What’s worse than the low opinion Americans have for their major institutions? Paul Jacob tells you in this weekend’s episode of This Week in Common Sense:
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Baltic Independence
On August 27, 1991, the European Community recognized the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and Moldova after they had declared their independence from the USSR.
θαρρεῖν, ὦ Θεαίτητε, χρὴ τὸν καὶ σμικρόν τι
δυνάμενον εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν ἀεὶ προϊέναι.
No one should be discouraged, Theaetetus, who can make constant progress, even though it be slow.
Plato, Sophist.
They say it was all a terrible misunderstanding.
The Department of Homeland Security has caved and is now closing its new Disinformation Governance Board. Critics had been disinformatively saying that the board would probably be used for censorious purposes.
Au contraire, says DHS — even though the board was originally headed by an exponent of countering wrongthink about such matters as the “alleged” Hunter Biden laptop. No. Per DHS, this board really, truly, deep down, supposedly had only benign intentions.
When announcing the shutdown, DHS also announced that it has a bridge to sell you.
(Gotcha! DHS didn’t announce anything about a bridge. That’s just a bit of disinformation that I perpetrated with the help of my woefully abused First Amendment–protected freedom of speech!)
In May, DHS Secretary Mayorkas insisted that the board was no threat to free speech. The point was to address threats “without infringing on free speech.” Rather, the board would be doing things like disputing the strangely persuasive misinformation that the U.S. now has an open southern border.
Even early on, though, the board had been planning to coordinate its anti-disinformative efforts with Big Tech social media firms, which have been censoring on behalf of government. And various government officials will still be working to delegate the nuts and bolts of violating the First Amendment to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, et al. No letup on that front in sight.
DHS may be ending its ill-named board. But beware: its spirit and agenda live on.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
NOTE: This board was previously discussed in these pages on May 2, in “Homeland Censorship Board.”
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Q. What is that fundamental principle?
A. It is justice, which alone comprises all the virtues of society.
Q. Why do you say that justice is the fundamental and almost only virtue of society?
A. Because it alone embraces the practice of all the actions useful to it; and because all the other virtues, under the denominations of charity, humanity, probity, love of one’s country, sincerity, generosity, simplicity of manners, and modesty, are only varied forms and diversified applications of the axiom, “Do not to another what you do not wish to be done to yourself,” which is the definition of justice.
Constantin Francois de Volney, The Law of Nature, Chapter XI: “The Social Virtues; Justice.”
On August 26, 1920, the 19th amendment to United States Constitution took effect, giving women the right to vote in every state of the union.
Prior to the passage of this amendment, 15 states allowed women to vote. Most of them were west of the Mississippi. The territory of Wyoming was the first to extend voting rights to women in 1869.
In a bid to bail out the sinking ship of his party, President Joe Biden has decided he can go ahead and bail out Americans who are having trouble paying off their student loans.
Yesterday he announced that (quoting The Epoch Times) “his administration will spend hundreds of billions of dollars to pay off $10,000 in federal student loan debt for some borrowers,” with the Education Department giving the specifics: “individuals earning less than $125,000 a year or families earning less than $250,000 will be eligible for up to $10,000 in debt cancellation.” Pell Grant recipients in the same situation will be eligible for relief of up to twice as much.
The politic nature of the move is so obvious that . . . it isn’t getting enough attention from critics.
Most of those alarmed at the move concentrate on the unfairness: rewarding those who have not met their obligations and thereby penalizing those who have. Defenders of student debt relief make the usual arguments about the need to help the under-privileged — by giving them more privilege (if anything’s a privilege it is to be able to take out a loan and then not pay it back).
You may be wondering how a president can authorize spending billions of dollars. Isn’t that Congress’s job? Well, the administration has found a semi-plausible excuse — from Congress: a 2003 higher education law that allows the Education Department to provide relief in response to a national emergency.
And what is the emergency?
Pick one. Inflation, for example.
Which is spurred by overspending.
Which an extra $250 billion will merely increase.
You gotta wonder: isn’t it college graduates who cook up this stuff?
It’s ‘We the People’ who deserve not relief but a full refund.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Charles Dunoyer
Man’s concern is not with government; he should look on government as no more than a very secondary thing — we might almost say a very minor thing. His goal is industry, labour and the production of everything needed for his happiness. In a well-ordered state, the government must only be an adjunct of production, an agency charged by the producers, who pay for it, with protecting their persons and their goods while they work. In a well-ordered state, the largest number of persons must work, and the smallest number must govern. The work of perfection would be reached if all the world worked and no one governed.
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John Birch
On August 25, 1945, the Cold War began (some say) when, ten days after World War II ended with the Japanese surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party killed Baptist missionary Capt. John Birch (1918-1845).
Forget “the one percent.” I want to know about the seven percent.
Last month, the Gallup polling outfit asked Americans about our confidence level in Congress. Did we have “a great deal, quite a lot, some or very little”?
Unlike the 93 percent of us with firing brain synapses, there appeared an enigmatic seven percent, folks who actually confessed to harboring “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of faith in that cabal of corrupt careerists legislating loquaciously in our nation’s Capitol.
It takes all kinds, I guess. The shadowy, slow-witted, and ill-informed must show up in statistics somewhere, right?
Granted, only five percent of Republicans expressed that much cockeyed confidence; it was six percent a year ago. Trusting Democrats hit double-digits, with ten percent believing congressional bull, a fall from the 17 percent hornswoggled in 2021.
Gullible independents came in at the overall average — seven percent — a decrease of five percentage points from last year, when 12 percent clutched a false sense of security regarding our federal legislature.
Among a long list of American institutions, Congress roused the absolute least confidence. Odd that we feel worse about the people we elect to represent us than those we have little if any direct responsibility for or control over.
This must change.
We desperately need term limits. And the competitive elections brought by creating smaller districts where grassroots campaigns employing shoe-leather can compete with the big money and special interest power behind professional politicians.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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