Samuel Butler, Notebooks (1951).
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
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Samuel Butler
For residents of Klickitat County, Washington, it’s an easy two-step process.
Well, optimally, one step. Two only if necessary.
County Sheriff Bob Songer tells gun-owning constituents that if agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives come to their door wanting to inspect their guns but have no warrant, they should tell the agents to go away.
ATF agents have started to make “surprise home visits of persons who have purchased two or more firearms at one time.” The sheriff was alerted by video of such a visit to a home in Delaware.
Republican Congressman Matt Rosendale of Montana has called for an investigation into the intimidatory practice.
Although Sheriff Songer knows of no such incidents yet occurring in the Evergreen State, he wants his county to be prepared. So he also provides a second step: if the agents don’t leave when asked, the resident should call Songer. He will then “make contact with the agents. If they still refuse to leave, I will personally arrest the ATF agents for Criminal Trespass and book them into the Klickitat County Jail.”
All other sheriffs, please make the same announcement.
Songer belongs to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association and regards protecting the constitutional rights of his constituents as part of the job.
When it comes to respect for the Constitution, there really shouldn’t be more than one type of sheriff. But if there are going to be more than one, “constitutional sheriff” is the type you want to be.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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C. S. Peirce
The first formulation of “the pragmatic maxim,” by C.S. Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Popular Science Monthly, v. 12 (January 1878), pp. 286-302.
Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.
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The Fourteenth
July 28, 1868, is the official date for the certification of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
“Hulu’s censorship of the truth is outrageous, offensive, and another step down a dangerous path for our country.”
While social media’s partisanship and Big Brotherish thought control have been on all our minds in recent years, the current Internet controversy has a slightly different slant:
- This time it is Democrats complaining. We’re used to having Republicans and other non-Democrats grumbling about having their accounts shadow-banned, frozen or closed, their posts taken down, and worse.
- This time it’s Hulu — a video entertainment streaming service, not a social media company or banking service — taking “the wrong side.”
- And now it’s not about the standards for regular services, but about accepting, or not, advertising.
“The Disney-backed streaming service Hulu is refusing to run political ads on central themes of Democratic midterm campaigns,” writes Michael Scherer for The Washington Post, “including abortion and guns, prompting fury from the party’s candidates and leaders.”
The ads are almost innocuous. Tame stuff. So what is Hulu up to?
Suraj Patel, a Democratic candidate for Congress in New York City, protested the service’s refusal to run his ads. Then, after some back-and-forth — and editing — his ad was allowed to run: he had to replace the “climate change” with “democracy” and, The Post relates, swap “the footage of violence at the U.S. Capitol with footage of former president Donald Trump.”
This is irksome. Hardly a matter of The Truth, as “three executive directors of Democratic committees” put it, quoted at top. It shows how normal business advertising (on an unregulated entertainment service, not a normal news network) is a tricky biz, considering the unwillingness of the programmers to tick off viewers, who probably turn to Hulu for a respite from politics.
Yet, it would be better if Hulu didn’t allow any political advertising rather than some . . . and then only after editing. Who do the folks at Hulu think they are? Twitter executives? Zuckerberg?
I wonder if my Democratic friends will remind me that Hulu is a private company that can do as it wishes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics.
One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.
Shawn McBreairty has the right to speak at public school board meetings in Maine.
That may not sound like the most controversial of contentions, but many school boards and even the Justice Department have been treating parents as criminals for publicly objecting when schools
- teach kids to feel racially guilty,
- unlearn the biologically obvious about sex, and in general
- engage in radical indoctrination at the expense of education.
The parents’ sin in such cases is that of nettling board members and others who want a free hand to inflict such policies.
Mr. McBreairty has gotten in hot water with more than one school board in Maine. The recent court ruling that he has the right to speak at board meetings was occasioned by the actions of the RSU 22 school district, which barred McBreairty from its own board meetings.
When he tried to attend one in June, the board used local police to stop him.
The judge in the case, Nancy Torreson, has no sympathy for the board’s antics, characterizing its rationale for trying to muzzle McBreairty as “evolving, ad hoc, and unsupported.”
Judge Torreson concludes that McBreairty’s expression of “school-related concerns at the podium during the public comment period of School Board meetings constitutes speech that is protected under the First Amendment.” Her ruling grants the motion for an order temporarily restraining the school board from stopping McBreairty from attending and speaking at its meetings.
Even if board members disagree with him.
McBreairty and the school board are in America, after all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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July 27 births include that of Samuel Smith (1752), an American who served as a captain, major, and lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army, and later as a politician in several capacities in the state of Maryland; Hilaire Belloc (1870), author of a classic analysis of modern political governance, The Servile State; and American singer and songwriter Bobbie Gentry (1944).
On July 27, 1694, the Bank of England received a royal charter, beginning a long history of central banking in England. Subsequent inflationary booms and deflationary busts are usually considered “mysterious” by people connected with the bank.
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C. S. Peirce
C.S. Peirce, “Pragmatism and Pragmaticism” (1903).
In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don’t remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.
What’s more provocative: visiting friends or threatening a military invasion?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is rumored to be visiting Taiwan in August, to see our friends who have made the most miraculous political advances of the last half century, from a repressive authoritarian society through four decades of martial law to arguably the most democratic and free nation in all of Asia.
Not to mention blossoming into an economic powerhouse that produces “roughly 90% of the world’s most advanced chips.”
“[T]he chip industry is dominated by manufacturers in the small island of Taiwan,” informs Fortune. “Policy makers in the U.S. have started to see that as a problem.”*
What’s problematic? Well, Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), ruling over both the world’s most populous country and the world’s fastest growing armed forces, constantly threatens a military assault to conquer the “renegade Chinese province.”
They want us not to be friends with the Taiwanese. No talking. No holding hands.
Last week, Beijing warned the U.S. against allowing Pelosi’s visit. Chinese spokesman Ma Xiaoguang “said today that some people in the US government and Congress are constantly provoking and playing the ‘Taiwan card’ . . . and the mainland will ‘resolutely strike back,’” Taiwan’s government news service reported.
Asked about the possible trip, President Joe Biden offered: “Well, I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now. But I don’t know what the status of it is.”
By any fair reading of all the gobbly-gook produced by our State Department over the decades, the U.S. is treaty-bound to defend Taiwan.
Moreover, from U.S. statements and actions, all the world expects America to step up for democratic Taiwan against a violent takeover by totalitarian China.
Even China thinks so.
And what does Pelosi think? “It is important for us to show support for Taiwan,” Pelosi told reporters.
She’s right.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Also last week, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo called a disruption of the supply of computer chips from Taiwan a “scary scenario” that would lead to a “deep and immediate recession.” Invasions can be quite disruptive. Where would the chips fall, then?
NOTE: More on Taiwan at ThisisCommonSense.org.
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