And so no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight.
William Whewell, Elementary Treatise on Mechanics, The Equilibrium of Forces on a Point (1819).
On October 9, 1635 — and after many religious and policy disagreements — Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Clapper wrote that in a recently declassified email from late 2016. It’s about RussiaGate, which his inter-departmental team had concocted out of Clinton oppo campaign research leading up to Donald Trump’s unexpected win that year.
“This is one project that has to be a team sport,” urged Clapper, expecting unity on his scheme to undermine Trump’s presidency.
While you and I may hope that saving the country isn’t mere sport to our leaders, we should learn from divulgations of this kind. They know what they’re doing, and are serious about it, even when “sticking to” an obviously nutty story.
Do you remember where that phrase came from?
On May 18, 1926, Aimee Semple McPherson vanished while swimming at Venice Beach, California. A massive search — involving divers, the Coast Guard, and a $25,000 reward — came up bupkis. But this media innovator and founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel reemerged five weeks later near the Mexican border, saying she had been abducted by three strangers, held captive in a desert shack, tortured, and forced to write ransom notes before her escape, walking 40 miles through wilderness. Her wild story quickly fell apart as evidence of a torrid affair was made public. But in response to relentless questioning from prosecutors, journalists, and skeptics during the following grand jury hearings and trials, the Pentecostal evangelist repeatedly affirmed her account, often uttering variations on what became an infamous theme: “This is my story, and I am sticking to it.”
James Clapper channeled that while orchestrating his much more serious public fraud. And he expects to get away with it, too, like “Sister Aimee” did, through bluster.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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In peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons.
Herodotus, The Histories, Book I, Chapter 87.
On October 8, 1970, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in literature. In his acceptance speech, given after his deportation from the USSR, he said that “during all the years until 1961, not only was I convinced I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared this would become known.” In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev had allowed Solzhenitsyn’s short novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch to be published, and defended the novel at the presidium of the Politburo, claiming that there is “a Stalinist in each of you; there’s even a Stalinist in me. We must root out this evil.” Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn’s works were not published in the Soviet Union from 1964 through 1989. Stalinists won, for a time, with Solzhenitsyn being deported to West Germany in February 1974.
Great! Wonderful to see democracy in action, eh?
Not so much for this leftwing political action committee, however. “We have to keep this proposal off of Michigan’s ballot in 2026,” the email went on.
The initiative petition in question is Michigan’s Citizen Only Voting Amendment, which (1) clearly establishes that “only” U.S. citizens are eligible voters in all state and local elections, (2) mandates that the Secretary of State check the voter rolls for citizenship status, and (3) requires photo ID to vote.
Polls have shown upwards of 80 percent of Michigan voters support the measure. Perhaps spurred on by the noncitizens who were shown to have voted unimpeded in last November’s presidential election.
How will VNP honchos accomplish their mission of suppressing a petition for a public vote on this ballot initiative? They urge folks to “learn how to peacefully disrupt circulation.”
“Disrupt”? That doesn’t quite go with “peacefully.”
Last month, Charlie Kirk was assassinated speaking on a college campus. According to a recent poll,* the percentage of Democrats who believe “Americans may have to resort to violence” to achieve political goals has doubled this year. Back in April, a survey found that a majority of self-identified “left-of-center” respondents agreed it was “somewhat justified to murder President Trump.” The same survey found that 15 percent found it “completely justified.”
Destroy democracy to save it?
As chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting: We won’t let you. Stop trying to block us and others from speaking. Instead, speak out against our measure to your heart’s content.
I also suggest looking for a rallying slogan that fits better with “peacefully.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* From 12 percent of Democrats saying so in May of 2024 to 28 percent this year. The percentage of Republicans believing violence may become necessary is higher still — 29 percent in 2024 and 31 percent in 2025. A whopping 77 percent of the public cited political violence as “a major concern.”
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Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.
Pericles, as quoted in Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Book II (1945), Chapter 40.
In 1913, Ford Motor Company launched a new manner of production for the Model T: a continuously moving assembly line.
Earlier in the year, Ford employees had assembled magnetos using this technique, improving efficiency to a marked degree: “Instead of each worker assembling his own magneto, the assembly was divided into 29 operations performed by 29 men spaced along a moving belt,” explains History.com. “Average assembly time dropped from 20 minutes to 13 minutes and soon was down to five minutes.”
The chassis was added on such a line on October 7, so that “all the major components of the Model T were being assembled using this technique,” which, when combined with high wages, came to be known as “Fordism.”
The consequence? A complete commercial success for Henry Ford, so much so that “by 1916 the price of the Model T had fallen to $360 and sales were more than triple their 1912 level. Eventually, the company produced one Model T every 24 seconds, and the price fell below $300.”
With 280,000 people having already voted in Virginia’s race for attorney general, polls show Jones leading.
“Like all people,” Jones excused himself, “I’ve sent text messages that I regret.”
Have all of us sent texts such as these?
“If those guys die before me,” Jones messaged Republican House Delegate Carrie Coyner, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves.”
Jones, who had resigned as a state legislator, was incensed that Speaker Gilbert had offered too strong a public eulogy over the death of a retired Democratic delegate. Apparently, that delegate had committed the unforgivable sin of being a moderate.
Jones boasted that if he had Hitler, Pol Pot and the Virginia House Speaker in a room, and only two bullets, Speaker “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”
In one message, Del. Coyner “chastised Jones” for telling her over the phone how he hoped “Jennifer Gilbert’s children would die” in her arms to make the Speaker change his political views.
“Rather than deny that he had wished death on the children,” National Review explained, “Jones responded by saying, ‘Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.’”
“I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they’re breeding little fascists?” he asked in another text.
To which he answered: “Yes.”
Jay Jones for attorney general? No.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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This book raises issues that might not be apparent from the table of contents.
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Introduction.
It sketches some of the difficulties faced by our civilization — a civilization which might be perhaps described as aiming at humanness and reasonableness, at equality and freedom; a civilization which is still in its infancy, as it were, and which continues to grow in spite of the fact that it has been so often betrayed by so many of the intellectual leaders of mankind. It attempts to show that this civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth — the transition from the tribal or “enclosed society,” with its submission to magical forces, to the “open society” which sets free the critical powers of man. It attempts to show that the shock of this transition is one of the factors that have made possible the rise of those reactionary movements which have tried, and still try, to overthrow civilization and to return to tribalism.