Preserve thyself; Instruct thyself; Moderate thyself; Live for thy fellow citizens, that they may live for thee.
Constantin Francois de Volney, The Law of Nature, last sentence.
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White House Burnt Down
In 1814 on this day, British forces burnt down the White House. Unlike audience reaction to the 1996 movie Independence Day (pictured), there was no widespread cheering among Americans for the building’s destruction.
One year later, the modern Constitution of the Netherlands received its empowering signatures.
August 24 birthdays include that of British anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Argentine literary genius Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), and French historian and author of a magisterial study of the rise of capitalism in Europe, Fernand Braudel (1902-1985),
The Ukraine celebrates its independence from the Soviet Union with a National Day on August 24.
On August 24, 1682, William Penn received an area of territory to add it to his colony of Pennsylvania. The area comprises, today, the state of Delaware.
Can we trust the FBI to stick to the rule of law and defend our rights?
Yesterday I more than suggested that the answer is “No.”
Adding more fuel to this negative judgment, last week Eric Boehm at Reason told the tale of a Federal Bureau of Investigation raid upon safe deposits.
“The FBI told a federal magistrate judge that it intended to open hundreds of safe deposit boxes seized during a March 2021 raid in order to inventory the items inside,” Boehm writes, “but new evidence shows that federal agents were plotting all along to use the operation as an opportunity to forfeit cash and other valuables.”
When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton’s response, reportedly, was “that’s where the money is!” He actually didn’t say it, but FBI personnel understand the operative principle all too well . . . regarding safety deposit boxes.
Convictions? Hah!
They seize property on an expected-revenue-based rationale.
Since “details regarding the planning and execution of the FBI’s raid of U.S. Private Vaults arenow out in the open,” Boehm goes on to explain, it looks like the FBI has to say bye-bye to “more than $86 million in cash as well as gold, jewelry, and other valuables from property owners who were suspected of no crimes.”
The plot’s been foiled, it appears, but will the culprits within the FBI be prosecuted?
Seems unlikely.
Truth is, the culture at the FBI has never been good. Barring defunding (which would be politically difficult) perhaps FBI agents should be restricted to just investigation, stripped of their weaponry, forced to rely on state and local lawmen — and perhaps the U.S. Marshals — to make any searches and arrests at all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Charles Dunoyer
It is impossible for a government to levy taxes and distribute large amounts of money without by that very process creating large numbers of enemies of its authority and those jealous of its power.
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Singing Revolution
On August 23, 1989, two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stood on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands, as part of the “Singing Revolution” that helped set the Soviet Union to its fateful implosion.
What did Vice President Mike Pence learn from the Trump years?
Perhaps, that his 2016 ploy to ratchet up his career backfired . . . when his running mate actually won?
Thank goodness, he followed normal procedures in January 2020, rejecting then-President Donald J. Trump’s pleas to send back to the states the Electoral College slates.
In a recent speech at St. Anselm’s College, the former Vice President advised fellow Republicans not to overreact to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Mr. Pence insists that Republicans “can hold the attorney general accountable for the decision he made without attacking the rank-and-file law enforcement personnel at the FBI.”
That sounds about right, until you read the rest of Pence’s remarks. “The Republican Party is the party of law and order. Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the FBI must stop. Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”
Has Pence lost “the plot”? The FBI has a long history of abusing the rule of law. While leaders are rightly blamed — J. Edgar Hoover used his agency to create a vast spy-and-blackmail network — they have not worked alone to do flagrantly unconstitutional things. After all, remember in October of 2020, the Bureau made headlines foiling a plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor. The plot was concocted by multiple agents, who worked mightily to entrap members of a citizen militia into going along with it.*
Pence surely remembers that the FBI agents who conspired against the Trump administration were breathtakingly partisan, lying and concocting documents to perform what amounts to an attempted coup d’etat.
It’s not a “law and order” outfit if its most consequential actions illegally serve partisan political purposes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* These G-men and G-women were consenting adults — consenting not only to the politics of such entrapment, but also to engaging in sexual acts to get their way.
Note: Two defendants in the Michigan conspiracy case are now being retried, after the jury in their first trial could not reach a verdict.
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C.-F. Volney
Like the world of which he forms a part, man is governed by natural laws, regular in their course, uniform in their effects, immutable in their essence; and those laws, — the common source of good and evil, — are not written among the distant stars, nor hidden in codes of mystery; inherent in the nature of terrestrial beings, interwoven with their existence, at all times and in all places, they are present to man; they act upon his senses, they warn his understanding, and give to every action its reward or punishment. Let man then know these laws! let him comprehend the nature of the elements which surround him, and also his own nature, and he will know the regulators of his destiny; he will know the causes of his evils and the remedies he should apply.
Constantin Francois de Volney, The Ruins: or, Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires, Joel Barlow and Thomas Jefferson, translators (French original: 1793), Chapter V: “Condition of Man in the Universe.”
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Devil’s Island
On August 22, 1952, France closed its penal colony on Devil’s Island.
At first a leper colony, it had been transformed by the end of the 19th century into a prison tasked primarily with housing enemies of the French state.
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Watch: Free Speech Everywhere
The world is getting weirder, and those who love liberty seem less weird every day — but some are very wrong about democracy.
If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two they would cut each other’s throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.
Voltaire, Letters on England, letter 6, “On the Presbyterians,” Leonard Tancock, trans. (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1980): p. 41, published first in English in 1733.