These associations, or political parties, are actual armies which have been trained to pursue power; their immediate objective is to so increase the number of their adherents as to control an electoral majority. Influential electors are for this purpose promised such or such share in the profits which will follow success, but such promises — generally place or privilege — are redeemable only by a multiplication of ‘places,’ which involves a corresponding increase of national enterprises, whether of war or of peace. It is nothing to a politician that the result is increased charges and heavier drains on the vital energy of the people. The unceasing competition under which they labour, first in their efforts to secure office, and next to maintain their position, compels them to make party interest their sole care, and they are in no position to consider whether this personal and immediate interest is in harmony with the general and permanent good of the nation.
Gustave de Molinari, The Society of To-morrow (1904).
On March 4, 1933, newly inaugurated President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his customary address. The speech “brought a decidedly favorable reaction in the Italian press, especially his declaration that he will seek extraordinary powers to deal with the situation if necessary,” wrote The New York Times the next day. The Times went on to quote “Premier Mussolini’s Milan newspaper, Popolo d’Italia,” which stated that “The American people place their hope in decisive action by the new President and his speech truly satisfied public opinion.”
The Italian newspaper “said the bank moratorium in New York contributed perhaps more than any other factor in convincing even the most reluctant of the urgent necessity for the whole nation to rally around Mr. Roosevelt.” A Turin paper succinctly stated its appreciation for FDR: “Mr. Roosevelt is following the great principles established by the Fascist revolution and the genius of Il Duce.”
On March 4, 1789, the first bicameral Congress of the United States met in New York, New York, in accordance with the new Constitution.
Two years later on the same date, Vermont was admitted as the fourteenth state of the union.
In a twist in World War II allegiances, Finland declared war on Nazi Germany on March 4, 1945, beginning the Lapland War.
Yes, the “law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate,” with minimal adaptability to new conditions. “By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.” Herbert Spencer had it right over a century ago. The latest example? The massive cluster-muck that was school shutdowns during the lockdown period of the recent pandemic.
Here at Common Sense with Paul Jacob you read of the overkill that were the lockdowns, especially as regarding public schools. But now the evidence is pouring in, as reported in Reason magazine. Yes, government schools exhibit the old Spencerian principle:
When COVID-19 shuttered virtually everything in 2020 and forced public schools to begin distance learning, those schools responded with the agility one would expect from a decrepit battleship forced to make a quick change of course in the face of an unexpected enemy. In other words, the state’s hulking K-12 system barely responded at all, even as small and nimble private and charter schools quickly adapted to the new reality.
I remember news stories about public schools unable to set up even the most basic Zoom classes, of teachers who had no idea what they were supposed to do — and then of unions and administrators resisting efforts to re-start classroom teaching even after the rest of society was getting back to normal. Instead of re-ordering procedures to help kids stay current on their schoolwork, the school establishment mainly whined about not having enough money.
Anyone who needs a reminder about why government bureaucracies are incapable of providing quality public services need only look at the resulting disaster. A Stanford University study found, “a substantial decline in student learning in both English language arts/literacy (ELA) and mathematics between the 2018–19 and 2021–22 academic years.” Those are the general figures, but the results for poor and minority students were a travesty.
The whole article is worth reading, though we add one caveat: “COVID-19” did not shut down schools: governments did. In reaction. In over-reaction. For very little reason. The lockdowns in general were unnecessary and usurpative. But regarding schools — government or non-government — they were baseless and grand folly.
And if you want to see how learning can happen in online chats, look to unschooling and home schooling and other systems with actual, working feedback systems.
Dr. Phil has a clip that is making the rounds on this subject. It is worth viewing:
You see, when a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry. The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity. They stimulate their people’s natural fear of all other men by channeling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors. This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide.
On March 3, 1924, the 407-year-old Islamic caliphate collapsed when Caliph Abdülmecid II of the Ottoman Caliphate was deposed. The last remnant of the old regime gave way to the reformer Kemal Atatürk.
