Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book One.
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Flogged, Founded, Fired
On August 5, 1861, the U.S. Army abolished flogging. The same day 23 years later, Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor received the foundation stone for the Statue of Liberty (which was featured in the rousing conclusion to Alfred Hitchcock’s wartime picture, Saboteur). The island was renamed Liberty Island, in 1956.
President Ronald Reagan fired 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers (who had ignored his order for them to return to work) on August 5, 1981.
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All Together Now
Chinese Communist Party-controlled Hong Kong — under the National Security Law — has issued arrest warrants for six democracy activists.
I was not honored with inclusion.
“But Paul,” you sputter, “you do not live in China!”
Well, neither do those activists — all six now live outside the territory.
Passed in secret in Beijing and imposed on Hong Kong, the new law basically criminalizes opposition to the CCP.
ALL opposition. Anywhere. Anytime. Ex post facto.
“The law criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference,” CNN explains, “and it applies to offenses committed ‘outside the region’ by foreigners who are not residents of Hong Kong or China.”
One fugitive from injustice is Nathan Law, a former Hong Kong lawmaker and a leader of 2014’s Umbrella Movement. “I was prepared when I left Hong Kong to be in exile,” Mr. Law said on social media, explaining his departure when the draconian new law took effect, “but . . . who can enjoy freedom from fear in the face of China’s powerful political machine?”
Hong Kong officials maintain that there is “no retrospective effect” to the law, but that seems obviously untrue in Law’s case, and others’.*
Samuel Chu with the Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council, a U.S. citizen for two decades, also graces the list. “I might be the 1st non-Chinese citizen to be targeted, but I will not be the last,” tweeted Chu. “If I am targeted, any American/any citizen of any nation who speaks out for HK can-and will be-too.”
Last year, when the protests first began, I wrote “I Am Hong Kong.” A year later? Even the CCP ominously agrees with Mr. Chu’s conclusion: “We are all Hong Kongers now.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* “Other activists targeted include Simon Cheng, a former employee of the British consulate in Hong Kong who was granted asylum in the United Kingdom after alleging that he was tortured in China and interrogated by secret police about the city’s pro-democracy protests,” according to CNN, “and Hong Kong pro-independence activists Ray Wong, Honcques Laus and Wayne Chan.”
Note: Before these indictments, Hong Kong authorities tossed a dozen pro-democracy candidates off the ballot for September’s election. And then suspended the election for a year citing the pandemic — obviously wanting to avoid another massive election defeat for the CCP-puppet government.
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A Prohibition Overturned
On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.
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Ambrose Bierce
“In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.”
The president’s July 30 tweet reminded us he can still manipulate the news cycle.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Reactions ranged from dismissal to outrage — and assurances of no schedule change — but the most obvious thing about the tweet was the “made-you-look” aspect. By focusing on the rapid deployment of new-old technology (the mail-in ballots) to handle the public’s panic over the now–waning pandemic, Trump does several things at once:
- shows a danger posed by lockdowns and social distancing;
- calls attention to an under-investigated phenomena, voter fraud and vote-count rigging; and
- provides an excuse for his possible failure in November.
The Democrats think this latter is the biggest danger. But they’ve a funny way of raising the alarm, considering their recurrent expressions of fear that President Trump “wouldn’t step down” if defeated.*
Apparently, calling into question the election mechanisms of the states is considered ‘going too far’ — not because it isn’t worth being vigilant about, but because questioning election integrity might undermine regime legitimacy.
The bipartisan regime.
The Epoch Times’s article on the president’s tweet concludes this way: “Attorney General William Barr said last week that there is ‘no reason’ to believe any election rigging is afoot.”
Well, Trump himself provided the reason: it is an obvious opportunity.
An opportunity that some unscrupulous partisans no doubt have little compunction about trying. Making the subject not worth discussing — a ‘third rail’ — actually makes election corruption more likely by removing some of the risk.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Hillary Clinton came out with this again, in July. This sort of thing does not help Democrats much, for it was they who, last time, could not accept defeat: antifa violence at the inauguration, followed by fake scandal-mongering and a failed impeachment made them look worse than their target.
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Mark Twain
When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic—for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the Republicans and Mugwumps know it. All the Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats and Mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. When I look around me, I am often troubled to see how many people are mad.
Mark Twain, Christian Science (1907), Book I, Chapter V.
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
On August 3, 2008, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at age 90.
Solzhenitsyn’s novels, such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward, explored life under totalitarian Communism, and remain classics of modern literature. His huge survey of Soviet concentration camps, The Gulag Archipelago, was an important contribution to the demise of Communism as a popular ideology, showing just how horrifying the repression in the Soviet Union had become.
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Watch: Shakes Out Like
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Declaration signed!
The Declaration of Independence was signed by members of the Continental Congress of the United States, on August 2, 1776.