November 25, 1975, Suriname gained independence from the Netherlands.
On the same month and date 17 years later, the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia voted to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia (officially disjoined as of January 1, 1993). This split has been called “The Velvet Divorce” (following, in style and method, “The Velvet Revolution”).
“How does the doctrinal foundation of the Church fit in with shame and sin being raised as a matter of pride?” Räsänen asked (in Finnish). Her tweet included a link to an Instagram post displaying Romans 1:24-27, which refers to how males “did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.”
Whether you or I agree with Räsänen’s view that homosexuality is per se immoral is irrelevant. What is not irrelevant is our support for freedom of speech and religious expression: she should surely not be prosecuted for expressing her opinion!
But Finnish police investigated her for the tweet. For good measure, they also included as a possible charge her 2004 publication of a pamphlet questioning same-sex marriage and discussing related issues. She had published the pamphlet before it became illegal in Finland to express such opinions.
Now Räsänen and a Lutheran bishop being prosecuted for similar reasons have been acquitted.
This is a second acquittal. In 2022, the Helsinki District court ruled that it’s not the job of the court “to interpret biblical concepts.” A state prosecutor replied, “You can cite the Bible, but it is Räsänen’s interpretation and opinion about the Bible verses that are criminal.”
Politicians of Finland, don’t continue on this dark path. Revoke all laws that aim to jail people who disagree with you.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
John Milton, Paradise Regain’d (1671), Book II.
Passions, Desires, and Fears, is more a King;
Which every wise and vertuous man attains:
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
Cities of men, or head-strong Multitudes,
Subject himself to Anarchy within,
Or lawless passions in him which he serves.
November 24th marks the birthdays of philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632) and three influential Americans: ragtime composer Scott Joplin (1868), self-help writer Dale Carnegie (1888), and conservative editor, writer, and television personality William F. Buckley Jr. (1925).
It’s been expressed in American culture chiefly as an “official day” proclaimed by the State: Thanksgiving. We trace this back to the Pilgrims’ early days in Massachusetts — as I have done here and here — but there is much more to it than the Pilgrim story. On December 18, 1777, during the Revolutionary War, an official Thanksgiving was declared over a victory in battle. But as historian Brion MacLanahan has noted, Virginians experienced not only “the first representative government in North America” but also “hosted the first English thanksgiving.”
In 1619.
Sadly, the “nationalization” of late November’s holiday was not anodyne, as MacLanahan has taken pains to elaborate: it was a way for Yankees to replace Christmas, which Southerners celebrated but Purtian-dominated New England did not.
Still, let’s not relegate gratitude to sectarian politics or religion. For the philosophy of appreciation is much, much older than our America.
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others,” said Marcus Tullius Cicero, whom our Founding Fathers called “Tully.”
Epicurus, earlier, found the key to happiness — or “ataraxia,” as he called it (a kind of spiritual peace) — in storing up good memories and concentrating on them, rather than on one’s woes. This is gratefulness. It is a discipline.
It is not just a day or a good idea, it’s a key to virtue, as Cicero said.
But most of us of my generation probably remember the idea in a Sunday School song: “Count Your Blessings.”
Name them one by one.
As the world seems to spin into a kind of craziness, it may be hard to begin. So much madness and folly! Let me help:
We live in interesting times, and it is fascinating.
And maybe, if we keep our heads, we can help in setting some things right.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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A grateful mind
John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 55.
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharg’d.
On November 23, 1644, British poet John Milton published Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship.
Millett, along with Judges Cornelia T.L. Pillard and Bradley Garcia, serves on the three-judge panel of the federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. This week they devoted two hours to the appeal of a federal district judge’s gag order placed on former president Donald Trump.
Under Millett’s questioning, federal prosecutor Cecil VanDevender agreed that under the order Mr. Trump could say that someone testifying against him was “an untruth speaker” but not call that person a “liar.”
“He has to speak ‘Miss Manners’ while everyone else is throwing targets at him?” inquired Judge Millett. “It would be really hard in a debate, when everyone else is going at you full bore.”
She noted that the First Amendment importantly protects inflammatory speech, adding with some exasperation: “Your position doesn’t seem to give much balance at all to the First Amendment’s vigorous protection of political speech.”
Trump’s attorney argued that the current leading Republican presidential candidate has taken advantage of the order’s stay, pending this appeal, by “posting about this case almost incessantly since the day it was filed and they haven’t come forward with a single threat that’s even arguably inspired by any evidence in his social media posts.”
The three-judge panel, at least as The Post reads the hearing’s tea leaves, “indicated it may narrow the order prohibiting the former president from attacking individual prosecutors . . . or from calling potential witnesses against him ‘liars’ in the heat of next year’s campaign.”
It should. Unless the speech is specifically criminal it should be freely allowed. Orange Man should have the same rights we all rightly possess.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Prosperity or egalitarianism — you have to choose. I favor freedom — you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.
November 22 marks the death dates of a number of eminent writers, including that of English-American novelist and essayist Aldous Huxley and Irish-English novelist, theologian and medieval scholar C.S. Lewis, both of whom died in 1963, the same day as the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. British novelist Anthony Burgess died exactly 30 years later.
The date also marks the birth of the great British novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), in 1819.
Recommended reading from these authors include: