Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Today

Times for Choosing

On October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for the United States Presidency, Barry Goldwater, thereby launching Reagan’s political career. The speech came to be known as “A Time for Choosing.”

Two years earlier, Vasili Arkhipov, a flotilla commander present on the Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 in the Caribbean sea, defied the order of the sub’s captain, Valentin Savitsky, to launch a nuclear device. The captain had concluded that war had started while the submarine had been submerged. He had inferred this from the depth charges that American ships had deployed in order to force the submarine to the surface during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Captain Savitsky, seeking the necessary approval of two others on board, ordered political officer Ivan Masslenikov and the flotilla commander Vasili Arkhipov to launch a nuclear torpedo.

Masslenikov agreed. Arkhipov refused.

The date was October 27, 1962, and World War III was prevented by this one man, Arkhipov, who held his ground while facing the increasing anger of the submarine commander, refusing to approve a nuclear torpedo launch that would most almost certainly have triggered a conflict that would have doomed civilization, perhaps most or all of humanity.

That, we can now agree, was a “time for choosing” — and the correct choice was made.

First Amendment rights government transparency

Cough It All Up

The state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration for censorship. Thanks to the lawsuit, we’re learning more and more about how federal officials have pressed Big Tech social media companies to muzzle users who dissent from the Official Narrative about the pandemic.

Much of the evidence coughed up as a result of the litigation has taken the form of email exchanges. An official might email a social-media rep something like: “We find this post disturbing. Can you do something about? Like maybe censor it?” The rep might double-quick reply: “Done! Anything else I can do today to secretly help the government circumvent the First Amendment?”

Certain officials have been particularly central in the saga, including eight persons that a judge is now letting plaintiffs depose: Anthony Fauci, former press secretary Jennifer Psaki, FBI agent Elvis Chan, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Carol Crawford of the CDC, Daniel Kimmage of the State Department, and a couple of others.

During her tenure Psaki spoke openly about the Biden administration’s demand for more censorship of “misinformation,” which is the new code word for disagreement. So it’ll be hard to deny that she said that stuff.

Crawford is in charge of the CDC’s digital media activities, activities that included regular meetings with staff of social-media companies.

Among other subjects, plaintiffs will be asking Anthony Fauci about an email exchange with Francis Collins discussing a “takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, which opposed lockdown policies.

I’m all ears.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Mike Resnick

The first duty of power is to perpetuate itself. The first duty of free men is to resist it.
Mike Resnick, Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (1986), Chapter 23.

Today

Continental Congress

On October 26, 1774, the first Continental Congress adjourned in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Exactly one year later, King George III of Great Britain went before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion. And one year later yet, to the day, in 1776, septuagenerian Benjamin Franklin (pictured, above) departed from America for France, seeking financial support for the American Revolution.

general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Doctor Dead End

Dr. Anthony Fauci not only holds a smoking gun, he’s standing over the corpse and sniffing the barrel, grinning like a cartoon villain.

Last week we considered the gross indecency of this director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force funding Peter Daszak and the Wuhan lab to do more research on bat coronaviruses — to the tune of “Six Million Dimes.”

And now that a Boston group has publicized its gain-of-function research, we should ask ourselves: is Fauci involved in this, too? The answer is: YES — to the tune of $2.5 million!

This group of researchers, jiggering with a bat virus and the Omicron variant’s version of the infamous spiked protein, made a new iteration that killed 80 percent of infected mice. Success? What?!?

We had been told that gain-of-function was against policy.

But that wise policy is no match for Fauci’s mania.

Wait, you cry, at least they developed the vaccines!

Well, to what purpose?

A few weeks ago, in a European Parliament hearing, a Pfizer bigwig admitted that when the multinational introduced its anti-COVID mRNA “vaccine,” it had not even researched the ability of the jab to reduce transmissibility of the virus.

“We had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what was taking place in the market,” Pfizer senior executive Janine Small explained. “And from that point of view we had to do everything at risk.”

Clear? As mud?

This is a scandal . . . except . . . not according to FactCheck.org, which states that “nobody claimed the vaccines — Pfizer’s nor Moderna’s — were tested for transmission prevention before they hit the market.”

But even the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s fact checkers admit that “some officials have overstated the transmission protection provided by the vaccines.”

Chiefest of these is Fauci, who said last year that by getting vaccinated we “contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community. In other words, you become a dead end to the virus.”

Fauci, at the top of the Big Gov/Big Pharma dung heap, is himself a dead end — to responsible medicine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Rudyard Kipling

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Rudyard Kipling, June 1935, from “Interview with an Immortal,” Arthur Gordon, Reader’s Digest (July 1959).

Today

Max Stirner

Adapted from a sketch by Friedrich Engels

On October 25, 1806, German philosopher Max Stirner was born. Stirner was known for his radical individualism, which under the name of “egoism” became culturally chic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, a major work that was famously attacked by Karl Marx, he translated into German Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations from its original English and J.-B. Say’s A Treatise on Political Economy from its original French.

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Tyranny Without Limits

This weekend, at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a unanimous vote of elite communist party officials gave President Xi Jinping his third five-year term.

But the story that made the headlines focused on the physical removal from the main chamber of Hu Jintao, the previous Chinese leader (2003–2013), on the final day. No one is sure what it means, but we cannot unsee the pattern.

“In 10 years of ruling China, Xi Jinping has expunged political rivals, replacing them with allies,” notes The New York Times. “He has wiped out civil society, giving citizens no recourse for help but his government. He has muzzled dissent, saturating public conversation with propaganda about his greatness.”

The Times forgot to mention the genocide against Uyghurs or the full extent of CCP censorship or repression or the stepped-up harassment and threats to invade democratic Taiwan, but the article does convey that Xi is a thug of totalitarian proportions.

“What is happening is potentially very dangerous,” Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a political scientist at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, argued back when the limit was repealed, “because the reason why Mao Zedong made one mistake after another was because China at the time was a one-man show.”

Those “mistakes” cost millions of Chinese their lives. One-man totalitarian rule is bad news for everybody everywhere. Xi’s personal power makes China more repressive at home as well as more dangerous and aggressive abroad.

“For Xi Jinping, whatever he says is the law,” Lam added. “There are no longer any checks and balances.”

Lam meant internally, but, for better or worse, we are likely to see what checks and balances and defenses there are outside of communist-run China.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Thomas Jefferson

The care of every man’s soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or estate, which more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he shall not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Religion (October 1776), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904, Vol. II.

Today

Thirty Years’ End

On October 24, 1648, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years’ War.