On August 28, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act received Royal Assent, formally abolishing slavery throughout most the British Empire.
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Slavery Abolished
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George Santayana
To the mind of the ancients, who knew something of such matters, liberty and prosperity seemed hardly compatible, yet modern liberalism wants them together.
George Santayana, “The Irony of Liberalism,” Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922).
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Baltic Independence
On August 27, 1991, the European Community recognized the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova after they had declared their independence from the USSR.
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Watch: Term Limits Touted to Congress
An historic moment:
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Simone Weil
Men are unequal in all their relations with the things of this world, without exception. The only thing that is identical in all men is the presence of a link with the reality outside the world.
Simone Weil, Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943).
On August 26, 1920, the 19th amendment to United States Constitution took effect, giving women the right to vote in every state of the union.
Prior to the passage of this amendment, 15 states allowed women to vote. Most of them were west of the Mississippi. The territory of Wyoming was the first to extend voting rights to women in 1869.
A perennial bill in the California Assembly, Constitutional Amendment 1, would make it harder for voters to block local tax increases in accordance with the provisions of Proposition 13, which voters passed in 1978.
ACA 1 would shrink the percentage of voters who must approve certain tax increases from two thirds to 55 percent in cases where the money would purportedly be used for infrastructure or public housing.
Passage would further erode the legacy of Prop 13, which in addition to cutting taxes, limiting tax increases, and requiring a two-thirds legislative majority to increase state taxes, also imposed a two-thirds threshold for voter approval for special local taxes.
In 2000, voters accepted a lower threshold for approval of school bonds — 55 percent instead of two thirds — enabling billions more in property taxes.
That’s bad enough, but things could easily get worse.
Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association observes that if enacted, ACA 1 would be used to raise taxes repeatedly in local elections by dint of dubbing all government spending “infrastructure.”
The infrastructure exemption is an innovation of the 2023 version of the bill (the tricky tricksters never stop).
Moreover, if passed, the amendment would take effect immediately. “Billions of dollars in tax hikes will start that much faster.”
Coupal stresses that the new exactions would be added to property tax bills “above and beyond Prop 13’s one percent cap” on property taxes.
ACA 1 keeps getting reintroduced and, so far, keeps getting killed off, like the mad killer in a teen slasher movie. Only to be revived for the sequel.
Kill it again.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with PicFinder.ai and DALL-E2
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Montesquieu
Il n’y a point de plus cruelle tyrannie que celle que l’on exerce à l’ombre
des lois et avec les couleurs de la justice, lorsqu’on va, pour ainsi dire,
noyer des malheureux sur la planche même sur laquelle ils s’étaient sauvés.No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice — when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.
Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p. 89.
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John Birch
On August 25, 1945, the Cold War began (some say) when, ten days after World War II ended with the Japanese surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party killed Baptist missionary Capt. John Birch (1918-1845).
“After the Tiananmen massacre,” explained Washington Post editorial board member, Keith Richburg, “China’s rulers adopted an unspoken social compact with the population: The Communist Party offers them boundless economic growth, the opportunity to get rich and some expanded personal freedoms in exchange for its continued right to rule.”
Mr. Richburg doesn’t bother to name any of these “expanded personal freedoms” to which he refers. I’m sure the Chinese people are wondering as well.
Richburg is certainly not alone in his delusion; one regularly hears this inane idea suggesting some sort of political legitimacy and justification for the CCP’s totalitarian state. In fact, in this same Post feature assessing China’s current economic woes, columnist Catherine Rampell likewise declared, “For generations, the Chinese Communist Party has held on to power partly through an implicit bargain with its citizenry: Sacrifice your freedoms, and, in exchange, we’ll guarantee ever-rising living standards.”
But there simply is no such bargain. No contract. No political compact between the Chinazi rulers and the Chinese people. That’s a figment of fuzzy Western elitist — and Rousseauvian — fantasy.
The CCP doesn’t hold power via demonstrated public support. Their power flows from the barrel of a gun, as notorious mass-murderer Chairman Mao acknowledged long ago. Not to mention fear of today’s Tiger chair.
Pretending otherwise only enables the tyranny.
Know your enemy. And if you know the Chinese state, you know it is your enemy and an enemy of the Chinese people.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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