On October 20, 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.
Exactly 15 years later, the Convention of 1818 signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the Canada-United States border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.
Duuuuukes!
One might think this sport and spectacle a welcome relief from politics — and surely it is — but not entirely. Because, of course, these great college football programs are attached to public universities financed by us, by our tax dollars.
The problem? As The Athletic put it recently: “For the second consecutive year, James Madison looks like one of the best teams in the Group of 5. And for the second consecutive year, the Dukes are ineligible for the postseason.”
The Group of 5 are the five best football-playing conferences after the best five conferences known as the Power-5. That’s pretty impressive — especially considering this is only the second year since James Madison made the jump from the second division into the first division of football-playing schools of higher yearning and earning.
JMU is in the big leagues; it can now play for the national championship. Well, not now. Again, this year, like last year, JMU’s football team is banned from playing in a bowl game or being declared the champion of the conference . . . even though last year they did win the conference . . . except for the rule that says they cannot win the conference.
This year, the Dukes are 6-0 and could perhaps go undefeated. What if College Football’s Magic Computers pick them as among the best? They would still be denied a chance to compete.
Why? Well, those are the rules the colleges and conferences have agreed on. The rationales don’t hold much water. It seems like a hazing ritual holdover to me.
But, of course, the universities can do whatever they want.
And suffering the harsh two-year punishment is not so terrible for the coach who will possibly have a decade-long career, or the university that will play on in perpetuity.
All the unfairness is placed on the shoulders of the student athletes. Denied the conference honors and the post-season play they deserve, these unpaid players who’ve earned millions for their schools have at least learned a lesson. When it comes to sports and money, the kids come last.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: ‘To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due.’
Lysander Spooner, Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882).
On October 19, 1781, representatives of British commander Lord Cornwallis handed over Cornwallis’s sword and formally surrendered to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, at Yorktown, Virginia. The Revolutionary War (or War for Independence, or Colonial Rebellion, or whatever you wish to call it) was over.
In 1918 on this date, conservative writer Russell Kirk was born.
It’s part of the “thinning” controversy.
The subject? Forest management.
In the old days, human beings cleared forests or kept forests and harvested from them (for firewood, fungi, and fauna) on an ongoing basis. And, periodically, nature would swing around and forests would burn — a story as old as the hills, forest fires being part of the natural cycle.
But when humans use forests for all sorts of things, but most especially harvesting building material (lumber), we have to take some control of the natural cycles. Forest thinning — cutting and removing some trees and leaving the rest — is a key silvicultural practice.
Some environmentalists have objected to this practice on the grounds that Nature Is Good and Sacred, with silviculturalists generally arguing that without thinning, forests become tinder-boxes, ripe for runaway fires in which forests are destroyed, value is lost, and people die.
A recent article in The Epoch Times covers some of this. I am not qualified to adjudicate the ecological disagreements. But Bill Gates pushing the thinning of forests not as a means of harvesting lumber or as a means of reducing forest fires, but as a way of sequestering carbon, seems loopy: “Through his foundation Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mr. Gates is a part of the $6.6 million seed investor pool backing Kodama Systems in its proposal to remove trees in California’s fire-challenged woodlands and bury them in Nevada to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2).”
I would prefer sequestering that carbon in housing, which we need more of, not less.
But Gates has his eyes on atmospheric CO2 levels, not helping the poor in America.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon’s mouth.
Benjamin R. Tucker, “Passive Resistance,” Individual Liberty (1926).
On October 18, 1775, African-American poet Phillis Wheatley was freed from slavery, upon the death of her master. Widely appreciated in her day, she was the first African-American to publish a book.
We know only the surname, Ma, of the robbed developer. Ma’s crime was using a virtual private network to evade China’s great firewall, a censorship net used to keep people from seeing anything too politically thought-provoking.
Many others in China also use VPNs to circumvent the great firewall, and many China-based companies couldn’t function without using VPNs.
Authorities first noticed Ma because of a Twitter account that was not even his, and which authorities agreed was not his. But now they were looking at him.
He says that he explained that while his remote work could be done without bypassing the wall and that the company’s support site could be reached without doing so, he needed to use a VPN only to access Zoom for meetings.
These details fell on deaf ears.
Whatever Ma’s exact alleged violation, something in what passes for law in China could be found to rationalize punishing him for it. He seems to be a victim of bad luck. A mix-up about a Twitter account. He ticked a few boxes. He had money. Money the local officials wanted.
The message to other Chinese: “You may think you’re getting away with X [“X” being one of the many peaceful activities that the Chinese government arbitrarily outlaws]. But we can get you any time.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Lysander Spooner, Natural Law; or, The Science of Justice, Section I, page 5 (1882).
The science of mine and thine — the science of justice — is the science of all human rights; of all a man’s rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
“The date was October 17, 1909 — the fiftieth anniversary of John Brown’ famous (some say infamous) raid of the federal armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, which ended with the deaths of most of Brown’s small band of men and led to the execution of Brown, making him the most celebrated martyr to the cause of abolition.” So begins The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown (1995), by Edward J. Renehan, Jr.
As the author goes on to explain, it was a big occasion, with many ceremonies, including an inconspicuous one “not far from the site of the engine house where John Brown’s enterprise ended in defeat, a small group of aging abolitionists held a quiet prayer meeting — anxious not to be taken much notice of.” But in Concord, Massachusetts, the “most poignant exercise in memory” took place: “the surviving remnants of the Secret Six, that small, enigmatic cabal of northern aristocrats who financed John Brown’s strange adventure.”
Those attending this meeting were two conspirators, Thomas Wentworth Higginson (December 22, 1823 – May 9, 1911) and Franklin Sanborn (December 15, 1831 – February 24, 1917), as well as Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910), widow of a third conspirator, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe (November 10, 1801 – January 9, 1876). Not present, because long dead, were Reverend Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810 – May 10, 1860), Gerrit Smith (March 6, 1797 – December 28, 1874), and George Luther Stearns (January 8, 1809 – April 9, 1867).
Print out a commemorative poster:
