It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1869).
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Eleven/Eleven/Eleven
On November 11, 1889, the State of Washington was admitted as the 42nd State of the United States.
In 1918, German officials signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France. The fighting officially ended at 11:00 a.m. — the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The war officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919.
In 1921 on this date, U.S. President Warren G. Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
Back in the Spring, a pollster was detailing his findings to a group of us. The Democrats were none too popular, he informed. And informed. And further informed. But at one point, the pollster stopped to remind: “Don’t get me wrong, that’s not to suggest the public is fond of Republicans.”
“We have the worst inflation in four decades, the worst collapse in real wages in 40 years, the worst crime wave since the 1990s, the worst border crisis in U.S. history, we have Joe Biden who is the least popular president . . . since presidential polling happened,” Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen explained on Fox News, “and there wasn’t a red wave.”
Barely a ripple.
Voters, he continued. “looked at all of that and looked at the Republican alternative and said, ‘No, thanks!’”
Calling it “an absolute disaster,” Thiessen advised the GOP to do a “a really deep introspective look in the mirror right now.”
Watch for cracks.
More than the abortion issue or the mixed blessing of Mr. Trump’s omnipresence, I think the GOP’s problem was the lack of any serious, cohesive and positive agenda. We are indeed facing massive inflation, crime, cultural revolution . . . but what are you going do ’bout it?
Answers aren’t coming from the Republican Party.
In last year’s red wave across my home state of Virginia, it wasn’t now-Governor Glenn Younkin who made respecting the rights of the parents of public education students a cataclysmic issue. Parents did that.
The Republican Revolution of 1994 rode a tsunami produced in no small part by the term limits movement. With term limits measures on the ballot throughout the country, the GOP gained 52 seats to secure a majority after 40 consecutive years in the minority — even defeating the Democratic House Speaker.
Want candidates to ride a popular, pro-freedom wave?
Better start splashing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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William Godwin
Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Vol. 2, bk. 6, ch. 1.
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Cry of Independence
On November 10, 1821, the First Cry of Independence in the small, interior town of Villa de los Santos, occurred in Panama. The November 10 date has since become Panama’s “Cry of Independence Day” in the country.
The GOP has just issued a 1,000-page report about corruption in the Department of Justice and its Federal Bureau of Investigation. Based largely on the disclosures of 14 whistleblowers, plus what’s in plain sight — what we’ve all been able to see for ourselves over the last several years — the report details “a rampant culture of unaccountability, manipulation, and abuse.”
- To support its political agendas, the FBI has deliberately inflated statistics about “domestic violent extremism” and has diverted resources from legitimate investigations — like those into child trafficking.
- The Justice Department and FBI have averted their gaze from blatant and multifarious wrongdoing by Hunter Biden, son of the president.
- The FBI has “purged” employees who disagree with the left-leaning ideology of top brass.
- The FBI has targeted parents for investigation simply for protesting school board policies.
- Without cause, the FBI has been spying on US citizens, including persons who worked for candidate Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
- Like other agencies, the FBI has worked with Big Tech social-media companies to censor viewpoints that FBI honchos find uncongenial.
- While targeting anti-abortion activists who have perpetrated no violent acts, DOJ and FBI have ignored attacks on churches and pregnancy centers.
To be sure, the recent conduct of these agencies has plenty of precedent; thousands more pages could be produced.
From initial election results (before I got too sleepy), Republicans will have control of the House of Representatives, at the very least, and perhaps a Senate majority. They will have the power to press their investigation further and compel reforms.
The House controls the purse strings . . . if it dares.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Anthony Trollope
It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.
Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn (1869). Frederick Waddy, illustrator.
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Close Call
On November 9, 1979, NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland, detected an apparent massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert was cancelled.
Image from the last few minutes of Stanley Kubrick’s dark comedy, Dr. Strangelove, or; How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, Slim Pickens in his most memorable onscreen moment.
The Bill of Rights was originally understood as curbing the power only of the federal government.
This began to change with the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from depriving persons “of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Thanks to the “incorporation doctrine” interpretation of this amendment, provisions like the First Amendment now apply as much to state and local governments as to the federal government.
Except that many officials, disdaining these protections, simply ignore them.
So although obliged to make no law “abridging the freedom of speech,” California’s government is abridging the freedom of speech of doctors. A new law authorizes state medical boards to penalize doctors who utter speech contradicting “contemporary scientific consensus” about COVID-19.
Doctors are suing the Newsom administration to block the law from taking effect. According to their complaint, this anti-“misinformation” law would impede their ability to communicate with patients.
The doctors argue that the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech applies to expression of minority views as well as majority views; indeed, that minority views “particularly need protection from government censorship.”
Also that nobody can ever know “the ‘consensus’ of doctors and scientists on various matters related to prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”
Of course, free speech rights should protect even persons who say the moon is made of green cheese, let alone of those who disagree with official pronouncements about a vexing new virus and what to do about it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Adam Mickiewicz
That rabble had a mighty power over minds, for when the Lord God sends punishment on a nation he first deprives its citizens of reason. And so the wiser heads dared not resist the fops, and the whole nation feared them as some pestilence, for within itself it already felt the germs of disease. They cried out against the dandies but took pattern by them; they changed faith, speech, laws, and costumes. That was a masquerade, the licence of the Carnival season, after which was soon to follow the Lent of slavery.
Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz (1834), as quoted as an epigraph to Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016).