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.
The wit and wisdom of
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.
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).
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.
Paul Jacob on the progress of our time:
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?”
On December 4, 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in New York City, General George Washington formally bade his officers farewell.
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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Czy jeżeli ludożerca je widelcem i nożem to postęp?
Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?
Stanisław Jerzy Lec, in Unkempt Thoughts [Myśli nieuczesane] (1957) as translated by Jacek Galazka (1962).
On December 3, 1989, the leaders of the two world superpowers, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, declared an end to the Cold War, at a summit in Malta. A little over two years later not only had the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union was itself dissolved.