Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Inclusion on Compulsion

A news article over the weekend explains that certain “lawmakers” are “leading the effort to allow all Americans ages 18 to 25 to be included for registration with the Selective Service System.”

To “allow”? And “to be included”?

The allowance and inclusion mean “at gunpoint” . . . by force of law: the expansion of compulsory draft registration to women, in addition to men, does not mean that lifelong dreams could finally come true. After all, military jobs are already open to women who want to serve . . . voluntarily.

Young men have long been required to register for a military draft upon punishment of prison for refusal . . . even though President Reagan, who enforced the law post-Vietnam, acknowledged “The draft or draft registration destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.”*

After praising “the brave women who have volunteered to serve our country,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) argues that “volunteering for military service is not the same as being forced into it, and no woman should be compelled to do so.”

He’s right there.

But neither should men be so compelled.

And Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) have introduced an amendment to the NDAA that would end draft registration completely for “all Americans.”

“The real question now,” as Jeff Jacoby wrote incisively in The Boston Globe, “is whether anyone should still be required to sign up for the draft.”

The answer is easy: No.

The All-Volunteer Force has been a huge success. Free Americans have and will defend our freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I know about those precious values as well as about the penalty — 37 years ago today the FBI showed up at my door. And not for coffee. For my refusal to sign a draft form, I spent more than five months in a Federal Correctional Institution (and yet still go around in error from time to time).

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Tags draft, draft registration, freedom, women

Thought

Russell Brand

There’s an obvious pushback about being told what to think. Twitter temporarily afforded the option of, well, ‘just let the people decide.’ That’s what democracy is. That’s why democracy is not real, and never was. Because real democracy means stuff might happen that you don’t like. What they mean when they say democracy is ‘our democracy.’ What they mean by ‘the outcome of the people’ — the ‘outcome of our people.’ What they mean by ‘freedom of speech’ — ‘freedom for our speech.’
Comedian Russell Brand, “Hang On… ‘A Tool for Democracy’ or a Tool of THE ESTABLISHMENT,” discussing “Jack Dorsey has resigned as CEO of Twitter – the platform that was intended as a tool for democracy but became the opposite” and a Matt Taibbi article on Substack.

Today

13th & Paul Jacob

On December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, banning slavery in all states and territories.

One-hundred-and-nineteen years later, to the day, in 1984, Paul Jacob (of ThisIsCommonSense.org, LibertyiFund.org, and the Citizens in Charge Foundation) was arrested by the FBI for his refusal to register with Selective Service System (the draft people). The Government was probably not attempting to make a commemorative point about involuntary servitude.

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Watch: Is It Progress?

The wit and wisdom of

George Santayana
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
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and others, all serving as grist for Paul Jacob’s commonsense mill — er, view — of the world. And a lot more, too, on Rumble, the latest podcast from Paul Jacob.

Common Sense

A. C. Grayling

Thus justice is not equality but equity; as Aristotle says, “Injustice arises when equals are treated unequally, and unequals are treated equally.”
A.C. Grayling, “Protest,” Life, Sex, and Ideas (2002).

Today

Prohibition Ends

On December 5, 1933, nationwide alcohol Prohibition in the United States ended after Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75 percent of states needed to enact the amendment that overturned the 18th.

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Listen: Cannibal with Knife and Fork

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Post date December 4, 2021
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Paul Jacob on the progress of our time:

Thought

Robert Nozick

The intellectual wants the whole society to be a school writ large, to be like the environment where he did so well and was so well appreciated. By incorporating standards of reward that are different from the wider society, the schools guarantee that some will experience downward mobility later. Those at the top of the school’s hierarchy will feel entitled to a top position, not only in that micro-society but in the wider one, a society whose system they will resent when it fails to treat them according to their self-prescribed wants and entitlements.
Robert Nozick, “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?”

Today

A Farewell to Arms

On December 4, 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in New York City, General George Washington formally bade his officers farewell.

First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture international affairs

Which National Church?

Juhana Pohjola, writes Joy Pullmann in The Federalist, may be “the first in the post-Soviet Union West to be brought up on criminal charges for preaching the Christian message as it has been established for thousands of years.”

While it may seem strange that Bishop Pohjola’s being prosecuted for saying Christian things — considering that he heads the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, and the Lutheran Church is the country’s state church — the truth is that Finland is majority nonbeliever, now, and the actual state religion might best be called Wokianity.

That is why he’s being prosecuted.

And he’s not alone.

Former Minister of the Interior and current Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen also faces charges: “The medical doctor, mother of five, and grandmother of seven is accused of having engaged in ‘hate speech’ for publicly voicing her opinion on marriage and human sexuality in a 2004 pamphlet, for comments made on a 2019 radio show, and a tweet directed at her church leadership.”

That last is a quotation from the ADF International, which describes itself as “a faith-based legal advocacy organization that protects fundamental freedoms and promotes the inherent dignity of all people.” The tweet quoted a Bible verse.

At issue is protecting “government-privileged identity groups,” in this case LGBTQ folks, from “centuries-old Christian teachings about sex” that “incite hatred.”

A sign of the times: Finland, which used to be very liberal, is now merely “progressive” — making the assault on Christian beliefs for being un-woke completely unsurprising.

And worth noting here in America. For this sort of attack on free speech and freedom of religion is obviously what many on the left wish to implement.

It’s Wokianity versus Christianity . . . those with political powerful against the most basic rights of the First Amendment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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