Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Cancel Freedom?

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s message “couldn’t be simpler,” he offered last week: “It’s time to cancel everything.”

Gee whiz, that is simple.

The mayor’s order “prohibits public and private gatherings of people from more than one household and states that all businesses in the city that require people to work on location must stop operations. Walking, driving, travel on public transport, bikes, motorcycles and scooters are prohibited, other than for those undertaking essential activities,” Fortune reports.

Walking alone; riding a bike — really?*

Thankfully, folks are still permitted to play golf, tennis and pickleball. But . . . unless the course or the court is in your back yard, wouldn’t it remain illegal to travel there? Or to play with someone not living with you already?

Governor Gavin Newsom made similar demands, only over even more folks — and with less credibility — after flouting his own previous mandates. His regional order affected “some 33 million Californians, representing 84% of the state’s population,” to be locked down in their homes until after Christmas.

Restaurant owners are going to court to challenge the constitutionality of the governor’s lockdown. “We can’t close our businesses,” restaurant owner Angela Marsden told Fox news’ Neil Cavuto. “We need to stay open to survive this.”

And what about “following ‘the science’”?

“For the second time in five days,” explained SFGATE.com, “California Gov. Gavin Newsom did not provide evidence that businesses ordered to close during the state’s new stay-at-home order are actively contributing to the spread of the coronavirus.”

Lacking legal authority and defying science provide more than enough reason for outright defiance. “At least seven counties say they won’t enforce the mandates,” NBC Nightly News informed. “The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department will not be blackmailed, bullied or used as muscle against Riverside County residents,” announced Sheriff Chad Bianco.

Defying tyranny is simple, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* As I noted months ago, the scientific data correlate Vitamin D deficiency with serious and deadly cases of COVID-19. Therefore, telling people to stay inside, thereby avoiding sunshine, a major source of the vitamin, is not good advice. As an order with threats of enforcement, it is something even worse.

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Tags Christmas, Covid 19, freedom, lockdown

Thought

John Milton

No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.
John Milton, “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates” (1650).

Today

December 9th Birthdays

On December 9, 1958, the John Birch Society was founded in the United States. December 9 also marks the birthdays of

Poet and anti-censorship advocate John Milton (1608), author of the masterpiece of blank verse narrative, Paradise Lost (1667) and a classic prose defense of free speech and the press, Areopagitica (1644).
Russian prince and anarchist theoretician Peter Kropotkin (1842), author of Mutual Aid and other books and pamphlets.
John Malkovich (1953), who directed The Dancer Upstairs (2002) and starred in the odd eponymous film Being John Malkovich (1999).

initiative, referendum, and recall

Wolves, Checks, Balances

“Propositions are a pure democracy,” Allen Thomas declares, “and a threat to the rights of our republic.”

Citizen-initiated ballot measures, he contends, “bypass the system.”

Thomas’s wrongheaded essay — completely outside any right-minded head — “A Proposition To End Ballot Propositions,” appeared on the website of KLZ 560 AM talk show host Kim Monson.

Thomas, an author and commentator in Colorado, refers to the electorate as “the mob” and offers the old standby wolves-and-sheep-voting analogy. “Our Republic works,” informs Mr. Thomas, “because we bypass a direct democracy and instead balance the power of legislation between the state legislature and the governorship. It is a system of checks and balances.”

Yet, he does not mention the most critical check on both citizen-initiated and legislative lawmaking: judicial review. We have courts that protect our rights against encroachment in law. In fact, in the real world, it seems the courts are far more demanding in reviewing initiatives for constitutional violations than the bills legislatures pass.

Mr. Thomas also ignores that so many reforms — term limits jump to mind — would be impossible if only politicians acted.

Worse still, is the defeatism. “Progressives . . . are much better at it,” he concedes, adding “We also cannot count on the Colorado populace to think more reasonably.”

So, Thomas wants to “abolish” citizen initiatives.

More hopeful is George Mason University Professor Ilya Somin. “Referendums are a promising tool for libertarian progress,” argues Somin at Reason, “one with a proven record of success.” No need for despair.

“Much can be done,” Somin adds, “to build on that record and extend it.”

He’s right: Don’t be discouraged; take the initiative!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags citizen's initiative

Today

The Brookings

On December 8, 1927, one of the United States’ oldest think tanks was founded through the merger of three organizations that had been created by philanthropist Robert S. Brookings. Called the Brookings Institution, it would provide a blueprint for future work by research and advocacy organizations in the modern era.

On this date in 1974, a plebiscite abolished the monarchy in Greece.

Thought

Herbert Spencer

Let those who are anxious to improve the health of the poor, through the indirect machinery of law, bring their zeal to bear directly upon the work to be done. Let them appeal to men’s sympathies, and again to their interests. Let them prove to people of property that the making of these reforms will pay. Let them show that the productive powers of the labourer will be increased by bettering his health, whilst the poors’-rates will be diminished. Above all, let them demand the removal of those obstacles which existing legislation puts in the way of sanitary improvements. Their efforts thus directed will really promote progress. Whereas their efforts as now directed are either needless or injurious.
Herbert Spencer, “Sanitary Supervision,” Social Statics (1851); as quoted in Phillip W. Magness, “Herbert Spencer’s Critique of the Board of Health in 1851” (December 7, 2020).

international affairs media and media people

Maybe Next Year?

Once again, TIME is skipping right over you and me for consideration as the magazine’s “Person of the Year for 2020.”

What am I saying, YOU were named back in 2006!

TIME’s choice can be important recognition for someone working against all odds to make a very positive difference in this world. Lech Wałęsa in 1981, for instance, and Gandhi in 1930.*

Last year’s pick of Greta Thornburg? Not. So. Much.

While presidents often get the coveted cover, President-elect Joe Biden garnered only 3 percent of the public “advisory” vote. “Essential workers” had the most support at 35 percent. Seems too amorphous . . . a catalyst mostly for endless debate.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the federal government’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the last 36 years, was next at 31 percent of respondents. No one else had more than 5 percent.

Don’t choose Fauci, please! Despite his experience, his pandemic performance has been less than expert. Under his leadership, Americans were told for months that masks would be of no benefit, then suddenly mandated to wear them.

Last June, Sen. Rand Paul, who is a physician, tried to get Fauci to address the ample scientific data indicating it was safe to open the schools. Fauci deflected and dithered until flippantly declaring last week: “Close the bars and keep the schools open is what we really say.”

That is certainly not, Fox New’s Tucker Carlson exasperatedly explained, what Fauci was “really” saying months ago.

Forget Fauci. For leading the best national response to COVID-19, TIME should name Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen 2020’s “Person of the Year.”

It would send a powerful message about leadership. And freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The magazine has also named dictators and mass murderers: Hitler served as 1938’s “Man of the Year” and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin took the top spot the next year, and again in 1942; in 1979, with Americans held hostage in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini glared at us from TIME’s cover.

Note: My biggest disappointment was in 2013, when TIME cowardly choose Pope Francis over Edward Snowden.

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Tags media, Time Magazine

Today

Maj. Gen. Lafayette

On December 7, 1776, the Marquis de Lafayette arranged to enter the American military as a major general. On the same date in 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.

The 1941 date marks, of course, “the day that will live in infamy,” when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

Thought

Gouverneur Morris

It is not easy to be wise for all times, not event for the present much less for the future; and those who judge the past must recollect that, when it was the present the present was future.
Gouverneur Morris to Robert Walsh (February 5, 1811).

by Paul Jacob video

Watch: What Voters Want

Paul expands upon the big stories of last week:

This Week in Common Sense, December 5, 2020.