Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.
William Cobbett, Letter (February 10, 1804).
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William Cobbett
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C. S. Lewis
Irish-English medievalist, theologian, and novelist Clive Staples Lewis was born on November 29, 1898. Among his best known works are Out of the Silent Planet, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and the “Narnia” fantasies for children. His novelistic retelling of the Psyche myth, Till We Have Faces, and political essays such as “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” and The Abolition of Man, will almost certainly stand the test of time.
“Protests spread to cities and college campuses around China on Saturday night,” reports The New York Times, “reflecting rising public anger at the country’s draconian Covid controls, with some in a crowd in Shanghai directing their fury at the Communist Party and its top leader, Xi Jinping.”
Reuters informs that this “wave of anger was triggered by an apartment fire that killed 10 people on Thursday in Urumqi, a far western city where some people had been locked down for as long as 100 days, fueling speculation that COVID lockdown measures may have impeded residents’ escape.”
Demonstrations are rare in China; “room for dissent has been all-but eliminated under President Xi Jinping,” reminds Reuters. Yet, a month ago, a lone “Bridge Man” in Beijing unfurled anti-government banners in a crowded intersection.
“Go on strike at school and work, remove dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping!” the man, now in CCP custody, yelled through a loudspeaker. “We want to eat, we want freedom, we want to vote!”
Yes, vote. Xi Jinping was just elected to a term-limit busting third term, but by the Communist Party — not the Chinese people.
In a numberof videos, students hold “up blank sheets of paper in silent protest, a tactic used in part to evade censorship or arrest.” In 2020, Hong Kong activists did this to avoid prosecution under the national security law imposed by Beijing.
Across social media, people have been posting pictures of themselves with blank pieces of paper in solidarity. “By Sunday morning, the hashtag ‘white paper exercise’ was blocked on Weibo,” notes Reuters.
“If you fear a blank sheet of paper,” posited a Weibo user, “you are weak inside.”
A blank page, on the other hand, displays surprising strength, as well as meaning — for people to one day freely write their own stories.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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William Hazlitt
The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
William Hazlitt, from a review of Lord Byron’s Childe Harold in Yellow Dwarf (May 2, 1818).
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Henry Hazlitt
In 1894, on November 28, economics journalist Henry Hazlitt was born. Hazlitt went on to write numerous books, including Economics in One Lesson, Time Will Run Back, and several works criticizing Keynesianism. He was the main proponent of the work of Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek in America during the 1940s and 1950s.
Exactly one year earlier, women voted in a national election for the first time . . . in New Zealand. On the same date in 1917, the Estonian Provincial Assembly declared itself the sovereign power of Estonia. November 28 also marks the independence of Mauritania from France (1960), and East Timor from Portugal.
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Watch: One Way or Another?
I’m gonna gitcha gitcha gitcha . . .
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Christopher Marlowe
Accurst be he that first invented war.
Mycetes, in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (c. 1588), Part 1, Act II, scene iv, line 1.
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Nobel Prizes
November 27, 1295, the first elected representatives from Lancashire were called to Westminster by King Edward I to attend what later became known as “The Model Parliament.”
On the same date in 1895, Alfred Nobel (pictured) signed his last will and testament, thereby establishing the Nobel Prizes.
From Blondie to gratitude, with corporate corruption in between:
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Alexander Pope
A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing;
Alexander Pope, An Essay in Criticism (1709).
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.