Category: Common Sense

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Common Sense national politics & policies regulation subsidy

Electric Class Warfare

Star Trek, electric car, gas car, regulations, climate

Star Trek may have adversely affected American politics. Its techno-communist utopian militarism was one thing, its attitude towards engineering? Perhaps worse.

In how many episodes did Captain Kirk demand that Scotty push the warp drives further, or decrease the time required for a task — arbitrarily according to his need, not actual possibility?

And, because television: presto, it was done; just in time for the finale!

We see that in the push for electric vehicles (EVs). 

The EV mandates, explains The Epoch Times, “will likely cause a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of the United States to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them. . . .”

For while Democrats say they’re trying to “save the planet” from an increase in atmospheric carbon, really, analyst Robert Bryce counters, “it’s a type of class warfare that will prevent low- and middle-income consumers from being able to afford new cars.”

How? The EPA’s new “rules are the strictest in history and will effectively force carmakers to have one-third of new car sales be plug-in EVs by 2027 and more than two-thirds by 2032.” But according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “as much as $48,000 of the cost of the average EV sold in the United States is paid not by the owner but in the form of ‘socialized costs’ that are spread out among taxpayers and electricity consumers over a 10-year period.”

So the new rules will reduce the supply of gas-powered vehicles, driving up costs. And the increased number of already-subsidized vehicles will also be paid by taxpayers at large, while the benefits go to . . . mostly Democrats in the bluest counties of the bluest states, as statistics show.

In recent years, Democrats have prided themselves that their “blue states” subsidize “red states,” mocking the “rugged individualist” pretensions of the hapless bubbas in flyover country. But now such boasts ring hollow. 

This is the far-flung future? 

Subsidy and regulation spoil the Star Trek promise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Google as a Powerful Evil

Google, deep state

“We’re like rats in a Skinner box,” says psychologist and researcher Robert Epstein.

In “Electoral Fraud, Google-Style” (April 25, 2022), Paul Jacob looked at Epstein’s work on how Google manipulates elections. Now, Google’s political bias has become obvious. That bias’s efficacy, however, requires some science to understand. In Michael Shellenberger’s recent podcast interview, Epstein explains how he has studied what Google does:

There is indeed some new information here. Epstein says that in 2022, had Google not engaged in its manipulations, the GOP would have gained a two-seat majority, not lost by two seats.

The amount of power Google has is amazing. And simply by using the platform, we have given that power to the company.

Remember, as has become clear since — and something Epstein does not talk about — Google was seeded with Deep State money. It has never been an innocent partner.

Recent coverage of Google on Common Sense with Paul Jacob includes “Google’s Evil AI” and “Big-Gov-Google-Plex” and “Google Can’t Have That.”

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Common Sense general freedom Thought

Happy New Year–2024

Thomas Paine, New Year, 2024, new world

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months. The reflection is awful, and in this point of view, how trifling, how ridiculous, do the little paltry cavilings of a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world.”

from “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine
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Common Sense ideological culture

One by One

Thanksgiving, gratitude

Before gratitude became a platitude, it was a way of life, a philosophy.

It’s been expressed in American culture chiefly as an “official day” proclaimed by the State: Thanksgiving. We trace this back to the Pilgrims’ early days in Massachusetts — as I have done here and here — but there is much more to it than the Pilgrim story. On December 18, 1777, during the Revolutionary War, an official Thanksgiving was declared over a victory in battle. But as historian Brion MacLanahan has noted, Virginians experienced not only “the first representative government in North America” but also “hosted the first English thanksgiving.” 

In 1619.

Sadly, the “nationalization” of late November’s holiday was not anodyne, as MacLanahan has taken pains to elaborate: it was a way for Yankees to replace Christmas, which Southerners celebrated but Purtian-dominated New England did not.

Still, let’s not relegate gratitude to sectarian politics or religion. For the philosophy of appreciation is much, much older than our America.

 “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others,” said Marcus Tullius Cicero, whom our Founding Fathers called “Tully.”

Epicurus, earlier, found the key to happiness — or “ataraxia,” as he called it (a kind of spiritual peace) — in storing up good memories and concentrating on them, rather than on one’s woes. This is gratefulness. It is a discipline. 

It is not just a day or a good idea, it’s a key to virtue, as Cicero said.

But most of us of my generation probably remember the idea in a Sunday School song: “Count Your Blessings.”

Name them one by one.

As the world seems to spin into a kind of craziness, it may be hard to begin. So much madness and folly! Let me help:

We live in interesting times, and it is fascinating.

And maybe, if we keep our heads, we can help in setting some things right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Auberon Herbert

If we cannot learn, if the only effect upon us of the presence of the dynamiter in our midst is to make us multiply punishments, invent restrictions, increase the number of our official spies, forbid public meetings, interfere with the press, put up gratings — as in one country they propose to do — in our House of Commons, scrutinize visitors under official microscopes, request them, as at Vienna, and I think now at Paris also, to be good enough to leave their greatcoats in the vestibules — if we are, in a word, to trust to machinery, to harden our hearts, and simply to meet force with force, always irritating, always clumsy, and in the end fruitless, then I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and an evil time.

Auberon Herbert, The Ethics of Dynamite (1894).

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Common Sense

William Carlos Williams

Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.

William Carlos Williams, letter to James Laughlin (January 14, 1944), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 219.