In a civilized nation no man can excuse his crime against the person or property of another by claiming that he, too, has been a victim of injustice. To tolerate that is to invite anarchy.
Richard Milhous Nixon, “What Has Happened to America?” Reader’s Digest (October 1967).
On May 21, 1851, slavery was abolished in Colombia, South America.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), Chapter V, “Applications.”
A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
French economist and co-winner of the first (1901) Nobel Prize for Peace, Frédéric Passy (pictured above), was born on May 20, 1822.
English economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill was born exactly 16 years earlier.
Well, that’s not quite right. It was Congress that gave us the regulations that turned our toilets into a nightmare of clogging and extra time with plungers and flush levers. I wrote about this nightmare for years, advising readers to “Flush Congress.”
Now it isn’t Congress directly, but “the White House” — and the Department of Energy in particular, according to a story in The Epoch Times. “The Administration is using all the tools at our disposal to save Americans money while promoting innovations that will reduce carbon pollution and combat the climate crisis,” states Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
She’s talking about new efficiency standards for power and water usage which the DOE insists will “cut energy use by 27 percent and water use by 34 percent in new conventional household dishwashers.”
But anyone who has endured the toilets that came out in the 1990s knows that these putatively well-intentioned schemes burst the pipes, so to speak, making a mess and a mockery of any concept of efficiency. The Biden is enthusiastically pushing the piety that intentions matter most in regulation — the If We Mandate It, It Shall Be philosophy. Yet,The Epoch Times contrasts the current administration with the previous: “Trump criticized the push to raise efficiency standards, arguing that they made some appliances work less effectively and so were counterproductive” . . . and then mentions the multiple flushes of toilets that I cannot help but remember.
Trump’s surely right; The Biden’s surely wrong. And the ultimate result will be to raise the costs of appliances, thus hitting the poor hardest.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Men are only too clever at shifting blame from their own shoulders to those of others.
Titus Livius, Ab urbe condita (History of Rome; 27–9 B.C.), Book XXVIII, sec. 25.
On May 19, 1897, Irish author, playwright, and poet Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was released from Reading Prison, where he had finished, in ill health, his hard labor sentence for “gross indecency.” His “Ballad of Reading Gaol,” first published pseudonymously in a periodical with wide circulation amongst criminals, quickly achieved the status of a
He died less than three years later, in exile in Europe. His most famous works include the play The Importance of Being Earnest, the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the fascinating essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.”
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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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.
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.