In 1862, troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza stopped a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla in Mexico — an event leading to the popular “Cinco de Mayo” celebration.
No cause for celebration, however, is the anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth 205 years ago.
We sure are a long way from the heady days when he proclaimed, “I am the Science.” It’s more like in the book of Genesis, where Cain asks the great rhetorical question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
In other words, Fauci’s trying to set the record . . . crooked.
For Fauci was the Authority that bolstered all the advice from the Centers for Disease Control and elsewhere, urging mask mandates and lockdowns and what-have-you.
Now, he is doing more than back-pedaling. He is shifting blame. Blame for failed policies.
But he’s not alone in this. For The Epoch Times, Petr Svab notes another famous back-pedaler: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Watch Ms. Weingarten declare on C-Span, “We spent every day from February on trying to get schools open,” but click that link and read the Twitter crowd-sourced fact-checks, showing how that’s . . . deceptive:
We still argue about how much COVID leaders lied during the heat of the panic. I advised, at the time, to give them a little leeway.
Regarding policy, that is.
Not lying.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The foremost, or indeed the sole, condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835), as quoted in Robert Nisbet, The New Despotism (1976).
On May 4, 1796, American historian William H. Prescott was born. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico and his Conquest of Peru remain classic works of well-researched, “scientific history.” Prescott, Arizona, was named in his honor.
The May Fourth Movement began on May 4, in 1919: Student demonstrations took place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory to Japan.
In 1961 on May 4, the “Freedom Riders” began a bus trip through the South.
I checked the U.S. Debt Clock last night. The federal government was, at that time, $200 billion shy of owing that amount, $32 trillion.
It’s such a big number that it doesn’t seem real.
Maybe that’s why politicians ignore it. And keep spending, adding to it.
All spending that seems fishy contributes to that debt. But so, alas,does spending that a majority of Americans may want. When you are over-spending, all spending contributes to the red ink.
Still, to witness elected government officials throw money around with reckless abandon is especially irksome. Consider all the taxes that pay for that debt, continually as well as eventually. And the misdirected investments that get derailed from productive activity just to fund that debt.
Today’s example of idiotic spending? A mere $500,000. Half a million bucks. Chump change — next to the trillions on budget lines.
So this half-a-million is slotted to go to Pakistan.
To train Pakistanis to speak, read and write in English.
But the kicker’s in the headline, courtesy of The Epoch Times: “Biden Earmarks $500,000 for Transgender Youth, Other Groups in Pakistan.” The blurb makes the obvious point I wish to drive home: “Biden ‘hell-bent on spending money we don’t have,’ said Rep. Ralph Norman’s office.”
Biden’s prodigality will provide “intensive professional development courses for Pakistani transgender youth.”
The old saw about such foreign aid runs, “Don’t we have transgender youth in this country to help?”
But better to join Rep. Norman and point to the debt clock. And shake our heads.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.
Jerry Pournelle & Larry Niven, Lucifer’s Hammer (1985).
In 1791, the Constitution of May 3, the first modern constitution in Europe, was proclaimed by the Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
On May 3 in 1915, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae composed the poem “In Flanders Fields,” the most famous poem of World War I. The Canadian physician wrote it after presiding over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres. It is in the form of a rondeau.
Institutions of higher learning where foes of free speech flourish include purported bastions of intellectual discourse like Harvard University. In 2022, Harvard ranked 170th out of 203 schools with respect to free speech on campus in an assessment by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
According to a 2023 College Pulse survey, 26 percent of Harvard students say it’s sometimes okay to use violence to stop speech on campus. Only 27 percent say it’s always wrong to shout down a speaker.
“Many, many people are being threatened with — and actually put through — disciplinary processes for their exercise of free speech and academic freedom,” says Janet Halley, of Harvard Law School. “Many people think that they’re entitled not to be offended.”
Jeffrey Flier, medical school professor, says free speech has been in decline at Harvard at least since 2007.
Halley, Flier, and more than 100 other Harvard faculty members have newly formed the Council on Academic Freedom.
Flier says it’s been too hard for professors to simply “[put] their head above the parapet [and say] ‘I think this is wrong.’ There hasn’t been any network of people from across the spectrum that could be able to do this. But that’s what we now have in the council.”
The Council seems to be off to a good start. Now let us see how many of the rest of the school’s 2,400 or so faculty members join up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Life is the true mystery, not because impenetrable by thought, but because thought penetrates it to the infinite with power equal to its own.
Benedetto Croce, The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic (1913; 1967), Douglas Ainslie, trans., p. 590.
On May 2, 1989, Hungary began dismantling its border fence with Austria, allowing a number of East Germans to defect.