The human soul has need of truth and of freedom of expression.
Simone Weil, Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943).
The need for truth requires that intellectual culture should be universally accessible, and that it should be able to be acquired in an environment neither physically remote nor psychologically alien.
On February 4, 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected as the first President of the United States, under the new Constitution, by the U.S. Electoral College.
On the same date five years later, the French legislature abolished slavery throughout all territories of the French Republic.
The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better.
Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics (1872).
On February 3, 1783, Spain recognized the independence from Britain of the United States of America.
Walter Bagehot (pronounced “badge-it”; pictured), famed editor of The Economist and author of Lombard Street, was born on this date in 1826.
I would like such a thing not to happen again. I adhere to the radical political doctrine that the world should not be repeatedly ravaged by avoidable pandemics. I especially don’t want to see a pandemic considerably worse than the COVID-19 pandemic.
But politicians and scientists continue to make pandemics more likely by permitting, paying for (with our money), and even defending the gain-of-function research that weaponizes viruses.
Why, oh why? I hear you ask. The reason, they say, is so they can learn how to better combat these more virulent forms.
And if somebody happens to unleash a lab-enhanced virus capable of killing a third of the human race, will words like “sorry” and “oops” and “now we know how to stop it better the next time” undo the damage?
This danger is one theme of a talk given by U.S. Senator Rand Paul last November. As Paul, author of Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up, puts it, “To think that we can prevent future pandemics even as we continue to seek, catalog, and manipulate dangerous viruses is the height of hubris. . . . We must reform government and rein in out-of-control scientists and their enablers.”
Senator Paul echoes MIT biochemist Kevin Esvelt, who says “Please stop.”
Let us have no more experiments “likely to disseminate blueprints for plagues.”
Policymakers and investigators have no inalienable right to threaten the well-being of us all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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To know how just a cause we have for grieving is already a consolation.
George Santayana, The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress; Vol. IV, Reason in Art (1906).
On February 2, 1887, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, celebrated the first Groundhog Day. On the same day in 1976, the Groundhog Day gale hit the north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada.
In 2009, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe officially devalued the Zimbabwean dollar for the third and final time, making Z$1 trillion now only Z$1 of the new currency, equivalent to Z$10 septillion before the first
The Centers for Disease Control wrote an alert in the thick of 2021’s “vaccine” rollout, warning of the dangers of the Moderna and Pfizer jabs.
It was never sent out.
“In the May 25, 2021, email, exclusively obtained by The Epoch Times, a CDC official revealed why some officials were against sending the alert,” explains Zachary Stieber. You see, while an alert to health care professionals using the official Health Area Network system made complete sense, one CDC official gave a clue to her colleagues’ hesitance: “people don’t want to appear alarmist,” you see.
What did we who took the jab risk? Heart inflammation, or myocarditis. The CDC knew this early on.
But did not warn us.
Now, from listening to Dr. John Campbell on YouTube and Rumble, we have learned a lot more (if not in time in 2021) about the myocarditis threat. The takers of the modRNA treatment who are most at risk are those who engage in strenuous exercise soon after inoculation (which explains why the bulk of the afflicted have been boys and young men in the prime of life). Or so I last heard. I am certainly no doctor; I merely rely upon doctors to advise me.
And those doctors, in turn, rely upon official sources of information like the CDC.
Who did not advise them properly.
Who worry too much about “appearing alarmist” and not enough about relaying the best information.
Poltroons!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.
George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone (2007).
On February 1, 1835, slavery was formally abolished in Mauritius. Twenty-six years later, Texas seceded from the United States. On this date in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed a Joint Resolution from Congress formally submitting the proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to the states for ratification.
This Amendment abolished chattel slavery throughout the union.