Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.
Consider your origin;
Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto XXVI, lines 118–120.
you were not born to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge.
On March 11, 1702, The Daily Courant, England’s first national daily newspaper, was published for the first time. It was a one-sheet, concentrated on foreign news, sans commentary. The reverse side sported advertising. It was produced by Elizabeth Mallet (1672–1706), a printer and bookseller who lived, and published the paper, next to the Kings Arms tavern at Fleet Bridge in London.
But they’re here now.
And they seem hell-bent on destroying farms.
That’s what thousands upon thousands of European farmers are saying, anyhow, and we should listen to them. After all, they provide the food we eat. We need to eat in order to survive. If we don’t survive, we can’t continue living. So, whatever we do, let’s keep the farmers.
But that’s not current policy, at least in Europe. In the Netherlands, Belgium, and elsewhere, powerful political interests continue their crusade to shut down thousands of farms in the glorious cause of pursuing “climate goals” which, they believe, by being achieved will enable the fine-tuning of the weather and the creation of the best environment.
Or at least to say they gave it the old college try.
“I want to have the possibility to continue my dad’s farm,” Brendt Beyens told the AP. “But right now I feel like the possibility of that happening is slowly shrinking and it’s getting nearly impossible.”
So once again, thousands of tractors are clogging the streets, this time in Brussels, the capital of Belgium (video of the protest is on Twitter). The farmers object to being destroyed. They have a point.
Nor is it just about the livelihoods of sodbusters. With food prices rising worldwide and the threat of serious famine looms in Africa and parts of Asia, it’s also about saving lives.
My advice for today is don’t destroy farmers.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Charles A. Beard’s response, upon being asked to summarize the lessons of history, saying he could do it in four key points; as quoted in “Condensed History Lesson” by Arthur H. Secord, in Readers’ Digest, Vol. 38, No. 226 (February 1941), p. 20.
On March 10, 1922, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), activist and theorist of non-violent revolution, was arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released nearly two years later for an appendicitis operation.
What is it?
A proposed Florida law advanced by State Senator Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary).
Senate Bill 1316 “would require bloggers to register with the state within five days of any post mentioning a state official, according to Florida Politics,” a Newsweek article explains. “It would then require bloggers to file monthly reports listing posts that mention officials, as well as any compensation for those posts.”
The legislation, which has not advanced far — and probably won’t — has received mostly negative responses. Former Speaker of the House Gingrich’s is typical: “The idea that bloggers criticizing a politician should register with the government is insane. [I]t is an embarrassment that it is a Republican state legislator in Florida who introduced a bill to that effect. He should withdraw it immediately.”
Promoters of the law defended it mainly by saying that Ginrich’s criticism mischaracterized the law. Not all political bloggers would have to register, only those paid to write would be. Only!
“If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register with the appropriate office. . . .”
Former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith challenged the notion itself: “Would you apply this to journalists? Citizen who write letters to their representatives? People who talk to their neighbors? Why not? No, you don’t have a right to know who is paying them. You have a right to ignore them if that matters to you.”
Since the world began, politicians have had a very difficult time ignoring their critics. Instead, like this Florida Senator, they want to shut them up. By force. By intimidation. By regulatory harassment.
The First Amendment says NO.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction.
Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness (1964).
March 9 marks the 1763 birthday of British pamphleteer and activist William Cobbett. Cobbett was known for his lifelong opposition to authority, and his later-in-life “radicalism,” which included his opposition to Britain’s protectionist Corn Laws as well as his support for Catholic Emancipation. Cobbett died in 1835.
In 1776 on this date, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which became the first widely accepted landmark work in the field of economics. It was not the first general treatise on the subject, however; that designation almost certainly belongs to banker Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général, cited by Smith in his more famous book. It is also worth noting that Étienne Bonnot de Condillac’s systematic treatise, Le Commerce et le Gouvernement, also saw publication in 1776.
On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fought to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships. The Virginia was built on the remains of the USS Merrimack, and the battle is often referred to as between “the Monitor and the Merrimack.”
Three years ago, such a thing was declared to be impossible, or at least extremely unlikely. After all, the Chinese government itself, which always tells the truth, had repudiated this explanation, even going so far as to conscientiously refuse to cooperate with investigations into the origin of the pandemic.
Many policy makers and media mavens in the West nodded vigorously. No need to inquire further.
But the dam has been breaking in recent months. Now, even U.S. government agencies — government agencies themselves! — are saying yeah, probably a lab leak.
The FBI has hopped on the probably-lab bandwagon and, according to its director, has been on the wagon a while.
FBI director Chris Wray says: “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”
Quite some time now? And kept quiet?
Author James Kunstler wants to know if the FBI knew during all the time that fey Wray “was in charge of a battalion of FBI agents assigned to managing Twitter, Facebook, and Google . . . to make sure that anyone who opined about Covid coming from the Wuhan lab got censored, banished, cancelled, reputationally destroyed.”
It’s hardly “kooky” to inquire as to what the FBI was thinking, simultaneously believing something to be true and, yet, in contravention of the First Amendment, working to suppress that very belief.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Justice is indiscriminately due to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, Georgia v. Brailsford (1794).