Common Sense with Paul Jacob

A Life of Meaning

Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong, China, free speech, freedom

My wife and I are attending tonight’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty dinner at the Cato Institute. We are very excited, for this year’s award will be given to a very worthy recipient: Jimmy Lai.

The 75-year-old Lai, alas, won’t be there.* He sits in a Hong Kong jail for committing the Chinese Communist Party’s most feared crimes: speech, association, practicing religious faith, advocacy for democracy and human rights. And he awaits more charges that could (and probably will) keep him in prison for life.

Lai is no stranger to this audience. Last December, I gave two thumbs up to the Acton Institute’s documentary†, “The Hong Konger: Jimmy Lai’s Extraordinary Struggle for Freedom”; back in 2020, I noted his long deployment on Hong Kong’s front lines of freedom.

Lai escaped to Hong Kong from Communist China as a kid. His hard work and entrepreneurial skills made him a wealthy man. He used that wealth to advance freedom, including publishing the pro-democracy Apple Daily, which was shuttered by Chinese authorities in 2021 under the National Security Law.

Mr. Lai could have escaped it all with plenty of money to live comfortably somewhere far away from the Chinazis. “I think you have to live a life of meaning,” he offers. “And I find taking responsibility to fight for freedom is meaningful for me.”

Thanks to Jimmy Lai and the Hong Kong protesters for standing up against the CCP, the world has a much clearer view of those imprisoning him. Let’s hope the world acts accordingly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn, a friend of Lai, will give the keynote address. Jimmy Lai’s son, Sebastian, will be there to receive the award.

† The documentary now has over a million views on YouTube, which may be why Tik Tok “shut down” the Acton Institute’s account. Meanwhile, for context , a documentary to “mark the handover anniversary,” on which the Hong Kong government spent $1.3 million, garnered only 4,000 views.

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Thought

Polybius

Post author By Redactor
Post date May 18, 2023
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The only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.
Polybius, The Histories, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (1889), Book I, Chapter 1.

Today

Slavery and Heresy

On May 18, 1652, Rhode Island passed the first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal.

On May 18, 1593, playwright Thomas Kyd’s accusations of heresy led to an arrest warrant for fellow playwright Christopher (“Kit”) Marlowe.

Kyd was the famed author of The Spanish Tragedy, and Kit Marlowe [pictured] was known for a number of plays, including The Jew of Malta and The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.

Marlowe died a few weeks later, on May 30, without having been arrested. The circumstances of his death were bizarre, suspicious — as if written by a playwright.

First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media

Whose Brains Fell Out?

Elon Musk, Turkey, democracy, censorship, freedom, ethics

Just before the Turkish presidential election, the Turkish government ordered Twitter to block content that its strongman incumbent apparently found inconvenient. (The election isn’t over; a runoff is scheduled for May 28.)

We don’t know what Twitter was told to censor. All we know is that, although now guided by the somewhat pro-free-speech policies of Elon Musk, Twitter complied, saying it did so “to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey. . . .”

Journalist Matthew Yglesias tweeted that Twitter’s compliance “should generate some interesting Twitter Files reporting.” This is an allusion to internal Twitter communications released by Musk showing how readily and frequently pre-Musk Twitter censored dissenting speech at the behest of U.S. government officials.

The jibe got under Musk’s skin. “Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias?” Musk counter-tweeted. “The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety [in Turkey] or limit access to some tweets.”

But Twitter doesn’t control Turkish policies. It only controls its own policies.

Had Twitter refused and then, in turn, been throttled in Turkey, every Twitter user there would have known about the censorship by their government. Some might have protested. But only a few people in Turkey will know about the Twitter-abetted censorship.

Musk has in effect announced that Twitter will censor anything governments want if only a government willing to block Twitter does the asking. And what tyrants do is up to them.

Whether we cooperate with their tyranny when we have the means to resist?

That is up to us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags censorship, democracy, Elon Musk, Twitter

Thought

Livy

Post author By Editor
Post date May 17, 2023
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The old Romans all wished to have a king over them because they had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom.
Titus Livius, Ab urbe condita (History of Rome; 27–9 B.C.), Book I, sec. 17.

Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

Fifty-One & Nine & Two

Joe Biden, intelligence agency, spy, laptop, Hunter Biden

When 51 ex-intelligence officials signed the October 2020 “laptop letter,” they were lying to get Joe Biden elected as president. Yet, they also contributed to antagonizing Russia, further instilling distrust, and perhaps playing a part in the calculus prompting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a year after Biden was installed into his perilous perch at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The former spooks, spies, and psy-op masters claimed that the Hunter Biden story possessed “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Yet, anyone who’d been following the strange story of Biden family corruption, now clearly laid out in detail in a 36-page memorandum by House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), knew from the beginning that those 51 former intel bigwigs were lying through their teeth.

Now one of them, former CIA Director John Brennan, has been interrogated by Congress — and implicated another CIA Director for organizing the disinformation campaign.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) had charged Brennan with recruiting the 51 signatories to the now-infamous letter, which not only provided ammo for Biden in the 2020 presidential debates, it enabled Twitter to suppress the story. But it now appears that the recruiter was, instead, then-Acting CIA Director Mike Morrell.

In his four-hour testimony, Brennan confessed that the letter was “political” — that is, designed to get Biden elected.

The truth about the Biden family shake-down system, which evidence shows involved a whopping nine Biden family members, not just the “Big Guy” and his brother and his wayward son, taking in the big bucks from foreign sources, using a variety of bank accounts and shell corporations, but with no discernible product.

Back in 2020, those 51 trusted experts wrote: “It is high time that Russia stops interfering in our democracy.”

And past time for our Deep State to halt its very clear pattern of domestic election interference.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Sallust

Post author By Redactor
Post date May 16, 2023
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Necessitas etiam timidos fortes facit.

Necessity makes even the timid brave.
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter LVII.

Today

Oregon Trail

On May 16, 1843, one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri, set off for the Pacific Northwest, blazing what became known as the “Oregon Trail.”

crime and punishment media and media people

New York Vigil

Al Sharpton, subway, vigilante, New York City

What happened on a New York City subway train on May 1 was a tragedy: Jordan Neely died.

Daniel Penny, 24 years old, a former Marine, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in Neely’s death, after prosecutors weighed the evidence following multiple protests.

Neely became unresponsive and was pronounced dead at the hospital. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.

“Let’s not forget that there were three people restraining him, and it is vital that the two others are also held accountable for their actions,” argued Rev. Al Sharpton. “The justice system needs to send a clear, loud message that vigilantism has never been acceptable.”

But was this “vigilantism”?

“Penny claims he and others on the train felt threatened and did not intend to harm Neely,” reported Eyewitness News ABC7NY. Penny physically overpowered Neely “after witnesses said Neely was making threats and scaring passengers,” informed Good Morning America, “but that there was no indication that he was violent.”

Good night! Making threats is one of the foremost indicators of coming violence.

“Officials and friends say Neely struggled with homelessness and mental illness for years,” noted CBS Mornings, “and he worked as a Michael Jackson impersonator.”

Missing from the CBS coverage — and so many other stories — was the fact that, as CNN disclosed, “Neely had a lengthy arrest record . . . including 42 arrests . . . and three unprovoked assaults on women in the subway between 2019 and 2021.”

Three. Assaults on women. In the subway.

As one attorney put it, NYC prosecutor Alvin Bragg must now prove that Daniel Penny “recklessly caused the death of Jordan Neely.”

There is little doubt Penny caused the death but was his impulse “reckless” . . . or responsible?

Thank goodness for the right to trial by jury.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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