On June 8, 1949, George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.
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Nineteen Eighty-Four
Lilly loves me. That’s the good news.
I love her, too. Funny thing, though, I don’t even know Lilly’s last name. You see, she works at my local Starbucks. She makes a mean flat white.
I do know how to say “thank you” in Vietnamese — sounds like “gahm un.” Her folks hail from Vietnam. One day a man spoke Vietnamese with her and she lit up. So I learned those two words in Vietnamese.
The bad news — or the other good news — is that she recently hurt my feelings.
You see, after my heart attack of a couple months ago, I scaled back my flat white drinking. When I first ordered a tall (that is, a small) instead of my usual venti (large), well, my Starbucks peeps thought there might be a tear in the universe.
I explained that I wanted to cut down on my caffeine and milk intake post heart attack.* Which immediately got them onboard with my change.
But soon I backslid to a grande (medium). Then, with the price difference to move up to a venti size so enticingly small . . . well, I was back to venti.
The other day when Lilly was delivering my drink, she saw its size and questioned, “You’re already back to a venti?”
Ouch! It felt like when I’ve disappointed my kids or wife or other loved ones.
Because . . . Lilly is a loved one. I care about her — like so many of her workmates whom I’ve gotten to know. And she cares about me, a venti-size concern! She wants me to live. More than the extra 20-30 cents her employer might make from the larger drink.
When I mention Starbucks, many think about it being a liberal corporation.** I, however, think about the mostly young people I’ve met, working their butts off to advance themselves while being so kind and decent with customers; thoughtful in conversation.
Young people these days . . . I love ’em.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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* For the record, this change wasn’t something my cardiologist specifically advised; just me trying to improve my diet to live a long time.
** Consider that back in 2020 Starbuck’s pioneering CEO Howard Schultz wasn’t “progressive” enough to be comfortable running for president in the Democratic Party.
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Murray Leinster
Eminent men were called on to take command and arrange suitable measures. They immediately acted as eminent men so often do; they took action to retain their eminence. Their first instinct was caution. When a man is important enough, it does not matter if he never does anything. It is only required of him that he do nothing wrong. Eminent figures all over the world prepared to do nothing wrong. They were not so concerned to do anything right.
Murray Leinster, The Wailing Asteroid (1960), Chapter 3 (pp. 32–33).
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Founders, Fathers
On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee presented the “Lee Resolution” to the Continental Congress. The motion was seconded by John Adams, but was tabled for several weeks. The motion was finally passed on July 2, 1776.
During the 1916 Republican National Convention (June 7 – 10), Senator Warren G. Harding used the phrase “Founding Fathers” in his keynote address . . . and would go on using it in speeches thereafter. It caught on as a eulogistic way to refer to figures such as Thomas Jefferson and, yes, Richard Henry Lee, who orchestrated the American colonies’ break from England’s imperial monarchy.
Unconstitutional searches of private property by a renegade Tennessee government agency may be coming to an end.
Unanimously upholding an earlier decision, a Tennessee Court of Appeals has ruled that no, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency employees have no right to ignore No Trespassing signs on private land — not even to enter it, let alone install cameras there in search of a crime.
The court ruled in a case brought by the Institute for Justice on behalf of Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth.
“TWRA claimed unfettered power to put on full camouflage, invade people’s land, roam around as it pleases, take photos, record videos, sift through ponds, spy on people . . . all without consent, a warrant, or any meaningful limits on their power,” says IJ attorney Joshua Windham.
“This decision confirms that granting state officials unfettered power to invade private land is anathema to Tennesseans’ most basic constitutional rights.”
The ruling cites the observation of legal scholar John Orth that “‘general warrants’ and ‘writs of assistance,’ authorizing officers to search anyone, anytime, for evidence of any crime” were among the abuses leading to adoption of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibiting “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
“The various state constitutions adopted after the Revolution almost invariably forbade the practices,” Orth notes.
According to the new ruling, Tennessee’s constitution does too. But we may not be quite done. The TWRA can appeal, which means that the case may end up in the Tennessee Supreme Court.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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F. Paul Wilson
Reality is what trips you up when you walk around with your eyes closed.
F. Paul Wilson, Healer (1976).
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Two Philosophers, Many Concepts
June 6 marks major life events of two eminent British philosophers, Jeremy Bentham’s death* (1832) and Isaiah Berlin’s birth (1909).
Bentham was known as a “philosophical radical” and a major influence on the British utilitarian tradition. He authored numerous books, including Defence of Usury (1787) and An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). Bentham started out advocating for laissez faire, became obsessed with his own specially designed prison design, the Panopticon, and argued for feminism and animal rights in public but kept his defense of homosexual rights private, to be published long after his death. His treatise on ethics, Deontology: Or, the Science of Morality, in Which the Harmony and Co-incidence of Duty and Self-Interest, Virtue and Felicity, Prudence and Benevolence, Are Explained and Exemplified, was published from his manuscripts two years after his death.
Berlin was best known for several dozen brilliant essays, including the famous, much-quoted “The Hedgehog and the Fox” (a study of Leo Tolstoy) and “Two Concepts of Liberty.”
* Pictured is his remains as housed in a special “closet” in the London Academy. Bentham specified this in his will, and he called this manner of posthumous presentation an “auto-icon.”
Should government regulators be able to urge financial institutions to cancel clients that regulators dislike for political reasons? Such as oil companies and groups advocating Second Amendment rights?
Although a court of appeals has said Yes, the Supreme Court has just said Maybe No in a case involving the National Rifle Association (NRA v. Vullo).
The NRA hasn’t won final victory. But the court is unanimously letting it proceed with its lawsuit, which argues that by pressuring banks and insurance companies to cancel their business with the NRA, New York regulator Maria Vullo violated its freedom of speech.
The Supreme Court seems to accept an artificial distinction, though, between a regulator’s “persuading” an organization to hurt a client and “forcing” it to do so.
An official with power over a company who seeks as a government official to “persuade” that company to do something is engaging in coercion. The implicit threat is: “I have the power to hurt you if you don’t do this little favor for me.”
Moreover, in sending the case back to the lower court, the Supreme Court has also said that it may consider whether Ms. Vullo is protected by qualified immunity, the get-away-with-anything card that government officials are too often able to rely on when they commit wrongdoing.
So this decision is hardly a final, definitive victory for the NRA and other victims of thug-regulators. But at least the NRA can keep fighting — for itself and the rest of us.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Samuel R. Delany
A lesson which history should have taught us thousands of years ago was finally driven home. No man can wield absolute power over other men and still retain his own mind. For no matter how good his intentions are when he takes up the power, his alternate reason is that freedom, the freedom of other people and ultimately his own, terrifies him. Only a man afraid of freedom would want this power, who could conceive of wielding it. And that fear of freedom will turn him into a slave of this power.
Samuel R. Delany, The Jewels of Aptor (1962), tenth chapter.
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
On June 5, 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, started its ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.