It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.
Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn (1869). Frederick Waddy, illustrator.
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Anthony Trollope
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Close Call
On November 9, 1979, NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland, detected an apparent massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert was cancelled.
Image from the last few minutes of Stanley Kubrick’s dark comedy, Dr. Strangelove, or; How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, Slim Pickens in his most memorable onscreen moment.
The Bill of Rights was originally understood as curbing the power only of the federal government.
This began to change with the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from depriving persons “of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Thanks to the “incorporation doctrine” interpretation of this amendment, provisions like the First Amendment now apply as much to state and local governments as to the federal government.
Except that many officials, disdaining these protections, simply ignore them.
So although obliged to make no law “abridging the freedom of speech,” California’s government is abridging the freedom of speech of doctors. A new law authorizes state medical boards to penalize doctors who utter speech contradicting “contemporary scientific consensus” about COVID-19.
Doctors are suing the Newsom administration to block the law from taking effect. According to their complaint, this anti-“misinformation” law would impede their ability to communicate with patients.
The doctors argue that the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech applies to expression of minority views as well as majority views; indeed, that minority views “particularly need protection from government censorship.”
Also that nobody can ever know “the ‘consensus’ of doctors and scientists on various matters related to prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”
Of course, free speech rights should protect even persons who say the moon is made of green cheese, let alone of those who disagree with official pronouncements about a vexing new virus and what to do about it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Adam Mickiewicz
That rabble had a mighty power over minds, for when the Lord God sends punishment on a nation he first deprives its citizens of reason. And so the wiser heads dared not resist the fops, and the whole nation feared them as some pestilence, for within itself it already felt the germs of disease. They cried out against the dandies but took pattern by them; they changed faith, speech, laws, and costumes. That was a masquerade, the licence of the Carnival season, after which was soon to follow the Lent of slavery.
Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz (1834), as quoted as an epigraph to Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016).
Montana was admitted into the United States federal union as the 41st state on November 8, 1889. On the same date in 1960, John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the 20th century, becoming the 35th president of the United States.
“This is just one of those things where things get taken out of context,” congressional candidate Hung Cao told WJLA in Arlington, Virginia, responding to his opponents TV ads, which charge that Cao said he “wants to punch Dr. Fauci in the face.”
Mr. Cao, a colorful fellow, came to America from war-torn Vietnam when he was just four. He graduated from the Naval Academy and served for 25 years — a combat veteran of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia.
“[T]he real quote was ‘if there’s two people I could punch in the face and get away with it, it would be Mark Zuckerberg and Fauci,’” explained Cao. “I’m not advocating violence. All I’m saying is we are so frustrated with people — unelected officials — making decisions for this country like Mark Zuckerberg being able to ban people based on speech and Dr. Fauci shutting down businesses.”
Cao clarified that he is “all about law and order.”
His opponents “are also tying Cao to January 6th in television ads,” notes WJLA.
“You know where I was on January 6?” Cao asks. “I just landed from my last combat deployment in Afghanistan and my kids voted unanimously to open presents after I returned. So, that morning . . . we were actually opening Christmas presents,” he said. “I was trying to keep my eyes open with toothpicks, because I was so tired from the jetlag. And . . . to superimpose my face onto January 6, and then, not only that, Confederate flags as if I’m some sort of white supremacist.”
His word for that: insulting.
While attacked as an extremist, however, Cao has not shied away from defending parents — including homeschoolers, like he and wife — from the real extremists running our schools, and opposing President Biden’s COVID vaccine mandates that are kicking “heroes” out of the military “like trash.”
He even has a commercial where, as a former kick-boxing champion, he invited voters to join him in kicking Congress!
Sadly, as much as I want to, I cannot vote for Cao.
I’m in an adjacent district.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Note: Asked to express the importance of “previous experience in government or politics,” Cao explained to Ballotpedia: “Career politicians are a cancer. Being a county supervisor or city mayor makes them no more qualified than a truck driver.”
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
I have found from many observations that our liberals are incapable of allowing anyone to have his own convictions and immediately answer their opponent with abuse or something worse.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot (1869), as quoted as an epigraph to Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016).
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War Powers
The U.S. Congress overrode President Richard M. Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution on November 7, 1973. This resolution ostensibly limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval, hence Nixon’s veto. Nowadays, however, it is often referred to as the expansive terms for the “Imperial President’s” license to engage in military conduct, and a dereliction of congressional duty to direct the United States’ foreign policy and warfare.
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Statism
Statism is the very
paradoxical idea that people
are inherently greedy and
self-interested and therefore
we should pick a handful of
them and give them all
the power.
– Spike Cohen
You’ve carved a Jack-o-Lantern, no? Made a pumpkin pie? The seedy innards aren’t what you keep!
Paul Jacob is much more clean and non-yucky in this discussion of the big stories of the week, beginning with Paul Pelosi’s: