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Noble Traitors

Sophie Scholl, White Rose, Nazis, Germany, Third Reich

Today marks a solemn anniversary. Seventy-nine years ago — on Feb. 22, 1943 — three German students at the University of Munich were tried for treason by the Nazis, convicted and then executed, all in one day.

The method of execution: guillotine.

Days earlier, Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie had been caught distributing a leaflet at the university. It was damning — of the Nazi regime; and, from the perspective of that Nazi regime, of the Scholls: “In the name of German youth, we demand restitution by Adolf Hitler’s state of our personal freedom, the most precious treasure we have, out of which he has swindled us in the most miserable way.”

Hans had in his pocket a draft of another leaflet, in Christoph Probst’s handwriting. That seventh leaflet, never distributed, led to the arrest and execution of Christoph, along with Hans and Sophie.

The three were part of a cadre of students who wrote and distributed leaflets under the name The White Rose — a symbol of purity standing against the monstrous evil of the Third Reich. The leaflets decried the crimes of National Socialism, including the mass murder of Jews. And they urged Germans to rise up.

Three more members were later executed: Willi Graf, Alex Schmorell and Professor Kurt Huber. Another eleven were imprisoned.

Their resistance was ultimately futile, unsuccessful … but not pointless.

They would not remain cogs in the killing machine that had taken the most advanced society in the world to the depths of depravity. They took a stand against what George Orwell later characterized as “a boot stamping on a human face, forever.”

We often say, with earnest piety, “Never again.” But our dedication should be inspired by the White Rose. When we encounter tyranny, think of the Scholls and say “Again for Freedom.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Further reading: For an excellent account of The White Rose, consult the aptly titled A Noble Treason, by Richard Hanser. See also Jacob Hornberger’s The White Rose — A Lesson in Dissent. The Orwell quotation is from the dystopian novel 1984. You can read the six pamphlets on this website.

This article is reprinted from 2019. A previous appreciation was published on Townhall in 2010.

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ideological culture Popular

A Deplorable Christmas

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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Assault on Second Amendment Ricochets

Post author By Redactor
Post date December 24, 2019
1 Comment on Assault on Second Amendment Ricochets

guns, 2nd Amendment, Virginia, Washington, gun rights,

Were gun owners expected to roll over and play dead?

After the November 2019 election, Democrats took over the Virginia statehouse. A slew of gun-control bills were soon in the works, including proposals for expanded background checks, a ban on “assault” weapons, limits on magazine capacity, and seizure of legally owned guns if the owner should be deemed “dangerous.”

Defenders of the right to keep and bear arms expect that the precedents lawmakers are working to establish would soon be expanded. And not without reason. After all, many advocates of gun control regard all private ownership of guns as “dangerous.”

In response, more than 100 Virginia counties have passed resolutions declaring themselves Second Amendment Sanctuaries, with many sheriffs voicing their support. In response to the response, the gun grabbers pledge to call in the National Guard if law enforcers don’t grab guns on command.

The state’s attorney general has declared the Second Amendment resolutions null and void.

This sanctuary movement began before November’s election. Indeed, it began elsewhere.

Last January, I wrote about sheriffs in 25 out of Washington State’s 39 counties that have pledged not to enforce a citizen-passed gun control measure while it is being challenged in court. David Campbell, on the board of Effingham County in Illinois, reports that his county was among the first in the country to pass a Second Amendment Sanctuary resolution — in April 2018. Seventy Illinois counties have also passed such resolutions. Kentucky counties are following suit. Locales in Colorado, Oregon, and New Mexico are also on board.

Something has started.

As with state nullification of federal marijuana laws, the story isn’t over: a major constitutional conflict approaches.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies partisanship Popular

Between the Devil and the Deep State, See?

Post author By Redactor
Post date December 18, 2019
3 Comments on Between the Devil and the Deep State, See?

Donald Trump, Imperial Presidency, President, crown,

“If it turns out that impeachment has no sting, has no bite,” exasperated Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude, Jr., speculated on Meet the Press, “and we are in the aftermath, what it will mean is that there will be an unlimited, an imperial, executive branch that can do whatever it wants to do.”*

Per the “imperial presidency, actually, that ship sailed a while ago,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka quickly responded.

