Category: Common Sense

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Common Sense

Robbing Words of Meaning?

Words change over time, in meaning as well as sound. Since much of this comes from misuse, ignorance, laziness, and even wordplay, the more you know and the less fun-loving you are, the more a scold about words you will likely be.

Over the long run, though, for each loss in meaning we gain another. Might as well live with it.

In any case, the history of words can be fascinating. For example, did you know that “rob” and “robe” have the same ancestor?

Rob means to steal by force; robe means a loose flowing garment. Both hail from the same Old High German word, which I won’t try to pronounce. “Robe” comes close to the original meaning, of “clothes.” The original became synonymous with “stealing by force” because, in times long past, one of the most common items to grab from another was clothing. When one was robbed, one often had to disrobe. It was your robes you were being robbed of. Clothes were that valuable.

No wonder, then, when clothing was a robber’s favored booty, to become poor meant utter destitution. The destitute often wandered around with nary a scrap on them.

Not only have words changed, times have, too.

When next I catch a word in painful transition, I’ll remind myself that it’s more like a peaceful clothing change than a robbery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

If the President Says It

Is President Barack Obama trying to echo the paranoid days of the Clintons’ famous “vast right-wing conspiracy” complaint? Obama says that those who oppose the Democrats’ medical reforms are “those who are profiting from the status quo.” Further, he says the opposition is “well-financed.”

Great story, if true.

But the president won’t name names. When asked by Washington Examiner columnist Timothy Carney, the White House declined to name any individual, any group, any organization profiting in the industry now and actively supporting the opposition. Same for Obama’s revamped campaign outfit, Organizing for America. It’s now run by the Democratic National Committee. Carney asked folks there which nefarious profiteer funds against Obama, but they wouldn’t clarify a thing.

Carney went looking in the medical care industry, looking at the companies and organizations with the deepest pockets. Which ones are now spending millions to oppose Obama’s reforms? He found zip. Nada. Bubkes.

The big pharmaceuticals are on board with the Democrats, it turns out. So are the biggest insurance companies.

The president is just blowing smoke. The opponents of his medical industry reforms are not well-financed. They are grassroots and widespread.

The big companies hope that the reforms will consolidate their market-leading positions, protect them from competition. Most big government programs do just that.

The people, on the other hand, have the most to lose from more government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

Craigslist, eBay and Twitter

Could California’s budget crisis be solved by a triumvirate of Internet services, Craigslist, eBay and Twitter?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is raiding the state’s storage sheds to sell off unneeded items on eBay and Craigslist. His signature on a California fleet car adds, it is estimated, $400 to its auction value.

He got the latter idea from one of his million Twitter followers.

Wow. I have nowhere near a million Twitter followers. I’m told that I should envy the governor’s Twitter cred, but . . . I’m not the jealous type; I won’t seek any “Tweet” revenge. Still, I’d be happy if all my listeners joined, and I got some usable ideas for raising money.

Unfortunately, neither I nor my sponsor, Citizens in Charge Foundation, have a vast resource of unneeded inventory to sell off. Nor do I have the cachet of the actor-turned-governor: My signature won’t add much value to a Ford Focus.

Yep. Someone paid $1,625.01 for a state-owned Focus with over 110,000 miles on the odometer. The governor signed the visor.

That’s better than a car once owned by Jon Voight!

The only new thing here, really, is using Craigslist and eBay. This isn’t a singularity in the progress of civilization. From this no miracles follow. But it is a healthy sign of thinking slightly outside the proverbial box.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense education and schooling U.S. Constitution

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on October 3, 2005. When I read in the paper about a fifth grade class re-writing the Constitution, I immediately thought about our judiciary. Then I discovered the whole effort was part of a program mandated by Congress. We should all — freely — read the Constitution. Luckily, it is shorter than most of the bills in Congress. —PJ

James Madison, father of our U.S. Constitution, must be rolling over in his grave. You see, he forgot to put love in it. In the Constitution, that is.

By congressional edict, schools and universities across the nation were recently required to spend some time on or around September 17 teaching about the Constitution. That’s the date our nation’s founding document was ratified back in 1787.

One institution of higher learning, Irene’s Myomassology Institute in Michigan, was forced to comply because some students training to be tomorrow’s masseuses receive federal money. The Institute gave students a flier.

Marlboro College in Vermont held a parade featuring professors dressed up as constitutional articles and amendments.

Virginia’s James Madison University celebrated with a “We the People” cake and a trivia contest.

But you ask: What has love got to do with the Constitution?

