Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.
Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).
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A Bad Day for the Templars
At dawn on Friday the 13th, in October of 1307 — a date that lent weight to triskaidekaphobia, especially when Fridays fall on the 13th day of a month — King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the words: “Dieu n’est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume” — “God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom.”
These “Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon,” most commonly known as the Knights Templar, figure heavily in the literature of Grand Conspiracies, and in the lore of heresy and the occult.
The next opportunity to commemorate a “Friday the 13th” anniversary of the liquidation of the Templar order will be in 2028.
On October 13, 1870, American social critic and education theorist Albert Jay Nock was born. Nock was the author of a number of books, including Jefferson, the Man and Our Enemy, The State, but was probably most famous for his intellectual autobiography, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, which was widely read and admired amongst conservatives in the 1950s and ’60s.
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Fiscal Protector
Why doesn’t California Governor Gavin Newsom care about kids?
What is it with this “conservative”?
Last week, Newsom coldly deployed his veto pen to deny to Golden State public high school students the sex subsidies — in this case, free condoms — that a solid majority of their state legislators had determined were essential to their healthy development.
Senate Bill 541 would have mandated that all public schools make condoms available free to all students, grades nine through twelve. According to an Associated Press report, the legislation would also “have made it illegal for retailers to refuse to sell condoms to youth.”
The bill’s author, State Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Los Angeles Democrat, contends the legislation is needed to help “youth who decide to become sexually active to protect themselves and their partners from (sexually transmitted infections), while also removing barriers that potentially shame them and lead to unsafe sex.”
Newsom agreed that free condoms, even if not yet recognized as a fundamental human right, are “important to supporting improved adolescent sexual health.”
His problem? Condoms cost too much.
“With our state facing continuing economic risk and revenue uncertainty,” explained the governor, “it is important to remain disciplined when considering bills with significant fiscal implications.”
Seems California is already running a $30 billion deficit. Becoming the condom supplier of first resort for 1.9 million hormone-infused students each year would annually add a few million more to that deficit.
Ah, California . . . where Gavin Newsom is the voice of fiscal restraint.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Voltairine de Cleyre
[C]an you expect Liberty to undo in a moment what Oppression has been doing for ages?
Voltairine de Cleyre, The Economic Tendency of Freethought (1890).
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The New World
On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas, thinking he had reached “the Indies.”
Exactly two hundred years later, a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips ended the Salem Witch Trials.
On this date in 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance was first recited by students in many U.S. public schools, as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage.
The Pledge had been composed that year by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist minister, and was first published in Youth’s Companion magazine, September 8, 1892. The recital was accompanied with a salute to the flag known as the Bellamy salute. During World War II, the salute was replaced with a hand-over-heart gesture because the original form (described in detail by Bellamy) involved stretching the arm out towards the flag in a manner that resembled the later Nazi salute. The original form of the Pledge was somewhat less involved than later versions:
I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
In October an editorial addition occurred, the word “to” prefixing “the republic.”
Kindness; generosity; aid — even these need defending from government.
In “Performing Charity Is a First Amendment Right,” C. J. Ciaramella writes about the difficulties people have had in feeding the poor in their towns and cities.
The problem is not lack of charity — unless you mean the lack of charity that local governments sport.
In Houston, Texas, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Santa Ana, California — and in many other communities around the country — local governments have fined and prohibited the charitable from doing the good they do, often on grounds of “health and safety.”
Houston even set up a hyper-specific charity area — reminiscent of the “free speech zones” set up for political rallies in recent years — in a parking lot near a police station. Just the kind of place that the destitute want to hang around in!
After the usual forms of police harassment came the court cases . . . and appeals to the First Amendment.
And as I read through Ciaramella’s article, the attempts to defend charity as a right of “religious expression” struck me as odd. Santa Ana politicians, for example, characterized charity as “incidental” to the core religious missions — a bizarre tack to take when dealing with Christian doctrine anyway! — and for once the U.S. Justice Department took the common-sense position on this. Thankfully.
But charity as “expression” leaves a bad taste. Charity’s more basic than “expression,” isn’t it? Some might see the art of giving as a duty, others as a rite, and others as mere generosity for its own sake. Jesus spoke of charity as something one did without speaking about it.
Could it even be more basic than free exercise of religion? Might it not more accurately be a Ninth Amendment right — one “retained by the people”?
So fundamental there seemed no need to spell it out specifically.
Our most basic rights are general rights, and charity is fundamental to being human.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John Adams
The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.
John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765).
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A Revolution Remembered
October 11, 1890, marks the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
On the same date in 1976, President Gerald R. Ford approved a congressional joint resolution Public Law 94–479 to appoint, posthumously, George Washington to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, as part of the bicentennial celebrations.
John J. Pershing (1860 – 1948) is the only other American to attain this high title, and the only one to achieve it while alive.
Sane Republicans do exist, says Hillary Clinton. Even in the House of Representatives!
We know this because they voted to continue federal government operations by raising the debt limit. Or so Mrs. Clinton says. It’s just “common sense”!
Talking with Christiane Amanpour on CNN, last week, the former presidential candidate explained that these sane Republicans are “intimidated,” adding, “they oftentimes say and do things which they know better than to say or do.”
To get to common ground with these compromised GOP folks, however, the measures that intimidate them — while exciting their extremist, insane MAGA proponents — must be roundly defeated.
No compromise.
In times past, our representatives in Congress could work together; but back then, argues the former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State, “there wasn’t this little tail wagging the dog of the Republican Party.”
That is, conservative representatives would kindly admit defeat every time the green light was given to more and more spending. Now they won’t cooperate.
It’s extremism, in Hillary’s judgment, to oppose the ceaseless growth of the warfare-welfare state.
But, Hillary being Hillary, she had a corker to unleash. “Maybe at some point there needs to be a formal de-programming of the cult members.”
Just like Mrs. Clinton to generously offer re-education camps to her opponents.
Followed by an admonition: “we have to be smarter.”
How is it smart (or sane) to continually grow the federal debt, its mere service now larger than the defense budget?
By talking about formally deprogramming MAGA extremists Hillary Clinton skillfully deflects her supporters’ attention from the real need: informally deprogramming their own insane debt-piling status quo mindset.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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A gun is not an argument.
Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).