Platforms can hardly get more different than Twitter and the Libertarian Party. But they are equally interesting.
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Lincoln, Vermin, Trump
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Comte de Volney
When time and labor had developed riches, cupidity restrained by the laws, became more artful, but not less active. Under the mask of union and civil peace, it fomented in the bosom of every state an intestine war, in which the citizens, divided into contending corps of orders, classes, families, unremittingly struggled to appropriate to themselves, under the name of supreme power, the ability to plunder every thing, and render every thing subservient to the dictates of their passions; and this spirit of encroachment, disguised under all possible forms, but always the same in its object and motives, has never ceased to torment the nations.
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Montesquieu
On January 18, 1689, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, French satirist and philosopher, was born.
His treatise The Spirit of the Laws was a major influence upon America’s founding generation. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He did more than any other author to secure the place of the word despotism in the political lexicon.
In 1811, former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson translated and published Destutt de Tracy’s Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s ‘Spirit of Laws,’ a very popular review of republican principles — which helps demonstrate how important these French writers were to the American form of government.
Montesquieu died on February 10, 1755.
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Much Ado in D.C.
The impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump began yesterday, after much stalling by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had postponed sending the House impeachment documents to the Senate after the finalization of the impeachment vote a month ago. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts swore in the assembled senators — 99 of 100 signed their oaths — and a schedule was announced.
The question of new documents and testimony remains a bit up in the air. “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says a federal watchdog’s report on President Donald Trump’s freeze of aid to Ukraine makes it more important for Congress to get new testimony and documents,” according to the Associated Press. Seems odd that a trial would require more information than was present in the original indictment, er, impeachment, but I’m no scholar of the legality of this issue.
I do remember the last presidential impeachment.
And it was a real partisan — indeed, all-around — let-down.
Interestingly, that trial was held around the time Bill Clinton was to give 1999’s State of the Union address. And he gave it, indeed, in the midst of the whole brouhaha.
Defiantly.
What will President Trump do? What should he do?
I don’t know. But I know what would be fun: deliver it via Twitter.
The Constitution, as I’ve noted before, does not specify a format of the annual presentation before Congress. Thomas Jefferson wrote it out and had it delivered. No speech at all.
But the idea of the Twitterer-in-Chief tweeting it and even not correcting the spelling errors? Priceless.
He could end with “Covfefe.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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George Stigler
On January 17, 1937, Chicago School economist George Stigler was born. Stigler won a Nobel Memorial Prize for his work. His autobiography is entitled Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist.
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Ludwig von Mises
The most important event in the history of the last hundred years is the displacement of liberalism by etatism. Etatism appears in two forms: socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion. . . .
Ludwig von Mises defining “statism” in Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (1944).
Etatism assigns to the state the task of guiding the citizens and of holding them in tutelage. It aims at restricting the individual’s freedom to act. It seeks to mold his destiny and to vest all initiative in the government alone.
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Revolutionaries for Bernie
It seems like just last week we were arguing about how it is not OK to go around “punching Nazis.”
Now we have a Bernie Sanders campaign employee fuming about putting people he disagrees with into “re-education camps.”
“The only thing that fascists understand is violence,” said a Field Manager in the campaign’s Iowa office, as caught on all-too-candid camera by Project Veritas. “So, the only way you can confront them is with violence.”
It is one thing to get called a “fascist!” or “Nazi!” by a leftist for disagreeing with a leftist, it is another thing to be sucker-punched by a leftist for disagreeing with a leftist — and something far, far worse to be put into a concentration camp for expressing non-leftist-approved views.
His name is Kyle Jurek. Project Veritas has certainly not dubbed him a typical Bernie voter. His views are described as “extreme left-wing fringe,” and the utility of the clandestine recordings, taken over months, said to lie in the insight they provide “into the mentality of many Sanders staffers and what they truly believe.”
Jurek’s beliefs include extra-legal violence and Soviet Gulag revisionism, expressed with f-bombs and mf-barrages. “You want to fight against the revolution, you’re going to die for it, mother—” Jurek lashes out at “fellow” Democrats . . . and MSNBC . . . and Trump voters. He talks about setting Milwaukee afire. And not rhetorically.
We’ve long worried about the Vermont senator, who has defended horrific Soviet and Cuban rule throughout his long history of communist apologia.
I guess the real test is how Jurek’s comrades — er, fellow Sanders supporters — react to the revelations.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
N.B. As this commentary posts, the only official response has come from the Iowa state director for the Sanders campaign, Misty Rebik, who dismissed the video, saying, “The hundreds of thousands of Iowans we’ve talked to this caucus season don’t care about political gossip . . .” Jurek has not been dismissed. A search of the Washington Post and New York Times websites show neither paper has reported on the story.
The Babylon Bee made the obvious “democratic gulag” joke.
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Religious Freedom
On January 16, 1786, Virginia enacted the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson.
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Antony Sammeroff
Far from creating a futuristic utopia where — once our security needs are met — we are all liberated to pursue our dreams, become great scientists, scholars, artists, and entrepreneurs, the universal basic income threatens a totalitarian horror the likes of which we are used to seeing imagined only on The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.
Certainly the poor, who depend solely on their handouts to survive, will quickly become very cautious of what they say and do, but even reasonably affluent people will think twice before risking a sum that is high enough to live on. The UBI will institutionalise the state as each of our patrons — and us as wards of the state. Once this relationship is established we will enter into a frightening era where the government is our provider and the UBI can easily be weaponized by our rulers to shape us into compliance.
Antony Sammeroff, “Universal Basic Income: A Dream Come True for Despots,” Mises Wire (January 11, 2020).
Remember during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, when she promised “to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”?
She seemed surprisingly surprised that coal miners were so displeased.
Have no fear, however — quickly she highlighted her $30 billion plan to provide sustenance and re-training to these soon-to-be displaced miners.
Leading in the latest Iowa poll, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vt.) opines his own deep commitment to enacting “Medicare for All” and, by the magic of Washington statecraft, summarily executing private health insurance in these United States.
“The private health insurance business employs at least a half a million people, covers about 250 million Americans, and generates roughly a trillion dollars in revenues,” reports The New York Times. “Its companies’ stocks are a staple of the mutual funds that make up millions of Americans’ retirement savings.”
In last night’s debate, CNN’s Abby Phillip read the Vermont senator a question from an Iowa Democratic voter: “Des Moines is an insurance town. What happens to all . . . the health insurance industry here if there is ‘Medicare for All’? What happens to all the jobs and the livelihoods of the people that live in insurance towns like Des Moines?”
“We build in to our ‘Medicare for All’ program a transition fund of many, many billions of dollars,” Sanders explained, “that will provide for up to five years income and health care and job training for those people.”
Come on, don’t get uptight about whether your job — or your whole industry — is terminated. Uncle Bernie will set you up with a new gig, and some cash to hold you over.
Trust Washington to take good care of you.
Or use Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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