Categories
First Amendment rights

A Gift to Remember

On this very date in 1657, in the Dutch colony of New Netherland, 30 residents of Flushing (in what is today New York City) signed a petition, the Flushing Remonstrance, requesting an exemption to the ban on Quaker worship imposed by Peter Stuyvesant, the colony’s director-general.

None of the signers were themselves Quakers; they were English citizens opposed to the prohibition of religions other than the Dutch Reformed Church.

The Remonstrance stated:

You have been pleased to send unto us a certain prohibition or command that we should not receive or entertain any of those people called Quakers because they are supposed to be, by some, seducers of the people. . . .

Wee desire therefore in this case not to judge least we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand or fall to his own Master. . . .

Therefore if any of these said persons come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egresse and regresse unto our Town, and houses, as God shall persuade our consciences, for we are bounde by the law of God and man to doe good unto all men and evil to noe man.

Four of the signers were arrested; two, who refused to recant, imprisoned. Years later, signer John Bowne was arrested for allowing Quakers to meet in his house. He petitioned the directors of the Dutch West India Company, which ultimately “advised” Stuyvesant to end his religious persecution in the colony.

The Flushing petition served as an important precedent to the First Amendment’s provision guaranteeing freedom of worship. Americans of all religions (or none) owe those brave petitioners a debt — a debt best repaid by taking good care of our current freedoms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture too much government

Two Decades Later

Twenty years ago yesterday, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his position as head of the Soviet Union. It was a momentous occasion. It was also slightly comic, since he was resigning from a government that didn’t quite exist any longer.

December 25, 1991, was the last day of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

It was the end of an age. The republics that had allied to form the original empire withdrew their support and formed a new union, the Commonwealth of Independent States.

This was one of history’s most momentous developments — or “undevelopments”?

The abandonment of Marxian communism — indeed, of state socialism — marked a turning point in ideological thought, too. Total government control of economic life had been a joke — a miserable, bitter joke — within the Soviet Union during its heyday. The news of its demonstrated unfeasibility shocked the protected sensibilities of the West’s intelligentsia, even eliciting startling confessions from professional socialist rah-rah boys like Robert Heilbroner, who publicly admitted that “Mises was right” about the unworkability of socialism.

For my first 30 years of life, the Cold War with the Soviet Union dominated the newspapers and our imaginations. And then it collapsed. Surprisingly quickly.

As Russians take to the streets to protest Putin’s revealed corruption, and as the United States of America itself buckles under the weight of its own “internal contradictions” — that is, the attempt to live on debt alone — the lesson becomes clear: The mighty can fall.

Radical change becomes possible, even where impregnability was previously assumed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Carl von Clausewitz

“Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.”

Categories
Today

Washington crosses the Delaware

On Dec. 25, 1776, just before midnight, General George Washington crossed the icy Delaware River with 5,400 troops, surprising a Hessian mercenary force early the next morning, Dec. 26. Washington’s men captured close to 1,000 Hessians still groggy from Christmas festivities, and the military triumph provided a much needed boost to morale after months of military defeats.

Categories
Thought

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, April 8, 1816

“I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.”

Categories
Today

Benjamin Rush born

On Dec. 24, 1745, Benjamin Rush was born. Rush founded Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and signed the Declaration of Independence. A physician, writer, educator, and humanitarian, he was also an early opponent of slavery and capital punishment. Dr. Rush may be most famous today for reconciling the friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams by encouraging the two former Presidents to resume writing to each other.

Categories
too much government U.S. Constitution video

Video: What If?

Judge Andrew Napolitano has a few questions:

Categories
First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency

Secret Censorship

“There are so many things about this story that are crazy,” according to a detailed and exasperated report at Techdirt.com, “it’s difficult to know where to start.”

What story? The one you’ve probably heard nothing about.

Back in late 2010, the federal government seized Dajaz1.com, a popular Internet blog devoted to hip hop. The Justice Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shut down the website domain claiming it was infringing on music copyrights. ICE “put up a big scary warning graphic on the site, suggesting its operators were criminals.”

The government then failed to abide by the legal requirements for filing an asset forfeiture case, conducting a secret legal effort, instead. Motions, hearings, and court decisions were filed in secret and placed under “seal,” denying the website owners and their attorney any opportunity for challenge.

Freedom of speech? Due process of law? Obliterated. And yet, earlier this month, the government admitted it had no legitimate case, no probable cause to go after this website in the first place, and, after a year of censorship, finally returned the web domain to its rightful owners.

That a website can be seized by our government, without a charge being publicly made and the crime proven in a fair and open court of law, is absolutely frightening.

What’s even scarier, though, is that legislation currently being considered by Congress — Protect IP and the Stop Online Piracy Act — would give the federal government even more sweeping powers to regulate and control the Internet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Lily Tomlin

“Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.”

Categories
Today

Gen. Washington resigns commission

On Dec. 23, 1783, General George Washington resigned his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, and retired to his home at Mount Vernon, Virginia. Many people at the time wanted Washington to become the new king. His quick resignation of his military post helped fortify the republican foundations of the new nation.