The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748).
On August 19, 1919, Afghanistan gained full independence from Great Britain. The British attempts to maintain an imperial presence in this region elicited an earlier, infamous essay in protest by English sociologist and anti-imperialist Herbert Spencer (pictured), “Patriotism” (Facts and Comments, 1902).
On this day in 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest, a crucial event leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In 1999, a mass rally of Serbians demanded the resignation of Slobodon Milosevic.
Jonathan Turley observes that in this fourth indictment, “every call, speech, and tweet appears a criminal step in the conspiracy. District Attorney Fani Willis appears to have elected to charge everything and everyone and let God sort them out.”
This is the kitchen-sink, banana-republic approach to “justice.” Facts? Plausibility? Irrelevant when the would-be one-party regime has a target in view.
In masterful understatement or point-missing, Turley writes that the “greatest challenge for Georgia is to offer a discernible limiting principle on when challenges in close elections are permissible and when they are criminal.”
But how can it ever be criminal simply to challenge election results or call for a recount or plead for further investigation of the flimsiest of allegations, even via imperfect phone call?
The “limiting principle” operative here is obvious. Is the challenger on our side or the other side? Our side, the challenge is legal. Other side, it’s illegal, prosecutable. This is Willis’s “principle.”
Per Turley, it’s important for campaigns to seek judicial review of an election “without fear of prosecution.” Yes, important. But from the perspective of those who want to prevent other-side campaigns from seeking recourse when an election is close or seems pockmarked by fraud, what’s important is making sure other-side campaigns do fully feel this fear.
The bad guys already understand what’s at stake, what Mr. Turley is so carefully explaining as if they are perhaps only a little confused.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Patronage is the sword and cannon by which war may be made on the liberty of the human race.
John Tyler, speech in Congress (February 24, 1834) against the policies of President Andrew Jackson. Seven and a half years later, as president of the United States, Tyler would veto a revival of the national bank, opposition to which was one of Jackson’s most memorable policies.
On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women’s suffrage.
It must be global warming!
Well, it is hotter than usual.
But this is summer.
And a volcano did blow in the ocean near Tonga, a year and a half ago, and scientists at the time did say that the water vapor it placed into the stratosphere could linger for years, affecting the climate.
Still, you won’t see recognition of this factor for warming on the major news sources. They keep pushing the AGW line: anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming: “climate change.”
Matt Walsh, on his podcast, ran through the vulcanism story last week. Water vapor is a more effective, broad-spectrum greenhouse gas than CO2, which all the journos cannot help but push (because it fits a statist agenda, and that’s their real business: propaganda).
Walsh calls mainstream AGW crusaders “volcano denialists.”
Our planet’s ecosystem is ultra-complicated. Cloud cover (which has something to do with water vapor, you might say) can also cool the planet by increasing high-altitude albedo, a point touched upon in The Epoch Times, “Nobel Winner on Climate Agenda: ‘We Are Totally Awash in Pseudoscience,” which focuses on physicist John Clausner and his contrarian views on climate.
“Contra the IPCC and other major institutions,” Clausner contends “that climate is primarily set by . . . the ‘cloud cover thermostat,’ a self-regulating process whereby more clouds start to enshroud the Earth when the temperature is too high and vice-versa.”
He was slated to give a talk to the International Monetary Fund on July 25, but that was cancelled. These elites have directed trillions of global dollars to “research” global climate, and Clausner’s caution that they’ve made “a trillion-dollar mistake” is not exactly welcome.
It’s not just vulcanism they deny. They deny water.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.
Alfred Elton van Vogt, “The Weapon Shop,” in Astounding Science Fiction (December 1942).
On August 17, 1786, American backwoods hero and politician, David Crockett, was born. Famous as a politician, he brought personal principle and honor and a “common sense” approach in representing Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives. He later played a part in the Texas Revolution, dying at the Battle of the Alamo.
Crockett grew up in East Tennessee, where he gained a reputation for hunting and storytelling, which helped make him a legend in his own time. After being made a colonel in the militia of Lawrence County, Tennessee, he was elected to the Tennessee state legislature in 1821.
In 1825, Crockett was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he vehemently opposed many of the policies of President Andrew Jackson, most notably the Indian Removal Act.
Crockett wrote a number of books, including a biography of Martin Van Buren.
Responding to a question from Hugh Hewitt on his radio program, Ramaswamy — the entrepreneur, author, and GOP presidential candidate — urged a “move from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity.”
The right idea, I guess, just not elaborated in the clear-thinking manner I have been hoping for.
You see, there was a “second part” to Ramaswamy’s foreign policy prescription. “That commitment is only as far as 2028,” he explained, “by which point I will have led the United States of America to achieve semiconductor independence, and we will not take the risk of war that risks Americans lives after that for some nationalistic dispute between China and Taiwan.”
“Some nationalistic dispute”?* Sure, between the democratic miracle of the last century and a genocidal totalitarian regime that claims it . . . along with claiming 90 percent of the South China Sea, the world’s busiest waterway.
A skeptical Hewitt heard Ramaswamy “saying ‘I will go to war, including attacking the Chinese mainland, if you attack before semiconductor independence. And afterwards, you can have Taiwan. So if you just wait until 2029, you may have Taiwan.’”
Let’s make the world safe for semiconductors!
But . . . not for people?
Ramaswamy’s transactional approach might make the Taiwanese feel less inclined to assist our efforts toward semiconductor independence. And what a terrible message to send other allies in the region!
As the democratic countries of Asia and the world are stepping up and coming together to push back against Beijing’s belligerence, the U.S. ought not jeopardize this by suggesting more convenient dates for calendaring in future Chinazi invasions.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* From the interview, Ramaswamy appears ignorant of Taiwanese history; namely, the fact that the Nationalist Chinese forces that fled to the island in 1949, as well as their offspring, comprise a distinct minority of the island nation’s population. Meanwhile, the native Taiwanese had been under Japanese colonial rule for the previous fifty years and, prior to that, never completely under Chinese control.
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The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.
William Gibson, repeatedly said on radio in 1993.