Categories
Today

Wollstonecraft & Spencer

On April 27, 1759, English philosopher and author Mary Wollstonecraft was born. Wollstonecraft married anarchist philosopher William Godwin and the couple begat one daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Wollstonecraft herself wrote several important political treatises, including her response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), and her valiant effort in the emancipation of women, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792).

English philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, and political theorist Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England, on April 27, 1820. Among Spencer’s most famous books are First Principles, Principles of Ethics (chiefly its first part, The Data of Ethics), The Study of Sociology, The Man versus the State, and two editions of Social Statics. Spencer was an evolutionary theorist as well as a religious and political philosopher, and coiner of the phrase “survival of the fittest.” He called the basic principle of a free political order “The Law of Equal Freedom.”

Categories
crime and punishment media and media people

With Our Own Eyes

Police body-cam video cannot bring back the dead. Nor end racism or prevent tragedy. 

What point-of-policing video can capture is solid and critical evidence. After a deadly police encounter, body-cam footage gives the public confidence that the truth will soon come out. 

But only if police consistently and promptly release relevant video to the public.

Consider last week’s tragedy in Columbus, Ohio, where a policeman shot and killed 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant as she was preparing to stab another young women. Many politicians and those in the media were ready to herald it as “the latest in a string of deadly videos documenting the final moments of a person of color killed by law enforcement.” 

The cop-cam video, however, clearly showed a policeman firing his gun to prevent one person of color from stabbing another. Just what we want police of any color to do.

NBC Nightly News still managed to mangle its reporting, editing out the image of the knife. In the aftermath of George Zimmerman’s shooting and killing of Trayvon Martin, you may remember, NBC News broadcast Zimmerman’s 911 call but dishonestly edited part of the conversation to inject a racial element where none had been.*

And, sure, even staring at incontrovertible videotape evidence of good police behavior, some took to defending knife-fighting as a youthful rite of passage.

But everyone can see the footage for themselves.

In another fatal shooting last week, police attempted to serve an arrest warrant in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. But under state law police are not required, short of a court order, to release police body-cam video. 

Citizens are going to court.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The local Jacksonville, Florida, NBC affiliate fired three employees over the incident.

PDF for printing

Photo by Lance

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

Herbert Spencer

When men hire themselves to shoot other men to order, asking nothing of the justice of their cause, I don’t care whether they are shot themselves.

Herbert Spencer, “Patriotism,” Facts and Comments (1902) — commenting on Britain’s “second war in Afghanistan” (1878-1880).
Categories
Today

Sybil’s Ride

On April 26, 1777, Sibyl Ludington, aged 16, rode 40 miles to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British. Her ride was over twice as long as Paul Revere’s more famous effort.

On the same day in 1805, United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, an important event in the First Barbary War.

In April 26, 1865, Union cavalry troopers cornered John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia, shooting him to death. There was no interrogation.

Categories
by Paul Jacob video

Watch: The More Laws…

Tacitus was right. Paul Jacob explains.

This Week in Common Sense, April 24, 2021.
Categories
Thought

James Monroe

Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all — liberty!

Categories
audio podcast Thought

Listen: The More Numerous the Laws

Paul Jacob applies ancient principles to the news:

Categories
Thought

James Monroe

The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.

Categories
Today

Shush: Library

On April 24, 1792, the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” was composed by Capt. Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.

Eight years later to the day, the United States Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress.

Categories
national politics & policies

Doubling Down on Time Jiggering

daylight savings time, astronomical clock

Daylight Saving Time was designed to trick us into spending more free time in daylight during summer. The trick? Set our clocks forward in the spring, meaning — if we keep to our old-clocked schedules — waking up and going to work earlier, leaving more recreational and home life (and shopping time) in sunnier late afternoons and evenings.

Kind of cheating.

Most folks find it a bother.* Switching one’s clocks back and forth means upsetting sleep rhythms, which can trigger negative health outcomes. 

Commonsensical people prefer to chuck the program — and several states have opted out, having no Daylight Saving Time at all. The program’s benefits — and negatives — often prove hard to find in actual statistics.

Enter Senators Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). They want to get rid of all the Spring-Forward/Fall-Back nonsense.

And there’s a bill in the House to push the policy forward.

But they want to do it the Nixonian way, making Daylight Savings Time universal and year-long. This effectively shifts time zones permanently east by one hour. And ensures that no one will experience 12:00 at solar noon, with the Sun directly above.

Surely we can change our schedules to fit whatever sunlight we want and we don’t need Washington to tell us when to get up . . . even as they manipulate time.

Regardless, you can check out Murray’s and Rubio’s arguments in USA Today.

The switching has got to go. But the permanent evasion of astronomical timekeeping sure smacks of . . . the opposite of . . . 

Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Daylight Saving Time was first instituted in wartime by Woodrow Wilson, but repealed by popular demand during peacetime; this was repeated under FDR for WWII. Richard M. Nixon pushed it in during the Seventies as an energy conservation program. It still exists federally, with 16 state exceptions.

Note: corrections made in the text after initial publication, with thanks to Thomas Knapp, below.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts