Mussolini was a Marxist ‘heretic.’
A. James Gregor, Young Mussolini and the Intellectual Origins of Fascism (1979), p. xi. In his 1969 analysis, The Ideology of Fascism, he elaborated on Mussolini’s socialist bona fides: “Mussolini was a well-informed and convinced Marxist. His ultimate political convictions represent a reform of classical Marxism in the direction of a restoration of its Hegelian elements.”
July 28, 1868, is the official date for the certification of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
The Obamas just gave Kamala Harris their endorsement. But before you rush to the Babylon Bee to get the taste of it out of your mouth, take a look at when Paul Jacob noticed a past connection between the pols: “Sen. Kamala Harris successfully bears aloft the banner of Barack Obama.” But by “banner” Paul meant “lie”! See “The 79¢ Lie,” October 8, 2019. See also “Why Lie?” May 22, 2019.
While the press does a full-court praisefest for the Vice President, we all pretty much remember that she was originally picked for the rôle not because anyone liked her but because she fit the intersectional boxes as a woman of color. Paul asked the multi-million-dollar question, though: “How important is the color of a person’s skin or their ancestry or the skin color of their spouse to that person’s fitness to be president?” Find out his answer in “Birth of a Twitterstorm,” July 2, 2019.
Speaking of Twitter (now known as X), Kamala Harris once demanded that Donald Trump be thrown off the platform. See “Twitter Abuse,” October 4, 2019. Update: Trump was thrown off Twitter, following the events of January 6, 2021. He is now back on X.
In “Into and Out of the Muck,” August 2, 2019, Paul Jacob wrote of the humiliating takedown of Senator Harris by Representative Tulsi Gabbard. How times have changed, however, now that Democratic Party insiders and the corporate media have anointed Harris as their party’s standard-bearer for the presidency in the general elections next November.
Oh, and don’t forget The Babylon Bee on Barack Obama’s endorsement!
In 1934, Mussolini reiterated that capitalism, as an economic system, was no longer viable. Fascist economy was to be based not on individual profit but on collective interest.
A. James Gregor, The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism (1969), p. 299, showing that fascism has always been the very opposite of a free-trade, freedom-of-contract society.
On July 27, 1694, the Bank of England received a royal charter, beginning a long history of central banking in England. Subsequent inflationary booms and deflationary busts are usually considered “mysterious” by people connected with the bank.
July 27 births include that of Samuel Smith (1752), an American who served as a captain, major, and lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army, and later as a politician in several capacities in the state of Maryland; Hilaire Belloc (1870), author of a classic analysis of modern political governance, The Servile State; and American singer and songwriter Bobbie Gentry (1944).
But why was there even a question?
The case is Gonzalez v. Trevino. It started in 2019 when Gonzalez was elected to the council of Castle Hills, Texas. After winning, she led a petition drive to remove the city manager from office for abusing employees and neglecting his duties.
Soon the mayor and the police chief were falsely accusing her of tampering with a government record. She was arrested and jailed. But the district attorney dropped the charges after a day.
After Gonzalez resigned from the council because of “ongoing intimidation,” the Institute for Justice helped her file a federal lawsuit against the town for selective prosecution.
A lower court had gone along with the city’s request to dismiss the case. The rationale was that Gonzalez had not shown that others who trivially “mishandled a government petition” in exactly the same way Gonzalez did were not then arrested.
In reversing this decision, the Supreme Court said that “the demand for virtually identical . . . comparators goes too far.” Plausible evidence that Gonzalez had been singled out for retaliation, thus violating her First Amendment rights, was enough to let the case proceed.
It’s an important issue for all of us, not only for Sylvia Gonzalez. As IJ stresses, this kind of retaliation “against citizens engaging in protected speech or activity” is more common than we may suspect.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photo provided by Institute for Justice
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
A legislature is always badly set to work in manufacturing crime. To risk money in a wager is not a crime per se, whether the wager be on the result of a race, on the fate of a lottery ticket, on the turn of a dicebox, or on any other like contingency. It is folly, perhaps, in all cases, and it becomes crime and madness in some; but to draw the line between allowable folly and criminality, in a matter of this kind, is rather the office of publick opinion, than of the law.
William Leggett, in an editorial in the Plaindealer, January 28, 1837, republished in A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett (1840), and titled “Gambling Laws.”
On July 26, 1533, Francisco Pizarro’s Spanish conquistadors strangled to death Atahualpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, thereby ending 300 years of Inca civilization. The conquistadors were greedy and murderous, but the Inca civilization, arguably, was worse: totalitarian and radically inegalitarian. But they made great high-mountain roads. (Arguments about infrastructure promoted by Big Government continue to this very day. And it is quite possible that an earlier civilization made the roadways, which the Inca merely renovated.)
On this day in 1948, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 desegregating the U.S. military.
China threatens. And threatens. And threatens.
As discussed yesterday, it is unclear just how committed a Trump 47 administration would be to protecting Taiwan.
President Joe Biden, on the other hand, has repeatedly pledged to engage U.S. military forces in defense against China. But since he is physically and cognitively unable to run for the presidency, are we safe letting Joe hang out at the White House for the next six months performing the “lesser” job of being America’s commander-in-chief?
That position might suddenly take on a less sleepy character.
Just prior to Biden’s Oval Office address, NORAD disclosed that it had “scrambled fighter jets to intercept two Russian Tu-95 ‘Bear’ bombers and two Chinese H-6 bombers off the coast of Alaska.”
Lately, the Philippines has gotten most of the CCP’s bullying, enforcing their ridiculous claim to 90 percent of the South China Sea. The U.S. has an unambiguous treaty obligation to the Philippines.
On the other hand, the U.S. position toward Taiwan, right there 80 miles off the Chinese coast, is friendly . . . but the U.S. doesn’t officially recognize Taiwan as a country and our policy toward its defense remains one of “strategic ambiguity.”
Still, unless the U.S. plans to leave Asia, and maybe even then, we will have to stand up to China. Best to draw that line, to mount that defense at Taiwan.
Why?
Making it in my interest and yours to disallow the snuffing out of freedom on the other side of the globe.
We need a president who knows the world is a dangerous place, understands how critical Taiwan is, and levels with the American people about the challenges ahead.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Nothing like I’d ever seen. . . . I knew that we didn’t have any vehicles of that kind, and I was 99 and nine tenths percent sure that the Russians didn’t have any of that type either. . . . At that point in time there was no doubt in my mind that this vehicle was made at some other place than here on Earth.
NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper, on one of his several encounters with UFOs in the 1950s.