Ralph Waldo Emerson, “English Traits” (1856).
Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, ‘If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?’
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The First ‘Common Sense’
On January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense.
You can read this classic on this site’s library.
Lots of talk about term limits last week — in Washington.
Of all places.
What bizarre chain of events caused career congressmen to start jawboning and horse-trading about the popular reform that most of them viscerally oppose?
It was the work-product of a small number of hardcore conservative Republican legislators, a mere 20, flexing their strength and commitment at a critical political point — the election of the House Speaker — and armed with concrete demands.
“We offered Kevin McCarthy terms last evening that he rejected,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told reporters last Tuesday. One of those? “We’ve sought a vote in [the] first quarter of the 118th Congress on term limits.”
By week’s end, however, McCarthy had been elected Speaker of the House . . . but only after having pledged to bring to the floor that congressional term limits amendment, authored by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), one of the 20 holdouts, along with making other concessions.
Meet the Press host Chuck Todd yesterday cast shade on the effort, calling these “show votes.”
While it’s true that incumbents are unlikely to vote for the term limits amendment in the 2/3 supermajority the Constitution requires, or for the balanced budget amendment for which the holdouts, mostly Freedom Caucus members, also secured a commitment from McCarthy.
“We’ve got to start taking steps to make fundamental change in America,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told Todd. And putting every U.S. representative on record on term limits sounds like a great first step for early 2023.
Worth the battle.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Clarence Darrow
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.
Clarence Darrow, Address to the court in People v. Lloyd (1920).
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Fifth to Ratify
On January 9, 1788, Connecticut became the fifth state to be admitted to the United States under the new Constitution. Connecticut was one of the first nine states of the original union, under the Articles of Confederation, to accept the Constitution, and thus officially ratify it. All 13 original states had ratified that new compact, officially, by May 29, 1790. The first state to be added to the original 13 was Vermont, in 1791.
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Watch: The Right Kind of Speech
Paul has a few things to say about our free speech rights, and why politicians don’t like them.
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Auberon Herbert
If you really think that for some purposes we may rightly compel men, and for other purposes we may not, you are bound to arrange your perceptions on the subject and discover what is the dividing line between “the may” and “the may not.”
Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State (1885).
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State of the Union
On January 8, 1790, George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York, New York.
In 1835, on this date, the United States federal government achieved a zero debt for the first and only time.
In 1867, African-American men were first allowed to vote in Washington, D.C.
Paul Jacob celebrates the first week of the New Year according to his old program: truth, common sense, and the American way:
To be totally frank, almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true. Is there a conspiracy theory about Twitter that didn’t turn out to be true? So far they’ve all turned out to be true — if not more true than people thought
Elon Musk, quoted in “Watch: Elon Musk Reveals Most Shocking Thing About ‘Twitter Files,’ Makes Major Confession,” Western Journal (December 27, 2022).