On Jan. 4, 1642, King Charles I of England sent soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, beginning England’s slide into civil war.
On Jan. 4, 1649, the English “Rump Parliament,” having purged those members willing to restore Charles I to the throne, voted to put Charles I on trial for high treason. Before the month was over, he was executed.
“There’s a field – a grand one for women – in politics, but women must . . . play politics as women and not as weak imitations of their ‘lords and masters.’ Men are all to inclined to ‘stuff’ a lady full of nonsense, treat her with not too much respect for her intellect and be far happier when she’s nicely tucked away in some corner where she can do them no harm — and herself no good. But it doesn’t have to be that way. . . . She has certain natural talents which men don’t have. Women are naturally given to detail. . . . If they weren’t, they couldn’t make pies or sew dresses. Men don’t like details. Because of woman’s training . . . she’s more thorough than man and right there she has a splendid opportunity for politics.”
Barack Obama wants to go out swinging, like a take-charge super-president. And his next target? Gun rights. Click on over to Townhall.com for the January 3, 2016, column by Paul Jacob. Then come back here:
The distinguishing property of man is to search for and to follow after truth.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties, 44 BC.
On January 3, 1933, Minnie D. Craig became the first woman elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first female to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.
On the same date in 1977, Apple Computer was incorporated.
January 3rd birthdays include that of Cicero (106 BC), Roman philosopher and theorist of republicanism, and J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 AD), English philologist and author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Both were deeply concerned about the problem of absolute power.
The political economy of a popular obsession….
On January 2, 1788, Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution.
“It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.”
John Caldwell Calhoun, in a speech (January 1848) delivered on the Senate floor.
Today’s the traditional day for New Year’s “Resolutions,” but instead of resolutions, how about some solutions?
Sure, Thomas Sowell has sagely reminded: there are no solutions in social life, only trade-offs.
But, utopian perfection aside, let’s agree that some changes would be better than others, and, let us resolve to solve some nagging problems — or at least trade up. And since the really nagging problems are political . . .
For Republicans: this could be the year to give up on government as society’s chief moral agent, empowered to regulate everybody’s medicine cabinets and bloodstreams. End the failed War on Drugs, with legalizing marijuana the simplest first step. Vice will continue, as it always has. But it’s another kind of vice to think that force, policing and imprisoning folks, will “solve” the problem. Much less even reduce the availability of drugs.
For Democrats: this could be the year to give up on government as micromanager of markets — and people’s marketplace choices. Face it: folks will make decisions that liberals don’t like. They’ll eat at McDonalds and buy large sodas — and the wrong stocks. And guns! But adding to the mass of regulations doesn’t make consumers choose better, it makes stuff more expensive and business less open to competition. Indeed, almost all the regulations designed to help “the little guy” backfire, helping big business by hobbling their upstart competitors.
Our leaders, at present, cannot even balance budgets. They are addicted to debt. To pretend we must have more and more government to prevent our addictions or save us from personal debt is ludicrous.
Can we resolve to stop pretending that bigger government is always the solution?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“The people of the United States will discover when too late that they may be enslaved by laws as well as by the arbitrary will of a despot; that unnecessary restraints are the essence of tyranny; and that there is no more effectual instrument of depriving them of their liberties, than a legislative body, which is permitted to do anything it pleases under the broad mantle of THE PUBLIC GOOD — a mantle which, like charity, covers a multitude of sins, and like charity is too often practised at the expense of other people.”
William Leggett, in an editorial in the Evening Post, March 11, 1835 (republished in A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett (1840), and titled “The Legislation of Congress”).