On December 27, 1657, a group of English citizens in Flushing, New York, who were not themselves Quakers, signed a petition protesting the persecution of Quakers, a document that has become known as the Flushing Remonstrance. An eloquent statement of the principle of religious liberty, it is widely regarded as a forerunner to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
The petition was delivered to Director-General of New Netherlands, Peter Stuyvesant.
In this weekend’s selected video, former presidential candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul discusses a lawsuit challenging the male-only draft registration program, the military draft, foreign policy, and the role of women in combat:
The video begins with a great scene from the 1965 movie Shenandoah.
“Virginia needs all of her sons,” a confederate officer tells Charlie Anderson.
“That might be so, Johnson, but these are my sons,” counters Anderson, played by Jimmy Stewart. “They don’t belong to the State.”
Dr. Ron Paul argues that the country should “get rid of the draft and . . . get rid of the registration.” He decried the fact that, “As a consequence of [draft registration], there was a friend, Paul Jacob, who was a draft resister. He would not sign up for the draft.”
“And he ended up going to prison,” notes the former congressman. “I testified at his trial. . . . I think this is the most serious abuse of liberties.”
The former U.S. representative argues, “The Thirteenth Amendment is rather clear — no involuntary servitude and no slavery — and yet it’s totally ignored.”
Coincidentally, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on Dec. 6, 1865, one-hundred-and-nineteen years to the day in 1984 that Paul Jacob (now of ThisIsCommonSense.com, LibertyiFund.org, and the Citizens in Charge Foundation) was arrested by the FBI for his refusal to register with Selective Service System (the draft people).
A transcript of the trial in Jacob’s case, United States v. Paul Jacob is here.
“How can the draft, calling up men and/or women,” asks Dr. Paul, “and sending them off and exposing them to death, how can they say this is not involuntary servitude?”
Ron Paul was not the first American to ask that question. Daniel Webster addressed the issue of military conscription during the War of 1812.
“The question is nothing less, than whether the most essential rights of personal liberty shall be surrendered, and despotism embraced in its worst form,” said Webster, on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Is this, Sir, consistent with the character of a free Government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No, Sir, indeed it is not. The Constitution is libeled, foully libeled. The people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves. Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and references to prove that such an abominable doctrine has no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that that instrument was intended as the basis of a free Government, and that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from the substance of a free Government. It is an attempt to show, by proof and argument, that we ourselves are subjects of despotism, and that we have a right to chains and bondage, firmly secured to us and our children, by the provisions of our Government.
On December 26, 1799, four thousand people attended George Washington’s funeral where Henry Lee III honored him as “”first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
The Decembrist revolt againt Tsar Nicholas I occurred on the 26th of December in 1825. It was, alas, put down. Later revolts would prove less liberty-minded, more communist, and far bloodier.
In addition to the religious significance of Christmas, Americans share an excellent historical reason to celebrate this day.
In January of 1776, Thomas Paine published his smash hit, “Common Sense.” This pamphlet galvanized public opinion in favor of the American Revolution, which had begun the previous year at Lexington and Concord with the shot heard ’round the world.
That July, the Declaration of Independence was written, signed and proclaimed to the new nation by the Continental Congress.
But by December of the same year, the prospects for the American cause were looking bleak.
British forces, along with their mercenary Hessian reinforcements, had manhandled the Continental Army. Gen. George Washington’s troops were routed at Long Island, pushed out of Manhattan, forced to retreat across the Hudson to New Jersey, and then run out of Jersey across the Delaware River to Pennsylvania “exhausted, demoralized and uncertain of [their] future.”
Soon, the British believed, the American revolt would be extinguished.
“To compound Washington’s problems,” recounts the EyeWitnesstoHistory.com website, “the enlistments of the majority of the militias under his command were due to expire at the end of the month and the troops return to their homes.”
Yet, on Christmas night, Washington marshaled his ragtag soldiers and crossed the icy Delaware, marching his men nine miles to Trenton. In the wee hours of the morning on Dec. 26, the Continentals attacked, catching more than 1,000 Hessian soldiers by surprise and taking nearly all of them captive.
In strictly military terms, the victory was not terribly significant. But in terms of American morale, as well as the perception of important potential allies such as France, the win was an absolutely perfect Christmas gift to the new Republic.
Our Republic, dedicated to liberty and justice for all, continues to this day.
And today, you and I are left to defend it — just like the barefoot minutemen who walked through the snow to face the most powerful military force of their world.
