Fake photography has mass repercussions on everyday life and experience:
It is worth noting that this site, ThisIsCommonSense.com, uses obviously manipulated photos. They are often collages, sometimes sketches or Photoshop cartoons. We have tried to be pretty forthright about this practice.
On December 3, 1989, the leaders of the two world superpowers, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, declared an end to the Cold War, at a summit in Malta. A little over two years later not only had the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union was itself dissolved.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.
Sure, I’ve complained about the over-the-top anti-Trump bias of much of the mainstream media (which may actually have improved Trump’s public standing). But, today, I enthusiastically celebrate that supercilious slant.
Why? Because it means much of the media amazingly finds itself on the right side, panning the recent deal to save 1,000 jobs at the Carrier Corporation.
Saving jobs is good per se. We want jobs to stay here in America. But, at what price?
Thus far, the deal remains secret, but according to Politico, “The agreement reportedly includes $7 million in state tax breaks over ten years offered by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, a quasi-public entity that doesn’t require legislative approval for its deals.”
“Quasi-public entities” always make me queasy.
“Can American companies now merely threaten to go to Mexico,” asks Chris Rossini in the Ron Paul Liberty Letter, “in order to get a sweetheart deal for themselves?”
This special arrangement’s costs are not merely monetary: Special deals for some companies at the expense of others undermine the whole concept of equality under the law.
File under: crony capitalism.
Even the socialists at The Nation say the agreement “epitomizes corporate socialism at the expense of American taxpayers.”
“I certainly think that, if President Obama had done something like this, conservatives would have been freaking out,” argues Reason’s Peter Suderman.
Many are. Well, maybe not exactly “freaking out” — but vocally opposing the idea of the not-quite-yet-president picking winners and losers in the marketplace.
Crony capitalism didn’t make America great. Our revolution’s justification prompts the antithesis.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On December 2, 1823, U.S. President James Monroe delivered a speech establishing American neutrality in future European conflicts. The policy became known as the Monroe Doctrine.
Though a much-discussed principle of American foreign policy, it was undermined by the Spanish-American War, and proved a dead letter as the U. S. entered World War I.
A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
When Hillary Clinton assured her insider sponsors (as we learned through WikiLeaks) that there would be a crucial difference between what she tells the people and what her actual policies would be, she was not merely admitting to a private and a public face.
The President is legally, and by honor, bound to serve the American people, not Goldman-Sachs. What she was confessing to was more than the mere appearance of a conflict of interests.
She boasted a plan of betrayal.
In that light, President-elect Donald Trump’s international business deals seem . . . what? His first diplomatic meeting — with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — included his daughter and partner-in-business Ivanka.
It seems to at least wander into conflict-of-interest territory, if not stake claim and hoist up a flag proclaiming Trumpistan America!
So I was very pleased, yesterday, when the President-elect vowed to step out from the running of his global business and branding empire.
Earlier, he had brushed off conflict-of-interest concerns, saying he could run his empire and . . . ours.
Apparently, his new White House appointees have convinced him that this business dealing while President was a huge problem. “I feel it is visually important,” he explained Wednesday morning, “as president, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.”
Thanks, Steve Bannon?
Or, maybe, Mitt Romney, with whom he dined* the night before?
I hope Mr. Trump follows through with this, as well as distance himself from business partner Ivanka as unofficial policy advisor.
Americans did not reject Corrupt Hillary only to wind up with a Corrupt Trump set.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?
John Milton, Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England (1644).
On December 1, 1824, with neither John Quincy Adams nor Andrew Jackson receiving a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives was given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The House selected Adams. Jackson and his supporters felt deeply aggrieved, and immediately set about preparing for the next election, which Jackson won handily. Jacksonian supporters referred to the election of 1824 as “the Stolen Election,” in no small part because Jackson had received more popular votes.
“To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.”
Finally. Some sense from the New York Times.
Mark Lilla, in “The End of Identity Liberalism,” delivers a valuable lesson about political correctness — without once mentioning the term “political correctness.”
Now this is a lesson we can get behind.
The problem is “diversity.” The center-left became so obsessed with it that it helped sink the last election for Hillary Clinton, Democrats at large, and the coherence and legacy of President Barack Obama.
“However interesting it may be to read, say, about the fate of transgender people in Egypt,” Lilla wrote in the Friday think piece, “it contributes nothing to educating Americans about the powerful political and religious currents that will determine Egypt’s future, and indirectly, our own.”
Fixating on diversity of gender identity and racial make-up in business and government has scuttled the rights-oriented approach of the older liberalism.
Alas, Lilla is not talking about the liberalism of J.S. Mill or Lord Acton. He is talking about FDR.
But compared to today’s “identity liberalism,” FDR’s burdensome promises look like sheer genius. And Lilla understands at least one thing about diversity: “National politics in healthy periods is not about ‘difference,’ it is about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best captures Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny.”
He does not bring up the real liberal message: that the way to find commonality is to avoid making government all things to all people. It is to limit its scope, instead, so the president of the United States isn’t every school’s bathroom monitor.
Perhaps an essay on The End to Hubristic Liberalism is required?
Another day. And probably another paper.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Original (cc) photo by James Cridland on Flickr