In 1862, troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza stopped a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla in Mexico — an event leading to the popular “Cinco de Mayo” celebration.
No cause for celebration, however, is the anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth 201 years ago.
“Mr. Biden is making a six-trillion dollar bet that promoting popular programs will be popular,” offered NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on Sunday, “and that he’ll be rewarded for getting things done, long before the actual bill comes due.”
That “Six trillion dollars”? New splurging “on social spending, infrastructure, climate change, health care and more.”
The host intoned that this constitutes the “return of big government.”
“We have to prove democracy still works, that our government still works,” Joe Biden, the 47th president, implored Congress last week, “and we can deliver for our people.”
Spend = Deliver.
Deliver = Democracy.
Democracy = Spend!
So goes a federal “democracy” wherein voters never get a straight, democratic choice on how much government should spend and tax.* Instead, politicians opt for their beloved “deficits forever” method. Purchase votes today — “People like it when you give them money” — and leave for future generations of voters the tax burden needed to pay that bill. No pain, all gain.
Smart re-election strategy, some say.
“Democratic strategists are betting that the infighting in the Republican Party, the extremism on display during the Jan. 6 attack . . . and the sheer scale of the trillion dollar programs Democrats have pushed through this year,” reports The Washington Post, “leads to a reorienting of partisan divisions that can overcome historical patterns.” Meaning Democrats avoid the traditional loss of congressional seats for a president’s party.
“Will voters care about the scope of Mr. Biden’s plans?” Todd inquired. “. . . care about the price tag?”
Likely to the degree they notice paying that price.
“President Trump and the Republicans may have made it a bit easier for Mr. Biden by spending big themselves,” reminded Todd.
He’s not wrong there.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Colorado voters have such a choice: a vote on any tax increase and on government spending increases. It’s called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and was passed by citizen initiative back in 1992. The politicians and lobbyists just hate it, as I detail here.
Photo by Anno Málie
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War has ceased to be productive of security, but the masses, whose existence depends upon the industries of production, are compelled to pay its costs and suffer its losses without either receiving compensation or possessing means to end the contradiction. Governments do possess this power, but if the interests of governments ultimately coincide with the interests of the governed they are, in the first instance, opposed to them.
Governments are enterprises — in commercial language, “concerns” — which produce certain services, the chief of which are internal and external security. The directors of these enterprises — the civil and military chiefs and their staffs — are naturally interested in their aggrandizement on account of the material and moral benefits which such aggrandizement secures to themselves. Their home policy is therefore to augment their own functions within the State by arrogating ground properly belonging to other enterprises; abroad they enlarge their domination by a policy of territorial expansion. It is nothing to them if these undertakings do not prove remunerative, since all costs, whether of their services or of their conquests, are borne by the nations which they direct.
Gustave de Molinari, The Society of To-morrow (1899)
On May 4, 1796, American historian William H. Prescott was born. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico and his Conquest of Peru remain classic works of well-researched, “scientific history.” Prescott, Arizona, was named in his honor.
The May Fourth Movement began on May 4, in 1919: Student demonstrations took place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory to Japan.
In 1961 on May 4, the “Freedom Riders” began a bus trip through the South.
The watchdog group Judicial Watch has obtained evidence that the government of California and the Biden camp violated the First Amendment rights of Americans during the 2020 presidential campaign.
In at least a couple dozen cases, social media companies complied with governmental requests to delete posts containing “misinformation,” the new code word for “stuff that I don’t want people to see or discuss.”
But hey: were all materials containing “misinformation” deleted from the annals of humankind, historians would be left with maybe ten or twelve pages and scrolls of primary documents. Into the trash? Herodotus, Josephus, Gibbon!
On the other hand, the social-media giants often curtail online discourse without any apparent urging by government censors.
Example? The popular discussion group Reddit has taken upon itself to block users from viewing the videos hosted by certain popular alternatives to YouTube like Rumble and BitChute. Reddit has China-walled links to the videos regardless of content. The problem, it seems, is that Rumble and BitChute are too much in favor of free speech.
Now, it may be that Reddit does its redactions in eager pursuit of its own ideological agenda rather than in obedience to some politician(s), but questions remain. When it comes to suppressing voices that socialist social media moguls find politically uncongenial, how much is reluctant submission to government pressure and how much is spontaneous voluntary initiative?
I’d like to know.
Barring any likelihood of a certain answer, we citizens must vigilantly watch governments — along with the tech firms receiving lucrative government contracts.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
In 1791, the Constitution of May 3, the first modern constitution in Europe, was proclaimed by the Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
On May 3 in 1915, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae composed the poem “In Flanders Fields,” the most famous poem of World War I. The Canadian physician wrote it after presiding over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres. It is in the form of a rondeau.
Paul Jacob laughs through today’s horrors:
This Week in Common Sense, May 2, 2021.
Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.
On May 2, 1989, Hungary began dismantling its border fence with Austria, allowing a number of East Germans to defect.