Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force — that grimmest and ugliest of gods that men have ever created for themselves out of the lusts of their hearts.
Auberon Herbert, The Voluntaryist Creed, Being the Herbert Spencer Lecture Delivered at Oxford, June 7, 1906, London.
On January 26, 1992, Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia would stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.
A private spacecraft is heading to the Moon.
It has taken pictures of “the Blue Marble,” our planet Earth. The spacecraft owned by Firefly Aerospace is called “The Blue Ghost,” and on Thursday fired thrusters that will allow the lunar lander to reach its destination in early March.
The mission is dubbed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” and the mission’s client is NASA.
Launched with it, from the same SpaceX rocket on January 15, 2025, is a lunar lander from Japan’s ispace, Resilience, making the launch a double shot at Earth’s satellite.
Resilience is still in orbit, and is expected to land on the Moon before July. According to Space.com, “Resilience is packed with five science payloads. These come mainly from commercial and academic partners, while one is a micro moon rover developed by ispace’s Luxembourg-based subsidiary that will drive the mission’s initial resource exploration activities.”
See also articles at The Epoch Times (AP) and AOL (Reuters).
Paul Jacob has been covering the advance of private spacefaring for almost as long as Common Sense with Paul Jacob has been in publication.
No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige? It is not the love of truth, but desire to prevail that sets quarter against quarter and makes parish desire the downfall of parish. Each seeks peace of mind and subserviency rather than the triumph of truth and exaltation of virtue — But these moralities belong, and should be left to the historian, since they are as dull as ditch water.
Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography (1928).
On January 25, 1787, Shays’ Rebellion experienced its largest confrontation, outside the Springfield Armory, with four of the rebels dead, 20 wounded.
The rebellion was a key moment in United States history. Daniel Shays and his followers objected to Massachusetts’s high taxes and rampant cronyism. The revolt, which was completely suppressed, led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, drawing George Washington from his retirement to serve as the new union’s president.
“When bondholders don’t see a credible fiscal path to be repaid for current and future government debt,” writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason, “they expect that eventually the central bank will create new money to buy those government bonds, leading to higher inflation.
“Recent inflation wasn’t just about money supply; it reflected the market’s adjustment to unsustainable fiscal policy.”
Winning, for Trump, cannot equate to Spending.
While Ms. de Rugy tries to explain this all in terms of a big-picture economic analysis, she does not quite reach back in time far enough. We had stagflation way back when I was young. It was cured then not by decreased spending but by Paul Volcker of the Federal Reserve putting the brakes on money-and-credit expansion. He stopped inflation.
A pure recession immediately followed, followed by recovery in the new administration, Ronald Reagan’s, who helped reduce the rate of growth of government (and not much else).
Inflation could, theoretically, be handled by the Fed alone, now, as then.
Except — the federal government can hardly now afford to service existing debt, which would skyrocket with the nitty-gritty of the Fed’s cure, higher interest rates.
Today, debt service (paying just the interest) approaches One Trillion Per Annum.
“A crucial tipping point was reached in 2024 when the interest expense on the federal debt exceeded the defense budget for the first time,” Nick Giambruno summarizes at The International Man. “It’s on track to exceed Social Security and become the BIGGEST item in the federal budget.”
Increasing it yet more would cripple the government.
The only way out, if there is one, is a radical decrease in spending and deficits, as de Rugy advises. Trump’s path to success is somehow accomplishing that.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.
Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1756.
On January 24, 1732, French playwright, watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, horticulturalist, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary (both French and American) Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was born. He proved instrumental in securing armaments for the America Revolution, but remains best known for his three “Figaro” plays, Le Barbier de Séville, Le Mariage de Figaro and La Mère coupable. The plays remain memorable today chiefly for their operatic settings by Mozart and Rossini.
Beaumarchais died May 18, 1799.
On January 21, David Keating, president of Institute for Free Speech, asked this question. And he refers the reader to his Wall Street Journal op-ed published last month in which he offered suggestions about how to stop the federal government from censoring people via social media or in other ways.
The new president sure seemed to get off to a good start restoring the First Amendment. One of his thirty or so executive orders signed on the 20th, his first work day, is entitled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”
Section 2 says that it is U.S. policy to “secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech,” ensure that no federal employee or agent “engages in or facilitates” unconstitutional abridgement of speech, and “identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.”
Section 3 says no federal employee or department may act in a manner inconsistent with Section 2.
Maybe this broad order needs to be supplemented with many more specific orders that say: Really. Don’t engage in censorship here or there or anywhere.
This is where specific suggestions like Mr. Keating’s come in handy, such as preventing the IRS from penalizing taxpayers for criticizing political candidates, repealing SEC limits on political donations, and instituting specific regulations to “force disclosure of most government contacts with social-media organizations asking to take down third-party posts,” thereby scuttling most future such contacts.
It’s a start. Let’s keep going.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Revolutions are usually accompanied by a considerable effusion of blood, but are accounted worth it — this appraisement being made by beneficiaries whose blood had not the mischance to be shed.
From The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).