According to official records and all the respectable historians, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun — after being married for less than 40 hours — committed suicide on April 30, 1945. Nevertheless, rumors about Hitler’s survival in South America, until the 1960s, continue.
Ironic, considering that official U.S. policy is dubbed “strategic ambiguity,” meaning we don’t say one way or the other about our defensive intentions for helping the island nation against a regularly threatened and rehearsed-for Chinese invasion or naval blockade.
Four separate times during his term, however, former President Joe Biden publicly pledged American military help to counter a People’s Republic of China assault on Taiwan. As for the Trump 2.0 Pentagon, weeks ago it leaked (or suffered a leak of) a global defense strategy memo that said preventing a PRC takeover of Taiwan was the “sole pacing scenario” engaging our armed forces.
Surprising unanimity for the two parties in Washington. But has anyone asked what the American people think?
Well, Humanity for Freedom Foundation conducted a poll, released yesterday.*
Informed that “China claims Taiwan as its own territory,” 82 percent of respondents agreed that “Taiwan is an independent country.” Only 3 percent felt “Taiwan is part of China.”
A 58 percent majority favored full U.S. diplomatic recognition for Taiwan. When it comes to American military defense, a plurality of 39 percent wanted to continue the status quo of not saying (“strategic ambiguity”), while 32 percent of Americans preferred their government make a clear commitment to Taiwan. Only 2 percent supported ending arm sales and adopting a neutral stance.
The above results are thoroughly — and surprisingly — non-partisan, with arch conservatives and far-out progressives finding common ground to defend Asia’s freest society against the world’s most maniacal totalitarian state.
Could the specter of a future dictated by the Chinese Communist Party be bringing the world closer together?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* In full disclosure, I’m on HFF’s board of directors. As for the national poll, it had 800 respondents, giving the results a 3.5 percent margin of error with a 95 percent confidence level. Full results are here.
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Cannon, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
Ambrose Bierce, from The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).
Capital, n. The seat of misgovernment.
On April 29, 1945, U.S. troops of the Seventh Army liberated the Dachau concentration camp.
Arresting judges?
“This is a drastic escalation and dangerous new front in Trump’s authoritarian campaign of trying to bully, intimidate, and impeach judges who won’t follow his dictates,” Raskin explained. “We must do whatever we can to defend the independent judiciary in America.”
Oh, my goodness, what is Mr. Trump doing now? was admittedly my first thought. But then I looked at the two cases raised.
The first features Joel Cano, a former magistrate judge in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, and his wife, Nancy, both charged with evidence tampering, as reportedly “jail records show.” Cano resigned back in March, after the Department of Homeland Security raided his home, on information that “an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela whom authorities suspect of being a Tren de Aragua member, and others were staying on the Canos’ property.”
Last Friday, the FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan on obstruction of justice charges, “alleging,” NBC News reported, “that she obstructed federal authorities who were seeking to detain an undocumented immigrant by escorting the man and his defense attorney though a nonpublic jury door.”
That man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, in court on a new domestic violence charge, was successfully apprehended by ICE, nonetheless. But what to make of a judge aiding and abetting a criminal’s escape?
Yes, we want an independent judiciary. But independent from politics — not independent from the law.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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I’m struck by how laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.
John Cleese, From The Human Face, BBC Television (2001).
On April 28, 1788, Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the United States Constitution.
“London, which now has 215,700 millionaires, is one of only two cities in the top 50 — the other being the heavily sanctioned capital of Russia, Moscow — that has fewer rich individuals than a decade ago,” states The Epoch Times.
Changing demographics is a subject taking some popular notice, as populations worldwide get older and are replaced (so to speak) by immigrants as well as the young.
The city famed for its bridges and Big Ben, and for surrounding the peculiar financial center, the “City of London,” has recently “dropped out of the top 5 cities for millionaires around the world, with New York, the Bay Area, Tokyo, Singapore, and Los Angeles all ranking higher, according to a report commissioned by Henley and Partners, a United Kingdom-based investment migration consultancy,” explains The Epoch Times.
The article by Guy Birchall mentions a couple of causes, including high taxes and rising crime rates. What it does not mention is the changing demographics of the city. That is, the cultural and racial make-up of London. Actor and comedian “John Cleese has been called out for suggesting the number of immigrants in London means it ‘is not really an English city anymore,’” a Huffington Post UK article explained a few years ago. Cleese was merely noting the big change in the kind of people who live in London. “‘I had a Californian friend come over two months ago, walk down the King’s Road and say, “Where are all the English people?”’”
It is not absurd to think that a rise in numbers of one group could effect a decline in another.
Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen.
The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), 6.43.
On April 27, 1759, English philosopher and author Mary Wollstonecraft was born. Wollstonecraft wrote several important political treatises, including her response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), and her valiant effort in the emancipation of women, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792).
English philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, and political theorist Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England, on April 27, 1820. Among Spencer’s most famous books are First Principles, Principles of Ethics (chiefly its first part, The Data of Ethics), The Study of Sociology, The Man versus the State, and two editions of Social Statics. Spencer was an evolutionary theorist as well as a religious and political philosopher, and coiner of the phrase “survival of the fittest.” He called the basic principle of a free political order “The Law of Equal Freedom.”
Wollstonecraft married anarchist philosopher and bookseller William Godwin; the couple begat one daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Mary Wollstonecraft died on September 10, 1797.
Spencer never married, dying on December 8, 1903.