On October 15, 1894, Alfred Dreyfus (1859 – 1935) was arrested for spying: The Dreyfus Affair began. And thus began a scandal that brought anti-Semitism into the cultural center.
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The Dreyfus Affair
While Trump lives, proverbially, rent-free inside Hillary Clinton’s head, that is not all. Her mind’s a memeplex of totalitarian ideas, too. And a strange circular logic:
The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.
Nicholas Black Elk [Hehaka Sapa], The Sacred Pipe : Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (1953), as told to Joseph Epes Brown.
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William Penn
On October 14, 1644, Willliam Penn was born.
An English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania (the English North American colony and future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania), he was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Indians. Penn died in 1718.
“Let’s be clear,” said Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) yesterday, speaking of the difficulty Republicans in the House of Representatives have in finding a new Speaker, “January was a coronation, and it was difficult; this is a competition, and it’s going to be even more difficult.”
Asked about the Steve Scalise (R-La.) candidacy, Rep. Massie replied that at least 20 Republicans would never vote for Scalise as Speaker.
Wednesday, Scalise expressed his honor to have been nominated for the position. Thursday he withdrew his nomination. “There are still some people that have their own agendas. And I was very clear we have to have everybody put their agendas on the side and focus on what this country needs.”
This begs the question. What does the country need? Bad-mouthing the dozen or so who would not support his compromising techniques as pushing “their own agenda” is a rhetorical move, but it is by no means demonstrated.
Massie made the point that the recently ousted Speaker (whose ouster he did not support) had negotiated a significant concession from the Biden Administration — a one percent reduction in spending for a debt limit increase — and that no candidate for Speaker who would not press this advantage further could be accepted.
The collapse of the Scalise campaign leaves only Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh.) in the offing. A far better option. As of this writing, on Thursday night, no one else has thrown a hat into the ring.
It’s a pretty contentious ring, with elbows getting thrown by the Republican Freedom Caucus types leveraging the power they have. The establishment GOP is reeling.
Which is not always a good thing.
And Democrats? Appalled.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing. With a $33 trillion debt and growing fast, should everyone blithely march towards oblivion, meekly following the leader in Washington’s favorite version of Kick the Can?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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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.”