On September 21, 1792, The National Convention abolished the French monarchy, thereby deposing King Louis XVI.
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King Louis XVI
In an interim victory for freedom of speech that may lead to an important precedent, a court has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the University of Texas.
According to Richard Lowery’s complaint, filed in February 2023, university officials threatened his “job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, [and] academic freedom” as part of a campaign to stop him from criticizing various stupid and/or horrific policies of the school.
An example of Lowery’s language that has the school’s administrators gunning for him is a College Fix piece, “At UT-Austin, teaching white 4-year-olds that they’re racist is funded by taxpayer dollars.”
Administrators repeatedly pressed a superior of Lowery, Carlos Carvalho, to “do something about Richard.” When Carvalho resisted, Dean Lillian Mills threatened to oust Carvalho as executive director of a Center at the school.
Officials also “allowed, or at least did not retract, a UT employee’s request that police surveil Lowery’s speech, because he might contact politicians or other influential people.”
Professor Lowery is represented by attorneys at the Institute for Free Speech, whose senior attorney Del Kolde stresses what should be obvious to the administrators: “Professors at public universities have the right to criticize administrators and speak to elected officials. The First Amendment protects such speech and, in a free society, DEI programs and UT’s president are not above public criticism.”
The goal of the lawsuit is, in part, to enjoin University of Texas officials from further threatening Lowery’s liberty to speak . . . and from acting on their previous threats.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Edmund Burke
To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Vol. III, p. 100.
On September 20, 480 BC, Greeks defeated Persian forces in the battle of Salamis.
Two scholars have entered politics: Javier Milei in Argentina and Michael Rectenwald in the U.S. The latter’s work has been discussed before in these pages, but the former’s has not.
Michael Rectenwald, an erstwhile Marxist who began criticizing woke leftism and found his way to libertarianism, spurred by his cruel rejection by the leftist academy and also by reading the work of Ludwig von Mises, is now running for the U.S. presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party.
Javier Milei was a footballer and rock-n-roll musician before becoming an economist and a politician. The Argentine with the wild hair spoke clearly and rationally to Tucker Carlson days ago in Buenos Aires, defending what he called “liberalism” (and opposing socialism in all its forms). Mr. Carlson identified Milei as a libertarian, claiming that the popular economist may become, next month, the next president of his country. At the ten-minute mark Milei explains that “liberalism” means something different in Argentina than in the U.S. He makes it clear he means freedom under a rule of law.
Michael Rectenwald formally introduced his campaign on comedian Dave Smith’s podcast Part of the Problem on Saturday. Rectenwald explains that his main goal is to speak the Truth. “The conclusion I’ve come to is effectively that the means that these elites use are actually the ends that they seek.” In short, those in power didn’t cook up lockdowns and mask mandates and jabs to fight a pandemic, but to extend their power.
Milei, in one popular video, takes a similarly dark view: “You can’t negotiate with leftards. You don’t negotiate with trash because they will end you!”
This politics stuff isn’t so easy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Michael Rectenwald
“The conclusion I’ve come to is effectively that the means that these elites use are actually the ends that they seek….
“The means that they’re using — or attempting to use, or beginning to implement — are the ends being sought. They don’t want you driving cars; they don’t want you having an air conditioner; they don’t want you even burning logs in your backyard; now I read, today, they don’t want you to have pets. There’s just an insane amount of stuff. . . . we’re talking about a totalitarian order that’s being ushered in.”
Michael Rectenwald on the Part of the Problem podcast, September 16, 2023.
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First U.S. budget
On September 19, 1778, the Continental Congress passed the first budget of the United States.
Congress last passed a budget in 1997.
Oh, Canada.
My wife and I visited our northern neighbor just a week ago, while its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was stuck in India . . . with plane trouble.
“Trudeau’s presence at the G20 summit . . . came against a backdrop of tensions between his government and host India over Ottawa’s handling of rightwing Sikh separatists,” U.K.’s Guardian reported. “New Delhi accuses Ottawa of turning a blind eye to the activities of radical Sikh nationalists who seek a separate Sikh homeland in northern India.”
Meanwhile, in Vancouver, British Columbia, I served as a member of the Punjab Referendum Commission, an international group with some know-how about direct democracy. We’re advising and monitoring the referendums being organized around the world by U.S.-based Sikhs for Justice. Nearly a million Sikhs live in Canada.
Mr. Trudeau should wear the Indian government’s scorn as a badge of honor, of course, for upholding the Sikhs’ basic rights to speak out in his putative free society.
But that’s not the only billion-being nation-state brouhaha this scion faces; Trudeau’s Liberal Party controls the Parliament but “after months of demands from opposition parties” just finally agreed to an official public inquiry into foreign (read: Chinese) interference in their political affairs.
“Canadian news reports earlier this year, citing anonymous Canadian intelligence officials and leaked classified documents, alleged that Chinese intelligence officials had funneled donations to its preferred candidates,” explains Axios, “all members of Canada’s Liberal Party led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.”
Worse than plane trouble.
I hope Canadians will get to the bottom of it and hold their politicians accountable in ways that we in the U.S. did not 30 years ago when Washington was first awash with Chinese cash.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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William Carlos Williams
Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.
William Carlos Williams, letter to James Laughlin (January 14, 1944), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 219.
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A Cornerstone
On September 18, 1793, George Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol building.
It has grown, since.
On September 18, 1838, Richard Cobden established the Anti-Corn Law League, which proceeded to bring free trade to Britain.