On May 10, 1768, riots broke out in London after John Wilkes was imprisoned for writing an article for The North Briton severely criticizing King George III.
Categories
John Wilkes & Riots
Some of the worthiest allies in the fight against terrorism are the cheerleaders of terrorism. Make sense?
Makes sense to California Governor Gavin Newsom, apparently. This March he sent nearly $200,000 — on top of earlier grants — to the Islamic Center of San Diego. It’s part of a program to help religious institutions fight terrorism.
The Center is led by an imam who rationalized Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israeli civilians; no atrocity gave him pause. The Washington Free Beacon also reports on links between this mosque and the 9/11 hijackers.
Newsom has awarded similar “antiterrorism” grants to other mosques demanding the demise of Jews and Israel.
Daily reports of Islam-rationalized outrages and atrocities are aggregated by Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch. They aren’t rare.
Some regard “Islamophobia” — which, defined reasonably, means something like irrational hostility to Islam or to peaceful Muslims — as a worse threat than use of Islam to rationalize intimidation, repression, kidnapping, rape, murder. We do have reason to oppose the latter . . . and it is not any kind of “phobic,” contrary to the assertions of those who seek to blur important distinctions, because it is not irrational.*
People are responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others who belong to the same ethnic or religious group.
But people are responsible for their own actions.
It should go without saying that applauding the most vicious treatment of other human beings is not the kind of thing an American government should be encouraging.
By words.
Or cash.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Remember that the modern use of “phobia” hails from abnormal psychology, which is especially focused on needless fears.
Illustration created with Krea and Firefly
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Categories
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce, preface to Pagine sulla guerre (1928), as quoted in As If God Existed: Religion and Liberty in the History of Italy, by Maurizio Viroli, (Princeton University Press, 2012).
Liberty is not the function of the bourgeoisie or any other economy but rather the human soul and its deep needs; it possesses qualities and origins that are not economic but instead moral and religious. . . .
Categories
Lockdown Record
On May 9, 2020, the U.S. unemployment rate hit 14.9 percent, its worst rate since the Great Depression. This was not caused by the boom and bust cycle, credit inflation followed by deflation, or sunspots. It was caused by the “15 days to flatten the curve” pandemic lockdowns that most states had started in March or April of that year and had continued well past the promised end date.
For decades, taxpayers have been forced to fund PBS and NPR, and with them any political tilts that we disagree with.
For decades, some lawmakers have nominally agreed that taxpayers should be liberated from this unchosen obligation.
But nothing has changed.
Now, however, President Trump has issued an executive order to simply end “Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.”
“Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage. No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies. . . .”
I say we have a right that our tax dollars not be used at all to fund public broadcasting. And that, also contrary to the text of the order, the government is not “entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize.”
It should have no authority to pay for any activities unrelated to the proper functions of government.
I will, however, accept the result of the executive order, defunding of public broadcasting. If we do get this result.
“The federal funding that supports Public Media,” PBS is alerting its viewers, “is at risk of being eliminated.”
But this public media is also — and famously — supported by pledge drives and other non-governmental funding sources.
Zero public funding doesn’t mean a world without Big Bird; an absence of subsidy does not mean an absence of the MacNeil Lehrer NewsHour — or its successor show, PBS News Hour. These and many other much-loved shows might well thrive solely on voluntary funding.
“Now is a critical time to act,” urges PBS.
Yes. Tell Congress to ratify the elimination of federal funding of public media now.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Krea and Firefly
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Categories
Joseph Heller
Anyone seeking public office was not worthy to hold it.
Joseph Heller, The Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (2000).
Categories
Mill & Hayek
On May 8, 1899, Austrian-English economist and philosopher Friedrich August von Hayek was born. He signed the bulk of his books written in the English language as “F.A. Hayek,” and is best known for The Road to Serfdom, The Constitution of Liberty, The Fatal Conceit, and many essays, several of them widely cited, including “Individualism, True and False” and “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”
A generation earlier, on the same date in 1873, English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill died. Now best known for On Liberty (1859) and Utilitarianism (1861), he was and is considered one of the most important economists and philosophers of the Victorian age, with other classics including A System of Logic (1843) and Principles of Political Economy (1848). Mill’s letters to his wife, Harriet Hardy-Taylor, were edited into book form by Hayek.
On May 8, 1946, two Estonian school girls (Aili Jõgi and Ageeda Paavel) blew up the Soviet memorial which stood in front of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn.
“I’ll give up power when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
This is the operative principle for today’s politicians.
The examples are so obvious:
- Nancy Pelosi, born in 1940, continues to represent California’s 11th District despite having lost the Speakership for the second time, despite having spent nearly four decades in the House of Representatives.
- Senator Chuck Schumer, a decade younger than Mrs. Pelosi (and thus not yet an octogenarian), is still serving his fifth term as a senator from New York State.
- Senator Dianne Feinstein demonstrated extreme mental fragility before dying in office at age 90 — after serving more than three decades.
There are Republican examples, too, but age, as The Wall Street Journal puts it, “is a bigger headache for Democrats than Republicans for one central reason: Democrats have a lot more old members.” While the median ages are nearly identical between the two parties, “of the 20 oldest House members elected in 2024, 16 were Democrats. In the Senate, where tensions over age are more subdued, nearly all of the oldest senators — 11 of the 14 who were older than 75 at the start of this Congress — were Democrats.”
This may strike a sense of dissonance, I know. The old cliché is that Republicans are tired old men and Democrats are wild young (and female) firebrands. But the true nature of the establishment doesn’t quite fit the old saws and preconceptions.
The Journal notes that 70 percent of Americans support an age limit on holding office.
Sure, as the next best thing to term limits! We know the crux of the problem is not age, it is the advantages of incumbency, and the length of time in power.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney and Firefly
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Categories
Gore Vidal
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, however suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
Gore Vidal, “French Letters: Theories of the New Novel,” Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship (1969).
Categories
Belated Amendment
On May 7, 1992, the State of Michigan ratified a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the United States Constitution, thereby fulfilling the terms of amending the document, adding it as the 27th Amendment.
The amendment had been written by James Madison. He had presented it as part of the original twelve amendments that became the ten making up the Bill of Rights.
It bars the U.S. Congress from giving itself a pay raise until after the next election, so that voters have a chance to decide whether those voting for the raise would remain in Congress to receive it.