Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s wife, was born on October 30, 1748.
On the same date two hundred twenty years later, American journalist, novelist and author Rose Wilder Lane died. Lane is perhaps best known, today, for her editorial work — some say “ghost writing” — of her mother’s Little House on the Prairie books for children. Her non-fiction The Discovery of Freedom was published in 1943, the same year as a similarly themed book, The God of the Machine, was published by her friend Isabel Paterson.
When is the best time to tiptoe through the issues?
Not now:
Law did not leap into life as something perfect and complete. For thousands of years it has grown and it is still growing. The age of its maturity — the age of impregnable peace — may never arrive.
On October 29, 539 BC, Cyrus the Great entered the city of Babylon as conqueror. His general policy of religious toleration would be extended to the exiled Hebrews, who were, not long after, allowed to return to their homeland.
On the same date in 1923 AD, the Ottomon Empire’s dissolution marked the start of the Turkish Republic.
That’s what liberal philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill called Britain’s Tories, and affixing the “stupid” label to conservatives has been important for intellectuals ever since: it’s one way they feel good about themselves.
We can argue about the (in)justice of the accusation till the cows come home and go out to pasture again, but it’s the Democrats who are pushing brain-damaged leaders, not Republicans.
I’m not just referring to President Joseph Robinette Biden’s many out-of-mind moments. I’m also talking about Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s run for the U.S. Senate.
The man suffered a stroke last spring, and has mostly been hiding out in the proverbial Biden Basement ever since. But on Tuesday he appeared on stage to debate his Republican opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Fetterman’s mental impairment? Obvious.
He began with the immortal clumsiness of “Good Night” rather than “Good Evening,” and stumbled through question after question. His handling of the minimum wage issue was slow-witted, and his awkward and robotic — and so obviously deceptive — repetitions regarding fracking sent shivers down my spine.
It’s not my purpose to make fun of people with brain injuries. But it is my role to call attention to the apologetics by Democrats (and the center-left/far-left news media) for their candidate, and their pretense that Fetterman’s just fine.
He isn’t. Biden isn’t.
And this says something about where Democrats are — intellectually; spiritually.
Very not fine.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The second you attain power, you become what you’ve been fighting against.
Mike Resnick, Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (1986), Chapter 23.
On October 28, 1886, in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated by President Grover Cleveland, despite the fact that the monument was not a federally funded project.
It’s extremely difficult to carry firearms for protection in states like Illinois, California, New Jersey and New York — except for certain Very Special Persons — rich enough or connected enough for special treatment.
Thankfully, the judicial system — which has the benefit of various guiding principles from a long-gone time when the rulers wore red coats — is disallowing some of the nonsense.
Still, it’s a struggle to “de-class-ify” Second Amendment rights — that is, take gun rights from being a class issue favoring the rich and famous and allowing all peaceful citizens legal access to firearms.
“Two weeks ago, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against many of the restrictions on public possession of guns that New York imposed after the Supreme Court upheld the right to bear arms last June,” writes Jacob Sullum in Reason. “Unfazed by that warning, New Jersey legislators this week advanced a strikingly similar bill that includes a subjective standard for issuing carry permits and sweeping, location-specific restrictions that make it legally perilous even for permit holders to leave home with guns.”
Politicians in these blue states remain resolute: they aim to unconstitutionally restrict access to guns. They strongly resist the current individualistic (as opposed to class-based) trend in judicial interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Their idea seems to be: guns for us, but not for them.
And we’re the Them.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
Rudyard Kipling, from the poem “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” (1919).
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘Stick to the Devil you know.’