On October 14, 1644, Willliam Penn was born. An English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania (the English North American colony and future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania), he was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Indians. Penn died in 1718.
“Southwest Airlines crews are walking out and so are FAA air traffic controllers,” Buzz Patterson tweeted on Sunday. “This is just the beginning.”
Buzz’s running for a House seat in California’s Seventh District. But I saw the tweet as quoted on Facebook by Erin Leigh, who wrote “Exactly what needs to happen. Over 1800 Southwest flights have been canceled in the last 48 hrs . . . employees from other airlines are joining as well as Amtrak.” And she concluded with “Mandates have consequences!!”
But what really caught my attention was Facebook’s warning: “Independent fact-checkers say this information has no basis in fact.”
Really? None?
You see, much of what was tweeted and Facebooked was definitely true: Southwest Airline pilots and other workers have walked out. And though the airline and the union provide the silliest rationales for the mass cancellations as cover — including blaming non-existent bad weather — it seems pretty obvious this is tied to the vaccine mandates. Tucker Carlson is nearly alone in covering this angle of the story — bemoans The Guardian — while the rest of corporate media relays the “nothing to see here” official spin (or “media blackout”).
Meanwhile, Facebook promotes its guardian of truth, “Lead Stories” — but its “fact-check” was entirely about the Amtrak shutdowns!!
Candidate Patterson didn’t mention Amtrak. And Ms. Leigh noted Amtrak almost as an afterthought.
And then, up on my screen, came Facebook’s altered image of the initial tweet, with “Regular Delay” super-imposed.
The Facebook post was mostly about airline business.
And while Amtrak officials and mouthpieces for the Transport Workers Union of America assure us that it’s all very regular . . . the jab mandate is in place, and labor . . . dislocations . . . are one consequence.
Our regularly scheduled re-scheduling will be re-explained by history.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Capitalism and socialism are mutually extinct. Why? Because science now finds there can be ample for all, but only if the sovereign fences are completely removed. The basic you-or-me-not-enough-for-both — ergo someone-must-die tenets of the class warfaring are extinct.
Richard Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969), p. 39.
On October 13, 1870, American social critic and education theorist Albert Jay Nock was born. Nock was the author of a number of books, including Jefferson, the Man and Our Enemy, The State, but was probably most famous for his intellectual autobiography, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, which was widely read and admired amongst conservatives in the 1950s and ’60s.
“China vows ‘peaceful reunification’ with Taiwan,” was The New York Post’s takeaway from Chinese ruler Xi Jinping’s speech at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing over the weekend.
What fantabulous news! Peace for our time . . . in Asia.
That same message was echoed by The Washington Post, which also noted that Xi’s statement comes “days after sending a surge of warplanes near the island.”
With China’s massive military build-up, ongoing threats to attack, invasion drills around Taiwan, not to mention flying squadrons of warplanes across the Taiwan Strait and into the island nation’s air defense identification zone — 150 such incursions last week — tensions have escalated to a fever pitch.
“We are very concerned,” warned Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, “that China is going to launch a war against Taiwan at some point.”
Thank goodness, then, that at this scary moment, our Fourth Estate can herald Xi’s promise of peace!
The only problem?
The Chinese dictator gave no such assurance.
Xi merely stated a preference for Taiwan’s peaceful surrender to his one-country, one-system totalitarianism — over having to snuff out Taiwan’s freedom by missile attack and invasion, murdering millions. Which the genocidal autocrat is still threatening to do whenever the opportunity presents.
Cancel the parade.
Still, if Xi’s rhetoric constitutes “a more conciliatory approach” from Beijing, chock it up to free countries finally waking up and pushing back against the Chinazis.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, noting her nation’s position “on the front lines of democracy and freedom,” focused on the fight against Chinese “coercion.” As she eloquently wrote in Foreign Affairs: “[T]he future of Taiwan is to be decided by the Taiwanese through democratic means.”
Provided there is the military might to deter Chinese aggression.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute.
From the novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury.
On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas, thinking he had reached India.
Exactly two hundred years later, a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips ended the Salem Witch Trials.
On this date in 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance was first recited by students in many U.S. public schools, as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage.
The Pledge had been composed that year by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist minister, and was first published in Youth’s Companion magazine, the issue dated September 8, 1892. The recital was accompanied with a salute to the flag known as the Bellamy salute. During World War II, the salute was replaced with a hand-over-heart gesture because the original form (described in detail by Bellamy) involved stretching the arm out towards the flag in a manner that resembled the later Nazi salute. The original form of the Pledge was somewhat less involved than later versions:
I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
In October an editorial addition occurred, the word “to” prefixing “the republic.”
Was it something I said?
Yesterday, YouTube removed the video of my latest episode of This Week in Common Sense. Why? The platform claims I violated its “terms of service” and “community standards” by providing “medical misinformation.”
Funny, YouTube did not specify which statement in the video was incorrect, much less provide any citation to back up its “misinformation” claim.
This sort of authoritarianism is quite common these days. We’re just supposed to take the Authority’s word that It Possesses the Whole Truth.
No debate. No dissent.
There is not even a reference or consult.
Which is what Dr. Byram W. Bridle, PhD, Associate Professor of Viral Immunology Department of Pathobiology at the University of Guelph discovered.
He refused to provide evidence of vaccination. So his Canadian university “banned” him “from campus for at least a year.” And sat by while colleagues and students abused him for being “anti-science.”
Thing is, as he points out in his Open Letter to the academic institution, not one of the tenured immunologists of the University of Guelph thinks there should be mandatory vaccination. All are very concerned about the goal of universal vaccination. Since not one of the available vaccines appears effective enough to produce sufficient immunity in recipients “herd immunity,” the goal must be mere “herd vaccination.”
Dr. Bridle is especially annoyed that the university does not allow him to demonstrate his natural immunity to the disease, which simply does not interest the pro-vaccination bureaucrats.
Worse yet, at no point in the university’s deliberations over the vaccine mandate did administrators consult their own immunology department!
That’s not “following the science.”
Like at YouTube, it’s a political campaign: science not required.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Note: I first heard about both stories from my podcasting sparring partner, who produced two stories on his website regarding Dr. Bridle and tipped the hat to historian Tom Woods.
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Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.
George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903).
October 11, 1890, marks the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
On the same date in 1976, President Gerald R. Ford approved a congressional joint resolution Public Law 94–479 to appoint, posthumously, George Washington to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, as part of the bicentennial celebrations.
John J. Pershing (1860 – 1948) is the only other American to attain this high title, and the only one to achieve it while alive.