On August 11, 1972, the last of American ground combat troops exited South Vietnam.
When the Lollapalooza music festival took place in Chicago, on the hinge of July and August, with oodles of attendees (some masked), a few people cried bloody foul, on account of super-spreader event potential. But Fox News’s Ben Domenech noted that the number of murders in Chicago over July was three times the number of COVID deaths, and the nation’s capital sports a similar ratio.
When Domenech asked guest Tim Pool about the lack of interest in gun violence in gun-controlled Chicago, Mr. Pool expressed bafflement.
But — really? Politicians seem bent on focusing on regulating us with masks and jabs rather than regulating criminals. And for a reason. . . .
More striking was Anthony Fauci’s public worrying about the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, while ignoring the Lollapalooza event — as well as Barack Obama’s 60th Birthday Party, which revealed/reveled in plenty of celebs unmasked.
A familiar double standard: how the elites get to behave vs. how they say we “must” behave!
The concept of “Anarcho-tyranny” may explain much of this. Politicians of a certain sort prefer to regulate peaceful people (tyranny) while letting real criminals go free (anarchy). It is easier to police the peaceful and law-abiding, while criminals on the loose reinforce the need for a more powerful state.
The Lollapaloozans are on the “right side” (the left side?) of the cultural divide, while the Sturgis rally is on the “wrong side.”
And make a good target.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Sam Francis
What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny — the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through “sensitivity training” and multiculturalist curricula, “hate crime” laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny.
Samuel T. Francis, “Synthesizing Tyranny,” Chronicles (April 2005). Sam Francis had coined the term “anarcho-tyranny” in the previous decade.
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Independence
On August 10, 1809, Ecuadorians attempted independence from Spain with the Declaration of Independence of Quito, but failed with the execution of all the conspirators a few days less than a year later.
Independence finally occurred in 1822.
If only Lincoln Eccles were a property owner in Franklin County, Ohio, instead of Kings County, New York. He’d have more of a chance.
Franklin County is defying the latest national moratorium on evictions. Early in August, caving to pressure from socialist Democrats, President Biden directed the CDC to outlaw the evicting of tenants for another 60 days.
A Franklin County court has announced that the county will not obey the ukase. The county cites a recent court of appeals ruling that disputes the authority of the CDC to impose the nationwide moratorium.
In June, the Supreme Court had narrowly refused to lift a previous moratorium in evictions, even though at least one justice in the majority acknowledged that the CDC had exceeded its authority. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s exact words: “Yes, this is unconstitutional, but . . . well, okay.” (Fine, not his exact words.)
Property owners have bills too. (Not to mention rights.) The less money they get from a property, the less money they have to maintain it, let alone earn profit.
Lincoln Eccles owns a 14-unit building in Crown Heights. Several tenants owe him rent. One owes $40,000. Which has put Eccles behind on utility bills and property taxes. The boiler must be fixed before winter.
But Kings County is not defying the CDC.
“At this point they’re just abusing us,” Eccles says. “And it’s some version of slavery to me, forcing people to work and produce a product for free, and there’s no compensation.”
Were one to consult the Constitution, one might find a prohibition about public taking of private property “without just compensation,” but governments throughout the union haven’t been consulting that relevant document much lately.
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Ernest Bramah
He who has failed three times sets up as an instructor.
Ernest Bramah, “The Story of Lin Ho and the Treasure of Fang-Tso” in Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928).
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Gandhi and Yeltsin
On August 9, 1942, British forces arrested Mahatma Gandhi in Bombay, spurring the Quit India Movement into nationwide action.
In 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, and his entire cabinet.
The video version of the weekend podcast:
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
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Born and Died
Francis Hutcheson, philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and a great influence on David Hume and Adam Smith, was born in Ireland on August 8, 1694. He died on his birthday in 1746.
Followers of Mahatma Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement against the British rule on August 8, 1942.
On the same day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon resigned.