On August 27, 1828, the South American states of Brazil and Argentina recognized the sovereignty of Uruguay in the Treaty of Montevideo.
Do the young think that their trendy-again socialist notions are new?
There’s no hat older than socialism. Our civilization has been grappling with socialist ideas for at least two centuries. While the arguments for and against socialism are many and varied, maybe it all boils down to ignorance and greed.
“This century’s socialist wave starts at a big disadvantage,” wrote Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., for the Wall Street Journal, yesterday. “It arrives as the socialism we already have runs out of that famous quantity, other
Today’s allegedly “democratic” socialists use “the socialism we already have” as an excuse for more. Truth is, we cannot afford what we now must put up with.
“An American baby born today owes $376,000 in federal debt and unfunded entitlement liabilities, assuming the burden is evenly distributed,” explains Mr. Jenkins. “Of course, it isn’t. We oldsters plan on checking out before the bill comes due.”
The intergenerational conflict of actually-existing socialism has been buried under nice phrases like “Social Security” — even as that specific program teeters, insolvent, requiring re-jiggering to ratchet up burdens on the young every other generation.
I see why the young would object. It’s harder to see why they would want more of the dog that bites them.
“Let me be the 1,000th to notice that the New York socialism of Mayor Zohran Mamdani seems to appeal especially to privileged young people, still supported in adulthood by their parents.”
And let me be the millionth to observe that demanding other people do your work and pay your bills amounts to exactly what these very nice socialists have always railed against.
Greed.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Οὐ μὲν σχέτλια ἔργα θεοὶ μάκαρες φιλέουσιν,
ἀλλὰ δίκην τίουσι καὶ αἴσιμα ἔργ’ ἀνθρώπων.
The blessed gods have no love for crime.
Homer, The Odyssey, Book XIV (Robert Fagles, trans., 1996), lines 83–84.
They honor justice, honor the decent acts of men.
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A Flag, a Vote, a Scandal
On August 26, 1863, the Swedish-language liberal newspaper Helsingfors Dagblad proposed the current blue-and-white cross flag as the flag of Finland.
In 1920 on the 26th of August, the 19th amendment to the United States Constitution — giving women the same access to voting as men — was certified.
In 2014 on this day in August, The Jay Report into the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal was published.
The people behind the Flock cameras that I talked about a month ago have not stopped trying to erect a total roadway surveillance state.
Pairing traffic cameras with artificial intelligence, the company behind the cameras provides a complete spy system, tracking drivers’ and automobiles every move. At least, they are trying. They have enough data to cook up a transportation profile on you right now, at least if you drive through the cities and freeways where Flock cameras are pointed
The fact that the police with access to Flock’s database cannot keep their hands off the data is just the tip of the goosefeather.
Musician, technology maven, and YouTuber Benn Jordan decided to test Flock Safety, to see if what is good for the goose is also good for the gander. So he registered as a journalist to attend Flock Forward 2026, the company’s swag-pushing, PowerPoint-heavy convention. But he was rebuffed: no journalists allowed. Not only barred from the convention floor, the good geese at Flock so feared exposure that they had the Hilton he had registered at cancel his reservation!
Using his technological expertise, Mr. Jordan recorded Internet traffic and open-mic conversations as well as — and this is genius — used a.i. face-recognition to answer Juvenal’s challenge, “who will watch the watchers”: he watched, finding policemen, politicians, businessmen and a former Minnesota state senator amongst the gaggle.
We are told that we have no expectation of privacy on public roads. But is a Flock of a.i.-backed cameras the kind of thing we want spying on us, tracking our every move?
While we say that “it’s only a conspiracy if they do it in secret,” what is it when the people who seek to destroy the last vestiges of our privacy demand their own privacy even as they plot against us?
Not good. That’s what.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Chief Joseph
You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Chief Joseph), “An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs” (1879), The North American Review, 128 (269), 412–433.
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Galileo’s Telescope
On August 25, 1609, Galileo Galilei first demonstrated his new construction, the telescope, to Venetian lawmakers. Magnifying distant images at first by three times, then, soon after, by about eight or nine times, it quickly became a profitable sideline for Galileo, who sold his telescopes to merchants who found them useful both at sea and as items of trade. He published his initial telescopic astronomical observations in March of the next year.
Galileo did not exactly invent the device, but perfected it for astronomical observation. It was called a “Danish perspective glass” in the version that had inspired him, and the idea might have been ancient. It was at least not wholly new, as suggested in the great short story “The Eye of Allah” by Rudyard Kipling.
It has been five years since I first wrote about “The Man the Media Missed,” Dr. Peter Daszak. But this British zoologist, crucial in the funneling of U.S. taxpayer funds to gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is now feeling heat from U.S. prosecutors. He may get away unsinged, but . . .
As reported here over the weekend, a man has confessed to conspiring to “evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to grant research funding and the Covid-19 pandemic.” His name is David Morens, and he received two bottles of a Napa Valley red blend wine from Daszak. And a note containing two killer sentences:
“This is the first of what I hope will be a continued series of expressions of gratitude for your advice, support, and behind-the-scenes shenanigans in my battle against your bosses [sic] boss, his boss, and the ultimate boss on the hill. It takes courage and commitment to do what you’ve done, given your job and the vindictive nature of the Administration.”
The effrontery: In April 2020, funding to Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance was cut off. This is apparently the president’s “vindictiveness.” How awful of the administration, seeking vengeance for Daszak’s evading the prohibition on dangerous research . . . and unleashing a deadly virus upon the world!
Daszak yearned for a more forgiving president, I guess.
For his part, Morens — now facing five years in prison — was more than forgiving, and advised Daszak to hide emails, also complaining that FOIA requests were “dreadful and paranoia inducing.”
Daszak may get away with his crime against humanity, but at least this fact is clear: Morens and his boss Antony Fauci conspired with Peter Daszak to bury the truth of their deadly “shenanigans.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Δειλαί τοι δειλῶν γε καὶ ἐγγύαι ἐγγυάασθαι.
Worthless is as worthless does.
Homer, The Odyssey, Book VIII (Martin Hammond, trans., 2000), line 351. This is variously translated. William Cullen Bryant (1871) has Vulcan say these words: “little is the worth of pledges given For worthless debtors.” Richmond Lattimore’s rendering (1965; 1991) is ungainly but follows the Greek closely: “The business of wretches is wretched even in guarantee giving.” Stanley Lombardo’s version (2000) is especially elegant: “Worthless is the surety assured for the worthless.” Robert Fitzgerald (1998), however, breezes by the poetry here: “I should not swear to a scoundrel’s honor.”
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The Great Soviet Crackup Began
On August 24, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On the same day, and not coincidentally, Ukraine declared itself independent from the Soviet Union.