You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, was the only American politician to have voted against America’s involvement in both World War I and World War II.
On August 9, 1942, British forces arrested Mahatma Gandhi in Bombay, spurring the Quit India Movement into nationwide action.
In 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, and his entire cabinet.
A new procedural reform is in the offing.
And just because it is “procedural” doesn’t mean it’s insignificant.
Or boring.
Remember, how something gets done determines, in part, what gets done. The checks and balances that were written into our Constitution are there to regulate the how of government, the better to limit the what.
But it’s obvious our federal government is out of control, and in need of some additional . . . controls.
Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Mia Love have introduced just such legislation. It’s not a constitutional limitation, but a legislative change of procedure. The title of their bills pretty much explains the idea: the “One Subject at a Time Act,” initialized as OSTA.
I first heard rumblings about it from Rand Paul; then, just last week, Mia Love sent out her press release, ballyhooing the House version of OSTA, H.R. 4335.
Rand’s Senate version is S. 1572, and was introduced a little over a year ago.
The idea is not new. I’ve talked about it before. You probably have, too. Anyone with sense realizes that the congressional habit of adding unimportant, controversial programs to unrelated but necessary, uncontroversial bills, is a leading cause of government growth.
And one reason why Congress is so roundly detested.
OSTA, by forcing Congress to deal with subjects one bill at a time, might even save Congress from itself.
The bill is still looking for sponsors. You can help by putting your representative’s and senators’ feet to the fire.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Francis Hutcheson [pictured, below at right], philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and a great influence on David Hume and Adam Smith, was born in Ireland on August 8, 1694.
Followers of Mahatma Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement against the British rule on August 8, 1942.
On the same day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon resigned.
Russia. The Bear.
Putin. The Tyrant.
America. The Oblivious?
Click on over to Townhall for further variations on a theme. With Trump in the picture.
Then retreat back here, for your further edification:
On August 7, 1782, George Washington instituted the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle, an award later renamed “the Purple Heart.”
Illustration: “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” Emanuel Leutze, 1851, Oil on canvas (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), depicting an event in 1776, not 1782.
Each man has the sole right to dispose of his own life. The recognition that the rights of each individual have priority over the demands of the state is an honored and traditional American concept.
Tonie Nathan, from her proposed preamble for the first Libertarian Party platform (On Libertarianism: Historical Notes & Articles, 1981).
“Sargon of Akkad,” a videoblogger on YouTube who is most famous for his weekly series “This Week in Stupid,” makes an eloquent and commonsense case for the traditional meaning of “equality of opportunity,” against a Vox.com egalitarian who thinks the idea is unworkable (and who prefers straight equality of outcomes):
https://youtu.be/TkVwYOYrxWM
Note: “Sargon” has named himself after history’s first emperor (the YouTuber’s extra-net name is Carl Benjamin), and argues from what he calls the “liberal” position, of what might be specified more accurately as Limited Transfer State Liberalism. It is a position very similar to F. A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom. Sargon, in this video, continues his ongoing attacks upon progressivism and socialism of the “Social Justice Warrior” left. He also, interestingly, uses the word “libertarian” as a general designator of a tendency, as philosopher Benedetto Croce used his coinage “liberist” — a general term to replace a once well-understood “liberalism.” Sargon is not a modern libertarian.
Sargon’s online enemies often refer to him as “alt-right” and “ultra-conservative,” to which Mr. Benjamin rightly objects, and on good grounds.
Sargon’s case, here, is strikingly like the standard, moderate Democrat/moderate Republican standpoint of America and Britain, fifty years ago.
How times have changed!
On August 6, 1962, Jamaica became independent of Great Britain. In 1991, on this date, Tim Berners-Lee released files describing his idea for the World Wide Web, and puts up the first website, running on a NeXT computer at CERN, in France.
Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn’t make sense not to use both.
Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, was the only American politician to have voted against America’s involvement in both World War I and World War II.