On December 14, 1918, Friedrich Karl von Hessen, a German prince elected by the Parliament of Finland to become King Väinö I, renounced the Finnish throne.
In 1939, on this date, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland and starting the Winter War.
On December 14, 1819, Alabama became the 22nd state of these United States.
The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.
Avicenna, “On Medicine” (c. 1020).
The TIME “Person of the Year” deserves the pronouns ‘they/them/their’ — but should have been one Chinese politician….
On December 13, 1636, the Massachusetts Bay Colony organized three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians.
The National Guard of the United States traces its heritage back to this event.
Paul Jacob covers the big stories from democracy to TIME magazine’s cover story, to . . . UFOs:
On December 12, 1939, Finnish forces defeated those of the Soviet Union in the first major victory of what became known as the Winter War, in the Battle of Tolvajärvi.
Texas A&M University’s Student Code of Conduct office is harassing a student for posting pro-Biden signs on campus last November.
Don’t believe it?
Well, ya got me. The signs were pro-Trump, not pro-Biden.
I committed this small and fleeting deception to make a point. The fact that posting of signs, announcements, etc., on a university campus, including the Texas A&M campus, is nothing unusual. The kids these days (along with those of the last umpteen centuries) have always engaged in political debate on campus, trying to promulgate their views.
Doing so doesn’t typically cause big problems with officials of U.S. universities. Unless — and, alas, increasingly — the message being promulgated contradicts approved establishmentarian political themes.
According to a CampusReform.org report, Dion Okeke, president of Students for Trump, received a letter from the school’s Student Conduct Office saying he’d better meet with the Student Conduct office about posting the signs. Otherwise, he could face charges of improper student conduct, and his registration could be placed on “administrative hold.”
Universities doubtless have rules about sign placement. Okeke’s sign-posting sounds like a minor infraction at worst.
If it even was an infraction at all.
Are the veiled and not-so-veiled threats in the letter signed by Jessica Welsch, assistant coordinator of the Student Conduct Office, a proportionate response to any alleged sin by Dion Okeke? No.
Meanwhile, a Texas A&M student who perpetrated a hoax about alleged racism last summer is not in any trouble with the school.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, “Rights.”
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 (died, August 3, 2008) and, as a novelist, philosopher, historian, short story writer and dissident helped bring down the totalitarian Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn’s novels include One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and Cancer Ward (1966). His behemoth history of Soviet prison camps, The Gulag Archipelago, was a major event in the cultural eclipse of far left ideology in the West, when it was published in 1973.
Two huge stories broke this week.
The first is that the “People’s Republic” of China guided American policy for decades using “old friends” who had “penetrated the highest levels of the U.S. government and financial institutions before the Trump administration.”
Bill Gerz, writing in The Washington Times, reported that “Di Dongsheng, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, also suggested in a Nov. 28 speech that China’s Communist Party helped Hunter Biden, a son of presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden, obtain Chinese business deals.”
These remarks were posted as a video on the professor’s Weibo account (think “Chinese Facebook”). Though quickly removed, copies went viral.
The second story? “Did Donald Trump Nearly Confirm Existence of Aliens? Israeli Ex-Space Chief Makes Bizarre Claim,” by Jeffrey Martin, writing at Newsweek. “Professor Haim Eshed, who served as the head of Israel’s space program from 1981 to 2010 spoke to the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Aharonot on Sunday. On Tuesday, the Jerusalem Post published some of Eshed’s quotes in English and they contained the most incredible claims made about Trump, who has long [been] the center of conspiracy theories—some of which he has actively encouraged.”
Eshed claims that both the U.S. and Israel have had contact with extraterrestrial civilizations (a “Galactic Federation,” no less) and that President Trump was about to go full-on Full Disclosure but — somehow — the aliens stopped him.
Quite a yarn, not unfamiliar to science fiction readers and moviegoers. But note: quite a few de-classified Pentagon, FBI and CIA documents suggest something very much like this. And in the last few years we’ve covered the U.S. Government’s trickling admissions that the UFO phenomenon is not all fakery, but real and odd.
Both stories hail from professors with close ties to foreign governments. Both point to actual conspiracies. Both present “epistemic” problems for us: they are neither easily proved or disproved.
Both, also, are too eerily plausible.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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