On December 4, 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in New York City, General George Washington formally bade his officers farewell.
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A Farewell to Arms
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Friedrich Nietzsche
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146.
When some of America’s most illustrious public figures — Senator Bernie Sanders, President Barack Obama, and Bill Nye the Science Guy — proclaim global climate change as the “obvious” cause of the rise of ISIS (and recent rounds of terrorism), it’s time to consider:
Is it climate change that is responsible for the recent rash of mass shootings in the U.S., most recently in San Bernardino?
There is a drought in California — a water shortage, anyway.
But that is caused more by overuse and underpricing of water resources — itself the result of public, not private, water resource management — than climate change.
Isn’t it more likely that people on the margin of stability — call them “crazy” or just evil — take cues from other shooters in the news, draw inspiration and then draw guns?
And fire.
America’s non-Muslim, home-grown mass murderers don’t seem to be making a clear point. Syrian refugee and European ISIS-sympathizing Muslim radicals do seem to be making a point — but one quite tangential to Bill Nye’s nifty causal chain: man-made global warming leads to droughts; farmers leave the country for the city; over-strapped cities lack water and jobs; frustrated male (and female) refugees go postal.
Hey Bill, don’t war and drone strikes, not to mention tyranny, also cause instability?
But then, so would cutting back on fossil fuels: the whole mid-east region runs on fuel sold to the West. If we fight ISIS by combatting CO2 emissions, and if the Sanders/Obama/Nye Theory is correct, we’ll just get more ISIS.
Copy-cattery and ideology explain this evil better. Not climate change.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Cold War Ends
On December 3, 1989, the leaders of the two world superpowers, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, declared an end to the Cold War, at a summit in Malta. A little over two years later not only had the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union was itself dissolved.
My brother, Tim Jacob, blames me for sucking him into politics. And I have reason to feel guilt, for politics is filled with — ugh — politicians.
Back in 1992, I urged Tim to join Steve Munn and Lance Curtis, who were launching a petition drive to put term limits before voters. Along with other do-it-yourself citizens, they gathered (all volunteer) 100,000 signatures. Then, against a special-interest-funded TV barrage, term limits prevailed with the largest YES vote of any initiative in state history.
In 2004, Tim was called back into service when legislators proposed a constitutional amendment to weaken term limits, using ballot language claiming it would “establish” limits. Voters saw through it, crushing the scam 70 to 30 percent.
But last year, legislators got even trickier. Their Issue 3 ballot language told voters the measure would ban gifts from lobbyists to legislators, create an “Independent Citizen Commission” to set salaries and “establish” term limits. Enough voters were fooled: Issue 3 passed 52 to 48 percent. Now, lobbyists are buying legislators even more meals, the “independent” commissioners awarded the very legislators who appointed them a 150 percent pay raise, and term limits were doubled to a ridiculous 16 years.
My brother co-chaired the unsuccessful effort to alert voters, noting that legislators “pursued a campaign of silence . . . letting the deceptive ballot title do their work.”
Today, he and a band of resilient volunteers have filed — and are gathering petition signatures for — a new initiative to give Arkansans an honest choice on restoring the stricter limits.
Yet, Monday morning, Rep. Nate Bell, who voted for Issue 3 and then hid throughout the campaign, tweeted, “I am publicly challenging Tim Jacobs [sic] of Arkansas Term Limits to a public debate on subject. Are there any #arpx news orgs that would host?”
Rep. Bell’s follow-up tweet announced, “Jacobs [sic] has declined to debate me on proposed term limits amndmnt. ‘Well I’m busy overcoming your fraud now, so you’ll have to wait’ #arleg.”
My brother, being wiser than I (due undoubtedly to his being older), didn’t take the bait. There’ll be plenty of time for debate once the initiative has enough signatures to be placed on the ballot.
In the meantime, Mr. Bell can huddle with career politicians, perhaps New York’s former Speaker Sheldon Silver. But hurry, before Silver goes to prison for corruption.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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C. S. Lewis
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
C. S. Lewis, “Bulverism,” reprinted in God in the Dock (1970).
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Monroe Doctrine
On December 2, 1823, U.S. President James Monroe delivered a speech establishing American neutrality in future European conflicts. The policy became known as the Monroe Doctrine.
Though a much-discussed principle of American foreign policy, it was undermined by the Spanish-American War, and proved a dead letter as the U. S. entered World War I.
If you try to compare those police who take people’s money and property through civil asset forfeiture laws to burglars, who rob folks in more traditional ways, you are just not being fair.
To the burglars.
The Institute for Justice recently released an updated Policing for Profit report showing that federal asset forfeiture topped $5 billion in 2014. The FBI disclosed that in that same year $3.5 billion of value was lost in burglaries.
Then, folks did the math.
Steven Greenhut’s piece at reason.com was headlined, “Cops Now Take More Than Robbers.”
At The Washington Post Wonkblog, Christopher Ingraham explained there was an especially big haul in seized assets in 2014, including $1.7 billion from Bernie Madoff. Moreover, the dollar figure for burglary doesn’t include larceny, motor vehicle theft, etc. All such theft combined totaled more than $12 billion that year.
So, law enforcement isn’t stealing quite as much from citizens as the criminals they are supposed to be protecting us from are. Sort of a backhanded compliment, though.
Recent polling finds more than 70 percent of Americans opposed to seizing assets without a criminal conviction, i.e. innocent until proven guilty, but taking cash and cars and stuff from folks never charged with or convicted of a crime has become a big business for “our” government.
When legislation to mildly reform civil forfeiture failed recently in California, Mr. Greenhut called legislators’ votes “about money, not justice.” Ferocious lobbying by the California District Attorneys Association and the California Police Chiefs warned money-grubbing legislators that budgets would take an $80 to $100 million hit.
Theft is apparently quite lucrative. Who knew?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
No state would ever dare to patronize such men as Plato and Schopenhauer. And why? Simply because the state is always afraid of them. They tell the truth. . . . Consequently, the man who submits to be a philosopher in the pay of the state must also submit to being looked upon by the state as one who has waived his claim to pursue the truth into all its fastnesses. So long as he holds his place, he must acknowledge something still higher than the truth — and that is the state. . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer als Erzieher,” as translated by H. L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (Third Edition, 1913), Chapter XII, Education.