Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery.
John Adams, as quoted in letter to Robert J. Evans (June 8, 1819).
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John Adams
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Auberon Herbert
On June 18, 1838, Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert was born.
Auberon Herbert was a Liberal Member of Parliament who, after reading the writings of Herbert Spencer, became a radical individualist, authoring essays such as “The Ethics of Dynamite,” “A Politician in Trouble About His Soul,” and “The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State.” He termed his version of the political philosophy of liberty “voluntaryism.”
Is “Didn’t Earn It” — the latest scam-decoding translation of officialdom’s acronymic jargon for race-conscious and gender-conscious affirmative-action policies, DEI — really catching on?
If so, maybe we’ll get back all the sooner to sanity.
That is, in universities, workplaces, and other hunting grounds of the DEI dictators who have inherited the mantle of reverse discrimination first inflicted on Americans via the affirmative-action quota policies of the 1970s.
John Tierney suggests that the popularizers of the apt “Didn’t Earn It” meme may well help rid us of “today’s most egregiously indefensible phrase: ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.’”
These woozy words are supposed to divert our attention from what DEI policies really mean: systematic discrimination against academic, professional, and other merit in favor of typically irrelevant physical characteristics like skin color and gender.
DEI discrimination is being imposed on ever more of our institutions, even at the cost of risking our lives. If unqualified applicants are being admitted into UCLA Medical School in order to appease the arbiters of DEI, then failing basic tests of medical knowledge after they get in — what happens if and when they start treating patients?
A single telling phrase (Tierney credits journalist Ian Cheong and cartoonist Scott Adams) can’t shoulder the whole burden of stopping DEI. True enough.
Fortunately, it’s got help.
In Congress, Republicans have introduced legislation to shut down DEI offices and forbid federal contractors from imposing the ugly indoctrination of DEI training and DEI statements.
We can all pitch in.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John Locke
[B]etween an executive power in being, with such a prerogative, and a legislative that depends upon his will for their convening, there can be no judge on earth; as there can be none between the legislative and the people, should either the executive, or the legislative, when they have got the power in their hands, design, or go about to enslave or destroy them. The people have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to heaven: for the rulers, in such attempts, exercising a power the people never put into their hands, (who can never be supposed to consent that any body should rule over them for their harm) do that which they have not a right to do. And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven.
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Sec. 168.
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The Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor on June 17, 1885.
On the same day in 1930, progressive Republican President Herbert Hoover — eager to please agricultural states, and confident that protectionism would yield greater wealth — signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. The Great Depression deepened, ratcheting up as each provision of the bill took effect.
Three years later, investment author and two-time Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne was born
On June 17, 1944, Iceland declared independence from Denmark.
On this day in 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs,” which steadily decreased civil liberty and the rule of law in America.
Exactly one year later, five men were arrested for attempted burglary on the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., igniting the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon more than two years later.
“The Supreme Court ruled on June 14 that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) exceeded its authority,” reports Sam Dorman in The Epoch Times, “when it interpreted a federal firearms statute to outlaw the use of bump stocks.”
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion in the case, Garland v. Cargill. “We conclude that semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it does not fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger,’” Justice Thomas explained.
The vote was 6–3, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing a dissent joined by the other two liberal justices. Her dissent suggested that bump stocks effectively make semiautomatic weapons into machine guns.
A bump stock is a firearm accessory that allows users to shoot at a continuous rate, resulting in hundreds of rounds fired per minute.
“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” she said.
Sam Dorman, “Supreme Court Strikes Down Bump Stock Ban,” The Epoch Times (June 14 and 15, 2024).
The core argumentation in the case did not focus on the Second Amendment, which says that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Instead, much back and forth tried to convince, as Dorman explains, “the justices that the phrases ‘automatically’ and ‘single function of the trigger’ within federal law (The National Firearms Act) either did or didn’t apply to bump stocks.”
As such, Garland v. Cargill is a constitutionally murky case.
Of course, most reactions depended not on the constitutional rectitude but on the outcome.
A statement from President Biden called for Congress to “ban bump stocks, pass an assault weapon ban, and take additional action to save lives — [s]end me a bill and I will sign it immediately.”
By contrast, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) responded by suggesting the decision restored the proper separation of powers between the executive and Congress.
“In our Constitutional republic, Congress makes the laws, not the administrative branch,” he wrote on X. “The Supreme Court just acknowledged this in a 6 to 3 decision invalidating Trump’s bump-stock ban.”
Sam Dorman, Ibid.
Though bump stock add-ons to rifles are now legal in these United States, the issue remains contentious: there’s been a Supreme Court decision, but the people and the politicians aren’t decided.
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Robert G. Ingersoll
Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.
Robert G. Ingersoll, “Motley and Monarch,” The North American Review, December 1885.
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To Freedom
On June 16, 1961, dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union.
The great Scottish moral philosopher, political economy pioneer, and Enlightenment intellectual Adam Smith (1723-1790), best known for authoring the 1776 masterwork The Wealth of Nations, was born on June 16.
On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln delivered his “House Divided” speech in Springfield, Illinois.
On this date in 1963, the Soviet Space Program achieved a first with the Vostok 6 mission, placing Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into orbit as the first woman in space.
June 16th is Bloomsday, a celebration of the life and work of Irish expatriate author James Joyce (1882-1941). The date was selected because June 16, 1904, was the date in which Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses was set. The ceremonial day is named after the character Leopold Bloom.
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The Duopoly Gonna Duop
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is the first independent candidate since Ross Perot to make a plausible run for the presidency of these United States. That does not please the Powers That Be. Or, we should say, the Duopoly (Republican and Democratic) Powers that run our elections.
They do not like competition.
Especially competition that might actually succeed.
The ruling Democrats, especially, fear RFKj. As Paul Jacob wrote in October of last year, the Biden Administration has balked at providing security for the candidate, though it that is indeed the usual courtesy.
It is almost as if Biden were saying: get shot; see if I care.
No joke.
The usual roadblock to an independent challenger who might upset the plans of the smoke-filled rooms is the elaborate set of ballot access hurdles set by the two parties in each of the fifty states and the several territories. Paul wrote about that in April.
But now CNN steps in to do the dirty work, with clever interpretations of campaign regulations that, the establishment’s toady hopes, will prevent RFKj from debating the former president and the current president on stage:
The last thing Trump and Biden want is someone who might make them look bad on the pandemic response — as Bobby Kennedy would — and challenge them on their war policies.
Trump and Biden seemed awfully eager to join in a debate, though one has to wonder: did they know all along that they would not have to debate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.?
Trump is on record saying he will not.
RFKj has filed a lawsuit against CNN, and we can expect much back-and-forth among the relevant parties up until the scheduled event on June 27. If it actually takes place. If the aging candidates all survive till that date.
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Jeffrey Tucker
A water heater is made to heat and hold water. It is begging you to do something that will change your life from gray to bright white: turn up the temperature!
Jeffrey Tucker, Hack Your Shower Head Plus 10 Other Ways to Get Big Government Out of Your Home (2012)