Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
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Eugene O’Neill
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Two Criminals
On March 12, 2009, financier Bernard Madoff pled guilty to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in U. S. history. One year earlier to the day, in the same city, New York, the state’s governor, Eliot Spitzer, resigned a mere two days after reports had surfaced that he was listed as a client in a high-end escort/call-girl prostitution ring.
The cause of freedom is advanced with every criminal nabbed and every hypocritical illiberal politician disgraced.
Your hoped-for “Golden Years” ain’t here yet, says Paul Jacob:
Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.
Consider your origin;
Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto XXVI, lines 118–120.
you were not born to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge.
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Daily Courant
On March 11, 1702, The Daily Courant, England’s first national daily newspaper, was published for the first time. It was a one-sheet, concentrated on foreign news, sans commentary. The reverse side sported advertising. It was produced by Elizabeth Mallet (1672–1706), a printer and bookseller who lived, and published the paper, next to the Kings Arms tavern at Fleet Bridge in London.
It’s lucky that today’s anti-agriculture tyrants weren’t around when the Fertile Crescent was just getting going.
But they’re here now.
And they seem hell-bent on destroying farms.
That’s what thousands upon thousands of European farmers are saying, anyhow, and we should listen to them. After all, they provide the food we eat. We need to eat in order to survive. If we don’t survive, we can’t continue living. So, whatever we do, let’s keep the farmers.
But that’s not current policy, at least in Europe. In the Netherlands, Belgium, and elsewhere, powerful political interests continue their crusade to shut down thousands of farms in the glorious cause of pursuing “climate goals” which, they believe, by being achieved will enable the fine-tuning of the weather and the creation of the best environment.
Or at least to say they gave it the old college try.
“I want to have the possibility to continue my dad’s farm,” Brendt Beyens told the AP. “But right now I feel like the possibility of that happening is slowly shrinking and it’s getting nearly impossible.”
So once again, thousands of tractors are clogging the streets, this time in Brussels, the capital of Belgium (video of the protest is on Twitter). The farmers object to being destroyed. They have a point.
Nor is it just about the livelihoods of sodbusters. With food prices rising worldwide and the threat of serious famine looms in Africa and parts of Asia, it’s also about saving lives.
My advice for today is don’t destroy farmers.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Charles A. Beard
The lessons of history:
- Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
- The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
- The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
- When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Charles A. Beard’s response, upon being asked to summarize the lessons of history, saying he could do it in four key points; as quoted in “Condensed History Lesson” by Arthur H. Secord, in Readers’ Digest, Vol. 38, No. 226 (February 1941), p. 20.
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The Mahatma
On March 10, 1922, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), activist and theorist of non-violent revolution, was arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released nearly two years later for an appendicitis operation.
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Register the Critics!
Joy Reid cited it as just another example of “right-wing fantasy,” and Newt Gingrich had, if anything, worse things to say about it.
What is it?
A proposed Florida law advanced by State Senator Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary).
Senate Bill 1316 “would require bloggers to register with the state within five days of any post mentioning a state official, according to Florida Politics,” a Newsweek article explains. “It would then require bloggers to file monthly reports listing posts that mention officials, as well as any compensation for those posts.”
The legislation, which has not advanced far — and probably won’t — has received mostly negative responses. Former Speaker of the House Gingrich’s is typical: “The idea that bloggers criticizing a politician should register with the government is insane. [I]t is an embarrassment that it is a Republican state legislator in Florida who introduced a bill to that effect. He should withdraw it immediately.”
Promoters of the law defended it mainly by saying that Ginrich’s criticism mischaracterized the law. Not all political bloggers would have to register, only those paid to write would be. Only!
“If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register with the appropriate office. . . .”
Former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith challenged the notion itself: “Would you apply this to journalists? Citizen who write letters to their representatives? People who talk to their neighbors? Why not? No, you don’t have a right to know who is paying them. You have a right to ignore them if that matters to you.”
Since the world began, politicians have had a very difficult time ignoring their critics. Instead, like this Florida Senator, they want to shut them up. By force. By intimidation. By regulatory harassment.
The First Amendment says NO.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction.
Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness (1964).