Yesterday, Paul Jacob explored the chief issues surrounding the fourth anniversary of “Fifteen Days to Flatten America.” He concluded by blaming mostly Fauci and Birx for the massive tyrannies and ineptitudes of the lockdowns and other measures associated with the pandemic.
While one of those names, Anthony Fauci, is more than familiar to readers of Common Sense with Paul Jacob, the other — Deborah Birx, the author of a memoir of the pandemic, Silent Invasion (2022) — is much less familiar. And it may be tempting to downplay her role.
But as a recent documentary argues, au contraire! She was key. Birx did the bulk of the damage. It was her bizarre reactions that led the federal government response.
The dangers of the War on Drugs has been a long-running theme here at Common Sense with Paul Jacob. And some times it is incumbent upon us to note that the drugs governments prohibit are often not as dangerous as proclaimed.
But no drug lacks dangers.
Indeed, for the past three years, the main Dangerous Drug theme has been a government-approved, government-subsidized, government-mandated drug, “the vax.”
With the rise of homelessness and simultaneous rise of drug de-criminalization in many states, the recreational drug issue has come back. And some people have taken the drum beat of old-timey Progressive Era drug alarmism, as reported by Jacob Sullum, Reason, “Because ‘Marijuana Is Dangerous,’ Inveterate Drug Warriors Say, ‘Legalizing It Was a Mistake’” (March 15, 2024):
Barr and Walters complain that marijuana legalization has “created the false perception that the drug is ‘safe.’” They think refuting that false perception is enough to justify a return to prohibition. Because “marijuana is dangerous,“ they say, “legalizing it was a mistake.” But the question is not whether marijuana is “safe”; it is whether marijuana’s hazards justify the use of force to stop people from consuming it. Barr and Walters fail to seriously grapple with that question even in utilitarian terms, and they completely ignore moral objections to criminalizing conduct that violates no one’s rights.
We will no doubt be talking about this issue a lot more in the months and years to come, especially if teetotaling Donald Trump returns to office.
The idea that non-citizens should vote in America’s elections has gained ground among Democrats. But, as reported here earlier — see, for instance, “Alien Nation Capital” (March 7, 2023) and “Blue Boston Democracy” (March 9, 2024) — the idea is being beaten back. Take the case of West Virginia:
A House of Delegates resolution that would create an amendment to the state Constitution ensuring only United States citizens can vote in West Virginia elections is now with the state Senate.
House Joint Resolution 21 passed on a 96-0 vote February 6. It was introduced February 7 in the state Senate and sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee before it would go to the Senate Finance Committee.
A co-sponsor of the State Senate’s version of the bill, State Sen. Mike Stuart (R-Kanawha), is quoted making a commonsense argument: “As an American citizen, I don’t vote in other countries’ elections, and they shouldn’t vote in ours.”
Among the biggest stories of the day is the wokification of corporate America.
The update? Corporations’ are pulling back from their activism, at least according to a report in The Epoch Times:
Wall Street titans appear to be having an increasingly hard time reconciling the conflicting goals of progressive activism and shareholder returns.
Until recently, many banks, asset managers, and insurers portrayed these goals as complementary, asserting that climate risk is financial risk and that the competence of management can be assessed by its commitment to social justice goals.
Today, however, those narratives are rarely heard.
The story behind the story is perhaps even more interesting, for it shows how easy it is to control America’s corporations: control the investment groups that own most of the stocks.
Which reminds us of Peter Drucker’s claim that socialism was coming to America via retirement funds.
Drucker sounded so . . . optimistic . . . about that. Didn’t he?
But what if socialism is bad no matter how you achieve it?
The idea that one needn’t be a citizen to vote in America’s local, state and even federal elections is being flirted with in many of the country’s biggest, “bluest” cities. Coverage here, on this site, includes this piece from last year, about the strange political maneuverings in our “Alien National Capital”:
Now the wackos in Washington, D.C., have enacted a non-citizen voting measure that goes further. It allows Russian nationals working for Mr. Putin at their embassy in our nation’s capital to vote on city candidates and ballot issues and welcomes onto Washington’s voter rolls Chinese citizens here promoting Xi Jinping and the interests of his genocidal regime.
The District of Columbia’s ordinance extends the franchise even to people here illegally, allowing anyone from anywhere in the world able to avoid deportation to cast a ballot. Legally.
We’ve updated this story in a number of ways, but in case you think this isn’t a movement of some kind, here is just one additional city from the current season:
Yes, the “law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate,” with minimal adaptability to new conditions. “By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.” Herbert Spencer had it right over a century ago. The latest example? The massive cluster-muck that was school shutdowns during the lockdown period of the recent pandemic.
Here at Common Sense with Paul Jacob you read of the overkill that were the lockdowns, especially as regarding public schools. But now the evidence is pouring in, as reported in Reason magazine. Yes, government schools exhibit the old Spencerian principle:
When COVID-19 shuttered virtually everything in 2020 and forced public schools to begin distance learning, those schools responded with the agility one would expect from a decrepit battleship forced to make a quick change of course in the face of an unexpected enemy. In other words, the state’s hulking K-12 system barely responded at all, even as small and nimble private and charter schools quickly adapted to the new reality.
I remember news stories about public schools unable to set up even the most basic Zoom classes, of teachers who had no idea what they were supposed to do — and then of unions and administrators resisting efforts to re-start classroom teaching even after the rest of society was getting back to normal. Instead of re-ordering procedures to help kids stay current on their schoolwork, the school establishment mainly whined about not having enough money.
Anyone who needs a reminder about why government bureaucracies are incapable of providing quality public services need only look at the resulting disaster. A Stanford University study found, “a substantial decline in student learning in both English language arts/literacy (ELA) and mathematics between the 2018–19 and 2021–22 academic years.” Those are the general figures, but the results for poor and minority students were a travesty.
The whole article is worth reading, though we add one caveat: “COVID-19” did not shut down schools: governments did. In reaction. In over-reaction. For very little reason. The lockdowns in general were unnecessary and usurpative. But regarding schools — government or non-government — they were baseless and grand folly.
And if you want to see how learning can happen in online chats, look to unschooling and home schooling and other systems with actual, working feedback systems.
Dr. Phil has a clip that is making the rounds on this subject. It is worth viewing:
