Categories
Today

Remember the Maine

On Feb. 15, 1898, the USS Maine, a battleship, exploded in the Cuba’s Havana harbor, killing 260 American sailors. An official U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry ruled in March 1898 that the ship was blown up by a mine, without directly blaming Spain. Nonetheless, Congress declared war and, within three months, the U.S. had decisively defeated Spanish forces. On December 12, 1898, the Treaty of Paris was signed between the U.S. and Spain, granting the United States its first overseas empire with the ceding of such former Spanish possessions as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

In 1976, a team of American naval investigators concluded that the Maine explosion was likely caused by a fire that ignited its ammunition stocks, not by a Spanish mine or act of sabotage.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom social media

#GoPoundSand

Give Send Go, crowd funding, Canada, truckers, GoFundMe

The exact words of GiveSendGo, on Twitter:

“Know this! Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo. All funds for EVERY campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”

Just the attitude one would hope for.

This wonderful statement is in response to assertions by the government of Ontario that they’re preventing the Freedom Convoy from getting the funds via GiveSendGo that truckers need to eat, gas up after police steal their gas, etc. All the standard expenses involved in being a national (and now international) trucker convey fighting tyranny.

Compare the inspiring policies of the folks at GiveSendGo with the dreary interventionism of the pinch-mouthed overlords at GoFundMe.

In addition to shutting down the Freedom Convoy campaign, GoFundMe briefly but seriously planned to steal some of the donations that had already been made.

GoFundMe has also shut down other fundraising campaigns to oppose mask and vaccine mandates, campaigns to help Kyle Rittenhouse and to help conservative students harassed at Arizona State University, a campaign to investigate voter fraud, etc.

We have to think long and hard. If we need to raise money for a purpose the tyrannical left would disapprove, are we better off going with new-kid-on-the-block GiveSendGo or better-established GoFundMe?

I hope that you ponder this question for the same full millisecond that I did.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Thought

Frédéric Bastiat

They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (June 1850; Dean Russell, trans., 1950).

Categories
Today

St. Valentine’s Day

On Feb. 14, 278 A.D., Valentine, a priest in Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius II, was executed. In order to facilitate the raising of an army for his unpopular military campaigns, the emperor outlawed all marriages and engagements. Valentine defied Claudius’s order and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. Once discovered, Valentine was arrested and condemned by the Prefect of Rome to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14. Valentine was named a saint by the Roman Catholic Church after his death.

Though February 14th is celebrated as “St. Valentine’s Day,” in today’s vernacular, the 14th of February, 278, was, ahem, “not his day.”

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audio podcast

Listen: The Genocide Games

Almost no one is paying attention to the Olympics. What they should be listening to is this:

This Week in Common Sense, February 7 – 11, 2022.

Categories
Thought

George Santayana

In the best schools, almost all school time is wasted. Now and then something is learned that sticks fast; for the rest the boys are merely given time to grow and are kept from too much mischief.

George Santayana, Persons and Places (1944).
Categories
Today

Galileo’s Heresy

On Feb. 13, 1633, Italian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome to face charges of heresy for advocating Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’s theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. In April, Galileo pled guilty before the Roman Inquisition in exchange for a lighter sentence. Put under house arrest indefinitely by Pope Urban VIII, Galileo spent the rest of his life at his villa in Arcetri, near Florence, dying in 1642.

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by Paul Jacob video

Watch: Rumble-only Genocide Game Coverage

China, Olympics, genocide games

Paul Jacob covers (on Rumble alone) the games almost no one is watching:

Categories
Thought

Flavius Josephus

These men agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord. They also do not value dying any kinds of death, nor indeed do they heed the deaths of their relations and friends, nor can any such fear make them call any man lord.

Flavius Josephus on the Galilean, or “fourth sect of Jewish philosophy,” Antiquities of the Jews, Book XVIII, Chapter One.
Categories
Today

Scharansky Freed

On Feb. 12, 1986, Soviet human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky was released after spending eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps. The amnesty deal was arranged at a summit meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. Scharansky had been imprisoned for his campaign to win emigration rights for Russian Jews — who had been forbidden to practice Judaism in the USSR.

On Feb. 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.

On Feb. 12, 1593, approximately 3,000 Korean defenders led by General Kwon Yul successfully repelled more than 30,000 invading Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.