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Thought

Daniel Defoe

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private.

Daniel Defoe, of the London pandemic of 1665, A Journal of the Plague Year / Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London (1722).
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Today

Pelted with Flowers

On July 31, 1703, Daniel Defoe — who would later become famous as the author of Robinson Crusoe and other literary works — was placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel. The sedition pertained to a satirical pamphlet he had published, “The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church.” The mob pelted him with flowers.


On the same date in 1912, Milton Friedman was born. Friedman became one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, and one of the most effective advocates of free markets, as well. His books include Capitalism and Freedom and two famous collaborations, A Monetary History of the United States (with Anna Schwartz) and Free to Choose (with his wife, Rose Director Friedman).

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by Paul Jacob video

Watch: Nobody Believes…

As folks in the news media increasingly reveal themselves to be lying shills for an establishment itself decreasingly truthful, what are the consequences?

This Week in Common Sense for July 24–28, 2023.
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Thought

Michel Chevalier

American liberty, as it now is, may be considered the result of a mixture, in unequal proportions, of the theories of Jefferson with the New England usages. From these dissimilar tendencies has resulted a series of contradictory measures, which have become strangely complicated with each other, and which might puzzle and deceive a careless observer. It is in consequence of these opposite influences in the bosom of American society, that such conflicting judgments have been passed upon it; it is because the Yankee type is at present the stronger, whilst the Virginian was superior in the period of the revolution, that the ideas which the sight of America now suggests, are so different from those which she inspired at the epoch of Independence.

Michel Chevalier, Society, manners and politics in the United States; being a series of letters on North America, 1839.
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Today

Out the Window!

July 30, 1419, the First Defenestration of Prague: Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest at the church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows, led his congregation on a procession through the streets of Prague to the New Town Hall, on Charles Square. While they were marching, a stone was thrown at Želivský from the window of the town hall. The mob, enraged, stormed the hall. Once inside, the group threw the judge, the burgomaster, and some thirteen members of the town council out of the window and into the street, where they were killed by the fall or dispatched by the mob.

King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, upon hearing this news, was so stunned, the legend goes, that he died soon after.


On July 30, 1619, the first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convened for the first time in Jamestown, Virginia. On the same date in 1676, Nathaniel Bacon issued the “Declaration of the People of Virginia,” beginning Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.

On this date in 1863, representatives of the United States and tribal leaders (including the Shoshone’s Chief Pocatello) signed the Treaty of Box Elder.

July 30 birthdays include Henry Ford (1863), Gen. Smedley Butler (1881), C. Northcote Parkinson (1909), and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947).

Vanuatuans celebrate Independence Day on July 30.

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The way it is: decadent!

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Thought

Bill Whittle

. . . this blue disposable mask is the MAGA hat for progressives.

Bill Whittle, in conversation with Scott Ott and Steve Green, on Right Angle (July 25, 2023).
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Today

Tocqueville

On July 29, 1805, Alexis de Tocqueville was born. His most famous book, Democracy in America (two volumes: 1835, 1840), quickly became a classic of social and political research and analysis, and remains the most important early book about the United States of America. He is often referred to as a founder of sociology as well as a major figure in the development of classical liberalism.

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general freedom ideological culture media and media people

“You in Your Whiteness”

The “antiracist” training now often inflicted in the west resembles the efforts to shame and remake people during Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today’s western cultural revolutionaries are not (yet) going nearly as far as China’s, when people were routinely humiliated, beaten to a pulp, imprisoned, and murdered for “wrong” ideas or background.

In the west of 2023, people with “wrong” politics and background (i.e., white) are merely humiliated, censored, perhaps forced out of a job. But we can now add another similarity to Mao’s era: the possibility that hounded victims will commit suicide, as Richard Bilkszto recently did.

Yes, Mr. Bilkszto killed himself.

In 2021, Kike Ojo-Thompson — hired to conduct “antiracist” struggle sessions that Bilkszto, a fill-in principal in Toronto, was required to attend — blasted him for disagreeing with her officially-approved contention that Canada is “more racist” than the United States.

While the issue could be subject to much debate, most of it would likely be pointless. Neither side stands on firm ground.

According to Bilkszto’s eventual lawsuit against the school district, Ojo-Thompson berated, “We are here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people.” She also accused Bilkszto of being a white supremacist.

Repeatedly.

A workplace agency found that Ojo-Thompson had indeed engaged in “harassment and bullying.” And, perhaps because of his complaint with the agency, the school district declined to renew Bilkszto’s contract. His lawsuit contends that his reputation was “systematically demolished.”

Now that he’s safely dead, do those who punished Bilkszto for uttering the “wrong” view of racial claims now regret their conduct? 

No more, I bet, than they regard themselves as the bullies they are.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Thought

John Adams

There seems to be a direct and formal design on foot, to enslave all America. This, however, must be done by degrees. The first step that is intended, seems to be an entire subversion of the whole system of our fathers, by the introduction of the canon and feudal law into America.

John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765).