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Thought

Daniel Defoe

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private.

Daniel Defoe, of the London pandemic of 1665, A Journal of the Plague Year / Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London (1722).
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Today

Atahualpa

On July 26, 1533, Francisco Pizarro’s Spanish conquistadors strangled to death Atahualpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, thereby ending 300 years of Inca civilization. The conquistadors were greedy and murderous, but the Inca civilization, arguably, was worse: totalitarian and radically inegalitarian. But they made great high-mountain roads. (Arguments about infrastructure promoted by Big Government continue to this very day. And it is quite possible that an earlier civilization made the roadways, which the Inca merely renovated.)

On this day in 1948, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 desegregating the U.S. military.

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audio podcast

Listen: Mobocracy v. Democracy?

Paul returns to the scene of the crime: Portland, Oregon, and Washington, DC, and every major news outlet in America:

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Today

A Fine Point of the War

On July 25, 1861, the U.S. Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, stating that the war with the seceded states of the Confederacy was being fought to preserve the Union, not to end slavery.

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Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people U.S. Constitution

The Mobs Attacked and Defended

Portland, riots, protests, Ted Wheeler

It’s “mobocracy” — the riots in major cities around the nation, but especially in Portland, Oregon, where the president sent federal agents. Local police had stood back for weeks as Democratic politicians — such as Joe Biden — referred to the rioters as “peaceful protesters.” Even as the mobs lit fires in the streets, defaced property, and attempted to break into government buildings.

Buck Sexton, writing at The Hill, makes the obvious linkage between the “anarchists” and the “Democratic” Party. 

But Sexton doesn’t really answer the key questions: “Why are anarchists terrorizing Portland? What was the real purpose of the Seattle ‘Capital Hill Autonomous Zone’? Why were ‘Occupy City Hall’ protesters allowed to fight with police in lower Manhattan for a month, until officers cleared out their encampment on Wednesday?” Sexton rejects the official reasons give by the movements’ apparent leaders, but doesn’t go very far beyond Democratic Party attempts to leverage the riots.

Which may at least offer amusement. “The reason I am here tonight is to stand with you,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler assured the mob as he put on goggles. “So if they’re launching the tear gas against you, they’re launching the tear gas against me.” But that same night, his security detail “scuffled” with “protesters” and his own police department threatened to use tear gas and impact weapons on the incendiary horde.

Is this really about legitimate protest, as Biden insists?

Fighting federal fascism, as Democrats and many others insist?

Americans are all-in for criminal justice reform and the right to protest. Many, me included, have peacefully taken to the streets in recent weeks.

But there is nothing peaceful about assault, arson, property destruction.

And Democrats who aim to use the fracas to beat Trump in November may find that ‘playing with fire’ . . . burns. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Gouveneur Morris

Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens, and let them vote. Are they property? Why, then, is no other property included? The houses in this city are worth more than all the wretched slaves who cover the rice swamps of South Carolina. The admission of slaves into the Representation when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Government instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey who views with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice.

Gouveneur Morris,Debate at the Constitutional Convention (August 8, 1787).
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Today

Splashdown!

On July 24, 1487, citizens in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, went on strike against a ban on foreign beer.

On the same day of 1823’s calendar, slavery was abolished in Chile.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the splashdown of the Apollo 11 capsule into the Pacific Ocean. Astronauts Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong spent more than eight days in space. The mission included 30 orbits of Earth’s satellite and a landing upon the lunar surface, an important milestone, so to speak, in humanity’s history of exploration. The astronauts brought back with them over 47 pounds of lunar rock, gravel, and dust.

On this day in 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court told President Richard Nixon that he lacked constitutional authority to withhold the infamous “Nixon Tapes” from Congress.

July 24 serves as Pioneer Day in Utah and as Simón Bolívar Day in Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.

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crime and punishment insider corruption national politics & policies

The Thick Blue Line

crime, criminal justice, Congress

In Minnesota — Land of 10,000 Lakes and a startling number of police killings of unarmed, innocent citizens, including George Floyd — the state legislature has “passed the most expansive criminal justice reforms in the state’s history.”

Though acknowledged as merely a start, it is good news. As are the banning in many major departments of neck restraints, and the kibosh placed on chokeholds in the nation’s capital.

Yet Eric Gardner died back in 2014 when placed in a chokehold by New York City police. Nevertheless, there is still no NYC ordinance against it. Numerous other cities also lack any such rule or law.

Why the glacial slowness?

It isn’t for lack of popular support. According to Cato Institute’s newly-released poll, 63 percent favor ending qualified immunity for police. 

So what is it? It’s no mystery; we do not need a blue ribbon investigative effort.

The Washington Post reports that reform-minded police chiefs and city officials “have repeatedly . . . run headlong into two formidable and interconnected forces: veteran officers who resist these efforts and the powerful unions fighting discipline.”

That second factor is key. Police unions are “powerful,” in part, because their political endorsement at election time means more to elected officials than the reform-minded opinions of mere citizens. 

So when you learn that, at the federal level, Democrats recently killed all prospects for criminal justice reform this year, you will not find yourself flummoxed.

Sadly, this festering dysfunction in our representative system corrupts our justice system.

And deaths result.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Lord Acton

“Great men are almost always bad men.”

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 13th Marquess of Groppoli, KCVO, DL (1834 – 1902).

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Today

Year of Our Ford

On this day in 1903, the Ford Motor Company sold its first car. Less than 30 years later, Aldous Huxley satirized Ford’s assembly line procedures in his novel Brave New World. Arguably, both the assembly line and the satire advanced freedom.