Every man should be considered as having a right to the character which he deserves; that is, to be spoken of according to his actions.
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James Mill
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Watch: A Special Day
The day was Saturday, February 27, 2021. That is when this video hit YouTube. But being a day late to viewing this video — 0r, for that matter, a week or year late — will not appreciably alter your appreciation of it.
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Frédéric Bastiat
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
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Whipped for sleeping in church
On February 28, 1646, Roger Scott, of Lynn, Massachusetts, was tried for sleeping in church. Awakened in church by a tithingman’s long, knobbed staff hitting him on the head, he struck back at the man, and garnered a whipping as punishment, as well as the dark designation as “a common sleeper at the publick exercise.”
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Listen: We Wish You a . . .
Today is Term Limits Day. Why celebrate:
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The XXIInd!
On February 27, 1830, American economist and free trade advocate Arthur Latham Perry was born.
The Twenty-second Amendment (Amendment XXII) of the United States Constitution, which sets a term limit for election and overall time of service to the office of President of the United States, was ratified by the requisite 36 of the then-48 states on February 27, 1951.
Congress had passed the amendment on March 21, 1947.
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Happy Term Limits Day!
Saturday is Term Limits Day.
Boy, this holiday season really sneaked up on me.
No excuse, though, because Term Limits Day falls on February 27th every year. On that date in 1951, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, limiting the president to two terms in office.
Call it the constitutionalization of the small-r republican example George Washington set so well by voluntarily stepping down after two terms as chief executive. That “tradition” lasted for nearly 150 years . . . until FDR sought and won a third term in 1940.
In addition to presidential limits, tomorrow let’s also cheer term limits on 15 state legislatures (including big states such as California, Florida, Ohio, Michigan), and those covering 36 governors as well as thousands of local elected officials, including in nine of the nation’s ten largest cities.
Of course, while we celebrate Term Limits Day — in this pandemic, mostly on social media — let’s remember where mandatory rotation out of elected office does not exist, yet is most desperately needed: Congress.
Since career politicians aren’t going to term-limit themselves, U.S. Term Limits has launched a “national effort to bypass Congress and put term limits on House and Senate through the Term Limits Convention.” The convention requires 34 state legislatures to take action and that in turn requires us to act at the grassroots in our states.
Already there is impressive movement. In the last week, resolutions for a Term Limits Convention have passed through key committees and entire chambers in Arizona, Georgia, and North Dakota. Much more is in the pipeline.
Term Limits Day, tomorrow, makes a great day for a contribution to the term limits cause. But there’s no time better than the present.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Ortega y Gasset
Life is fired at us point blank.
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Dominican Independence
February 26 marks the Dominican Republic’s Independence Day.
Politicians are ramping up assaults on political disagreement (with them) . . . only they call the disagreeable data “disinformation.”
The latest is a threatening letter by Democratic Representatives Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney to cable companies and digital providers such as Apple and Roku. Sample: “Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN and Newsmax on your platform both now and beyond the renewal date? If so, why?”
Bottom line: Do more to deprive dissidents of a forum! (Here we loosely define “dissident” as “anyone who disagrees with Eshoo and McNerney.”)
With such epistolary conduct the threat is implied. When congresspeople write a complaint like this, the “gun under the table” is understood. They can make laws or use existing laws — antitrust laws or 10,000 other possibilities in the kit bag of the federal leviathan — to pummel speech-enablers.
On Monday, I noted next month’s scheduled congressional inquisition of Twitter, Facebook and Google CEOs, the third such “hearing” in the last five months. That alone imposes a punishment of sorts . . . and to what purpose?
As Glen Greenwald cogently points out: “Congress violates the First Amendment when it attempts to require private companies to impose viewpoint-based speech restrictions which the government itself would be constitutionally barred from imposing.”
Congressmen who oppose what Eshoo and McNerney are doing should take this attack on our right to speak very, very seriously. Government must not silence voices, directly or indirectly. If there’s a battle to pick in defense of our freedom, this is it.
Freedom of speech is our first, last, and most important defense against tyranny. Tyrants have never been fans. We must be.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* It reminds me of President Trump complaining on Twitter about “Fake News out of NBC and the Networks” and asking
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