“I mean, it was a problem under George W. Bush. It was a growing problem under Obama. And it has come to its apotheosis under Donald Trump.”

There appears a left-right consensus among TV chatterers that, a Constitution of enumerated federal powers notwithstanding, the president can “do whatever [he] wants to do.”

But considering what we are learning about “the interagency” machinations to take down the current imperator, the imperial guard may be as big a problem.

Last week, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his report on the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, code-named “Crossfire Hurricane.” Though the IG did not find conclusive evidence that political bias inspired the launch of the investigation, he did detail “many basic and fundamental errors” that “raised significant questions” … adding portentously, “we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems we identified.”

“[A]s as the probe went on,” reported The Washington Post, “FBI officials repeatedly decided to emphasize damaging information they heard about Trump associates, and play down exculpatory evidence they found.”

The evidence piles up: Washington is dangerously out of control, and our career-politician Congress can only muster to provide a constitutional check on the flimsiest grounds and partisan manner.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Somehow Professor Glaude seems to have forgotten President Bill Clinton, who reached his highest ever public approval rating — 73 percent — in the aftermath of his 1998 impeachment by the then-Republican-controlled House. Been there, done that.

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Popular too much government

Gloating Time?

net neutrality, censorship, control, FCC,

“The freak-out was something to behold,” I wrote two years ago.

Newly appointed chair of Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, had just nixed ‘net neutrality,’ and reactions from the left end of the political spectrum were overwhelmingly negative.

I, on the other hand, prophesied good times ahead. But we free-market folks were outshouted.

At least on Twitter.

Now, two years later, with something like a free market returned to Internet regulation, Casey Given at the Washington Examiner urges us not to “forget how the Left cried wolf.”

Contrary to doomsayers — whose alarm was that, sans net neutrality, we would experience “the End of the Internet as We Know It” — things are turning out pretty well. Mr. Given tells us that “since the repeal of net neutrality, more than 6 million people have gained access to the internet. Internet speeds have increased as well.”

Which shouldn’t shock. After all, the whole net neutrality mania was fear-based anti-capitalist prejudice.

“The Internet had stumbled along just fine until 2015, when President Barack Obama’s FCC put ‘net neutrality’ in place — a point Ajit Pai ably makes in his defense,” I argued two orbits ago. “Do the doom-sayers really believe that a set of regulations that had been in place just a few years was going to ‘ruin the Internet’ and unleash Big Corporations upon the world to the detriment of regular consumers and start-up service providers?”

What most net neutrality advocates wouldn’t acknowledge, at the time, was that net neutrality was supported by key telecom corporations. This should have given them a hint that net neutrality itself was the thing to be most feared: a rigged system for a few at the expense of the many.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies Popular

After Them, the Deluge

One might be forgiven for finding Sen. Kamala Harris the perfect presidential candidate for Democrats after the Hillary Clinton debacle. Adding Harris’s skin color to her status as a woman, she had the intersectionalist angle covered. And for the power elite, she offered a ruthless, moraline-free ambition.

But no, her candidacy never really took off. She has dropped out, for lack of funds.

Her exit leaves a full field, however, including two billionaires — one unelectable (Bloomberg), the other mostly undetectable (Steyer).

Joe Biden has become a living, breathing Mr. Magoo, having just playfully bitten his wife’s finger while she was making a public speech. And his ridiculous ‘hairy legs’ rant just resurfaced for universal ridicule.

Yet some polls say he’s still leading the pack.

How?

This is how:

Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaim “democratic socialist,” is, like Biden, too old to be a Boomer, and is “recovering” from a recent heart attack, giving his future all the promise of Venezuelan socialism — which he has in the past praised.

Seems Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s star is falling. It may be the result of floating a multi-trillion-dollar healthcare plan that didn’t add up … or for backing away from that bold mistake … or the combination.

Pete Buttigieg’s star is now ascendent, in Iowa and New Hampshire. Which is ominous, for the silver-tongued mayor of South Bend, Indiana, sports at least one badge of official disadvantage — he’s gay — and has that uncertain magic that suggests having been anointed by whichever fallen angel selects future tyrants. The millennial embraces “national service” and big government.

But fear not: there’s still Hillary Clinton who, reports The Epoch Times, “says she’s ‘deluged’ with requests to run for the presidency for the third time and declined to rule out a bid for 2020.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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