On March 17, 1780, General George Washington granted the Continental Army a holiday “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence.”
On March 17, 1941, the U.S. Selective Service held its first lottery for the draft, in preparation for World War II. (Image, above, from the Morning Oregonian, from that year.)
Seattle, Washington, which in recent years has become increasingly “progressive” with job-killing minimum wage rate hikes, openly socialist city council members, and a whole mess of bizarre pro-crime policies, is of course driving businesses (along with decent citizens) out of the city limits.
Amazon, the giant, uber-successful Internet business announced, last week, that it will “relocate office staff in downtown Seattle due to a sustained uptick in violent crime,” wrote Thomas Kika for Newsweek. And “other businesses in the area” are continuing coronavirus lockdown policies by sticking “with remote work for the same reason.”
Government’s first job is law and order. There’s a case to be made that all other state tasks are decidedly optional, and those other jobs that muck up the first job should be chopped.
Progressives don’t get that.
But speaking of “chopped” — remember CHOP and CHAZ? These were the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest and Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone insurrections of the city’s infamous 2020 “summer of love,” where for weeks on end “protesters” took over the streets and kept out the police and generally behaved like anarchist revolutionaries. It was all very disorderly, yet city officials apologized to-and-for the movement for the longest time — presumably because the “protesters” sounded so righteous in standard leftist manner: apparently lacking any arguments against this kind of thing.
The occupied, autonomous, dangerous inanity was finally stopped, but the rise in vagrancy and crime continues.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Men who have gained a high official position in universities and academies are often actuated by a jealousy very similar to that which we have traced among ecclesiastics. They establish a certain scientific orthodoxy, based often to a great extent on mere conjecture and assertion, and seek to frown down and to silence the unknown outsider who calls in question one of their dogmas, or who discovers a truth which they have overlooked. That any region of research should be officially tabooed is a humiliating circumstance. The dread of truth, the jealousy of discovery, is not confined to the Holy Inquisition, and no disestablishment of churches, no secularization of schools and colleges, not even the suppression of every religion — were such a step possible — would put an end to its action.
J.W. Slater, “The Martyrdom of Science,” Popular Science Monthly (Vol. XVII, May 1880).
On March 16, 1995, the state of Mississippi formally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state of the Union to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment had been officially ratified in 1865, one hundred thirty years earlier.
James Madison, fourth President of the United States and “Father of the Constitution,” was born on this date in 1751.
“We have to show up every day until they stop selling that f—king book,” one activist said, comparing her effort to “stopping the historical publication of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.”
As the story in FEE makes clear, the store had already banished it from the block-sized building itself. But management has so far refused to de-list it from its website.
Meanwhile, Democrats (or at least the leftists at Salon) have been dubbing attempts by legislators and school boards to get rid of Critical Race Theory and similar woke nonsense from their curricula as “censorship.”
Here’s the muddle: as mobs play censor to a privately owned book company, leftists pretend that public input into the revision of curricula in taxpayer-funded, government-run schools is worse.
There are Jewish, Christian and Muslim schools near where I live. I have absolutely no say about what they teach their students; if I demanded that they conform to my standards, my demand would (depending on threat level) constitute censorship.
But if I’m taxed to support a school, and the school is constitutionally run as democratically controlled, my “voice” on the matter of curriculum is not in any way censorship — even if educators “professionally” disagree with my position.
Forcing someone else’s reading decisions is censorship; determining your own (or your children’s) is not.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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I am innocent, and I am not suicidal. If I did this, then it means that I stuck my fist in the fears of Black Americans in this country for over 400 years and the fears of the LGBT community. Your honor, I respect you and I respect the jury. But I did not do this, and I am not suicidal — and if anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not do it to myself. And you must all know that.
Jussie Smollett, upon being sentenced to jail time (as well as $120,106 restitution to the city of Chicago and a $25,000 fine) on March 10, 2022.
Prior to his court-exiting outbursts, the judge had said:
Let me tell you Mr. Smollett, I know that there is nothing that I will do here today that can come close to the damage you’ve already done to your own life. You’ve turned your life upside down by your misconduct and shenanigans, you’ve destroyed your life as you knew it, and there’s nothing that any sentencing judge could do to you that can compare to the damage you’ve already caused yourself.
You’re just a charlatan pretending to be a victim of a hate crime, and that’s shameful.
Judge James Linn, in the sentencing hearing of Jussie Smollett, March 10, 2022.
March 15 was “the Ides of March” in the Roman calendar. On that date in 44 BC, Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a handful of prominent senators.
On the same date in 1783, General George Washington eloquently entreated his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. His plea was successful: the threatened coup d’état never took place.
“And,” Pompeo added, “you remind me of home.”
The Republican was making a simple but pertinent point. In a world of growing authoritarianism, genocide and war, Taiwan and America share very essential political values: Freedom, democracy, respect for human rights.
The visit irked China, of course, which claims Taiwan as a province and doesn’t like Americans stopping by, especially meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen . . . whom the Butchers of Beijing refuse to refer to as “president.”
Totalitarians often seem especially displeased with the words people utter. Upon his arrival, Pompeo spoke of the beautiful island nation as — get this! — a “great nation,” further traumatizing the Chinese.
In bigger news, however, Pompeo urged the United States to recognize Taiwan as a free and independent nation. It is, indeed. And I applaud the Trump Administration for opening up all manner of nation-to-nation dialogue and cooperation, and the Biden Administration for continuing that policy.
But it’s complicated.
The Chinese have long threatened to launch a bloody invasion in order to “reunite” Taiwan’s territory with the repressive People’s Republic of China (PRC) against the will of the Taiwanese. The PRC claims that any official announcement of “independence” by Taiwan or similar recognition by the U.S. is provocation for war.
Rather than fretting about the “independence” label, let’s concern ourselves with the strategic and tactical military means for Taiwan to resist the embrace the Chinazis have already clamped upon Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Though the boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest.
As quoted by Plutarch.
On March 14, 1900, the Gold Standard Act was ratified, ending the long practice of bimetallism by placing the United States Treasury — and banking and currency — on the gold standard.