Ludwig Edler von Mises, Nation, State and Economy (1919; 1983, Leland B. Yeager, trans.), p. 252.
Bourgeois civilization has built railroads and electric power plants, has invented explosives and airplanes, in order to create wealth. Imperialism has placed the tools of peace in the service of destruction. With modern means it would be easy to wipe out humanity at one blow.
In 1814 on this day, British forces burnt down the White House. Unlike audience reaction to the 1996 movie Independence Day (pictured), there was no widespread cheering among Americans for the building’s destruction.
One year later, the modern Constitution of the Netherlands received its empowering signatures.
August 24 birthdays include that of British anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Argentine literary genius Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), and French historian and author of a magisterial study of the rise of capitalism in Europe, Fernand Braudel (1902-1985),
On August 24, 1682, William Penn received an area of territory to add it to his colony of Pennsylvania. The area comprises, today, the state of Delaware.
This, in response to a case where anti-abortion protesters were arrested for chalking the words “Black Pre-born Lives Matter” on a Washington, D.C., street back in 2020.
Emma Camp makes clear, in her Reason coverage of the ruling, that the case is not as simple as it may sound in the headlines. “While writing chalk messages on public streets and sidewalks is considered vandalism in D.C., protest leaders had an earlier conversation with a police officer in which he ‘explained that he believed Mayor Bowser had effectively opened up the District’s streets for political markings.’”
Nevertheless, during the protest, “police told demonstrators that they would be arrested if they painted or chalked any messages.” Two individuals in the pro-life protest defied police order and scribbled their message in chalk.
It’s actually a bigger issue than just an altercation during a protest. The police in D.C. had not merely looked the other way, allowing helter-skelter displays of “Black Lives Matter” graffiti, but the city government had actually gotten in on the act and messaged “Black Lives Matter” on the streets itself — in bold paint.
This obviously sends a message to disagreeing citizens: we are on this side, not that.
As Judge Rao insists, “The government may not play favorites in a public forum — permitting some messages and prohibiting others.”
She interprets this injunction as pertaining to the First Amendment, but it goes much deeper than that, reaching to the core idea of a rule of law, and equality of treatment under it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The rulers wanted to fool people, since they saw that people have a kinship with what is truly good. They took the names of the good and assigned them to what is not good, to fool people with names and link the names to what is not good. So, as if they were doing people a favor, they took names from what is not good and transferred them to the good, in their own way of thinking. For they wished to take free people and enslave them forever.
Excerpt from The Gospel of Philip as translated by M. Meyer, in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (2007), p. 163
On August 23, 1989, two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stood on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands, as part of the “Singing Revolution” that helped set the Soviet Union to its fateful implosion.
“In a recently obtained letter (pdf) sent in November 2021 to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),” writes Megan Redshaw in The Epoch Times, “top epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and seven colleagues informed the agency it was promoting flawed data and excluding data that did not reinforce their narrative.”
By over-stating the effectiveness of masks, the CDC “would ‘damage the credibility of science,’ endanger public trust by ‘misrepresenting the evidence,’ and give the public ‘false expectations’ masking would protect them from the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.”
While Osterholm and others expressed alarm that the CDC’s selection of study citations was more conclusion-oriented than process- (science-) oriented — “focus[ing] on the strengths of studies that support its conclusions while ignoring their shortcomings of study design” — we the patients (and doctors) were continually distracted from best practices during a pandemic.
Meanwhile, millions died.
The scientists’ letter was uncovered via aFreedom of Information Act (FOIA) process initiated by The Functional Government Initiative, which in making it public stated, “The story of official masking guidance should trouble the American public. Recall that Dr. Fauci at first said there was no need for masks. Then cloth masks were all that stood between you and COVID. But as evidence against cloth
Well, the rest is history: Big Government Science masking the truth.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Human existence begins when the lack of fixation of action by instincts exceeds a certain point; when the adaptation to nature loses its coercive character, when the way to act is no longer fixed by heredtiarily given mechanisms. In other works, human existence and freedom are from the beginning inseparable.
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (1941), Chapter Two: “The Emergence of the Individual and the Ambiguity of Freedom.”
On August 22, 1952, France closed its penal colony on Devil’s Island.
At first a leper colony, it had been transformed by the end of the 19th century into a prison tasked primarily with housing enemies of the French state.
He has a point. For example, the official House committee staff carefully stated that they had “identified over $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates.” But Committee Chairman Comer turned that into: “The Biden family received over $20 million from our enemies around the world.”
The whole $20M+ didn’t go to the Biden Crime Family. Kessler’s analysis puts that number at merely $7.5 million.
I guess this is why gang members sometimes turn on each other.
But Kessler — like so many other mainstream media mouthpieces — gets something very, very wrong.
“No evidence has emerged that any of these funds can be traced to Joe Biden himself,” the fact-checker asserts before delving into the specifics of his checked facts. Near the close, Kessler reiterates: “No money has been traced to Joe Biden.”
That’s just not true.
In a text that was discovered on the infamous Hunter laptop (now verified even by big media behemoths), Hunter Biden tells his daughter that his father (now President Biden for those following closely at home) makes Hunter kick back roughly 50 percent of his income.
A statement made in confidence to a loved one is commonly referred to as evidence. Strong evidence.
There are additional communications and invoices showing Hunter paid bills for “the Big Guy,” including home repairs and improvements costing thousands of dollars.
No matter how hard “fact checkers” ignore the evidence, it is still there.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.
Ludwig Edler von Mises, Nation, State and Economy (1919; 1983, Leland B. Yeager, trans.), p. 186.