The great political superstition of the past was the divine right of kings. The great political superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments. The oil of anointing seems unawares to have dripped from the head of the one on to the heads of the many, and given sacredness to them also and to their decrees.
Herbert Spencer, “The Great Political Superstition,” in The Man versus the State (1884).
April 18 marks the 1772 birthday of David Ricardo, English political economist and one of the most influential thinkers in economic theory. An advocate for free trade and the abolition of slavery, Ricardo’s most famous work is his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817).
In America in 2022, April 18 is the date income taxes are due to be filed.
Why cannot the media print the most important stories?
Paul Jacob argues for allowing anonymous political speech and activism — in the course of covering the big stories of last week.
It is strange how all authoritarians automatically assume that the libertarian wishes to impose his own views on them when all he actually wants to do is to appeal to the authoritarian’s better nature. But I suppose you authoritarians can only see things in your own terms.
Count von Bek to the narrator of The Warlord of the Air: A Scientific Romance (1971), the first novel of A Nomad of the Time Streams series by Michael Moorcock (2013 Titan Books edition, p. 149).
This is about major media being unable to do the news right — not about paneling and popular architecture. Don’t let first few minutes put you on the wrong track.
[T]here lie before the legislator several open secrets, which yet are so open that they ought not to remain secrets to one who undertakes the vast and terrible responsibility of dealing with millions upon millions of human beings by measures which, if they do not conduce to their happiness, will increase their miseries and accelerate their deaths?
There is first of all the undeniable truth, conspicuous and yet absolutely ignored, that there are no phenomena which a society presents but what have their origins in the phenomena of individual human life, which again have their roots in vital phenomena at large. And there is the inevitable implication that unless these vital phenomena, bodily and mental, are chaotic in their relations (a supposition excluded by the very maintenance of life) the resulting phenomena cannot be wholly chaotic: there must be some kind of order in the phenomena which grow out of them when associated human beings have to cooperate. Evidently, then, when one who has not studied such resulting phenomena of social order, undertakes to regulate society, he is pretty certain to work mischiefs.
Herbert Spencer, “The Sins of Legislators,” in The Man versus the State (1884).
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., penned his Letter from Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama, for protesting segregation, on April 16, 1963.
It is done from within the system.
By stock ownership.
Becoming Twitter’s top stockholder — right after Musk told the Babylon Bee he just might have to buy Twitter to reform it — surely demonstrates serious intent.
But Twitter honchos have stressed that the mere advent of Elon Musk portends no major changes, a hint of things not to come.
Moreover, a restriction on how many shares board members may purchase meant that had Musk joined Twitter’s board, he’d have been unable to ramp up the pressure for reform by becoming an even bigger stockholder.
So Musk chucked his original plan to join the board and decided, what the heck: If I do need to buy Twitter to fix its anti-speech policies, I better outright buy it. He has reportedly offered $43 billion.
He says: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe.” But he now realizes that the company in its current form will never be that platform.
“Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
A week ago we asked, “Will Elon Liberate Tweeting?”
We’re still asking. Maybe the current owners love banning disagreement with themselves too much to give it up.
Someone should tell them that are worse things to sell out for than open discourse and freedom of speech.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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[C]ommerce inspires in men a vivid love of individual independence. Commerce supplies their needs, satisfies their desires, without the intervention of the authorities. This intervention is almost always — and I do not know why I say almost — this intervention is indeed always a trouble and an embarrassment. Every time collective power wishes to meddle with private speculations, it harasses the speculators. Every time governments pretend to do our own business, they do it more incompetently and expensively than we would.
Benjamin Constant, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns (1819). See also: https://thisiscommonsense.org/2021/09/15/benjamin-constant-5-2/