If on this happy and historic holiday you want to launch a surprise attack against modern day tyranny and Big Brother government, to give a gift that will protect and grow freedom, there’s a link here to speed your way across the Delaware and right to the donate page of Citizens in Charge Foundation.
Perhaps you’d like to join Team 1776 by making a monthly pledge of $17.76, or to make a one-time contribution to keep Common Sense coming.
While you’re still free to do so.
Merry Christmas, America!
On Christmas night, 1776, General George Washington led a column of the Continental Army across the icy Delaware River to attack Hessian forces stationed at Trenton, New Jersey. The difficult raid, which took place in the early hours the day after Christmas, was a success — and an early, celebrated victory in the Revolutionary War.
On Christmas Day in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union. Ukraine’s referendum was also finalized and Ukraine officially left the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union itself dissolved the next day, in what might be described as the “best belated Christmas present ever.”
On December 25, 1910, economist Rose Director Friedman was born. She may be best known as the wife of Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman, and co-author with her husband of the bestseller Free to Choose.
“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
Clarence Oddbody, It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946, written by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra, and Jo Swerling to a story by Philip Van Doren Stern.
Earlier this week, SpaceX made history. Again.
Back in 2008, the company had launched the Falcon 1 into orbit —a big deal in the Space Age, previously dominated by governments.
Blue Origin, which is the baby of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has been providing Elon Musk’s SpaceX some stiff competition. A few weeks ago, Blue Origin sent up the New Shepard rocket — and returned it to earth vertically.
This week, SpaceX pulled ahead, sending its Falcon 9 up beyond New Shepard’s suborbital heights, putting eleven (count ’em: 11) satellites into orbit . . . and returning to touch down safely onto dry land — on the launch pad — vertically.
Just like we imagined when we (well, some of us oldsters) were young, before we witnessed Mercury and Apollo splashdowns.
Back in 2012, when I wrote about SpaceX — and NASA’s outsourcing of launches — I called it progress. One reader worried about the whole thing, though: “A spy satellite is still a spy satellite even if some telecom conglomerate puts it in space.” He was afraid of privatizing tyranny. That would be bad, but it doesn’t seem to apply to this week’s new satellites . . . unless M2M (machine-to-machine) Internet devices mean something different than what I understand them to be.
In any case, costs have been contained: while NASA’s Space Shuttle was also reusable, it cost about half a billion bucks per launch, which, we’re told, is “about eight times the current cost of a Falcon 9.”
Free enterprise: delivering the goods at a fraction of the cost.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On December 24, 1818, the first performance of “Silent Night” took place in the church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria. Father Joseph Mohr had written the lyrics some time earlier, commissioning nearby schoolteacher and organist, Franz Xavier Gruber, to compose a melody appropriate for guitar accompaniment. It is one of the world’s most recognizable songs, and a favorite Christmas carol.
Christopher Buckley, author of the satirical novels Thank You For Smoking and Supreme Courtship, was born on Christmas Eve, 1952
“The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it!”
The character Frank Constanza, Seinfeld, “The Strike,” Season 9, Episode 10 (December 18, 1997), written by Alec Berg & Jeff Schaffer & Dan O’Keefe — “Festivus” is the made-up holiday serving as an alternative to Christmas.
First, Hillary lied. She said that ISIS was using Trump in terrorism recruitment videos. The Donald responded with contemptuous ridicule, using a vulgar word for her 2008 defeat by Barack Obama.
Then, the Democratic Party presidential contender got all teary-eyed and said we had to treat each other with more respect, be nicer.
This is presidential politics?
Mrs. Hillary Clinton and Mr. Donald Trump are both addicted to telling whoppers. Their “stretchers” are now the everyday stuff of our nightly news.
Mrs. Clinton’s fact-less charge that Trump was being used in recruitment videos is all the more ridiculous considering that Mr. Clinton does star in such a video. Maybe she meant merely that Mr. Trump’s call for barring Muslim immigration will help ISIS paint America as anti-Muslim, telling the tall tale because, well, it “ seems true.” Even if it isn’t.
In this, she differs not a whit from Mr. Trump, who not too long ago “remembered” “seeing” “thousands” of “Muslims” in “New Jersey” celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 — a video he cannot produce, either.
Politicians hyperbolize from bigotry to factoid all the time. What’s new is Trump’s foul calumny, in response, and Clinton’s painting of Trump as a bully for belittling her. That’s not how I remember politics. It seems new to adult debate.
But it isn’t new to our experience. It’s children bickering on the playground, then whining and lying all the way to Teacher. Or even Home.
Responsible adults don’t believe every charge lodged by little boys and little girls.
Like Donny and Hillary.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
