Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heavens as its center, would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves.
My column this weekend at Townhall.com is about three very different news stories from last week. But really it’s about one thing: our wildly out-of-control government.
Here are links to the referenced stories, for those who want to learn more:
Last week’s Townhall column is online at this site, too: “Public School Privilege.” Did you miss it? Check it out.
You can’t free up society all on your lonesome:
“The imperialist ideology of force, from whatever side it comes, must be shattered for all time. A one sided Prussian militarism must never again be allowed to assume power. . . . The Germany of the future must be a federal state. At this juncture only a sound federal system can imbue a weakened Europe with a new life. The workers must be liberated from their condition of down trodden slavery under National Socialism. The illusory structure of autonomous national industry must disappear. Every nation and each man have a right to the goods of the whole world!
“Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the protection of individual citizens from the arbitrary will of criminal regimes of violence — these will be the bases of the New Europe.
“Support the resistance. Distribute the leaflets!”
On Monday I reported on the Ron Paul campaign’s “open secret” strategy: Gaining delegates in the caucus states, while letting the caucus-night straw poll numbers basically take care of themselves. The “popular” vote on caucus nights in states like Iowa and Minnesota and Maine may show Santorum or Romney as a winner, but the Ron Paul folks are picking up the actual, nomination-effective delegates.
Meanwhile, GOP insiders continue to work openly and sub rosa against the Paul candidacy, 
as is now pretty clear in Maine. Business Insider reports that
. . . and on and on and on.
The open conspiracy of deliberately under-reporting Ron Paul votes may be more than matched, however, by the open secret of the Ron Paul delegate strategy, with the Paul campaign now believing “it has won the majority of Maine’s delegates.”
Real change is, apparently, a messy thing. And preventing it . . . even messier.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”
“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
Regulators spawned by “Obamacare” have mandated that employer-provided medical insurance plans provide contraception as a benefit.
The problem, as currently reported and debated, is that only churches are exempted — church-run or -affiliated hospitals, for example, are not. And so Catholic hospitals, along with other religious-based charitable endeavors, must conform, despite their commitment to age-old ideas about the sanctity of life, which they say contraception and abortifacients, especially (some contraceptive methods are de facto abortion-inducing), abridge.
Many conservatives argue that the mandate thus runs afoul of the First Amendment. But it turns out that many Republican politicians have supported similar mandates in several states.
Mike Huckabee signed one such mandate into law in Arkansas.
No big news that GOP politicians are often just as bad as Democrats, of course. But forget, if you can, the First Amendment angle. The mandate runs afoul of something even more fundamental: common sense.
Adding an umpteenth mandate to the list of regulations government places on contracts amongst employers, employees, and insurance companies hardly passes the smell test. The more benefits that government insists you contract for, the higher your insurance rates. The higher the rates, fewer are those who would willingly buy, thus scuttling the whole point of “health care reform.”
We ostensibly want more people to purchase major medical insurance. Not fewer.
It’s possible that some reformers seek precisely that, to put insurance companies out of business, leaving only government to take up the slack, as a “single payer.”
In the case of Republican reformers, however, is there a hidden agenda or just mere foolishness?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”
Andrew Napolitano, former New Jersey superior court justice (and therefore often called “Judge Napolitano”), has been a legal and constitutional analyst for Fox News for some time. For several years now he’s hosted a nightly program on Fox Business called Freedom Watch, ending each show with a tagline: “Defending freedom, every night of the week.”
Monday night he amended it: “Defending freedom, everybody’s freedom, every chance I get.”
The tagline changed because Freedom Watch is now off the air. Fox pulled it.
Thankfully, Napolitano will still appear on various Fox commentary shows as an on-air consultant. Hence the teeth in those parting words: “every chance I get.”
The show began three years ago as a weekly webcast video. It soon began to air more frequently, 
and in 2010 hit the Fox Business channel — though it should have found a place on the News channel, alongside Hannity and O’Reilly and The Five. Napolitano drove home his philosophy with a series of oft-repeated slogans, including one of my favorites, “Does the government work for us or do we work for the government?”
Napolitano’s straight-forward, enthusiastic and general “good guy” approach made the radicalism of his political beliefs palatable to a wide viewership.
Yes, Freedom Watch was a great show — there is nothing else quite like it on television, though John Stossel’s weekly show remains on Fox Business, and hails from a similar perspective. Both are popular as excerpted on YouTube.
A lot of folks will miss Freedom Watch, but I, for one, will keep watch for Napolitano’s future projects.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.