On the same day, the Free State of Fiume was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy.
On March 3 of 1931, the United States adopted The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem.
Mohandas K. Gandhi began his hunger strike in Bombay to protest at the autocratic rule in British India on this day in 1939.
Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari (pictured above) was born on March 3, 1819. Associated with French laissez-faire economists Frédéric Bastiat and Yves Guyot, he was the longest-serving editor of Guillamin’s Journal des économistes. While today chiefly known in the English-speaking world for his authorship of one article, “The Production of Security” (1849), he was, as Ludwig von Mises described, the most productive economist in his school. Despite this, and his worldwide recognition, only one of his many books was translated from the French into English during his lifetime, The Society of To-morrow (1904), his final book.
In the book he advanced the idea of “the free constitution of nationality.”
When we see that the most ardent advocates of the minimum wage law have been the AFL-CIO, and that the concrete effect of the minimum wage laws has been to cripple the low-wage competition of the marginal workers as against higher-wage workers with union seniority, the true motivation of the agitation for the minimum wage becomes apparent.
“We’re like rats in a Skinner box,” says psychologist and researcher Robert Epstein.
In “Electoral Fraud, Google-Style” (April 25, 2022), Paul Jacob looked at Epstein’s work on how Google manipulates elections. Now, Google’s political bias has become obvious. That bias’s efficacy, however, requires some science to understand. In Michael Shellenberger’s recent podcast interview, Epstein explains how he has studied what Google does:
There is indeed some new information here. Epstein says that in 2022, had Google not engaged in its manipulations, the GOP would have gained a two-seat majority, not lost by two seats.
The amount of power Google has is amazing. And simply by using the platform, we have given that power to the company.
Remember, as has become clear since — and something Epstein does not talk about — Google was seeded with Deep State money. It has never been an innocent partner.
On March 2, 1793, Sam Houston (pictured above) was born.
On March 2, 1926, American economist and political theorist Murray N. Rothbard was born.
As President of the Republic of Texas, Houston (pictured above) cut the size of the Republic’s budget by a whopping amount, including selling the navy for scrap. Rothbard theorized about even more daring — and more permanent — cuts to (and limits upon) government.
On March 2, 1781, the Second Continental Congress convened as the new Congress of the Confederation, under the Articles of Confederation, ratified the day before. The congress elected no new president upon adoption of the Articles. This Confederation Congress oversaw the conclusion of the American Revolution.
The trouble with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution — the last two items in the Bill of Rights — has not been lack of clarity. The Tenth, at least, is extremely clear: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The problem has been one of enforcement. How do the States prevent the federal government from overreach? Especially when the federal government acts as if no objection to a federal law could be brooked? Especially when the Supreme Court is, ahem, wrong, or hasn’t yet been approached with a challenge.
Utah has rediscovered an old technique. And revived it. Governor Spencer Cox signed into law the “Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act”: “The Legislature may, by concurrent resolution, prohibit a government officer from enforcing or assisting in the enforcement of a federal directive within the state if the Legislature determines the federal directive violates the principles of state sovereignty.”
Ultra clear. And by old precedent — the non-enforcement of The Fugitive Slave Act by some northern states — it provides teeth to the Tenth. If the federal government were to enact (just stretch your mind a bit!) something obviously unconstitutional, like, say, a gun confiscation, the state legislature would simply vote to prohibit any state employee, or subsidiary of the state (county, municipality) from working with federal agents. Federal government agencies don’t have enough manpower to enforce all the rules. The feds rely on the states.
CNN quotes a Democrat representative running against Governor Cox suggesting that the use of this technique would be overruled by the Supreme Court using “the Supremacy Clause.”
No. The Supremacy Clause only applies to the federal government regarding specified (“enumerated”) powers.
Regarding matters not explicitly stated in the Constitution, it is the States that are supreme.