Oh, yes, I almost forgot Sharon Alexander’s fifth-graders at Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia. In following the federal order, they did what too many federal judges do: they re-wrote the Constitution. Actually, just the Preamble. Their new kid-friendly version states that “kids, pets and adults” are entitled to “electricity, food, water, schools and love.”

Our Constitution doesn’t talk about love. Love isn’t government’s job. That’s ours. Government is power. And our Constitution is all about limiting that power. Read it — and read it to your kids, too, if you love ’em.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense term limits

Green Politicians and Ham

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on August 8, 2003. As a big fan of Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss — having read his books to my kids — this is one of my personal favorites. Amusing, too, that with all the hand-wringing by politicians over term limits, those actually living under the limits are showing relatively more favorable toward the limits. —PJ

“Do you like green eggs and ham? . . . Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may, I say.”

Same goes for politicians and term limits. When state legislators ever-so-reluctantly try term limits, turns out that they actually like green eggs and ham, that is, term limits, better than state legislators who aren’t term-limited.

I read an endless stream of stories about how politicians, about to be term-limited, say the limits aren’t working. News flash: Politicians have always hated term limits. But now a survey commissioned by the National Conference of State Legislatures finds something surprising: there is more support for term limits among legislators in term-limited states than there is among politicians who have no actual experience with term limits.

Think about that. When asked whether term limits “promote healthy change” or “don’t work,” legislators serving under term limits in their state were 50 percent more likely to see term limits in positive terms than their unlimited colleagues.

“Say! I like green eggs and ham! I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!”

Well, I guess we shouldn’t get carried away. Even in term-limited states, legislators oppose the limits by a margin of nearly four to one. Term limits were designed to please voters, not legislators.

Still, good to know that for legislators under term limits, the idea is starting to grow on them.

Ever so slowly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense nannyism responsibility Second Amendment rights

Unhappiness Is a Drawn Gun

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on September 20, 2007. The growing use of zero-tolerance policies — especially having anything to do with guns — is the opposite of common sense. Mass insanity may be more popular these days, but I still prefer common sense. —PJ

There’s the real world, and there are representations of it.

I draw a picture of, say, a gun. That picture is of a gun; it is not itself an actual gun. It’s just, well, a doodle.

This being the case — that doodles differ from real threats — then why was a 13-year-old boy near Mesa, Arizona, suspended from school?

He drew a gun . . . on a piece of paper. He didn’t point it at anybody. He made no hit list. He didn’t say “Bang.” No one even got a paper cut.

But school officials treated it as a threat, lectured his poor father on the shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School, and suspended the lad.

The district spokesman insisted that the doodle was “absolutely considered a threat.” But somehow, knowing that this student was suspended, I’m not feeling any safer.

If our teachers and administrators can’t distinguish real threats from doodles — doodles most boys do, doodles I drew when I was a boy — then what are they teaching the kids? To overreact to everything? To not be able to distinguish small problems from big ones? To treat every symbol or representation as the real thing?

It’s elementary: The map is not the actual territory; the representation is not the thing represented.

You’d think, then, that teachers would be trying to impart (not erase) that notion from the minds of students.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense general freedom too much government

The Two Americas

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on July 4, 2007. A longer version published at Townhall.com was picked up by Rush Limbaugh and read on his radio show. —PJ

Could Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards actually be right about something? Not where to go to get a haircut, mind you, I mean about there being two Americas.

There is the vibrant America . . . and the stagnant one.

There is the America of ever-increasing wealth, innovation, creativity, new products and services. Choices galore.

And there is the politician’s America: The regulated America, the subsidized America, the earmarked America. The failing America.

In one America, it is what you produce that gets you ahead. In the other, it’s who you know.

In one America, to earmark some money means setting aside funds (into savings) for a purchase — a car, house, college.

In the other America, to earmark is to grab from taxpayers to give to cronies. It is the highest rite of career politicians: Buying their votes with other people’s money. Oh, there have been reforms, sure. But a recent bill in the House had 32,000 earmark requests.

In one America, we decide what we pay for. We choose constantly about little things and big. We call the shots. Or we walk down the street and associate with someone else. So we have some faith in those we work with.

In the other America, we vote. But we rarely get what we vote for.

Maybe that’s why the new Democratic Congress just registered the lowest approval rating in poll history.

It surely isn’t because folks love the Republicans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

A Great Country or What?

Some 233 years ago we made a clean break from the corrupt Old World of Europe. Fifty-six men risked it all to proclaim in the Declaration of Independence that:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . .

That sums it up — the grand total of good government. The rest is history. Freedom prospers. Empowered citizens work a whole lot better than dictators.

But the most striking lesson of history is sadly the opposite of America’s July 4, 1776, birth. So much of the world has long lived under political oppression.

