It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.
Voltaire, Zadig (1747).
With the Acte de déchéance de l’Empereur (“Emperor’s Demise Act”) of April 2, 1814, France’s Sénat conservateur officially recognized the downfall of Napoléon I of France. The original resolution to remove the Emperor was moved on the legislative body’s floor, by Thomas Jefferson’s friend Destutt de Tracy (according to Tracy himself — official records do not name the member), and was drawn up by Charles Lambrechts. The final paragraph summarized the new reality concisely:
The Senate declares and decrees as follows: 1. Napoleon Buonaparte is cast down from the throne, and the right of succession in his family is abolished. 2. The French people and army are absolved from their oath of fidelity to him. 3. The present decree shall be transmitted to the departments and armies, and proclaimed immediately in all the quarters of the capital.
Nine days later, after attempting to put his son on the throne, Napoléon abdicated unconditionally. The Allies exiled him to Elba, which was to be the whole extent of this reign as “Emperor.”
This arrangement proved unstable, with Napoléon staging a comeback, eventually leading to more war, his defeat at Waterloo, and his exile to an island in the South Atlantic.
American author, art critic, and commentator Camille Paglia was born April 2, 1947.
There’s good news about inequality?
In late March, George F. Will argued that the truth about inequality in America, according to his op-ed title, is “awkward for the left and right.”
He points to the reality of transfer payments in the United States.
Ignoring that reality is what leads to awkwardness.
On the left, critics of capitalism portray low-income earners as a growing class of the impoverished . . . and high-income earners as a growing class of filthy rich.
But by “not counting about 88 percent of government transfer payments that enlarge the buying power of lower-income households, and not counting taxes that lower the wealth of higher-income households, government statistics purport to prove that the average income in the top quintile of earners is 16.7 times that of the average in the bottom quintile. Counting transfers and taxes, however, the actual ratio is 4 to 1.”
So leftists ignore the “successes” of the very system they set up, the better to complain and demand more of what has already been done.
But what do rightists ignore?
That’s where Mr. Wills’s Washington Post editors (a class of professionals who usually determine titles and blurbs) may have given us the wrong impression. Most of his column explodes leftist interpretations of contemporary reality. But he does talk about “the populist right,”: the “national conservatives” who mimic the progressive left in favoring “industrial policy” that, he notices (as I’ve noticed here at Common Sense) “regressively funnels money upward to corporations.
“The populist right advocates protectionism (tariffs to shield corporations from competition), and the populist left advocates hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies (for semiconductors, electric vehicles, solar panels, etc.).” Both favor the rich when it comes to regulations, while complaining about the rich in other contexts.
A poor way to help the poor.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Georg Simmel
If freedom means that the will may be realized unhampered, then we seem to be freer the more we own, since we have accepted as the meaning of property that we ‘can do whatever we want’ with its content. We do not have ‘freedom’ to do so with other people’s property or with objects which cannot be possessed at all.
Georg Simmel, this passage translated by David Frisby, The Philosophy of Money (1978), § ““Freedom as the articulation of the self in the medium of things” from the chapter “Synthetic Part: Individual Freedom.”
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April Fool’s Day
On April Fools’ Day, 1957, the BBC offered for viewers of the current affairs program “Panorama” the infamous spaghetti harvest report hoax.
By sheer coincidence (?), one definition of “noodle” is “fool.”
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Milei’s ‘Bloodbath’
In Argentina, they aren’t getting caught up on words. Real things are happening, substantive changes. Javier Milei is actually reducing the size of government:
Argentine President Javier Milei announced his plans to slash 70,000 government jobs in an effort to shrink government expenditure and reduce the national deficit to zero. The cuts are part of his broader strategy to achieve fiscal balance at any cost.
Katarina Hall, “Milei To Slash 70,000 Government Jobs To Reform Argentina’s Economy,” Reason (March 28, 2024).
But it is worth noting that he has tremendous opposition. People with cushy government jobs do not want to lose their cushy government jobs:
Milei assured that he would move forward with reforms ‘in spite of the politics.’ He said that the Senate’s recent rejectionof his bills was an opportunity to expose corrupt politicians, those ‘who do not want to give up their jobs and seek to maintain their privileges.’ Looking ahead, the Argentine president said he plans to introduce 3,000 more reforms after the 2025 congressional elections.
Katarina Hall, “Milei To Slash 70,000 Government Jobs To Reform Argentina’s Economy,” Reason (March 28, 2024).
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George Santayana
American life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost before he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension, cheery self-confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so it seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.
George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States (1920).
On March 31, 1717, a sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ,” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy.
The sermon’s text was John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and from that Hoadly deduced — supposedly at the request of King George I himself, who was present in the assembly — that there was no Biblical justification for any church government. Hoadly identified the church with the kingdom of Heaven, noting that Christ had not delegated His authority to any representative.
King George’s preference for the Whig Party, and for latitudinarianism in ecclesiastical policy, is widely thought to have been a strategic maneuver to degrade church power in political government.
This being an election year, it is impossible to ignore the schism in America’s political culture, especially between the “two sides’” apparent presidential contenders, President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and former President Donald John Trump. What do American voters really think of them?
In “Democrats Are More Fearful and Angry If Trump Is Elected Than Republicans About Biden: Poll,” in The Epoch Times, we learn that the fear and loathing in 2024 is asymmetrical: “According to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, the majority of Democrats are both extremely fearful (66 percent) and very angry (60 percent) if the former president wins another term in the 2024 White House race,” Aaron Pan writes. “In contrast, 49 percent of Republicans feel very fearful, and 45 percent are angry about President Biden’s victory.”
More provocative yet is that the racial divide is less extremely asymmetrical than in the recent past, with “a recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College show[ing] that President Trump is taking the lead over President Biden from Hispanic and black voters, where Democratic candidates traditionally won in the past. Among Hispanic voters, President Trump received 46 percent support; the incumbent received 40 percent. Latino voters are estimated to account for around 15 percent of the electorate. Black voters’ support for the former president is 23 percent, while 66 percent support President Biden.”
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Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” in The World Tomorrow (May 1928).
I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.