On June 29, 1914, the day after the shooting of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Austrian interrogations confirmed that the Serbian government was behind the assassination. Serbia denied involvement.
Thus continued the series of events that led to “The Great War,” now known as “World War I.”
Man was created for social intercourse; but social intercourse cannot be maintained without a sense of justice; then man must have been created with a sense of justice.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis W. Gilmer, June 7, 1816
Complaints about “the mainstream media” are old hat. But that doesn’t mean the complaints have lost validity.
I was struck by this while reading Matt Welch’s warning, at Reason: “Don’t Believe Any Headline Showing Hillary Clinton with a 12-Point Lead over Donald Trump.”
“There is indeed a 51 percent to 39 percent advantage for Clinton over Trump in newly released Washington Post/ABC News poll, conducted from June 20-23,” Welch concedes. “But that same survey also asked the same pool of voters to react to a far more representative ballot, i.e., one that includes Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson . . . and the Green Party’s Jill Stein. . . .”
The point is, leaving out Hillary’s and the Donald’s actual competition from poll results — or from poll questions, for that matter — is tantamount to misreporting. It is, in other words, “bad science” and “journalistic malpractice.”
“Clinton has yet to reach 50 percent when her proper competition is included,” Welch explains, “and Trump hasn’t even cracked 40.”
In the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Mrs. Clinton was reported to enjoy a seven-point lead, but when voters were offered all likely ballot options, including Johnson, the Libertarian, and Stein, the Green, Hillary bettered Donald by only one point: 39-38 percent.
But why would journalists and editors systematically rig the reporting of politics?
Laziness? Covering four candidates is twice as much work as covering two.
Partisan reasons? The Washington press corps has been embedded with R&D operatives for decades.
Whatever the reason, they’ve missed a huge story: the impact of these minor party candidates is major news.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photo credit: Brett Weinstein on Flickr
[W]e did not invent the biotruths of human nature, no more than we invented vision, speech, the circulation of blood, the beating of the heart.
We did not invent men and women.
They are what they are, and what they are not is hollow vessels to be filled with whatever sugars and syrups their betters, the anointed cooks of humanity, the intolerant coveters of power and would-be imposers of values, see fit to pour into receptive, neutral containers to be labeled from the outside by strangers who do not know them, or themselves, and to be filled with whatever contents these outsiders might deem in their own best interests!
John Norman, GorChronicles.com
June 28 birthdays include that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher, in 1712.
On this date in 1914, 19-year-old Gavril Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and the Archduke’s wife Sophie. The Archduke had earlier missed a bomb thrown at his car, which necessitated a change in the motorcade route, which the driver forgot, which is why the car paused at the precise intersection in which Princip fired his fatal shots.
The shooting began a series of events that led to “The Great War,” now known as “World War I.”
On June 28, 1992, the Constitution of Estonia was signed into law.
Increasingly, folks in government balk at the commonsense requirement for transparency. They don’t like the basic idea of a republic, apparently — that we have rights; folks in government have duties. They are bound to serve us.
And allow us to oversee their work.
The latest bizarre attempt to wiggle out of transparency comes from California. A proposed bit of legislation, AB-2880, seeks to grant state employees copyright protection — for their everyday work as public servants.
“The bill claims to protect access to the documents through the California Public Records Act,” explains Steven Greenhut in The American Spectator, “but it gives the government the ability to control what people do with many of those records.” Emphasis added — to direct your attention to the enormity of the increase in government prerogatives.
Public records are called “public” not merely because they putatively serve the public, but because they are open to the public. Yet, if this measure passes, those records are essentially privatized . . . to the government.
That is not what we mean, usually, when we say “privatize.”
Using copyright law to protect “thin-skinned officials,” AB-2880 would insulate bureaucrats even further from citizen oversight.
The excuse for the law, to help agencies manage their “intellectual property,” is hardly a big concern, except perhaps in one way: trademark infringement. We do not want private businesses to pretend to be state parks or bureaus. But the overreach beyond this core issue goes so far into crazyland that one must question the intent behind it.
And stop it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their powers: that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, & to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him: every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him: and, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third. When the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions, and the idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural right.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis W. Gilmer, June 7, 1816
Paul von Mauser was born on June 27, 1838, and would go on to become a weapons designer. In 1869, Emma Goldman was born, to later become known as a feminist, anarchist, and early leftist opponent of Soviet Communism. In 1880, Helen Keller was born on this date.
Ah, how Britain’s Brexit vote surprised the world’s leaders and elites! If for no other reason than to see them squirm, there is something in the LEAVE [the EU] vote to glory in. But it’s more important than that.
Click on over to Townhall for this weekend’s Common Sense column. Then come back here for a bit more reading:
The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument hitherto unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity; but national education, since at least it presupposes the selection and appointment of some one instructor, must always promote a definite form of development, however careful to avoid such an error. And hence it is attended with all those disadvantages which we before observed to flow from such a positive policy; and it only remains to be added, that every restriction becomes more directly fatal, when it operates on the moral part of our nature,—that if there is one thing more than another which absolutely requires free activity on the part of the individual, it is precisely education, whose object it is to develop the individual.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (1792), English edition The Sphere and Duties of Government, as translated by Joseph Coulthard (1854).