“I love Rand, he’s awesome”; “We are the future of the Republican Party”; “The youth are … tired of the same-old/same-old”:
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Albert Jay Nock
Society’s tacit assumption is that all normal persons are qualified for matrimony, and this is not so.
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Owning Up to Racism
Last week, actress Stacey Dash tweeted her support for Republican candidate Mitt Romney. And unleashed a firestorm, including AP coverage — “Do Black People Support Obama Because He’s Black?”
On Twitter, she was called “jigaboo,” “traitor,” “house nigger” and worse. . . .
The theme of the insults: A black woman would have to be stupid, subservient or both to choose a white Republican over the first black president.
It might behoove Twits (those who use Twitter?) to take a breath every now and then and not immediately type out the first thing that comes to their heads. Especially if they’re racists, like those who tapped out these vile attacks on Ms. Dash.
What should the president’s skin color or her skin color have to do with whether she chooses to support Obama or Romney or whomever?
Funny, while attacking her for being stupid and subservient, this “progressive” beat-down crowd is upset precisely because Dash is smart enough — independent enough — to think for herself, refusing to be subservient to them.
It’s scary that this sort of racism is so blatant, even after the long and difficult progress made on civil rights; scary, too, that today a black person can be “high-tech lynched” online for thinking and acting and speaking in ways not somehow assigned to his or her race.
Slavery is long over. The laws that made blacks second-class citizens have been repealed. So, why do some progressives think they own blacks?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Russell Kirk
If a man has a *right* to marry, some woman must have the duty of marrying him; if a man has a *right* to rest, some other person must have the duty of supporting him. If rights are confused thus with desires, the mass of men must feel always that some vast, intangible conspiracy thwarts their attainment of what they are told is their inalienable birthright.
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Albert Jay Nock
I regard marriage in the way that the French have of regarding it, as a partnership effected for certain definite purposes, essentially practical.
Why call it “political correctness,” when it’s simply “political” and so terribly incorrect?
Whatever we call it — “a totalitarian impulse” comes to my mind — placing Angela McCaskill on administrative leave from her job at Gallaudet University is just flat-out wrong.
“It recently came to my attention that Dr. McCaskill has participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate for an individual serving as Chief Diversity Officer,” Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz wrote, last week, on the University’s Facebook page. McCaskill’s alleged transgression was to sign a petition to refer the Legislature’s same-sex marriage law to the ballot for Maryland voters to decide, and potentially overturn.
Hurwitz didn’t mention any specific policy violated by McCaskill. Worse, while acknowledging her “right to sign a petition,” Hurwitz added, as if in clarification, that “many individuals at our university were understandably concerned and confused by her action.”
There appears to be much confusion at Gallaudet . . . about the meaning of freedom.
President Hurwitz, who faces criticism from both proponents and opponents of the same-sex marriage referendum that started this fracas, claimed to be confident that a “resolution of this matter can be reached,” hazarding that it “will require that she and the university community work together to respond to the concerns that have been raised.”
A “resolution”? McCaskill has an attorney, and the greater likelihood is a large lump sum settlement for violating her civil rights.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Albert Jay Nock
For several years now I have been trying to get various publishers to start some ambitious youth writing a book about work. The idea first struck me when I was doing some rather close reading in our Colonial history, and was impressed by the amount of actual labor, both of brawn and brain, that the Founding Fathers seemed to be able to put into a day, and keep putting in, day after day. I doubt that there is anything like it in the country now. Take, for instance, Mr. Jefferson’s journal of a three-months tour in France; consider the facilities he had, the kind of accommodations he found, the amount of time and energy that had to be put in on the mere business of living and getting about from place to place, and then reckon up in terms of actual work, the achieve- ments recorded in that journal. Also, figure up the net of work in one of John Adams’s days, from the time he got up until he went to bed, or one of John Quincy Adams’s, when he was Secretary of State. I remember, too, when I was reading the history of the early English buccaneers, that what struck me most forcibly was the amount of actual labor that they were capable of doing, and did do, without making any fuss about it. No publisher ever bit at my suggestion, however, which I think shows a lack of enterprise.
Economist George Reisman, author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, supports strict gun control. So do I.
Not gun control directed against the weapons of peaceful gun owners. Gun control directed against armory-facilitated violations of our rights by government and criminals.
In his essay “Gun Control: Controlling the Government’s Guns,” Reisman assures readers that he too believes in gun control. “However, I do so in the light of the knowledge that by far the largest number and the most powerful guns and other weapons are in the possession of the government.”
By its nature, everything the government does, good or bad, relies for its effectiveness on the threat of deadly force — otherwise people would be free to ignore its laws and rulings. Therefore, a meaningful program of gun control “must above all focus on strictly controlling and regulating the activities of the government.”
When government uses its powers against actual criminals — those who kill, rape, steal — this serves as a “control on the use of force, including the use of guns,” insofar as it deters such criminal acts of coercion.
The Constitution is a form of gun control directed against the government. To control the government’s use of force, such protections must be enforced and illegitimate uses of government power must be curtailed. Guns owned by a peaceful citizen are also a form of gun control — they can deter or counter wrongful acts of force by both private criminals and public officials.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Albert Jay Nock
As far back as one can follow the run of civilization, it presents two fundamentally different types of political organization. This difference is not one of degree, but of kind. It does not do to take the one type as merely marking a lower order of civilization and the other a higher; they are commonly so taken, but erroneously. Still less does it do to classify both as species of the same genus — to classify both under the generic name of “government,” though this also, until very lately, has been done, and has always led to confusion and misunderstanding.
A good understanding of this error and its effects is supplied by Thomas Paine. At the outset of his pamphlet called Common Sense, Paine draws a distinction between society and government. While society in any state is a blessing, he says, “government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” In another place, he speaks of government as “a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world.”
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Alfred Nobel Rolls Over
The Nobel Committee, having whetted its appetite for absurdity with a long string of goofy Peace Prize Awards, especially but not limited to the 2009 award for Barack Obama (who had done nothing but get elected to earn it), went all the way by giving the 2012 award to the European Union.
Barack Obama went on to become a “war president,” even regularly picking targets for assassination by drone. So, could Europe continue the trend and head straight towards war?
Maybe. Last year, former French Prime Minister Alain Juppe warned that the unions debt crisis could lead to “the explosion of the European Union itself,” and warned of growing nationalism. And violent unrest.
Dire warnings from former heads of state are one thing. Actual military movements are another. And Switzerland seems to be preparing for the worst:
The Swiss defense ministry told CNBC that it doesn’t rule out having to deploy troops in the coming years.
“It’s not excluded that the consequences of the financial crisis in Switzerland can lead to protests and violence,” a spokesperson told CNBC.com. “The army must be ready when the police in such cases requests for subsidiary help.”
Talk about financial contagion!
Cooler heads may prevail, of course. Matthew Feeney, writing at reason.com, notes that the “most obvious argument against the possibility of war is that there are no likely candidates for the part of aggressor.” And Europe hasn’t exactly been engaging in a massive military build-up, unlike before the two world wars.
Alas, that doesn’t preclude massive rioting and uprisings.
Sovereign financial bankruptcy usually follows war, rather than preceding it. I guess that provides something like hope.
This is Common Sense. Im Paul Jacob.