The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.
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James Monroe
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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.
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 . . .
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* Daylight Saving Time was first instituted in wartime by Woodrow Wilson, but repealed by popular demand during peacetime; this was repeated under FDR for WWII.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.
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Senator Sam Ervin
Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state controls religion.
Samuel James Ervin, Jr., (1896-1985).
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A Student Protest
On April 23, 1968, students at New York City’s Columbia University held a demonstration to protest military research and the condemnation of part of the neighboring Morningside Heights section of Harlem to make way for a new student gymnasium. The protest escalated into a week-long occupation of five campus buildings before police moved in. Some 712 students were arrested, and over 100 injured during the forcible eviction. After the university-ordered police response, a student strike shut down the campus for the rest of the semester.
The speech-repressing Chinese government and the speech-repressing tech firm Google are apparently taking cues from each other.
Busy Google unit YouTube has been working overtime to cripple the YouTube channel China Uncensored, which is too brutal in its criticism of the Chinazi government.
YouTube has demonetized the channel’s latest video, “YouTube Helps Cover Up China’s Atrocities.” According to channel publisher America Uncovered LLC, the videos that tend to get penalized are those with footage “that makes the Communist Party look bad.”
Google often does much more to repress speech than flag and demonetize. But Google doesn’t want to always be super-blatant. So China Uncensored is still a YouTube channel. For now.
In contrast, the Chinese government usually goes full Chinazi. Its latest project is a snitch app to help neighbors turn in neighbors for voicing “wrong” opinions.
It’s about correcting misinformation. China’s Cyberspace Administration says the app will help counter online statements that are “maliciously distorting, slandering and denying Party, national and military history in an attempt to confuse people’s thinking,”
Ah, disagreement, a.k.a. “misinformation,” the too-steep cost of freedom! And who alone is qualified to determine which information is correct?
“Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth,” says Orwell’s O’Brien. “It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.”
Deviate from the party line about the party, the pandemic, an election, lack of elections, or anything else, and supposedly it’s right and just to muzzle you.
Wrong.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Gore Vidal
The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven’t seen them since.
Gore Vidal, Matters of Fact and Fiction (1978)
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Immanuel Kant
On April 22, 1724, philosopher Immanuel Kant was born.
Aside from being the pre-eminent modern philosopher and originator of transcendental idealism, Kant was also a major figure of Enlightenment thought, a classical liberal, and the originator of the notion of the Categorial Imperative. He was an early and important astronomical theorist in his early career, but produced his greatest works towards the end of his life, including The Critique of Pure Reason and The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. He was also author of the 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch.”
Arthur Schopenhauer is widely known as an admiring and astute critic of Kant’s thought, while philosophical opponents include Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. Kant’s approach to ethics continues to excite interest today, with some of the revival a result of the work of John Rawls.
Kant died on February 12, 1804, in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), where he had lived the bulk of his life.
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Pick Your Poison
Are cigarettes containing menthol-flavored tobacco racist?
Follow the science! It is an absolute fact that those menthol smokes “disproportionately addict — and kill — Black Americans.”
The reason? “Only 29 percent of White smokers choose menthol, as opposed to 85 percent of African American smokers, according to a National Survey on Drug Use and Health,” The Washington Post explains, “fueled by more than half a century of Big Tobacco aggressively marketing them specifically to Black Americans.”
Catch that causation claim? The black-and-white difference between racial group affinity with this flavor is the fault of cunning (white?) advertising execs with a racist penchant for hooking unsuspecting blacks.
Never addressed — or apparently even considered? The possibility that tobacco companies are targeting their promotional efforts in relation to the obvious preferences of their customers.
It is in the news because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration must officially address, by April 29, a formal regulatory petition “demanding menthol cigarettes be banned.”
Support for outlawing menthol-flavoring based on racial justice rationales meets plenty of opposition based on racial . . . sanity.
“Opposition,” notes The Post, “come[s] from GOP and Democratic officials as well as civil rights groups.”
The idea of providing another police enforcement flashpoint by outlawing an addictive substance used overwhelmingly by blacks seems a non-starter. “We do not think kids should be put in jail or given a ticket for selling menthol,” offered Rev. Al Sharpton.* “You’re going to give the police another reason to engage our people?”
“Banning a certain type of cigarettes because black people tend to favor them is stupid and patronizing,” one Post reader commented. “Either have the courage of your convictions and ban all cigarettes (lol) or leave this alone.”
Leave us alone.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Sharpton acknowledged to The Post that his National Action Network has received funding from “R.J. Reynolds, which makes Newport cigarettes, the most popular menthol cigarette and the No. 2 U.S. cigarette brand overall.”
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Sir Francis Bacon
Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.
Francis Bacon, Apophthegms, New and Old (published 1625).