On June 1, 1792, Kentucky was admitted as the 15th state of the United States. Four years later, Tennessee became the 16th state.
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Kentucky, Tennessee
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David Crockett
“I would rather be beaten and be a man than to be elected and be a little puppy dog. I have always supported measures and principles and not men. I have acted fearless and independent and I never will regret my course. I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized.”
David Crockett, after his electoral defeat in 1830, as quoted in David Crockett: The Man and the Legend (1994), by James Atkins Shackford, p. 133.
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Townhall: One Dangerous Doctor?
Update on the Dr. Bosworth case, at Townhall.com. Click on over, then come back here for more information.
- Argus Leader: Annette Bosworth found guilty on all charges
- KSFY Television: Life After Conviction – What’s next for Dr. Annette Bosworth?
- Casper Star Tribune: Former Senate candidate Bosworth plans to appeal her conviction
- Citizens in Charge: Bosworth Case May Chill Participation in South Dakota
- Argus Leader: Report – Bosworth Prosecution Overkill
- Ballot Access News: Paul Jacob Identifies Hugely Disproportionate Possible Criminal Penalty for Petitioning Infraction
- Conservative Angle: Over-criminalizing in America
- Townhall: An Egyptian Crackdown in South Dakota
- Common Sense: Blood Sport Justice?
- Hutterian Brethern
From the steps of the capitol in Pierre, South Dakota….
For more information: Bosworth Case May Chill; PDF of the report presented.
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders made a splash last week with an off-the-cuff comment. “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.”
The candidate whose initials are “B. S.” doesn’t call himself a Socialist for nothing.
The Democratic-caucusing “Independent” Senator from Vermont was expressing a tired old sentiment. See his error? (Raise your hand if you know.)
To make any connection between “feeding the hungry” and cutting back on competitive products one would have to believe there is a fixed stock of wealth, and that we waste it on different brands and whole varieties of antiperspirants and sports shoes.
But there is no such fixed supply.
Supplies are concocted to meet consumer values, wants, and getting rid of competitive products means that some values are not being met . . . and that some folks are not being employed at the rates they could be with more diversity of commodities.
The best way to “feed the hungry” is for the hungry to feed themselves, by being productive — if children, then being fed by productive parents. And to do that, folks need to find their market niche. Which might very well entail another deodorant or shoe.
There is a realm where one person gains at the expense of someone else: redistributive government. If Sen. Sanders wants government to give more money to feed hungry people, he should consider cutting back on some other government expenditure.
Why didn’t B. S. suggest that? Perhaps more than feeding the hungry, he’s interested in feeding government, and his own pride in his own b.s. ideology.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Jeremy Bentham
“Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.”
Private school choice is “in,” writes Patrick Wolf. “Far from being rare and untested, private school choice policies are an integral part of the fabric of American education policy.”
Now, these “new ideas” really upset some folks. I’m not one of them. School choice is greater freedom.
Freedom works.
Public schooling, on the other hand, is based on very different principles — and principals. It’s no wonder that a system based on compulsion (taxes, attendance, etc.) tends to have so much trouble performing well: it’s not the forced sector of the economy that booms.
Enter school choice. As long as kids must be forced to “attend” a school, I (as a parent) would rather decide which school, for both my sake and my children’s. And if I’m paying taxes, and other kids are getting tax moneys for their education, vouchers are more fair.
Wolf, writing in The Daily Signal, offers evidence that these eminently sensible policies lead to great results. “In Washington, D.C., use of an Opportunity Scholarship increased the likelihood of a student graduating by 71 percent.” Research into the effects of Milwaukee’s program show it “significantly increased the rates of high school graduation, college enrollment and persistence in college for the low-income students. . . .”
Researchers at Brookings Institution and Harvard found similar results for New York City’s “privately funded K-12 scholarship program.”
In his 1859 philosophical polemic, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill argued that parents have a duty to educate their children — and society an interest in seeing these duties met. But that doesn’t entail setting up government schools.
It’s time to catch up with Mill’s 1859 wisdom.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.”
What if police grabbed your children off the street and held them for five hours?
Alexander and Danielle Meitiv of Silver Spring, Maryland, have been investigated three times. First, when their children were discovered playing by themselves in a park a block from their home. The second time when police picked up the kids walking home from a park about a mile away. The third investigation was launched when the Meitiv’s 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter were arrested and held for five hours for walking home from a different park.
Nothing came of the first investigation. In the second, CPS originally found the couple guilty of “unsubstantiated neglect.” But last week, the Meitivs received a letter from Maryland’s Child Protective Services (CPS) now ruling out neglect in the second investigation.
Gee whiz, it’s good news. But the Meitivs still have investigation No. 3 to contend with. And CPS remains completely mum on whether the agency’s letter means the Meitivs and other parents can now freely allow their kids to walk to and from public parks and other venues.
Or not.
Can we really live in the “Land of the Free” and our children not be free to walk in public? What kind of freedom is that?
If the Constitution isn’t sufficient to stop police and child welfare [sic] agencies from snatching kids off the street, terrifying them, investigating their parents and threatening to take those children, we need to pass new laws granting children the right to walk down the street . . .
. . . as long as it’s okay with their parents.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Jacob Burckhardt
“The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state’s power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin to dispute the sacred right of the individual ruler or authority without being aware that at the same time they are playing into the hands of a colossal state power.”
Jacob Burckhardt, Reflections on History