Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn “reasonable” and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.
Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (1935).
On April 4, 1841, William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia, becoming the first President of the United States to die in office and the one with the shortest term served (he died on his 32nd day as president). A renowned Indian killer (having risen to fame for his part in 1811’s Battle of Tippecanoe), a proponent of the expansion of slavery into Northwest Territories, and a Whig, Harrison won the presidency in part by turning the Democrats’ “log cabin and hard cider” aspersions on his character as the basic symbols of the campaign.
Though hardly a “limited government man,” some limited government history buffs proclaim him the Greatest President, on the ostensibly droll and possibly cynical grounds that he spent so little time in office.
On a much sadder note, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on this day in 1968.
It already happened to me. Fifteen years ago.
Handcuffs and leg-irons. Paul Jacob, Rick Carpenter, Susan Johnson.
The Oklahoma Three. Indicted by an arch enemy of citizen initiative, Oklahoma Apparatchik and Attorney General Drew Edmondson.
No, we hadn’t robbed a bank or gunned down the sheriff.
We were accused of not following all regulations in conducting a 2006 petition drive in Oklahoma. The fictional charge: “conspiracy to defraud the state of Oklahoma.”
The possibility of ten years in prison hung over our heads for a year and a half. In all that time, the AG started but never completed a preliminary hearing after which a judge could decide whether the indictment had enough evidence to warrant a trial. (Because it didn’t.) Then, the federal 10th Circuit declared unconstitutional the law we had allegedly violated, residency requirements for signature gatherers.
Gritting his teeth and with smoke pouring out of his ears, Drew Edmondson dismissed the charges.
If somebody with official power like Edmondson or New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg wants to wield it against you and is indifferent to the requirements of justice, he might just do that.
Can it happen to you? Maybe not. Keep your head down, never say anything somebody somewhere could dispute, don’t leave the house, always wear a disguise, never exercise your political rights in a way that might draw the attention of thin-skinned and scared denizens of the political establishment.
Do all this, and you’ll probably almost certainly be fine. Maybe.
Or just fight them anyway.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab (1813), Canto III.
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.
On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.
Paul focuses on his most controversial commentary of the week, and then the conversation moves back to . . . Nixon.
The truth is a trap: you can not get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.
The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1854.
Image, above, is a caricature of Kierkegaard published in The Corsair, a satirical journal.
With the Acte de déchéance de l’Empereur (“Emperor’s Demise Act”) of April 2, 1814, France’s Sénat conservateur officially recognized the downfall of Napoléon I of France. The original resolution to remove the Emperor was moved on the legislative body’s floor, by Thomas Jefferson’s friend Destutt de Tracy (according to Tracy himself — official records do not name the member), and was drawn up by Charles Lambrechts. The final paragraph summarized the new reality concisely:
The Senate declares and decrees as follows: 1. Napoleon Buonaparte is cast down from the throne, and the right of succession in his family is abolished. 2. The French people and army are absolved from their oath of fidelity to him. 3. The present decree shall be transmitted to the departments and armies, and proclaimed immediately in all the quarters of the capital.
Nine days later, after attempting to put his son on the throne, Napoléon abdicated unconditionally. The Allies exiled him to Elba, which was to be the whole extent of this reign as “Emperor.”
This arrangement proved unstable, with Napoléon staging a comeback, eventually leading to more war, his defeat at Waterloo, and his exile to an island in the South Atlantic.
American author, art critic, and commentator Camille Paglia was born April 2, 1947.
Where and why leadership lacks:
I used to say to our audiences: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935).