September 16 marks the Independence Days for Mexico (celebrating the declaration of independence from Spain in 1810) and Papua New Guinea (commemorating the exit from Australia in 1975).
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Independence Days
Enthusiasts for prohibiting political dissent must know that the First Amendment protects the right to utter controversial speech.
They must know that there’s no constitutional loophole for speech that they disagree with.
Another “must know”? That calling the public statements of political opponents “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “hate speech,” etc. is no substitute for open discussion.
They just don’t care.
They just know that if they keep plugging away, struggling to muzzle the badspeech, they’re more likely to get their way than playing by the rules of free speech and open debate.
Their determination is well shown in a new California law, AB587, passed about a year ago. The law compels social media companies to institute moderation policies to squelch “hate speech,” “extremism,” “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “radicalization,” etc.
Although AB587 is anti-transparently called a “transparency measure,” main author Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel admits the point: to force social media companies to “moderate or remove hateful or incendiary content on their platforms,” like “hate speech and disinformation.”
Since Elon Musk’s Twitter is affected by the new law, Musk is suing to block it.
According to his lawsuit, AB587 “compels companies like X Corp. [Twitter] to engage in speech against their will, impermissibly interferes with [their] constitutionally protected editorial judgments” and “has both the purpose and likely effect of pressuring companies . . . to remove, demonetize, or deprioritize constitutionally protected speech that the State deems undesirable or harmful.”
Politically, Mr. Musk has emerged as one of the country’s most frustratingly contradictory figures, often doing great things, sometimes very bad ones. With this lawsuit, even his enemies must know he is in the right.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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James Fenimore Cooper
The peculiar office of a demagogue is to advance his own interests, by affecting a deep devotion to the interests of the people. . . .
He who would be a courtier under a king, is almost certain to be a demagogue in a democracy.
James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America (1838).
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After Porto
On September 15, 1820, an uprising occurred in Lisbon, Portugal, following similar insurrection in Porto the previous month. This was no bloodthirsty mob, but, instead, a popular demand for constitutional government. Unfortunately, the country was beset with imperial and monarchical problems for some time to come.
The United Nations established September 15 as International Day of Democracy, in 2007. An Independence Day is celebrated on this date in Guatemala (a Patriotic Day), El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, commemorating independence from Spain in 1821.
“Libertarians Want Control Over Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell,” the headline read.
That’s odd. Libertarians don’t usually want control over anyone.
But at issue is whether Sleepy Joe and Motionless Mitch have control over themselves.
“The U.S. Libertarian Party has filed for conservatorships for President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, referring to them as ‘geriatric elites’ mentally unfit to properly serve the American populace,” Newsweek reported on Tuesday.
“Both subjects’ ability to receive and evaluate information effectively, make decisions, and to communicate are impaired to such an extent that they lack the capacity to represent themselves or the interests of Americans,” explained a party news release.
“These men, and others like them (like Diane Feinstein and John Fetterman) are not well enough to be left alone in the house all day,” Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle argued. “How are they well enough to govern our lives and spend our tax dollars?”
She added: “so we’ve compassionately decided to step in and make those important decisions for them.”
At 80 years of age, Mr. Biden is the oldest president ever. If re-elected in 2024, he would be 86 at the conclusion of his term. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, 81 years of age, has been in public office in Washington for the last 38 years.
The problem, of course, is not age as a number, but that both men have exhibited behavior that concerns us for their health and well-being. Mitch has repeatedly frozen in public, to be led away like a zoned-out sleepwalker, while the president, on his recent Vietnam trip, closed a press conference with “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed.”
Still, their string-pullers persist in milking each to the last drool-drip of inertial power. Their families should step in.
Until then, the Libertarian Party will have to do.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Niels Bohr
An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.
Niels Bohr, as quoted by Edward Teller, in “Dr. Edward Teller’s Magnificent Obsession” by Robert Coughlan, in LIFE magazine (September 6, 1954), p. 62.
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Missing Eleven Days?
In 1752, throughout the British Empire, September 2 was followed, the next day, by September 14, as the government adopted the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days.
On September 14, 1944, Maastricht becomes the first Dutch city to be liberated by allied forces.
Mark Tapscott says Republicans should be made of sterner stuff.
He points to Senator Tommy Tuberville (R.-Ala.) as one who is showing Republicans “How to Win the Budget Battle Against the Swamp.”
Senate rules are such that a single U.S. Senator can prevent military promotions and appointments from being approved by unanimous consent (without a recorded vote). Tuberville has blocked hundreds, saying he’ll retreat only when the Biden administration drops its policy of paying for abortion-related expenses of military personnel. The policy violates the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits using tax dollars to pay for abortions.
Tuberville has stuck to his guns despite abuse. Emulate him, Tapscott enjoins.
Don’t mistake Tapscott to imply that negotiating a compromise is always legitimate, while he acknowledges: “nobody gets everything they demand, but everybody must get some of what they demand. [But only] when both sides realize that’s the only way out of an impasse.”
Demand what, though?
The principles, if any, that bring you to Congress should not be compromised. Whether forsaking them entails making any given unpalatable agreement isn’t always obvious. But often, it is. And you betray yourself by pretending otherwise.
What if, over the last 90 years, relatively decent lawmakers had never accepted deals — about spending, taxes, regulations, foreign policy, and other questions — that entailed violating the proper function of government as they understood it?
The battles, the outcomes, the procedures, and the precedents would have been much different. And I think we’d be far better off.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Richard Feynman
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Richard Feynman, address “What is Science?,” presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, in New York City (1966), published in The Physics Teacher, volume 7, issue 6 (1969), p. 313-320.
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John Calvin & Desmond Tutu
John Calvin [pictured above] returned to Geneva on September 13, 1541, after three years of exile. His subsequent work in church reform and theology became known as Calvinism, and profoundly influenced the course of European and (eventually) American culture, including several concepts of servitude and liberty.
On the same date in 1989, Desmond Tutu led South Africa’s largest march aganst Apartheid.