It takes imagination to identify an economic principle. It takes still more imagination to follow the implications of the principle outside the context of commercial activity and explore its psychological, social, and political meanings.
Stephen Cox, in Cox and Paul Cantor, Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture (2010).
In 1752, throughout the British Empire, September 2 was followed, the next day, by September 14, as the government adopted the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days.
On September 14, 1944, Maastricht becomes the first Dutch city to be liberated by allied forces.
10 out of 10 terrorist Jihadists agree…
American gun rights must be restricted!
Why is it when some politicians or pundits get a brilliant idea about how to make the country better, involving (of course) making people do as the government dictates, it only applies to other people?
Sunday, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” New York Times columnist and Times-styled conservative David Brooks bemoaned the electorate’s disunity due to the unprecedented unpopularity of Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton: “We could have a winner at 42 percent. Look at those poll numbers. . . . And so, that’s almost like a minority government. I think we’ve just got to do something about it.”
Do something? What?
Brooks explained, “Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago has an idea that every kid who graduates from high school spends the next three months in some sort of national service. So a kid from Martha’s Vineyard or Marin County is with a kid from Mobile, Alabama, and just three months, it would make a difference.”
Chicagoans will warn against emulating Mayor Emanuel.*
“I thought national service was going to be a given,” host Chuck Todd then offered. “I mean, my God, we’ve been talking about national service my whole adult life and I can’t believe we’re not there.”
News Flash: The problem with our politics is not the fault of teenagers. Nor would forcing young people to put their dreams on hold the better to toil in some social engineering scheme solve anything.
Want national service? Begin with politicians and TV talking heads.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* A whopping 62 percent of Chicagoans disapprove of their mayor and fully 40 percent want ole Rahm Never-Let-a-Crisis-Go-to-Waste Emanuel to immediately resign. The mayor’s delay in releasing an incriminating police video, until after his re-election, has been the most incendiary issue. But also consider some ugly facts about systemic breakdown in city governance: the number of murders this year is already higher than last year, four out of ten freshman in Chicago high schools fail to graduate and 91 percent of graduates going on to college require remedial courses.
John Calvin [pictured above] returned to Geneva on September 13, 1541, after three years of exile. His subsequent work in church reform and theology became known as Calvinism, and profoundly influenced the course of European and (eventually) American civilization, including several concepts of servitude and liberty.
On the same date in 1989, Desmond Tutu led South Africa’s largest march aganst Apartheid.
Even during my father’s 1984 gubernatorial campaign, it was, ‘Do you want to grow up and be governor one day?’ ‘No. I am four.’
Yesterday, around the country, flags were flown at half-staff, a sad acknowledgement of the atrocities on 9/11/2001.
In preparation for the 15th anniversary, students at a California college put up signs, emblazoned with the motto “Never Forget.” At least one faculty member took it upon herself to rip the signage down. Perhaps believing in blowback, her excuse had something to do with the posters needing a stamp from authorities in a “free speech area.”
Hey, I believe 9/11 had something to do with blowback, too. But trying to squelch speech rather than add to it seems like the wrong way to go.
In any case, the history teacher saw no problem suppressing the motto “Never Forget,” as if she were not in the “never forget” business.
Then, yesterday, on 9/11, Hillary “Never Admit” Clinton fell into wooziness at a memorial service. She hurriedly left the madding crowd. Yet, somebody recorded her stumbling, her knees buckling, being physically helped into her van.
For months now, her “conspiracy theorist” political enemies have been speculating about her persistent coughing, apparent confusions, and maniacal laughing fits. Now incontrovertible proof that something was wrong.
After going dark for 90 minutes, her campaign issued a statement that Mrs. Clinton had become “overheated.” Hours later, her doctor announced she’d been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday.
Was it bacterial? Chemical? Viral?
No specifics.
And it raises more questions than it answers.
On 9/11/2016, what became news was Hillary’s ill health. That news, at any rate, has gone viral. And will probably linger, adding yet another dimension to a strange presidential campaign year.
But, as the history teacher should have asked, are we learning anything?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On September 12, 1848, Switzerland became a unified federal state with a constitution limiting central government powers and providing decentralized state (canton) power patterned on the U.S. Constitution.
In 1880 on this date, H.L. Mencken was born. One of his earliest books was a debate with a socialist, The Men versus The Man (1910); his greatest lasting contribution was probably The American Language (1919) and its supplements (1945, 1948). His work has been collected in numerous anthologies, such as Alistair Cooke’s Vintage Mencken (1955) and the author’s own Mencken Chrestomathy.
The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.
John Caldwell Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government (1851), p. 90. Calhoun’s image (above), a detail from a portrait by George Peter Alexander Healy.
