“If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left. ”
NOTE: 100 million human beings were killed by communist ideologues in the 20th century.
Freedom is good, sure … for most of us, most of the time.
But the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service was funded by Congress to study whether perhaps just a smidgen of short-term slavery for young people might be a smart program, a nice change of pace, a big help to all involved — both our nation’s youth and our nation’s government.
Involuntary servitude — a year or two of military service or mandatory civilian national service, i.e. helping this government agency or that one — might force these whipper-snappers to grow up faster, the argument goes. Not to mention assisting them by engineering an enlighteningly involuntary point-of-view from which to better sort out their futures.
But enough about what’s good for young people. Let them heed the famous words of President John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what we can do for you, ask what you can do for us.”
Consider the awesome benefits we can accrue from an army of four million well-mannered, bright-eyed 18-year-olds, like the kids on The Facts of Life or Saved By the Bell — or whatever newfangled TV show dances in front of today’s youthful eyes.
Imagine, young people solving all our problems: cleaning up the environment, ending illiteracy, reversing global warming, wiping out poverty, curing cancer.
Or at least mopping up the lobby at the EPA, filing documents close to alphabetically at the Department of Education, picking up trash in a park.
All while becoming fully-actualized citizens.
Green energy isn’t the answer, youthful energy is! Remember: It cannot be bottled, but it can be conscripted.
Oh, and actually paying for 4 million make-work jobs?*
Ssshhhh.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* At minimum wage, it would cost more than $60 billion a year to hire every 18-year-old American. Oh, well, I guess freedom is much less expensive.
NOTE: If for any reason, you are skeptical of the wonders forced governmental service can provide, please join me today (April 10, 2019) at 4:00 pm ET for a webinar on how to “Save the Young People.”
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A funny thing happened on the way to voting on the Democrats’ Green New Deal (GND). With ‘earth in the balance,’ the proposal for fixing climate change — and so much more! — was granted its first procedural vote in the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.
It failed, 0 – 57.
Sen. Edward Markey (D‑Mass.), the Senate sponsor, along with 41 other Democrats* and independent Bernie Sanders, voted “present” to protest what he called “sabotage,” claiming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) “wants to silence your voice.”
Au contraire! McConnell longed to hear Democrats sing the bill’s praises — loud, proud, and on the record.
After the vote, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) absurdly made the opposite accusation: Republicans were “climate delaying … costing us lives + destroying communities.”
Meanwhile, “If the Green New Deal came up for a vote in the Democrat-controlled House,” USA Today reports, “it would have trouble passing.”
“It’s a list of aspirations,” says Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who does not plan to bring it to a vote. Though Democrats want to address climate change, the speaker points out that the “bill has many things that have nothing to do with climate.”
Rep. Elaine Luria, (D‑Va.) echoes Pelosi: “[T]he Green New Deal is aspirational.” Rep. Sean Casten, (D‑Ill.) adds, “The aspirations of the Green New Deal are great.”**
But is the GND something “great” to which Americans should aspire?
Only if they yearn for government-monopolized healthcare, free college tuition, micro-management of the economy, and government providing everyone a job, except those who don’t want one … who would get a guaranteed income, regardless.
I aspire to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* In the Senate, three Democrats — Sens. Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — and independent Sen. Angus King (Maine) joined all 53 Republicans in voting No.
** All four House co-chairs of the New Democrat Coalition’s Climate Change Task Force — Casten and Luria as well as Don Beyer, (D‑Va.) and Susan Wild, (D‑Pa.) — have come out in opposition to the GND.
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How do you know you are in an end-time cult?
When you won’t accept the complete and utter failure of your prophecies when they come a cropper.
So, am I talking about the classic Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter study in social psychology, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World? In that work, social scientists infiltrated an eschatological cult to see how they would react when their prophecy of end times failed.
What did the cultists do?
Many doubled down, tweaked their original prophecy, and continued in their previous beliefs but with greater fervor.
But no. I am not talking about that, not directly.
I refer to the Mueller Report.
“For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in,” writes Matt Taibbi in “It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD?” Noting that while the story as it was hyped from the beginning was about espionage, a “secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election,” the biggest thing to come of it has been “Donald Trump paying off a porn star.”
Now that the Mueller Report has come to a fizzle, proving nothing very interesting or relevant, our reaction to the news that the President is not Putin’s puppet should be jubilation.
To shed a tear and get all choked up, like Rachel Maddow? That should signal the end time for the cult.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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