On August 14, 1765, Sam Adams led the first rebel mob against enforcers of the Stamp Act in Britain’s American colonies.
On this day in 1980, Lech Wałęsa led strikes at the Gdańsk, Poland, shipyards.
As Julian Assange reveals more and more about Hillary Clinton’s nasty, loathsome ways, the WikiLeaks founder and spokesman faces an increased threat level.
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A Slave Saw Something
On August 13, 1831, Nat Turner witnessed a solar eclipse, which he interpreted as a sign from God. Eight days later he and 70 other slaves killed approximately 55 whites in Southampton County, Virginia.
Government “central planning”? I’m against it.
But it’s socialism, fascism, and allied isms that I oppose. I’m not against “government planning.”
We could use some.
Take population. When government sets up complicated institutions, like Social Security or Medicare, those institutions must match the general trend of the number and make-up of those served.
Or else fail spectacularly.
But as everyone knows, Social Security was set up when the population was growing, and expected to continue . . . at a positive rate. The whole logic of the system depended on population growth.
What if populations shrink?
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now reports that the general U.S. “fertility rate has dropped back to its all time low of 62.5 children per 1,000 American women ages 15 to 44 years,” informs science writer Ronald Bailey.
The “total fertility” rate is now “1.84 children over the course of an American woman’s lifetime.”
A steady-state population replacement rate is thought to be 2.1 children per woman.
Trouble is, if your main institutions depend on population growth, and instead, population declines, things are liable to go catawampus.
No wonder European nations, which are undergoing even more startling negative population growth, flirt with allowing huge influxes of hard-to-assimilate refugees. At the back of governmental minds may be: how do we keep going?
Some of today’s social anxiety may have to do with this shift in population growth, and government strategy.
Before politicians try to plan a whole industry — like, say, “single-payer” medical services — maybe they should learn how to arrange the existing government, to accommodate the direction society demonstrably wants to go.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul is Jacob.
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Spain Conquered
On this day in 1898, an Armistice ended the Spanish-American War, a war commemorated best by sociologist and economist William Graham Sumner in his classic essay “The Conquest of the United States by Spain.”
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Tonie Nathan
Our national economy is sick and has been for some time. It requires increasing doses of money to make it function in a manner satisfying to the public. Surely, it is time for the public to face up to the consequences of its expectations. Do we want to end up addicted to paper money to such an extent that productivity ceases and everyone ends up speculating on what few goods and services are left?
Tonie Nathan, “Inflation and Addiction,” Willamette Valley Observer (1977), in On Libertarianism: Historical Notes & Articles (1981).
“Political tags such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
–Robert A. Heinlein
Donald Trump states things in a manner simultaneously ambiguous and incendiary.
Of course, he has help from the media, the Clinton camp and other embittered opponents, all elated to act as firestorm propellants . . . through as many 24-hour news cycles as possible.
At a rally this week, Trump claimed that a President Hillary Clinton would appoint justices to the Supreme Court committed to undermining our individual right to bear arms. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks,” he told the crowd, before adding, off-the-cuff, “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
The Clinton campaign and much of the media (but I repeat myself) immediately took this as a clear call to Second Amendment activists to . . . well, summarily execute Mrs. Clinton.
A leap? As Hillary would say, “Let’s unpack this.”
Would Mrs. Clinton curtail gun rights as Trump charges? She recently told Fox News that she would not choose justices seeking to overturn the High Court ruling in the Heller case, which interpreted the Second Amendment as guaranteeing an individual gun right.
Do I trust her? Stop laughing and read on.
Was the Donald attempting to incite violence against Hillary? No.
But what should be the people’s response were a future president or court to declare our right to defend ourselves null and void?
Remember, musket-armed American patriots met the British redcoats at Lexington and Concord for the shot heard ’round the world. Why? Specifically to stop the Brits from rendering the colonists defenseless by confiscating their arms and ammunition.
The implication? Clear.
So, with a chill down the back of our necks, let’s hone and redouble our peaceful support for our most basic right, self-defense.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Harry Browne
The truth is that no gun-control law works because ‘bad’ people who want guns can always get them. Either they’ll buy them in the underworld or they’ll simply steal them from good folks like you and me.
Harry Browne, “The Limits of Gun Ownership” (October 23, 2003).
On August 11, 1972, the last of American ground combat troops exited South Vietnam.