Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Francis Bacon, “Of Studies,” Meditationes sacræ (1597).
On October 2, 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed, preventing him from reacting to the economic downturn following the Great War in a Progressive fashion — making his response de facto laissez faire. One insider, and skeptic of Progressive hubris, archly referred to Wilson’s incapacitation as “a stroke of luck.”
His successor in office, President Warren G. Harding, would go on to massively cut spending as well as taxes, and take on regulation as well. He also released Woodrow Wilson’s domestic war prisoners — ranging from journalists, ordinary folk to socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs — who had dissented from Wilson’s involvement in the war.
The Depression of the early 1920s, though as deep as the early 1930s, proved remarkably brief, thanks to Harding . . . and a stroke of luck.
On October 2, 1789, George Washington sent the proposed Constitutional amendments (the United States’ Constitution’s Bill of Rights) to the States for ratification.
It has a fake part and a real part.
The fake part itself has two parts: 1) how to learn whether voters support term limits, and 2) how to learn how a legislative body can function unless incumbents, whose advantages over challengers enable them to return to office sporting reelection rates exceeding 90 percent, may remain in place until ousted by death or scandal?
The answer to the first everyone knows. The answer to the second is to write down procedures and give tutorials and guidebooks on how the legislature works to newcomers in legislative halls.
The real mystery, though, is how to overthrow term limits given voters’ massive continuing support?
The answer?
This is where they get “clever”! Their plan appears to be: concoct the fake mystery and set up investigations premised on it.
And maybe sacrifice lambs and the first-born to the gods, hoping and praying and hoping some more that something turns up . . . anything to enable downtrodden entrenched legislators to cling to power for all eternity.
Regardless of popular support for term limits — support, after all, that has been confirmed in polls on the question conducted over the past four decades as well as in election after election.
This all explains why North Dakota legislators are paying $220,000 to Gary Consulting to find out how voters — who in 2022 passed term limits of eight years on the state house and eight years on the state senate — feel about term limits and how lawmakers feel about term limits.
I’ll tell you for free: voters love them; incumbents hate them.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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La culture est un instrument manié par des professeurs pour fabriquer des professeurs qui à leur tour fabriqueront des professeurs.
Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who, when their turn comes, will manufacture professors.
Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, part 2: “Uprootedness,” chapter 1: “Uprootedness in the Towns” (1949).
Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae.
To ask the proper question is half of knowing.
Roger Bacon, as cited in LIFE (September 8, 1958), p. 73.
On October 1, 1908, Ford produced the first Model T at a plant in Detroit. The auto could travel 40 miles per hour and ran on gasoline or hemp-based fuel. (As oil prices fell, Ford phased out the hemp option.) The Model T was the first car designed for a mass market, rather than as a luxury item. By 1927, Ford had built 15 million Model T cars — the longest production run of any car model until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972.
Nepal’s government had banned social media, fearing the extremity of sentiment that might be expressed against the regime, but what followed that ban brought down the government. The general mood of protest escalated into nationwide demonstrations, clashes with security forces, and the storming of government buildings, resulting in at least 74 deaths and over 2000 injuries.
But this was not an organized coup. It developed so swiftly from youth protest to the fall of Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s government* that it sure seemed to be spontaneous, taking just a few weeks’ time (or days’, depending where you set the starting point.)
Interestingly, the government the protesters ousted was communist, as in Marxist-Leninist — but both the ruling CPN-UML and the Maoist Centre are less ideologically rigid than traditional Marxist parties, focusing on nationalism, development, and power-sharing rather than the totalitarian push for utopia.
That is, the commies went straight to the corruption part of the long arc of socialism.
And that’s what young people objected to, focusing special ire on “nepo baby” status examples, the scions of wealthy rulers living life extra-large.
But the low employment rates also mattered, as did the censorship of the Internet, upon which so many Nepalese economically depended.
In fact, the momentum of Nepal’s uprising appears to have been largely driven by domestic digital activism on TikTok and Discord.
It’s not called the “Gen Z Revolution” for nothing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Protesters battled security forces on September 8; by the next day the parliament building and other government offices were in flames and the prime minister had resigned. The social media ban was lifted. The army imposed a nationwide curfew on the 10th; Sushila Karki, 73-year-old former Supreme Court Chief Justice became Nepal’s first female prime minister on September 12, 2025.
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The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Francis Bacon, Essex’s Device (1595).
Thomas Edison’s first commercial hydroelectric power plant began operation on September 30, 1882. Dubbed the Vulcan Street Plant, it was established on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin, and was housed in the Appleton Paper and Pulp Company building, which burned to the ground in 1891.
The candidate wants to increase taxes and government spending, reduce freedom and individual responsibility. The standard Democratic agenda, but foisted bigger and faster.
One announced plan is to scrap mass transit fees.
Taxpayers would then suffer new costs. But so would riders who travel “free.” Greater crowding is one. Another is the kind of people who would be more often riding, no longer discouraged by having to pay fares or having to risk arrest for jumping a turnstile. Riders would be plagued by more bums and more criminals.
Beggars already being a common sight on NYC subways, it’s easy to project that ending financial and physical barriers to entry would only encourage more. Criminals would also be encouraged.
We might consider what happened elsewhere when this has been tried. Kansas City, Boston, Philadelphia — a “scientific socialist” would insist on a thorough study of all those cases, but Mamdani’s merely mentioned Bogotá’s, and is not pushing a study, maybe because he’s seen the mess Albuquerque’s in, after eliminating its one-dollar bus fare in 2023. Buses were soon being used as “rolling homeless shelters.” Local media also reported that they were “being used as getaway vehicles for shoplifters. . . . The addition of security guards on buses has undoubtedly caused criminals to think twice, but it has not solved the problem.”
The author of these words, Paul Gessing, is hoping that recounting Albuquerque’s experience will convince Mamdani to scrap his free-transit proposal. Should Mamdani become mayor, he may eventually be forced do so, but probably only after first making everybody suffer.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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