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international affairs national politics & policies

Not Just a Border-Line Case

Should the U.S. Government let soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) enter these United States through the southern border so that they’re in place if and when the Chinese government directs them to undertake sabotage against the United States (perhaps during a Chinese invasion of Taiwan)?

We are not talking about borderline cases of one or two Chinese soldiers a year. The U.S. Border Patrol now acknowledges 347 encounters with Chinese nationals in 2021; 1,987 in 2022; and a whopping 12,533 encounters so far this year!

In a piece for Gatestone Institute, Gordon Chang reports that although some Chinese migrants entering through the southern border are simply “seeking a better life for themselves and their children,” many “are coming to commit acts of sabotage.” These are PLA soldiers.

They can first go to a country like Ecuador, which permits entry without a visa. They can then make their way through jungle before catching a bus to the border. They are often then simply released into the U.S.

Representative Mark Greenn (R-Tenn.) says that he was told by a Border Patrol sector chief that some of the people coming across have “known ties to the PLA.”

Chang quotes war correspondent Michael Yon: “At the Darien Gap, I have seen countless packs of Chinese males of military age, unattached to family groups, and pretending not to understand English. They were all headed to the American border.”

This is consistent with the pattern of Chinese aggression.

So maybe we — and maybe the government whose job is to protect us — should pay attention to this.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Thought

Josiah Warren

Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost.

Josiah Warren, Equitable Commerce (1848), p. 21.
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Today

The Weehawken Duel

A few hundred years ago, not far from Deas’ Point near Weehawken, New Jersey, was a ledge eleven paces wide and 20 paces long, situated 20 feet above the Hudson on the Palisades. This ledge, long gone, was the site of 18 documented duels and probably many unrecorded ones in the years 1798–1845. The most famous is the duel between General Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, and Colonel Aaron Burr, third (and sitting) Vice President of the United States, which took place on July 11, 1804.

Hamilton died the next day of complications from a bullet wound at less than 50 years of age; Burr died on September 14, 32 years later at age 80.

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First Amendment rights media and media people social media

First Amendment: Irrelevant?

For at least three years, we have all suspected — well, known — that the federal government has been pressuring social-media companies to censor speech that government officials dislike regarding the pandemic and other matters.

One clue: officials like Jennifer Psaki, White House press secretary from 2021 to 2022, forbiddingly and publicly demanded that social-media firms do more to suppress disapproved speech.

Even so, many left-wingers stressed that once allegedly open public forums like YouTube, Facebook, pre-Musk Twitter et al. were private entities with every darn right to set standards for posting. 

Just market decisions, that’s all that was happening here!

Now that litigation has delivered so much evidence that government agencies have been colluding to censor, directly and chronically “working with” social-media firms to suppress dissent, many on the left are not even pretending to favor protection of First Amendment rights to express speech they disagree with.

Jonathan Turley notes that according to The New York Times, a recent ruling temporarily enjoining the Biden Administration from colluding to censor would, by fostering open discourse, lamentably “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.”

Washington Post editors and others on the left “no longer deny censoring,” agrees Jeffrey Tucker. “Now they defend censorship as a policy in the national interest. . . . They don’t even pretend to have respect for the First Amendment that gave rise to the national media in the first place. They now seek a monopoly of opinion and interpretation.”

Yes. Cat’s out of the bag.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Thought

John Morley

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

John Morley (1838–1923), On Compromise (1877).
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Today

Anti-Bankster

On July 10, 1832, U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill to re-charter the Second Bank of the United States, in effect ending formal central banking in the United States until the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

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by Paul Jacob video

Watch: Variations on Anathema

This was mainly a “good news” week, but there remains plenty in the world to anathematize:

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Thought

Douglas Murray

Some of us are simply a bit bored of hearing people ripping at closed wounds and then crying about their presumed hurt.

Douglas Murray on Piers Morgan Uncensored, discussing reparations for slavery.
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Today

A Declaration Read

On July 9, 1776, General George Washington had the Declaration of Independence read out to members of the Continental Army in Manhattan. Meanwhile, thousands of British troops on Staten Island prepare for the Battle of Long Island.

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audio podcast

Listen: Variations on “Anathema”

It’s been a great week, with Independence Day to celebrate and the court system defending freedom. But there was enough trouble to justify a few anathemas.