Paul has the COVID, and America has a crisis:
This Week in Common Sense, January 8, 2021.
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Frédéric Bastiat
Among the new arrangements that feeble mortals are invited to make trial of, there is one that is presented to us in terms worthy of attention. Its formula is: Association, voluntary and progressive.
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Fifth to Ratify
On January 9, 1788, Connecticut became the fifth state to be admitted to the United States under the new Constitution. Connecticut was one of the first nine states of the original union, under the Articles of Confederation, to accept the Constitution, and thus officially ratify it. All 13 original states had ratified that new compact, officially, by May 29, 1790. The first state to be added to the original 13 was Vermont, in 1791.
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Slow on Subjugation
Latest: China opposes democracy!
When Great Britain turned Hong Kong over to China in 1997, the half-capitalist, ninety-nine-percent-totalitarian mainland government promised, scout’s honor, to preserve “one country, two systems” for 50 years. Hong Kong was to be mostly autonomous.
Almost immediately, China began interfering in Hong Kong’s democracy with the help of puppet officials on the island.
In 2003, China tried to impose a “national security law” to squelch the Hong-Kong-system part of the two systems. Criticism of the Chinese government would be treated as sedition. Five hundred thousand Hong Kongers marched in protest. Not wanting to send bombs and tanks, China retreated.
Hong Kongers blunted other assaults in 2012, 2014, and 2016.
But this last year, with the help of pandemic-rationalized restrictions on civic life, China has been making great leaps forward with its agenda. Recently, it detained 53 Hong Kongers for the terrible crime oftrying to run candidates in local elections.
Observing this, Victoria Hui, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame, has reached an insight.
“This is a total sweep of all opposition leaders,” she says. Why, if it is judged “subversion” just to run for office in Hong Kong, then the true purpose of the new security law is “the total subjugation of Hong Kong people.”
This goal has been blatant at least since 2003; longer, to anyone who knows China’s history. Sounds like Ms. Hui is only now catching on.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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George Eliot
Most of us who have had decent parents would shrink from wishing that our father and mother had been somebody else whom we never knew; yet it is held no impiety, rather, a graceful mark of instruction, for a man to wail that he was not the son of another age and another nation, of which also he knows nothing except through the easy process of an imperfect imagination and a flattering fancy.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879).
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State of the Union
On January 8, 1790, George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York, New York.
In 1835, on this date, the United States federal government achieved a zero debt for the first and only time.
In 1867, African-American men were first allowed to vote in Washington, D.C.
Crimes committed yesterday at the capitol should be prosecuted.
Let’s make that the rule from now on, not the exception.
I’m not suggesting long prison terms for trespassing, smashing windows, small-scale vandalism. But we have a right (and almost a duty) to insist that people respect the lives and property of others, no exceptions.
That’s Civilization 101.
Last summer, I think the cavalier attitude displayed by many public officials (Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler comes to mind) — and media outlets — toward looting and riots, as well as intimidation and violence directed at innocent individuals sent the wrong signal to . . . bad people on all sides.
Mostly peaceful protest isn’t good enough.
As the dust settles, we will learn more and discuss further. Note that as I put this and myself to bed last night, Congress was back at work but not yet finished certifying the Electoral College results.
Speaking of doing one’s job, in yesterday’s chaos, I witnessed one policemen apply some finesse to protecting the capitol — by de-escalating the tense situation. The mob he confronted refused to heed his instruction to leave the capitol. As the officer retreated up the stairs, they were on his heels. To delay their advance and stop them from overtaking him, he would turn upon reaching each floor’s threshold and threaten them with his baton.
But he didn’t hit them. If would have been disastrous for him to do so, because even with a baton he was badly outmanned: mob against one.
Soon, however, he was able to get to reinforcements, who together appeared to block the insurgents.
A few moments of wise restraint. Too rare these days.
Not to mention some fancy footwork.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Grover Cleveland
Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters. Not only is their time and labor due to the Government, but they should scrupulously avoid in their political action, as well as in the discharge of their official duty, offending by a display of obtrusive partisanship their neighbors who have relations with them as public officials.
Stephen Grover Cleveland, 22nd President of the United States, message to the heads of departments (July 14, 1886).
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Winter War
On January 7, 1940, the Finnish 9th Division completely destroyed the much-larger Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi Road, in a crucial battle during Finland’s Winter War.
Professor William Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor who also publishes the popular Legal Insurrection blog, got into trouble last summer by criticizing the violent Marxist organization Black Lives Matters.
BLM’s standard weapons include rioting, burning, looting, and screaming.
Jacobson had argued that the “Hands up, don’t shoot” version of the Michael Brown case is a lie and, in another post, that all the “bloodletting and wilding” around the country was primarily about tearing down the country, not about George Floyd.
These opinions upset the bullies.
Being a conservative professor on a liberal campus had all along made Jacobson feel like a “mouse waiting for the cat to pounce.” After 12 years at Cornell, though, the summer of 2020 was the first time that fellow Cornellians actively sought his ouster.
Six months later, we sure hope Professor Jacobson has managed to land on his feet. And he has. Back then, he was a professor at Cornell Law School. Today, he is a professor at Cornell Law school.
Why didn’t he seek friendlier pastures?
“I don’t see why I should be forced to change my life because they are so intolerant and they are so malicious,” he recently told The Daily Signal podcast. “Why don’t they leave? I’m not going to leave voluntarily. And if they do try to interfere in the renewal of my contract in a year and a half, I will take them to court over it.”
Bully for you, Professor.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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