On Dec. 19, 1776, Thomas Paine published the first in a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled “The American Crisis.” Paine’s popular pamphlet, “Common Sense,” released in January of ’76, called for the separation from Britain accomplished that July through the Declaration of Independence.
On Dec. 19, 1777, George Washington’s Continental Army went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
One year ago, on Dec. 18, 2010, protests broke out in Tunisia following Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation death in protest of police corruption and ill treatment. This began what came to be known as the Arab Spring, protests throughout the Arab world and the toppling of regimes in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
On Dec. 18, 1620, the British ship Mayflower docked at modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, and its passengers prepared to begin their new settlement, Plymouth Colony.
On Dec. 18, 1777, the United States celebrated its first national day of thanksgiving, commemorating the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777.
Last year at this time, I was in Omaha, Nebraska, testifying at a court challenge to the petition drive I had run to put a recall of Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle on the ballot. Recall opponents had hurled baseless charges of “fraud” throughout our signature drive, an increasingly common smear used by the professional left. In the court case, their attorney also tried the old racist tactic of demonizing me as an evil outside agitator. The judge found their charges meritless, writing in his opinion, “Plaintiff introduced evidence to attack the credibility of certain circulators and a Paul Jacob, the coordinator for the paid circulators. . . . This Court found Paul Jacob credible and accepted his testimony as truthful.”
Those powerful political forces opposed to citizens having a say on the ballot, whether through recalls or initiatives or referendums, have made a habit of using nasty, scorched-earth, character-assassinating tactics. They think they can keep good, decent people away from any effort to hold government accountable by being especially dishonest and despicable. We have to prove them wrong at every turn – as we did in Omaha last year.
“Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”
On Dec 17, 1777, France officially recognized the United States of America as an independent nation. News of the Continental Army’s victory against the British at Saratoga in October reached France in early December, giving Benjamin Franklin new leverage in rallying French support for the American rebels.
On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. The biplane stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered 120 feet. The Wright Brothers received no federal funding.
On Dec. 17, 1991, after a meeting between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin, a Yeltsin spokesman announced that the Soviet Union would officially cease to exist by New Year’s Eve.
Yesterday, on ThisisCommonSense.com, the “Today in Freedom” feature related that 220 years ago — on December 15, 1791 — Virginia’s ratification of the Bill of Rights made those first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution the law of the land.
Hooray! That’s worth remembering and celebrating.
But something else happened yesterday, worth remembering but not celebrating: Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives [sic] had already passed the legislation. Yesterday, the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate sent the bill to a President Obama, waiting ready to sign it, with a whopping 86 to 13 vote.
This law says the government can arrest you on U.S. soil, shackle you, pull a hood over your face and hustle you out of the country to Guantanamo if someone somewhere in the government theorizes that you might be a terrorist.
But wait: The Fifth Amendment guarantees that you cannot “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Sixth Amendment states quite clearly that “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial . . .”
Agreed, those proven to be terrorists are terrible people. But in a video posted on our website, Senator Rand Paul, who voted against this bill, pointed out, “Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, then the terrorists have won.”
We can only triumph over terrorism with the Bill of Rights intact.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“Is it not high time for the people of this country explicitly to declare whether they will be freemen or slaves? It is an important question, which ought to be decided. It concerns us more than anything in this life.”
On Dec. 16, 1773, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three British ships moored in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea into the water. Now known as the “Boston Tea Party,” the midnight raid was a protest against the Tea Act of 1773, a bill enacted by the British parliament to save the faltering British East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade.