On November 28, 1893, women voted for the first time in New Zealand’s parliamentary election.
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New Zealand Women Vote
Here’s a deplorable turn of events — and just when we were so happy to have thwarted the socialist stylings of Harris and Walz.
We’ve always known that Donald Trump doesn’t advocate 100 percent laissez faire capitalism. As if to confirm his inconsistencies and disabuse us of any hopes of clear sailing toward greater freedom, or even toward keeping the freedom we’ve got, he has named Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer as his Secretary of Labor.
Labor-union darling DeRemer supports the Pro Act: anti-worker, anti-freelancer legislation that was barely blocked in Congress and that the current Labor Department has tried to impose by regulation. I doubt the incoming Congress will enact it either. But if DeRemer is Labor Secretary she, too, may try to impose it by regulation.
The Pro Act would kill laws in 26 states that let workers choose whether to join a union. There’s a novel concept, letting employees decide whether to join an organization supposedly devoted to their interests.
The Pro Act would also undermine the secrecy of the ballot in union elections. A secret ballot is a fundamental tenet of our democratic republic.
Worst of all, at least for gig workers and freelancers, are its provisions to make life much harder to function as an independent contractor.
Unions that favor the Pro Act, and Mrs. DeRemer, are eager to do all they can to cripple the ability of non-unionized labor to compete with above-market-rate union labor.
This isn’t just a No, Mr. President.
It is, as Jennifer O’Connell puts it, a “Hell No.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Josh Billings
Nature never makes blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.
Affurisms. From Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865).
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Thus Spake
On November 27, 1896, Also sprach Zarathustra — a tone poem by the great composer Richard Strauss — was first performed. It is a program work referencing a book by Friedrich W. Nietzsche of the same title. It begins and ends with a fanfare that became the musical signature to the Stanley Kubrick film classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Police in Germany are raiding and arresting unpowerful citizens for committing the sin of speaking harsh words about sitting officials.
Or forwarding harsh words about them.
Animus toward free speech isn’t a new thing in Germany, even post-twentieth-century Germany. But it seems that the censorship, aka hate-speech hatred, is getting more intense lately because of an election.
One recent victim is a 64-year-old pensioner, Stefan Nieoff, who forwarded a “meme” about Green Economy Minister Robert Habeck. Habeck wants to be chancellor. According to the “meme,” Habeck is a “professional idiot” (Schwachkopf Professional).
But in consequence of Herr Nieoff’s reckless act of disseminating information of merely figurative accuracy, Bavarian police (a) raided the man’s home and (b) arrested him. Incidentally traumatizing his daughter, who has Down syndrome.
Why, exactly? Because the Bavarian police are idiots acting at the behest of other idiots.
In a video posted on X, Nieoff says, as Google-Translated: “What they did to me is awful. I’m going to court. It can’t be that everyone keeps their mouth shut and lets themselves be oppressed like that. . . . So please, Mr. Habeck, I beg you, come to my kitchen table sometime. Like the police officers from the Schweinfurt Criminal Investigation Department.”
The Alternative for Germany party asserts that although Habeck “presents himself as a ‘people-friendly’ candidate for chancellor, his critics are being relentlessly pursued.”
Reports say that Habeck, a member of the Green Party, has little chance of becoming chancellor. Let’s hope his chances are sehr schwach.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Thomas Sowell
When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.
Thomas Sowell, “Random Thoughts,” from his Creators Syndicate column.
On November 26, 1922, Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3,000 years.
King Tut, as he is now popularly known, started life as “Tutankhaten.” The future pharaoh’s name references the 18th Dynasty conception of a deity as represented in the sun disk, the monotheistic worship of which was the point of the Atenism of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), who reigned when he was a boy. During the reign of Tut, the religious revolution instigated by Akhenaten was overthrown, and the Amenist cult and its priesthood restored to preëminence. Thus the name change referencing another conception of a sun god, Amun.
Tutankhamun (c. 1341 BC – c. 1323 BC) died before age 20 and his burial appears to have been hastily made in the Valley of the Kings. He was succeeded by Ay, and then a general, Horemheb, who tried to erase from the records the “Amarna Period” pharaohs and any mention of the Atenist monotheistic revolution associated with pharaohs Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay. The tomb designated KV62 had been left intact, its grave good astounding the world, hence the April 19, 1923, issue of Life, reproduced in the image above.
After reports that British MPs wanted to summon Elon Musk to interrogate him about the role of his company, X (Twitter), “in disseminating ‘disinformation’ during the summer riots,” I didn’t suppose that he’d be eager to rush across the pond to be grilled by enemies of freedom of speech.
One of his would-be interrogators, Chi Onwurah, a Labour committee chairwoman, said she wanted to “cross-examine him to see . . . how he reconciles his promotion of freedom of expression with his promotion of pure disinformation.”
What a mystery. How can someone champion freedom of speech and letting people say things with which others disagree? Isn’t freedom of speech only for government-authorized speech, the kind King George III would have approved?
On X, a Malaysian commentator sought to warn Musk: “This is a trap,” tweeted Miles Cheong, “They’ll detain him at the border, demand to see the contents of his phone, and charge him under counterterrorism laws when he refuses.”
If we were concerned even a little that Mr. Musk might fall into this or a similar trap, we needn’t have been.
In reply to Cheong, Musk asserted that MPs will, rather, “be summoned to the United States of America to explain their censorship and threats to American citizens.”
In September, in response to being pointedly and publicly not invited to a British investment conference, Musk had said, “I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted pedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts!”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Josh Billings
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Affurisms. From Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865).
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Like Velvet
November 25, 1975, Suriname gained independence from the Netherlands.
On the same month and date 17 years later, the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia voted to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia (officially disjoined as of January 1, 1993). This split has been called “The Velvet Divorce” (following, in style and method, “The Velvet Revolution”). The Czech Republic is now also known as Czechia.