Born on this date in 1821, Edward Livingston Youmans, American science writer and editor. In 1871 he started publication of the International Scientific Series of then-modern classics of scientific literature (published simultaneously first in New York, London, Paris, and Leipzig, later also in St. Petersburg and Milan), and the next year started the magazine Popular Science Monthly. In these and other venues he promoted the work of British philosopher Herbert Spencer, instigating Spencer to write the popular “The Study of Sociology,” and arranging publication of all of Spencer’s books with D. Appleton & Co., as well as many other international authors – with royalties on the sales (which in Spencer’s case reached 132,000 copies by 1890) going to the authors, despite the lack of an international copyright.
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Townhall: Socialism by the Dose
Today at Townhall.com, an analysis of Jon Stewart’s defense of his “socialism.”
Links that may interest you, where all “big questions” get addressed. Well, a few big questions, anyway:
- “You’re all a bunch of socialists!” – Ludwig von Mises storms out of a Mont Pelerin gathering
- Ailes on Stewart – Stewart on Ailes (Daily Show link No. 1)
- Stewart defends his brand of socialism (Daily Show link No. 2)
- Ludwig von Mises’ classic Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis – one of the great classics of social theory and politics
- Ludwig von Mises’ Interventionism: An Economic Analysis – recovered from an earlier book published in the German language
- “Social Security Beyond Retirement Age” – Common Sense by Paul Jacob – on Paul Krugman’s swindle cover-up
- “The late great Social Security swindle” – a column originally appearing on Townhall.com – about the BIG QUESTION Jon Stewart wittily avoids talking about
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June 2, Intolerable Acts
On June 2, 1774, the Quartering Acts were passed by British Parliament, part of a package of punitive acts devised as a response to colonial unrest. The acts did not have the desired effect; they did not quell resistence. Instead, they became known as the “Intolerable Acts,” and helped fuel the fires of secession, leading to the American Revolution.
Also on June 2: The Sack of Rome begins, and the Vandals bequeath their name to hooligans of the future (455 AD); President Grover Cleveland marries his ward, Frances Folsom, while in office (1886); the Bhutan Broadcasting Service brings TV to the Himalayan kingdom (1999).
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H.L. Mencken, Minority Report (1956)
The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling. Probably the worst thing that has happened in America in my time is the decay of confidence in the courts. No one can be sure any more that in a given case they will uphold the plainest mandate of the Constitution. On the contrary, everyone begins to be more or less convinced in advance that they won’t. Judges are chosen not because they know the Constitution and are in favor of it, but precisely because they appear to be against it.
CAUTION: A carefully concocted measure designed to fool the voters. Pass this on. It is important.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruTn1kkvv6Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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Harappan Puzzles
Civilization first emerged around rivers: In Egypt, the Nile; in the Near East, the Tigris and Euphrates; in China, the Yellow River; and in the India-Pakistan-Afghanistan region, the Indus River Valley. We know the least about the Indus, or Harappan civilization. Its written language is the only one of these major civilizations’ forms of writing that remains uncracked, there being no “Rosetta Stone” for the curious ancient script.
Harappan culture sported elaborate plumbing, but no great monuments. This leads experts to suspect that the culture was “more democratic” than in the other cradles of civilization.
Truth is, we know next to nothing about Harappan governance or politics. By “democratic,” they probably mean “decentralized.” Or at least not heavily militaristic.
And, if that is borne out in further research, that’s huge. The hand of political governance lay quite heavily upon early city folks, and is generally associated with conquest. Could it be that Harappan civilization was freer, more voluntaristic and individualistic than Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Xia and Shang Dynasty societies?
We can only guess. But on a different Harappan puzzle, there’s a new theory out, purporting to explain what happened to this largest of ancient “empires”: climate change.
The weather got warmer, their riverways dried up, and the people scattered, mainly heading east.
Too bad for the civilization. But note two things:
- The climate change was natural, and
- People reacted naturally, by moving.
If we are experiencing, today, the beginnings of a global climate change, it may very well be natural, and (natural or not) people freely moving about may be the best response to the worst of it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Ludwig von Mises, Profit and Loss
In the capitalist system of society’s economic organization the entrepreneurs determine the course of production. In the performance of this function they are unconditionally and totally subject to the sovereignty of the buying public, the consumers. If they fail to produce in the cheapest and best possible way those commodities which the consumers are asking for most urgently, they suffer losses and are finally eliminated from their entrepreneurial position. Other men who know better how to serve the consumers replace them.
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June 1, General Motors files for bankruptcy
On June 1, 2009, General Motors files for bankruptcy. The natural course of this fourth largest official business failure was forestalled by the auto maker bailout, which progressives would later ballyhoo as a complete success in that investors and businesses would jump on the rescued company – which is what would have happened in an unbailed-out bankruptcy, anyway.
June 1 births include musical geniuses Mikhail Glinka (1804) and Alanis Morissette (1974).
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May 31, Emperor Petronius Maximus
On May 31, 455, the Roman Emperor Flavius Petronius Maximus dies, soon followed by the Vandal sack of Rome. In a system without terms or term limits for rulers, his 78 days at the top of the Western Roman Empire ended as so many did, in violence – in this case by being stoned by an angry mob while fleeing the capital. His body was flung into the Tiber.
Also on this day, Genghis Khan was born in 1162 AD. On a more positive note, other May 31 births include less violent folks such as composer Marin Marais (1656), poet Walt Whitman (1814), philosopher and economist Henry Sidgwick (1838), clergyman Norman Vincent Peale, and actors Don Ameche (1908), Alida Valli (1921), Denholm Elliott (1922), Clint Eastwood (1930), and Brooke Shields (1965).
Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm.