Scientific method consists in applying to those subjects which lie without the range of our immediate experience those same common-sense methods of reasoning which successful men of the world apply in judging of matters which concern their own interests.
Simon Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy, 1886, chapter III, “Of Scientific Method”
Paul Jacob wraps up the week’s biggest stories, and a few more, besides!
October 11, 1890, marks the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
On the same date in 1976, President Gerald R. Ford approved a congressional joint resolution Public Law 94-479 to appoint, posthumously, George Washington to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, as part of the bicentennial celebrations.
John J. Pershing is the only other American to attain this high title, and the only one to achieve it while alive.
Paul Jacob on conspiracies, dunces, and politicians. But he repeats himself.
Sixty-one years ago, on October 10, 1957, Ayn Rand’s dystopian/utopian novel Atlas Shrugged was published. Written to expound and defend a specifically individualist, freedom/free-market point of view, it is one of the most influential and literarily successful didactic novels ever written.
On October 10, 1973, Austrian-born American economist, Ludwig von Mises (pictured above) died.
Two-hundred fifty-nine years earlier, the French law-maker and Jansenist Pierre le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert died.
Both economists were known for their defenses of freer markets: le Pesant for pioneering the critique of mercantilism, arguing that a nation’s wealth consisted in what its people produce and trade; Mises for systematizing economic theory and advancing the critique of both socialism and latter-day mercantilism (what he called “interventionism”).
Politics and culture move according to rhythms not easy to comprehend, but political and cultural insanity seems to rush up and pull back according to time and tide.
The latest wave includes the growth of “diversity” or “anti-racism” training at workplaces and on campuses. One of its pernicious purposes seems to be to make people feel guilty if they have too-white skin color.
Race-based indictments are the opposite of judging people for content of character rather than color of skin.
According to the ideologies informing the indoctrination, failure to racially discriminate (in the “right” way) proves racial discrimination. Indifference to questions of race proves “racism.” One feature of the current dispiriting environment is ritual self-denunciation for imaginary crimes, like that of penning a bland encomium to the value of college football.
Until recently, universities that imposed “anti-racist” indoctrination could rely on uninterrupted federal funding. But now the Trump administration has started to ban the imposition of critical race theory in federally funded programs.
Trump’s executive order states that critical race theory is “rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans.”
The University of Iowa and John A. Logan College have announced, with emphatic reluctance, that they’ll discontinue the indoctrination for now — lest they lose funding.
But they are ready to reverse their reversals at a moment’s notice.
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Strangely enough, the fall from favor of the money-maker coincides with an increase in his social usefulness.
Bertrand de Jouvenel, in F.A. Hayek (ed.), Capitalism and the Historians (1954).
On October 9, 1635, Protestant theologian Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he spoke out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land. He moved south, founding Providence Plantations, where he worked for separation of church and state, the rights of aboriginal Americans, and against slavery.
Can we start laughing again?
If the actual positions of our goofy ruling class won’t do it for you, then . . . what about QAnon?
A few weeks ago, President Trump was asked about QAnon. “At the crux of the theory,” a reporter explained, “is this belief that [Trump is] secretly saving the world from this Satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals.” She went on to ask the president if that was something he was behind.
“I haven’t heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing?”
This may be the most politic and understated response ever given by our impolitic and hyperbolic leader.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives took QAnon seriously enough to formally condemn it, asking the intelligence agencies to monitor it closely. Though it is a set of conspiracy theorists, a few enthusiasts apparently have taken criminal actions.
Not included in “the widely supported bipartisan measure”? Seventeen Republicans and “Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.),” reported Christian Britschgi on Friday. “The latter argued the resolution posed serious free speech concerns and could be counterproductive.”
Amash had the wit to see that sending the FBI to investigate “conspiracy theorists who believe in a deep state that’s fighting against them” might possibly . . . “just confirm . . . their fears.”
If you are like me, you know little about pedophiles and bupkis about cannibal cults. But if Trump supporters who spin tall tales about Trump directing secret military units to nuke underground nests of alien deviltry unnerve politicians enough to publicly condemn them for doing so, three responses seem rational:
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On October 8, 1793, American merchant, president of the Second Continental Congress (1775–1777) and first and third Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Hancock (b. 1737), died.
The date October 8, 1582, does not exist in the records of Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, the result of that year’s implementation of the Gregorian calendar.
Fearing a Catholic plot, Protestant countries adopted the more accurate calendar much later. By the time Britain and its colonies got on board in 1752, eleven days had to be “disappeared.” This caused riots in some places, as people suspected some horrible chicanery — and in actual fact the inspiration for the “Give us our eleven days” protest had something to do with taxes, so it might not have been as idiotic as it now seems.