Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
Plutarch’s Lives: “Sertorius,” sec. 16.
Categories
Missing Day(s)
The date October 8, 1582, does not exist in the records of Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, the result of that year’s implementation of the Gregorian calendar.
Fearing a Catholic plot, Protestant countries adopted the more accurate calendar much later. By the time Britain and its colonies got on board in 1752, eleven days had to be “disappeared.” This caused riots in some places, as people suspected some horrible chicanery — and in actual fact the inspiration for the “Give us our eleven days” protest had something to do with taxes, so it might not have been as idiotic as it now seems.
On October 8, 1793, American merchant, president of the Second Continental Congress (1775–1777) and first and third Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Hancock (b. 1737), died.
Paul Jacob takes a break from a big project to bring you the truth about the news, expanding on what you have read on this website. He even offers a few pointers on how to get things done:
Categories
Mercy Otis Warren
The rights of individuals ought to be the primary object of all government, and cannot be too securely guarded by the most explicit declarations in their favor.
Mercy Otis Warren, Observations on the New Constitution (1788).
Categories
George Mason
On October 7, 1691, the charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay was issued.
Also on a seventh day of the tenth month, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which closed Indigenous lands in North America north and west of the Alleghenies to white settlements.
On October 7, 1792, George Mason — “The Father of the Bill of Rights” — died. He had drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, and, at the time of the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, had insisted on the addition of articles to solidify state’s and individual rights within the new order.
George Mason (pictured) has been honored in numerous ways, including by the United States Postal Service with an 18¢ Great Americans series postage stamp; a bas-relief in the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives as one of 23 honoring great lawmakers; and with an annual award named for him presented to a person who has made significant, lasting contribution to the practice of journalism in the Commonwealth, awarded by the Society of Professional Journalists, Virginia Pro Chapter.
On October 7, 2003, California Governor Gray Davis was recalled and Arnold Schwarzenegger voted into Davis’s previous gubernatorial spot.
“The Biden administration on Thursday said it would expand former President Donald Trump’s wall,” informs The Gray Lady, with a stiff upper lip.
And do it lickety-split: “Biden criticized for waiving 26 laws in Texas to allow border wall construction,” the UK Guardian headlines its report.
In fiscal 2023, government data shows 245,000 people entered the United States from this Rio Grande Valley sector.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated in the federal registry.
“Well, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall,” quipped the American Economic Liberties Project’s Matt Stoller, “Biden did.”
“There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,” the president had promised to the contrary during the 2020 campaign. Now Sleepy Joe’s administration has so awakened to the need for action on immigration that it argues for fencing off the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act from getting in the way . . .
. . . of building that wall.
Fast!
The New York Times notes “intensifying” complaints coming from “Democratic leaders in New York, Chicago and elsewhere who say the influx is overwhelming their ability to house and feed the migrants.”
Want a nimble response to the border crisis?
Instead, we see a NIMBY response — from big-city politicians, as the buses arrive from down south.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Those animals which are incapable of making covenants with one another, to the end that they may neither inflict nor suffer harm, are without either justice or injustice. And those tribes which either could not or would not form mutual covenants to the same end are in like case.
Epicurus, Principal Doctrines (Robert Drew Hicks, trans.), no. 32.
Categories
William Tyndale
October 6 is the traditional date commemorating the martyrdom of William Tyndale, in 1536.
Tyndale translated the New Testament and much of the Old into the English of his day, and in the process added more new words into the English language than any other single wordsmith, with the possible exception of Shakespeare. He also laid the ground for the later, and more famous, King James (“Authorized”) Edition of the Bible.
Among his memorable coinages and turns of phrase coined as translations from Hebrew and Greek into English include
- Passover (constructed from the Hebrew Pesach or Pesah)
- scapegoat
- a moment in time
- the powers that be
- the salt of the earth
- a law unto themselves
- it came to pass
- the signs of the times
- filthy lucre
At first blush, it seems like the most pointless political move ever.
When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R.-Fla.) moved to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R.-Cal.) from his role as Speaker of the House, lots of eyebrows were raised, and at least one pair of lips was licked. But did it make any sense?
This has never happened before, a House Speaker ousted by his own party mid-session.
That’s not an argument against the move, though. It was Gaetz who had blocked McCarthy back in January, through more than a dozen votes, allowing the moderate Republican to serve only with explicit conditions. Gaetz now says that McCarthy has failed to meet those conditions. Arguably, that’s accountability in action. Good?
Or mere revenge? After all, McCarthy had just made a deal with a sizable number of minority Democrats to fund the government and prevent a federal shutdown — thus kicking the overspending/insolvency can down the road again. Gaetz and his closest colleagues in the House made the same deal with the opposition party, ousting McCarthy.
It’s a game of kick the can, however you look at it.
Gaetz argues that McCarthy did not do what was required to bring fiscal responsibility, such as un-package spending bills. “We told you how to use the power of the purse: individual, single-subject spending bills that would allow us to have specific review, programmatic analysis and,” explained Gaetz, “that would allow us to zero out the salaries of the bureaucrats who have broken bad, targeted President Trump or cut sweetheart deals for Hunter Biden.”
But the deed is done. McCarthy’s out. Now, who to replace him?
Funny that no one mentions the wild plan to put Trump into the job — you know, the plan first floated after Election 2020?
It was such a snickered-at notion, just a goofy way of taking 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from Joe Biden.
Still, it was a plan. Only in the next few days and weeks will we learn if Gaetz really has one.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Categories
Algernon Sidney
That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.
Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (1689), Ch. 3, Sect. 11.