Paul doesn’t stop celebrating on July Fourth.
Or stop thinking.
Categories
William S. Burroughs
Most of the trouble in the world has been caused by folks who can’t mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.
William S. Burroughs, “My Own Business,” in The Adding Machine: Selected Essays (1985), p. 16.
Categories
“Cross of gold”
On July 9, 1896, William Jennings Bryan delivered his “Cross of Gold” speech advocating bi-metallist inflationism at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, a triumph of rhetoric over reason that solidified the takeover of the Democratic Party by reformers utterly ignorant of basic economics.
When does it become irresponsible to send children to a public school?
Has the line been crossed in Fairfax County, Virginia?
Their school board now prohibits teachers from telling parents when children “change gender” or pretend to change gender. Such decisions may be evidenced by a student’s changing his name or by identifying as a member of the opposite sex or as “nonbinary” on a school’s learning portal.
The district is not inviting teachers to exercise discretion about whether to inform parents. One can imagine cases in which a teacher knows parents to be physically abusive and likely to come down on a kid like a ton of bricks if alerted to such an event.
Rather, the policy stipulates that parents needn’t ever be told about such matters. To the extent teachers obey, parents won’t know unless informed by the children themselves.
If you live in Fairfax County, you could protest.
And you could do other things, such as
- attend school board meetings to object, as parents attended a Fairfax board meeting to object to the policy of suspending fourth-graders for using the “wrong” pronouns for classmates;
- join the shadow board that parents have formed to criticize the doings of the Fairfax County board;
- vote against a school board member or try to recall members — unless a judge decides that your recall petition fails to show “probable cause for removal.”
Or you could just get your kids the heck out of the public schools.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Categories
Immanuel Kant
Wer sich aber zum Wurm macht, kann nachher nicht klagen,
dass er mit Füßen getreten wird.
However, he who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards that he gets stepped on.
Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Part two: Metaphysical Principles of Virtue page 98.
Categories
Luther Martin
Died on this date, American founding politician, Luther Martin [pictured], in 1826.
Martin is famed among founding fathers for refusing to sign the U.S. Constitution, seeing the new compact as unduly centralizing and nationalistic.
On July 8, 1839, American industrialist John D. Rockefeller was born. On this same date in 1907, businessman and politician George W. Romney was born.
“‘One country two systems’ has been tested and proved time and again,” Chinese ruler Xi Jinping told his hand-picked Hong Kong audience last week, “and there is no reason to change such a good system.”
Twenty-five years into that “good system” — created when the United Kingdom signed it over to the Chinese Communist Party with the proviso it would recognize basic civil liberties in Hong Kong until 2047 — Xi was taking a victory lap.
He had successfully squelched freedom of speech and of the press.
“China’s government is,” Ian Easton writes in The Final Struggle: Inside China’s Global Strategy, “far more powerful and sophisticated than any that came before. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and Putin’s Russia all pale in comparison.”
Easton, who studies defense and security issues involving the U.S., China, Japan, and Taiwan at the Project 2049 Institute, also pointedly suggests that it is “of national importance that Hollywood begins to make movies about China that are not censored.”
Censored by Beijing, he means.
China’s long list of tyrannies has gotten so bad that even NATO — yes, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — has recognized the threat posed by the totalitarian country engaged in the largest military build-up in human history.
“NATO has listed China as one of its strategic priorities for the first time,” Al Jazeera reported weeks ago, “saying Beijing’s ambitions and its ‘coercive policies’ challenge the Western bloc’s ‘interests, security and values.’”
To which the Chinese objected, arguing the NATO statement “vilifies China’s foreign policy” and “China’s natural military development” and was “filled with . . . ideological prejudices.”
They have a point. It’s about time the West shows a bit of “bias” against totalitarianism and genocide.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Categories
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word Politic, which now for ages has signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick?
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series (1844), ”Politics.”
Categories
Solomon Islands Independence
July 7 is Independence Day in the Solomon Islands, commemorating the island nation’s political separation in 1978.
The “separation” may be over-stated, however: though self-government was achieved in 1976, and political independence for the islands obtained two years later, Solomon Islands remains a constitutional monarchy with the Queen of Solomon Islands, currently Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, as its head of state. Sir Frank Utu Ofagioro Kabui has been the Governor General since 2009, and Manasseh Damukana Sogavare has served as Prime Minister since late April.
Categories
Go Slow?
Somewhere along the line putative anti-racists forgot what racism is.
“In an email obtained by Reason,” writes Robby Soave at, yes, Reason magazine, “Regional Health Equity Coalition Program Manager Danielle Droppers informed the community that a scheduled conversation between OHA officials and relevant members of the public would not take place as planned.”
And she offered an . . . interesting . . . excuse.
“We recognize that urgency is a white supremacy value that can get in the way of more intentional and thoughtful work, and we want to attend to this dynamic. Therefore, we will reach out at a later date to reschedule.”
While it is obvious that Ms. Droppers does not like what she calls “white supremacy,” her blithe acceptance of the notion that punctuality is a racial characteristic is rather bracing.
Referring to blacks as, generally, slow and even lazy was once a common white-racist evaluation of African Americans.
So common, in fact, that it was a joke — one constantly referenced “as a trope” by Steppin Fetchit and other actors as they portrayed the languorous and servile blacks laughed at in a now bygone era.
Then, as now, there were blacks more than capable of speed and competence in matters where time was of the essence, who valued a “sense of urgency.”
To now accept the stereotype as reason enough to extol loose scheduling is . . . almost . . . funny.
If not so disturbingly stupid and racist.
Robby Soave briefly touches on the intellectual movement that does this sort of thing consistently. We can thank, it turns out, white anti-racists.
Who are quickly establishing a new stereotype: that white anti-racists are hopelessly witless.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts