To hurt in any degree the interest of any one order of citizens, for no other purpose but to promote that of some other, is evidently contrary to that justice and equality of treatment which the sovereign owes to all the different orders of his subjects.
Adam Smith, The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)
On June 5, 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, started its ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.
In the last few weeks we have learned how wrong much of what we are told about who legally and effectively picks the presidential candidates in the major political parties.
Who has an interest in not telling the truth, and undermining the integrity of America’s political parties?
There is no better means of reducing a fallacious variety of thought to absurdity than to let it live itself out completely.
Attributed to Carl Menger in Ludwig Von Mises, “Comments about the mathematical treatment of economic problems.” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Spring 1977, 1(2), p. 100.
June 4 marks Finland’s Armed Forces Day, Tonga’s Emancipation [or Independence] Day (commemorating the abolition of serfdom in Tonga by King George Tupou in 1862, and the independence of Tonga from the British protectorate in 1970), Estonia’s Flag Day, and the international Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 Memorial Day.
Hillary Clinton came out swinging against Donald Trump yesterday. She said electing the man would be an “historic mistake.”
As opposed to her past career in politics, which I would call an historical mistake.
Mrs. Clinton focused in on Mr. Trump’s foreign policy pronouncements. “She ran through Mr Trump’s foreign policy points and rejected each one,” reported the BBC, “calling him thin-skinned, irrational and unprepared.”
Funny, though: I wouldn’t exactly call Mrs. Clinton the opposite: thick-skinned, rational, or prepared.
Take her main charges, then look at the obvious demerit of each:
“Mrs Clinton said a Trump presidency could start overseas wars and ruin the US economy.” Don’t vote Trump — starting wars and ruining the economy is Clinton’s job!
Trump’s “proposals were vague and often nonsensical.” Unlike Clinton’s, whose murky specifics speak of evasion from a to z — and whose policies in Libya and elsewhere made no sense whatsoever, breeding more conflict and opposition in place of the regimes she helped undermine and remove.
“Questioning his relationship with Russian president Vladmir Putin, she said: ‘I’ll leave it to a psychiatrist to explain his affection for tyrants.’” And speaking of perverse affection, her and her husband’s Clinton Foundation has been milking foreign tyrants for years. All very above-board, I’m sure.
“‘This isn’t reality television, this is actual reality,’ she said.” If you ask me, her reality is just as irreal as Trump’s.
We can do better, America.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Gratitude is the virtue of wise and generous minds. Ingratitude is the fault of fools and clowns.
La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales, (1665, 1678), maxims 688 and 689.
On June 3, 1959, Singapore adopted a constitution.
Everybody is familiar with the standard theory regarding the Citizens United decision. Former comedian and current earnest socialist Sarah Silverman puts it this way: “Every politician takes money from Big Money, ever since it was made legal with Citizens United.”
Like most folks who talk this way, she doesn’t give a squeak of context. She barely even indicates that it was a Supreme Court case, 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. She does not mention at all that the ruling overturned the FEC’s act of suppressing a political movie.
But there is a much wider context than such bare facts — and if you want a good synopsis, you could hardly do better than read my friend Krist Novoselic’s calm, reasoned “look at the history of attempts to regulate independent campaign expenditures.”
This “modern history” started with what the New York Times called Richard Nixon’s “revolution in political financing.” The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 “required detailed disclosure of campaign contributions; set campaign contribution limits to candidates, parties and committees; set expenditure limits on campaigns, independent groups and individuals and created the first public financing of presidential campaigns and national conventions.”
And almost immediately the law began suppressing political speech and advertising. And led to a long series of court cases.
And decisions.
And revisions.
That define our times.
Krist (with whom I serve on the board of FairVote.org) provides the context you need to see through what he aptly calls “the hype” about “Citizens United,” as well as how the decision correctly removed the license given to the FEC’s role as “state censorship board.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called ‘the People’s Stick.’
Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy (1873).