En général, l’art du gouvernement consiste à prendre le plus d’argent qu’on peut à une grande partie des citoyens, pour le donner à une autre partie.
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
François-Marie Arouet (1694 – 1778), known by the nom de plume “Voltaire,” Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, “Money” (1770).
The Apollo 17 Lunar Module and its crew of astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, landed at Taurus – Littrow, a lunar valley, on December 11, 1972, becoming the sixth and final Apollo mission to land on the Moon. Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans orbited above, never to land on the lunar surface. Evans died in 1990; Cernan in 2017; Schmitt, a former U.S. senator (N.M.), survives at age 89.
Then there are the hardcore “memes” scorning Mr. Thompson’s medical insurance company and mocking his death — what are we supposed to make of it all?
Well, the virtuous response is to condemn the schadenfreude and mean-spiritedness.
But some of the jesting is indeed pointedly funny.
“All jokes aside,” runs the best of them (from BlueSky, the left’s alternative to X), “it’s really fucked up to see so many people on here celebrating murder. No one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health and no one else.”
Which brings us to the nib of it.
As the prospective Trump Administration puts its ducks in a row to hit the ground running in January, the “health issue” that RFKj and others have pointed to is the heavily regulated and subsidized food and drug industries, which are making us sick. The question of paying for medical care was supposed to have been solved by “Obamacare” a decade ago, but prices have only risen … and resentments along with them.
The author of that BlueSky tweet and virtually all Democrats today, think the answer to the insanity of our government-regulated “private” health insurance system is full-bore socialized medicine.
Our money-grubbing leaders know that would be a disaster, but they have only kicked the chaos we’ve inherited from the terrible policy choices of yesteryear down the road.
I’m left with nothing funny to say about that.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Note: As this episode was put to bed, the biggest update to the story was the announcement of a suspect, or “person of interest”: Luigi Mangione. Make of that what you will.
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Advice, n. The smallest current coin.
Conservative, n. A statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a Liberal, who wants to replace them with others.
Diplomacy, n. The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Four entries from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).
On December 10, 1884, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published. This novel, narrated in the first person by the title character, is a dark comedy of the antebellum South and slavery, and has been considered by more than one literary critic as the “Great American Novel.”
On this date in 1901, the first Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded — to economist Frédéric Passy (pictured above), co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Union; and to Henry Dunant the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Passy was an admirer of Richard Cobden and an active member in the French Liberal School of Political Economy that developed in the tradition of J. B. Say, Destutt de Tracy, and Frédéric Bastiat. His published works include Leçons d’économie politique (1860 – 61); La Démocratie et l’Instruction (1864); L’Histoire du Travail (1873); Malthus et sa Doctrine (1868); and La Solidarité du Travail et du Capital (1875).
Good riddance. But what next? Will any semblance of freedom come to Syria and be sustained?
“Syria is a mess,” President-elect Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, concluding: “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”
He’s not wrong.
Still, events in Syria add to the foreign policy challenges, increasingly military challenges, awaiting the new administration — from the war in Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza, to the threat of Chinese aggression across the Taiwan Strait against economically and geographically strategic Taiwan.
Or conflict might erupt in the South China Sea — a body of water that China claims more than 90 percent of … an outrageous, illegal contention, which nonetheless the PLA Navy increasingly enforces.
Recently, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping gave President Biden — meant for the President-elect, of course — four red lines that America was not to cross. The first two are instructive: “the Taiwan question” and “democracy and human rights.”
In short, it would be bad manners and really ruffle tender Beijing feathers were the U.S. to continue to arm and protect free, democratic Taiwan and to raise the issue of the numerous genocides the CCP regime continues to inflict on ethnic and religious minorities.
And everybody else.
It’s a dangerous world. Much of which the United States has pledged to defend. Good luck, Mr. Trump.
No wonder there is “a record high” percentage of Americans who “want the government to spend more on the military.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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