two of them voted for Trump. You need to move over to the other sidewalk because these are not good people that are walking toward you. You should be afraid of them.”

Before Trump’s election, sympathy; after, antipathy.

Why the change of heart?

He provides one clue. “I refuse to participate in post-racial America,” he fumes. “I refuse to say because we elected Obama that suddenly that means everything is ok, white people have changed. White people have not changed.”

Has it always really been about racism?

Another theory, though, would look at part of Moore’s 2016 prophecy: white working class men would be worse off with Trump.

Yet employment is way up; even Ford is moving back to Michigan, as Tim Poole notes. Could Moore be bitter because his enemy seems to be succeeding where his side has failed?

A movie now in the theaters may get to the real issue. Moore, by engaging in hatred and fear-mongering, has gone over to the Dark Side of the Force.

Power corrupts; partisan powerlust corrupts partisanly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture

Precious Gifts . . . 2019 and Beyond

Christmas 2019

There’s a quiet on Christmas morning . . . after Santa has come and gone . . . and the kids are still sound asleep . . . sugar plum fairies dancing to their gentle snoring.

A moment to stop and think.

I hope they’ll like their presents; they always do. There’s so much love my wife and I want to share, to give to them.

Of course, the biggest gifts are never under the tree. The most important being a staple home, with love, and the freedom for children to grow into themselves.

My parents gave me that . . . along with the bicycles and baseball gloves and some really good books. I’ve tried to be the same kind of parent.

Another incredible endowment I’ve enjoyed is to be born in a country “conceived in liberty.” A place where individual citizens are the sovereigns, creating government to be a servant and not a master. Land of the free.

What a gift!

But Tom Paine told us that, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly, ’tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

Freedom is under siege. And, therefore, we who love freedom, grateful for our historic luck, must come together to protect our “expensive” gift.

Some may get discouraged after setbacks, recent and not-so-recent, but none of us got involved in politics because we like “the game” and figured we’d pile up a shelf of trophies. We’re engaged because we must be and we seek victories because, as Churchill once put it, “without victory, there is no survival.”

In 1776, on this very day, General George Washington and his soldiers of the American Revolution crossed the Delaware River to score a surprise military victory against the British at Trenton, New Jersey.

Thank goodness, for these brave patriots and their muskets. Three Americans gave their lives in the battle. To secure our liberty.

Today, the Gift has been handed to us. Not to play with on Christmas morning and forget about, not to let get broken without our fixing it, but to protect and defend and cherish.

My commentary strives to illuminate, to amuse and to motivate toward action, bringing citizens together. Citizens in Charge protects the initiative process — the best weapon citizens have to cut taxes, term-limit politicians, stop the drug war, protect property rights, and place limits on government. The Liberty Initiative Fund partners with leaders across the nation putting measures  on the ballot to protect freedom and hold government accountable.

Thanks for your gifts to these efforts and to the many other important ones. We aim to protect the precious gift of freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

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general freedom ideological culture Second Amendment rights too much government

Whither Away?

“All around the world, earnest fans of socialism insist it has never failed, as critics claim, since ‘true socialism has never really been tried,’” the New York Post editorial board wrote on Tuesday. But socialism has been tried. It just doesn’t turn into the utopia socialists promise. 

And the State certainly does not do under socialism what Karl Marx said it would: wither away.

In Venezuela, “Bolivarian” dictator Nicolás Maduro sure isn’t withering away. In defiance of terms as well as term limits, he is not stepping down even as his country spirals downward into starvation and squalor. 

His method and madness are not mysteries: he keeps power the old-fashioned way, sheer force.

The Post’s editors note his latest stay-in-office procedure: “He’s going to expand his massive private army to 4 million gunmen by the end of 2020.”

He might be able to do it, since his ruthless regime is supported not only by a well-stocked military, but also boasts an alleged 3.3 million gang-members in the “Bolivarian militia,” exempt from the gun confiscation of 2012.

It turns out (to neither your shock nor mine) that key to making socialism work is the threat of confiscation, control, murder. “Maduro is showing that the sure way to make it ‘succeed,’” says the Post, “is for the self-proclaimed socialists to have all the guns.”

By definition, socialism is the “public” ownership and control of the means of production. By necessity, socialism requires the governing class’s ownership and control of the means of destruction.

And we see that now being used to destroy any opposition.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Maduro, Venezuela, socialism, collapse, illustration

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ideological culture political challengers

Discriminating Democrats

Democrat, Democratic, candidates, presidential, president, debate, race, quota,

In ten days, the Democratic Party will hold a presidential debate that, according to the rules established by the Democratic National Committee, includes six qualified candidates all of whom are white.

Which is apparently not the right color.

“Of course, there is nothing wrong with Democrats selecting a white presidential candidate to represent the party,” writes David de la Fuente at The Daily Beast. “But that should be up to the voters, and not the DNC by means of their debate inclusion practices.”

Those “practices” or rules seem straightforward enough — at least, they did . . . until the results were not to the liking of some. To earn a place on the Dec. 19 debate stage, a candidate must have garnered donations from 200,000 individuals, while also reaching 4 percent or higher in four recognized polls, or 6 percent in two polls.

The six qualified pale-faced candidates are: former Vice-President Joe Biden, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), billionaire activist Tom Steyer, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

A seventh candidate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, a woman of color, had also qualified for the debate stage — before she dropped out of the race.

Not yet able to jump all the hurdles? African-American Sen. Corey Booker (D-N.J.); Asian-American entrepreneur Andrew Yang; and Samoan-American Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii). They have all reached the donation requirement, but not yet met the polling threshold. 

I wish them luck, especially my favorite, Gabbard. 

Still, the choice is rightly up to Democratic voters. If enough speak up for Booker, Yang or Gabbard in polls, “diversity” will obtain its place. 

If not, should Democrats use a racial quota system?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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