What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984).
November 25, 1975, Suriname gained independence from the Netherlands.
On the same month and date 17 years later, the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia voted to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia (officially disjoined as of January 1, 1993). This split has been called “The Velvet Divorce” (following, in style and method, “The Velvet Revolution”).
They don’t read.
No one reads the legislation Congress passes, not the staffers and lobbyists who write “the packages” and congresspeople least of all, as again illustrated by the recent 5,593-page, $2.3 trillion pandemic-relief-plus-kitchen-sink bill just passed by Congress.
They haven’t for decades.
Nor do they care to.
James Bovard, expert reporter on the excesses of the modern individual-stomping state, says the new monster-bill “is another warning that know-nothing, no-fault legislating will be the death of our republic unless Americans can severely reduce Congress’s prerogative to meddle in their lives.”
Correct. Problem is, it’s Congress that must enact reform — on itself. Talk about a conflict of interest! That’s why the citizen initiative process has been so important at the state level. Without democratic checks — initiative, referendum, recall — at the federal level, what major reform is even possible?
All big, necessary reforms hit a roadblock on that issue alone.
That goes for limiting the page-length of bills or requiring legislation be posted online for days if not weeks before a vote.
Same for congressional term limits, which would de-insulate Congress from us.
And, just so, with the late columnist Bob Novak’s proposal of smaller districts, maybe increasing the number of U.S. representative to 2,000. (It wouldn’t cost taxpayers anything more if we cut their pay.) More politicians might be better than fewer by decreasing the power of individual politicians — diminishing marginal power, you might say.
We find ourselves in a trap. These ideas amount to ways to avoid the trap once we are out of it.
But it is getting out of the trap that’s the hard part.
Any ideas? Please advise. You can be sure your good ideas will be read — not by Congress, of course, but by those of us who want a way out.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
November 24th marks the birthdays of philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632) and three influential Americans: ragtime composer Scott Joplin (1868), self-help writer Dale Carnegie (1888), and conservative editor, writer, and television personality William F. Buckley Jr. (1925).
Elizaveta Zlatkis could be jailed for up to a quarter century.
What heinous crime has she committed? Prepare yourself: she kept a stash of guns in her home.
Well, toy guns . . . used as props.
Not real armaments, pretend armaments.
New York City police confiscated 21 starter pistols and toy replicas that, according to the NYPD’s own lab reports, cannot fire bullets. And “one actual firearm” that the police acknowledge “was rendered ‘inoperable’ because the trigger, hand grip and internal components were all missing.”
“We do videos with them as props,” attests a rapper named Crucial.
“That’s wild,” he says of the prosecution. “They’re fake.”
NYPD cops acted on a tip — standard prelude to many a dastardly home invasion by putative officers of the law — in raiding her home in December 2019.
It’s been a nightmare for Ms. Zlatkis ever since.
She thinks she’s innocent, refusing a plea deal. Meanwhile, the prosecuting attorney, Melinda Katz, won’t drop the charges.
What’s next? Raids of toy stores and movie studio warehouses?
BearingArms.com stresses one aspect of the lunacy: Zlatkis is facing decades behind bars for heaping toy guns while thugs arrested “for actually shooting someone are quickly returning to the streets.”
The guns are fake, and the charges too — if only this story were fake! Unfortunately, it is the believable kind of unbelievable. In the increasingly creedal crusade against guns, the kookier, more cultish element appears to dominate.
The DA and everyone else pursuing this case after the guns had been examined are the ones who should face charges for hounding this woman — not that exercising the right to keep and bear fully functional arms should be a life-destroying offense, either.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On December 23, 1783, George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland.
The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.
George Orwell, letter to Malcolm Muggeridge, December 4, 1948.
Good news: New York City businessmen can no longer be threatened with eviction and forced to forfeit their rights for the crime of . . . well, for no crime at all.
Sung Cho, owner of a Manhattan laundromat, is one of many victims of an eviction-and-extortion racket perpetrated by the city.
For years, business owners have faced eviction because of offenses that occurred on the premises of their business — even if the owner was ignorant of the alleged offenses before they were committed.
In 2013, police entered Cho’s laundromat to sell supposedly stolen goods. After a couple of people unconnected to the business accepted the offer, the NYPD threatened Cho with eviction. Even though neither Cho nor his employees were accused of doing anything illegal.
Cho felt he had no alternative but to waive his right not to be subjected to warrantless searches, and grant police access to his security cameras, and forfeit his right to a hearing if ever penalized for alleged criminal offenses in the future. To avoid eviction, he accepted those obnoxious terms.
But he didn’t leave it there. In 2016, Sung Cho teamed up with the Institute for Justice to sue the city.
After many ups and downs, the final result is that the law so often used as a club against innocent business owners has been changed. Also, the NYPD must obey a binding order that it “shall not enforce or seek to enforce” the terms of agreements imposed under the old law.
A big win for lots of small businesses against tyrannical actions by government.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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[I]f two countries are placed under unequal conditions of production, it is that one of the two that is least favored by nature that has most to gain by free trade.
Frédéric Bastiat, from Economic Sophisms, “To Equalize the Conditions of Production.”