I’ve been watching and reading about the protests in Iran, knowing that people are choosing to risk beatings and death to stand up in the streets to speak out for freedom. I’m frustrated that there is so little I can do.

And then it occurs to me: the best thing I can do, as an American, is to fight to keep our country all that it should be.

That’s no easy fight. As you know.

Our governments from Washington, DC, to Hometown, USA, are out of control.

What’s the trouble? Spending. Debt. Regular attacks on our property rights.
The list runs long: Corruption. Arrogance. Nanny-statism. Those relentless assaults on any process of reform — from term limits to voter initiative, referendum and recall.

The philosophy running government for some time now directly opposes the creed of 1776: A belief in unlimited government, the idea that everything is permissible, anything is possible, and nothing is sacred.

Disaster is on the horizon; the storm clouds of several coming catastrophes are dark and visible.

Politicians cannot stop the rain.

But I have faith in you. And in Common Sense.

Our political problems are solvable. But your work and commitment to freedom is ultimately the difference maker.

And I like to think Common Sense helps. By laughing at the sad absurdities. By voicing a little righteous indignation. And by using wit . . . whenever I can find it.

But mainly Common Sense does its job by connecting the outrages of unaccountable government with the great citizens all across America who stand up to defend their rights and the rights of their neighbors from politics gone wild.

Common Sense helps bring folks together to put citizens in charge and ensure that government is accountable to the people.

On radio, online and in your email, the Common Sense program is run on a shoestring by Citizens in Charge Foundation. But even shoestrings cost money. We need to raise $52,000 to cover the program for the remainder of the year and to step up our marketing of the program on radio and online.

On July 4, 1776, they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

This July 4, 2009, I’m asking you to pledge some of your fortune to help keep Common Sense on the air, online and in your email Inbox — and to help us reach out to new audiences.

A number of readers and listeners have made a monthly pledge of $17.76. That’s a big help. Can you make the same pledge?

Or give a one-time contribution of $17.76 today? If you can, please consider donating $1,776. Or $10, $25, $100 — whatever amount works for you.

The antidote to government gone wild is simple: Common Sense. Help us keep it coming.

Happy Independence Day!

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Common Sense First Amendment rights

More than a Breach of Professional Ethics?

The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority has a mission, to provide “Public Television For All of Oklahoma.”

And its top-listed production is news.

Oklahoma Educational Television Authority website
Oklahoma Educational Television Authority

And yet when the non-profit organization I work with, the Citizens in Charge Foundation, sent out a press release to OETA — that’s the outfit’s acronym — OETA sent an official complaint to our Web host, calling the press release spam.

Our former Web host, Hostica, shut down our site and our email.

This is the second time this happened. Obviously, we won’t be sending any more press releases to that news source.

But think about this. OETA is in the news biz. For it to call a press release “spam” — unwanted — is not just nasty, it’s an astounding breach of professional ethics. It’s like a weather man refusing to cover snow, or a preacher refusing to talk about God, or . . . a politician refusing to read the Constitution.

Now, it could be that we sent the press release to the wrong department. Their proper response? Forward it to the right people, then reply back.

But email routing is not what this is all about. Our press release covered a story that put a top Oklahoma politician in bad light. The public TV folk in Oklahoma aren’t independent. Being all-too-political, OETA — or someone at OETA — attempted to squelch our speech rights.

So I ask you: What should our response be?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability Common Sense free trade & free markets too much government

New Prez Pleads for Common Sense

I like a president who pleads for common sense.

Here’s the story, headlined in the New York Times: “Obama Calls for ’Common Sense’ on Executive Pay.”

The president announced a salary cap for top executives working for companies garnering the greatest gobs of booty under the most recent federal bailout. The cap? Half a million bucks.

President Obama allayed a few qualms, right away. He said that “This is America, we don’t disparage wealth. . . .” And he said, “we certainly believe that success should be rewarded.”

But he does talk about the “height of irresponsibility” in Bush administration bailouts, with execs taking huge bonuses after running their companies into the ground. Who wasn’t sickened by this? Obama sees it as common sense to make sure we don’t reward massive failure with the usual rewards of success.

Still, America is also about respecting contracts. Those corporations had negotiated very explicit contracts with their execs regarding the big bucks. And — surprise, surprise — Congress wrote up the law on the gargantuan bailouts without requiring those contracts be renegotiated.

And consider: Do we really want our politicians setting non-government salaries?

This is all a side issue, though. Take the bailouts themselves. Where’s the common sense there? They do reward failure. They will not help the economy. If our leaders had acted according to common sense, the whole salary issue wouldn’t even have come up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.