October 11, 1890, marks the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
On the same date in 1976, President Gerald R. Ford approved a congressional joint resolution Public Law 94-479 to appoint, posthumously, George Washington to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, as part of the bicentennial celebrations.
John J. Pershing is the only other American to attain this high title, and the only one to achieve it while alive.
“[I]f someone puts a gun to your head,” argues David Boaz of the Cato Institute, “and says you have to choose between Clinton and Trump, the correct answer is, take the bullet.”
Then, proving the axiom “it can always get worse,” came Friday’s twin revelations: the Washington Post broke the story of Donald Trump caught on a hot microphone bragging about groping women, and WikiLeaks released hacked emails with unflattering revelations about Hillary Clinton “principled” duplicity.
The Clinton camp huffs about the hack of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, but denies nothing.
In those speeches for which Wall Street firms paid her millions, Clinton’s progressivism evaporates. She suggests Goldman Sachs and other large financial firms should regulate themselves, because they “know the industry better than anybody.”
While publicly bashing the rich, she privately complains before her wealthy audience about the “bias against people who have led successful . . . lives.” Moreover, Hillary explains that it’s bad “if everybody is watching” public policy being made, adding: “[Y]ou need both a public and a private position.”
And to think some folks don’t trust her.
Mr. Trump likewise confirmed our worst fears. During a 2005 taping of a television soap, he boasted that “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
And then gave a “rapey” example of what “anything” means.
This man deserves political power?
Forget which is worse. Note how much alike they are. Both seem to think they can say — even do — anything. Without consequences.
Without caring one whit about the rest of us.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
John Morley, Voltaire (London: Macmillan and Company, 1885; 1897), p. 80.
Political liberty . . . has not only a meaning of abstention, but a meaning of participation. If in one sense it is a sheer negative, and a doctrine of rights, in another sense it is thoroughly positive, and a gospel of duties.
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On October 10, 1973, Austrian-born American economist, Ludwig von Mises (pictured above) died.
Two-hundred fifty-nine years earlier, the French law-maker and Jansenist Pierre le Pesant,
sieur de Boisguilbert (pictured below right) died.
Both economists were known for their defenses of freer markets: le Pesant for pioneering the critique of mercantilism, arguing that a nation’s wealth consisted in what its people produce and trade; Mises for systematizing economic theory and advancing the critique of both socialism and latter-day mercantalism (what he called “interventionism”).
The big story last week was about the conclusion of the Wisconsin John Doe raids, the cheese state’s attempt at strong-arm partisan fascism. This weekend at Townhall, Paul summarizes the story for a national audience.
Click on over, then come back here for the links you need.
Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 10.
Too far a retreat from reality is insanity.
On October 9, 1635, Protestant theologian Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he spoke out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land. He moved south, founding Providence Plantations, where he worked for separation of church and state, the rights of aboriginal Americans, and against slavery.
“We don’t know where the State ends and where we begin.”
If you think you know the story of Rwanda, the terrible genocide followed by healing and reconciliation, you’ll want to listen to what Anjan Sundaram told me last week at the San Francisco Freedom Forum. This video is from his talk on the subject at the Oslo Freedom Forum earlier this year.
This is ominous indeed, a dictatorship down to the rubber slippers.
Bonus footage: This 2014 BBC documentary goes into depth about President Paul Kagame’s role in the 1994 genocide.
https://youtu.be/c0LFbUZcO5I
Even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in the broad, intelligent, and spacious way.
John Morley, author of Voltaire and other works.
On October 8, 1793, American merchant and first Governor of Massachusetts, John Hancock (b. 1737), died.
The date October 8, 1582, does not exist in the records of Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, the result of that year’s implementation of the Gregorian calendar.
Fearing a Catholic plot, Protestant countries adopted the more accurate calendar much later. By the time Britain and its colonies got on board in 1752, eleven days had to be “disappeared.” This caused riots in some places, as people suspected some horrible chicanery — and in actual fact the inspiration for the “Give us our eleven days” protest had something to do with taxes, so it might not have been as idiotic as it now seems.