“Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.”
Aristotle, Politics, Book Five.
In 1776, on June 12, the Fifth Virginia Convention at Williamsburg, Virginia, unanimously adopted a Declaration of Rights, several weeks prior to the adoption of the state’s constitution. George Mason, who drafted the document, stated clearly in the preamble that rights must be “the basis and foundation of Government.”
The first four planks run as follows:
I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
II. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.
III. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community; of all the various modes and forms of government that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration; and that, whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
IV. That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge be hereditary.
Afraid that scandal-alluring Hillary Clinton may prove too flawed a presidential candidate, some Democrats are talking to billionaire and former three-term New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg about a 2016 presidential run.
Mrs. Clinton’s “slide is accelerating,” writes New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin. “A damaging new poll goes to the Achilles’ heel of her candidacy: People simply don’t trust her.”
Goodwin gushes, instead, at the “intriguing” possibility of Mr. Bloomberg.
“Wall Street wants Michael Bloomberg to run for president,” reports Business Insider, “but the billionaire isn’t budging.”
And for good reason. He can’t win.
It’s not just me saying so; it’s Michael Bloomberg himself. Last year, he told CBS Face the Nation that he’d consider running . . . “If I thought I could win.”
His honor should know, having spent more of his own money chasing public office than any person in American history.
Why did incumbent Mayor Bloomberg have to spend so much dough? He double-crossed voters on term limits. Bloomberg promised to oppose city council attempts to weaken the limits, but flipped to grab a third mayoral term for himself.
Voter anger “over his maneuver to undo the city’s term limits law,” reported The Times, became . . . well, a big problem. “To eke out a narrow re-election victory over the city’s understated comptroller, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg spent $102 million of his own money, or about $183 per vote,” explained the New York Times in 2009, “. . . making his bid for a third term the most expensive campaign in municipal history.”
A similar price tag in a presidential race stands at roughly $23 billion. That’s a lot for anyone.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Declarations
On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman to draft a declaration of independence from Great Britain.
In 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, doused himself with gasoline and set himself aflame in a busy Saigon intersection as a protest against South Vietnam’s lack of religious freedom.
Categories
David Crockett
“I gave my decisions on the principles of common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural born sense, and not on law, learning to guide me; for I had never read a page in a law book in all my life.”
David Crockett, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett (1834), chapter 9.
Given the stated purposes of the university — discovering, learning, teaching, engaging in open intellectual discourse — you might suppose that the pitched battles on campus would be primarily intellectual in nature. Persons set forth a view, others criticize it or elaborate a positive alternative, etc.
Open intellectual change, however heated, is indeed often what transpires.
But on many campuses, we also witness efforts to muzzle opponents of ideas or policies. The censors contend that disagreement as such constitutes a kind of assault on them, one from which their delicate selves must be forcibly and un-delicately protected.
Thus, campus activists at Northwestern University have reported Professor Laura Kipnis for “sexual harassment” for arguing, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, that “Sexual Paranoia [Is Striking] Academe,” as exemplified by prissy new rules about dating, jokes, the simplest of standard human interactions. According to her accusers, her article somehow creates a “hostile environment” for students eager to impose not only a Victorian screen on dating and talking, but also a screen, or lid, on any discussion of the Victorian screen. It’s just one example of a syndrome that could be multiplied ad infinitum.
What to do?
One thing, if you’re applying to college: omit as a prospect any school rife with the politics of repression. Boycott the anti-academic academy.
The second, larger solution: bypass the modern university altogether.
Modern technology can help with that. There are more and more ways to learn, and teach, with every day that passes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Nat Hentoff
Apple shipped the first Apple II computer on June 10, 1977.
Born on this day: historian, jazz critic and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff (1925); children’s writer Maurice Sendak (1929); scientist and pioneer of “sociobiology” E. O. Wilson (1929).
“Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.”
Aristotle, Politics, Book One.
As Americans brace themselves for another presidential campaign, USA Today’s editors hazard that the “configuration” of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) “certainly creates an appearance of a political duopoly designed to limit independent voices.”
In 1987, after the League of Women Voters displeased the two major parties, the duopoly’s respective chairmen cooked up the CPD. Both men indicated that including non-R-or-D candidates was not part of the plan.
Thirteen years later, to keep the CPD’s tax-exempt status, the CPD established a “non-partisan” rule to “fix” an opportunity for minor parties: candidates must garner 15 percent support in the polls for inclusion in the debates.
Fast forward to today, and we witness a new group pushing the CPD to drop that requirement. Change the Rule wants one third-party nominee to be included, provided that candidate is on enough state ballots to mathematically have a chance to win the presidency.
“A third person in the general-election debates would make it harder for the major-party candidates to stick to talking points and platitudes,” agrees USA Today. But the newspaper worries about “unintended consequences,” that rather than the “centrist” they want in the debates, a new system might produce someone “on the far left or far right.”
Dear Editors, the election process ought not be designed to produce a certain pre-arranged ideological outcome.
Establishing a fair system entails not limiting voter choice ahead of time. Voters should get to hear from every candidate on enough ballots to be elected president.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Roman Emperor Nero committed suicide on this day in June, 68 AD, ending Rome’s Julio-Claudian Dynasty, later written about with verve by Suetonius and Robert Graves.
Also on June 9, James Oglethorpe received a charter from the British crown to start the Georgia colony (1732); William Jennings Bryan resigned his position as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, disgusted over the handling of the sinking of the Lusitania (1915); philosopher John Hospers — who would go on to run as a Libertarian candidate for the U.S. presidency in 1972 — was born in 1918 on the ninth of June.