On October 29, 539 B.C., 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 A.D., the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution marked the start of the Turkish Republic.
This isn’t science fiction. It’s a warning. From today’s France.
Don’t let the U.S. become tomorrow what France is now.
The words are from Brivael Le Pogam, co-founder and “tech emperor” of a French a.i. company. He addresses Americans who “are about to vote Democrat,” directing his words thus because the Democratic Party is the ever more openly socialist of this country’s two major parties.
But Republicans need to heed him too.
As great as France may have been and is, don’t emulate the way it’s hurtling toward a cliff.
“In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise,” says Le Pogam. “Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. . . .
“France hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. . . . Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. . . .
“And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them. . . . The result is stagnation.”
Nobody voted for the accumulating costs of all the “free” goodies and assaults on free enterprise. They voted for the fairy tale.
“Before you vote, ask yourself . . . is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France?”
Listen to the time traveler.
I mean, the Frenchman.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Look upon yourself as more powerful than they give you out for, and you have more power; look upon yourself as more, and you have more.
Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own (The Modern Library, Steven T. Byington, trans.), p. 380.
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 and that Cleveland was adamant in sticking to the private funding of the project.
But does anyone truly believe that?
The federal income tax was originally sold to Americans as something only for the rich. And the first year of the tax, only the top 2 percent of earners paid the modest amount of 1 percent. But then came the War to End All Wars, and soon nearly everybody was paying Uncle Sam, the top marginal rate climbing to 67 percent by 1917.
Prop 40’s tax is also new, in America. It’s a wealth tax, designed to levy “a one-time 5% tax on the accumulated wealth of taxpayers and trusts with covered assets valued over $1 billion, including shares of capital stock, bonds or other evidences of indebtedness, and any legal or equitable interest. . . .”
To entice voters, the measure dedicates the proceeds of the tax “to fund state health care programs, food assistance programs, and public education.”
Will that be enough to hoodwink voters into forgetting that a precedent will have been set, giving the green light to the usual march of tax hikes and increases in reach of marks, er, eligible taxpayers?
The Democratic Socialists of America have endorsed it, not just because it’s a tax targeted against the rich — but because they want it to be much more than a one-time thing. Those who love total government are insatiable in their lust for other people’s money. In this case, it’s money from wealth that has never been taxed before, including unrealized capital gains (i.e. not yet in existence).
Interestingly, there is another measure on the ballot, one not endorsed by the DSA: Proposition 42, placed by Prop 40’s opponents specifically to prohibit new taxes on “mere ownership of assets such as investment accounts, business interests and personal property.”
Let’s hope Prop 40 fails . . . and if not, that Prop 42 passes and nullifies it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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People constantly assume that there is something metaphysical and sentimental about government. At bottom there are two chief things with which government has to deal. They are, the property of men and the honor of women. These it has to defend against crime.
William Graham Sumner, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883), Chapter VII, “Some Old Foes Under New Faces.”
On October 27, 1962, 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.
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.
This is the UK agency enforcing the UK’s Online Safety Act. Ofcom’s mission includes forcing sundry websites to require all visitors to present proof of age — essentially, to ID themselves.
The Act also lets Ofcom compel services that enable encrypted messaging to provide a way to tell whether anything illegal is being said or shown in the messages. That is, compel them to render the encryption pointless.
LBC reports that “Just two tech companies [out of 11 socked with big fines] have paid fines to Ofcom for being in breach of the Online Safety Act, the regulator’s chief executive has admitted.”
One is Itai Tech, a British firm. It paid £55,000. I find no info about the second, and Ofcom generally doesn’t disclose whether individual companies it has fined have paid up.
Among the known non-payers, several are based outside of the UK. In other words, the UK government is trying to censor and extort the whole world, or at least the semi-free parts of it.
4chan, based in the U.S., has fought Ofcom very publicly. It “owes” (so far) maybe £520,000, which it has vowed to never pay.
4Chan’s lawyer expects that Ofcom would receive “a very chilly reception in an American courtroom if it ever tries to enforce its fines in the United States.” Its only alternative, he says, is to wage war and try to extract payment that way.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Sleep is perverse as human nature,
Ogden Nash, The Primrose Path (1935).
Sleep is perverse as a legislature,
Sleep is as forward as hives or goiters,
And where it is least desired, it loiters
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 departed from America for France, seeking financial support for the American Revolution.