Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no.
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Mark Twain
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the ceremonial dedication of the military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, appropriating an old phraseology for republican government — “of the people, by the people, for the people” — and giving it its most memorable usage.
On the same date in 1955, National Review published its first issue.
Over two out of five. The first articles I saw put the ratio at “nearly 50 percent,” but the percentage is, more accurately, “nearly 41.” What’s significant is we would expect that figure to be much, much lower.
I’m talking about UFOs. Or “UAP” — as it is now trendy to say. I’m going to stick with the old term, just to rub the long history of the subject into smug, refined noses.
The story is this: in an upcoming-any-day-now report to Congress on UFOs, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence claims that there were 366 military-reported Unidentified Aerial … er … Flying Objects, last year, and 150 of them remain unexplained and not likely to be explained, since they behaved extremely oddly. That is, they acted in classic “flying saucer” manner.
“The unexplained ones they just have no clue,” says Daily Mail reporter Josh Boswell, “because these things are moving in ways that we just don’t understand. At hypersonic speeds, and then they just turn on a dime. I mean, it’s incredible.”
The bad news is that it appears these things “exist.” The good news, one can hope, is that now the military has protocols in place to handle such reports rather than turn each UFO/pilot interaction into a case fraught with secrecy and suppression, fear and consternation. The UFO reports now go to the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
It is worth mentioning that many of the stories in this upcoming report toe the old government line, insisting that these sightings are in theory explainable as enemy drones, etc. If true, drone tech has made serious advances!
And the world is even more dangerous than previously thought.
Or weirder.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Abigail Adams
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
Abigail Adams, Letter to John Quincy Adams (May 8, 1780).
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Tell and Shaw
On November 18, 1307, legend has it, William Tell shot a crossbow bolt to pierce an apple, toppling it off his son’s head. He was forced to do this by the local Austrian authority, whose hat hung on a pole in the Altdorf town square Tell had refused to bow to when entering the village. Tell endures as a Swiss folk hero, and provides the subject of a famous opera by Rossini — the music of which is associated with, in many ears, Bugs Bunny and the Lone Ranger.
In 1926, on this date, George Bernard Shaw formally refused to accept the money for his Nobel Prize for Literature, saying, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”
Is Taiwan, the island democracy of 24 million, really caught in the nation-state equivalent of a lovers’ triangle?
“Taiwan is caught in the middle of escalating tensions between the U.S. and China,” is how National Public Radio headlined its recent story about Communist Party-ruled China “speeding up its plans to seize Taiwan.”
“Entangled in a geopolitical power struggle between the US and China, the wants of the Taiwanese people get overshadowed,” informs CNA, the Singapore-based English language news network, pitching its weekly hour-long news program, Insight, which sought to present “the Taiwanese perspective to being caught between giants.”
Nothing new.
“As China challenges the global dominance of the United States,” NBC News reported back in 2020, “tiny Taiwan finds itself stuck, rather uncomfortably, smack dab in the middle of the conflict between the two international giants.”
The Taiwanese are no doubt uncomfortable. In a recent survey, nearly 40 percent now believe a Chinese military invasion, killing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or more, to be likely.
They are not torn, however, between two superpowers. Taiwan is — most assuredly — not preparing to defend against an armed attack by the United States.
In fact, Taiwan is coordinating its national defense efforts with the U.S., hoping and praying for direct U.S. help in defending themselves from totalitarian China.
Taiwan is not stuck with us. Nor we with them. We are simply allies in deeply valuing societies where individual lives matter.
Against a superpower for whom they don’t
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John Quincy Adams
Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.
John Quincy Adams, Letter to James Lloyd (October 1, 1822).
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Confederation & Congress
On November 17, 1777, the Articles of Confederation were submitted to the states for ratification.
On that date in 1800, the United States Congress held its first session in Washington, D.C.
No sooner had President Biden shared his somewhat soothing takeaway from a three-hour meeting with Chinese ruler Xi Jinping — Joe doesn’t think there is an “imminent” threat of China invading Taiwan — then here comes a report that Russian missiles have killed two people.
Not in Ukraine, where Russia is “arguably” at war, but in neighboring Poland, a NATO country.
I’ve repeatedly suggested we review all the military alliances and commitments our politicians and diplomats have entered into . . . “on our behalf.” But there comes a time (and it seems fast approaching) when it is too late for review and the U.S. will have to stand up and meet the commitments it has made.
While I have little doubt in the current generation of volunteer soldiers, I cannot say that about my generation of generals and politicians and bureaucrats. “We cannot manufacture and produce weapon systems fast enough,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) told Full Measure host Sharyl Attkisson.
Pointing to $3 billion in U.S. arms sales to threatened Taiwan, McCaul complained that it has been “three years and we haven’t delivered one of these weapon systems into Taiwan. . . . Remember, in Taiwan, they actually have purchased these weapons.”
One step to fix this mess is the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022 (S.4428), which would allow the U.S. to transfer significant weaponry, “essentially to do for Taipei what is being done for Kyiv — but before the bullets start flying.”
Our best opportunity to keep Chinese guns silent.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Henry Adams
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds, and Massachusetts politics had been as harsh as the climate.
Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Chapter One: “Quincy” (1907).