The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.
Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” Fortnightly Review, February 1891.
On June 1, 1792, Kentucky was admitted as the 15th state of the United States. Four years later, Tennessee became the 16th state.
On April Fools’ Day, 1957, the BBC offered for viewers of the current affairs program “Panorama” the infamous spaghetti tree report hoax. In the spirit of the day, Common Sense offers these “historic” events:
On April 1, 1787, James Madison, father of the Constitution, removed the General Welfare clause from his draft of the U.S. Constitution, telling friends that, “I fear future big-government-loving politicians will undoubtedly abuse the clause’s vague concept to drown the people in federal overreach.”
On April 1, 1918, Woodrow Wilson became the first and only President of the United States to be impeached and removed from office for lying about munitions being aboard the Lusitania in an effort to whip up war fever against Germany and push the nation into World War I.
On April 1, 2002, the U.S. Congress refused to grant President George W. Bush’s request for a declaration of war against Iraq.
On April 1, 2014, President Barack Obama admitted to being a Kenyan, er, Keynesian, but argued that the Constitution did not bar Keynesians from office.
Many who pledged to limit their terms in Congress have gotten elected and, then . . . actually kept their word. Yet, with the temptations of power, combined with the acute narcissism of politicians, not a few have flung their honor aside to break their promise.
Four years ago, Oklahoma Congressman Markwayne Mullin was a challenger, “who pledged repeatedly . . . not to serve more than six years in the House.” Okie voters limited their congressional reps to three terms (six years) via a ballot initiative back in 1994. Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that and 22 other state-imposed congressional term limits laws just a year later.
NewsOK.com reporter Chris Casteel asked Rep. Mullin if this coming term would, as Mullin vowed, be his last.
A simple yes or no question, eh?
Well, the incumbent’s response was less than unequivocal, “leaving open the possibility that he may run for a fourth term,” Casteel reported.
“Our position on this has not changed,” read Mullin’s official statement. “However, Christie and I will continue to seek the Lord’s guidance and do what is best for our family and the 2nd District of Oklahoma. The only election I am focused on right now is in 2016.”
Hmmm. Do you recall the Lord ever guiding anyone to break his word to the people?
What a dodge!
Mullin is like a burglar announcing, “I’m not sure if I’m going to rob your home when I get out of jail. That’s too far off in the future. But I’m seeking spiritual advice about it.”
Come to think of it, incumbent politicians and burglars have quite a lot in common.
But not Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
Václav Havel, Speech of October 1989, accepting a peace prize.
On March 31, 1717, a sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ,” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy.
The sermon’s text was John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and from that Hoadly deduced — supposedly at the request of King George I himself, who was present in the assembly — that there was no Biblical justification for any church government. Hoadly identified the church with the kingdom of Heaven, noting that Christ had not delegated His authority to any representative.
King George’s preference for the Whig Party, and for latitudinarianism in ecclesiastical policy, is widely thought to have been a strategic maneuver to degrade church power in political government.
Being a clever person is hard work. Many of the truly clever things about everyday life have already been said. New and innovative cleverness? A rare thing indeed.
But if you are in the business of being clever, that puts you in a pickle, if “being relevant” and “worth our attention” is part of your cachet.
Take Alain de Botton, a very clever man who has written at least one brilliant book . . . and several not-so-brilliant ones. He has tackled Proust, Epicureanism, and is now deeply into religion.
Well, maybe not so deeply.
He wants politicians to follow the lead of religious leaders, who, he asserts, are masters of rebranding. (I had thought that was for marketing specialists.)
Recognizing that the word “tax” is an odious one — few people really like paying their taxes — de Botton says that politicians should follow what “religions do” and “rebrand ‘tax’ as ‘charity.’”
Charity, he notes, is a “much more appealing word.”
Well, yeah. That’s because charity is a word for love. It is all about deep concern, sympathy, etc., and “acts of charity” are expressions of love and concern.
And the only way that acts of charity can be determined to be expressions of concern is that they are voluntary. Taxes, on the other hand, are not voluntary. They are taken by force (try not paying them — force will find you).
Forcing people to “be charitable” will automatically scuttle that very purpose.
Trying to rescue politics from the stench of compulsion should not be done with rebranding, but by limiting government.
The less government, the less force.
And more scope for charity.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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A new “right” that violates other fundamental rights, can’t be a right.
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I am strongly and steadily opposed to all plans of state employment. Besides the old fatal objection that we have no right to compel some to pay for others, such works interfere with the regular labor market, they are badly supervised and badly conducted and therefore tend to demoralize the men employed; they often keep labor collected at certain spots when it should be dispersed, discouraging the men from following and finding other work.
Auberon Herbert, from the appendix to the 1885 edition of The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State.
On March 30, 1864, German sociologist and economist Franz Oppenheimer was born. This sociologist is most famous for his 1908 book The State, in which he elaborated some consequences of two means for acquiring wealth, the “economic means,” by which he meant private production or by trade, and the “political means,” by which he meant forcible extraction from one group or person by another person or group. Oppenheimer taught in Palestine in the mid-1930s, and fled the Nazis to the United States, via Japan in 1938. In 1941 he became a founder of The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, and died two years later.