On December 29, 1911, Mongolia gained independence from the Qing Dynasty.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.”
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Bk. II, Ch. 5; source: Die Wahlverwandtschaften, Hamburger Ausgabe, Bd. 6 (Romane und Novellen I), dtv Verlag, München, 1982, p. 397 (II.5)
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We Won’t Go
What can we do for freedom? Paul has an answer:
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An Arrest, a Resignation
On December 28, 1797, Thomas Paine was arrested in France for treason, after being tried in absentia on December 26 and convicted. Before moving to France, Paine had been an instrumental figure in the American Revolution as the author of Common Sense. Paine then moved to Paris to become involved with the French Revolution, but the chaotic political climate turned against him. Paine had not earned friends in the Revolution with his vocal opposition to capital punishment.
“During the whole of my imprisonment,” Paine later wrote, “prior to the fall of Robespierre, there was no time when I could think my life worth twenty-four hours, and my mind was made up to meet its fate. The Americans in Paris went in a body to the convention to reclaim me, but without success.”
Paine’s imprisonment in France caused a general uproar in America. Future President James Monroe used all of his diplomatic connections to get Paine released in November 1794.
With the publication of Paine’s The Age of Reason — a great part of which he wrote in French prison — the American population turned against him, and he died penniless in New York in 1809.
On this date in 1832, John C. Calhoun (pictured above, in his most famous but hardly most becoming portrait) resigned as Vice President of the United States, the first to do so.
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Benjamin Franklin
Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.
Benjamin Franklin in ‘On Freedom of Speech and the Press,’ Pennsylvania Gazette (November 17, 1737).
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A Deplorable Christmas
Just in time for Christmas, Rolling Stone released a recorded interview of Michael Moore showing the Roger & Me filmmaker in pure Scrooge mode.
Shortly before Election Day, 2016, Moore had famously characterized a likely Trump win as middle America’s rebuke of the establishment. “They’re not racist or rednecks,” he sympathetically said of the Trump voters he had talked to, “they’re actually pretty decent people.”
But white men, he now proclaims, are “not good people.”
What’s the ‘deplorable’ ratio?
“Two-thirds of all white guys voted for Trump,” offers Moore. “That means anytime you see three white guys walking . . . down the street towards you, two of them voted for Trump. You need to move over to the other sidewalk because these are not good people that are walking toward you. You should be afraid of them.”
Before Trump’s election, sympathy; after, antipathy.
Why the change of heart?
He provides one clue. “I refuse to participate in post-racial America,” he fumes. “I refuse to say because we elected Obama that suddenly that means everything is ok, white people have changed. White people have not changed.”
Has it always really been about racism?
Another theory, though, would look at part of Moore’s 2016 prophecy: white working class men would be worse off with Trump.
Yet employment is way up; even Ford is moving back to Michigan, as Tim Poole notes. Could Moore be bitter because his enemy seems to be succeeding where his side has failed?
A movie now in the theaters may get to the real issue. Moore, by engaging in hatred and fear-mongering, has gone over to the Dark Side of the Force.
Power corrupts; partisan powerlust corrupts partisanly.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Anders Chydenius
Fatherland without freedom and merit is a large word with little meaning.
Anders Chydenius, For What Reason do so Many Swedes Emigrate Every Year?, 1765.
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Flushing Remonstrance
On December 27, 1657, a group of English citizens in Flushing, New York, who were not themselves Quakers, signed a petition protesting the persecution of Quakers, a document that has become known as the Flushing Remonstrance. An eloquent statement of the principle of religious liberty, it is widely regarded as a forerunner to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
The petition was delivered to Director-General of New Netherlands, Peter Stuyvesant.
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Five Days Left!
You may have noticed me take notice . . . repeatedly . . . of an otherwise little-noticed National Commission on Military, National and Public Service (NCMNPS). It was established by Congress in 2017 to look into the issue of extending draft registration to women or let the federal courts end registration for not including women.
While I protested the atavistic practice, loud calls could be heard to bring back military conscription partially or universally . . . or to impose a year or two of national “service” on all young people when they turn 18 — despite its utter lack of value.
The last day of the year — Dec. 31, 2019 — is your deadline to quickly and easily express your thoughts on the draft here.
Thankfully, as the Commission is finishing its work (making its report in March — don’t forget to share your thoughts!), Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) have introduced House Resolution 5492. “To repeal the Military Selective Service Act, and thereby terminate the registration requirements of such Act . . .”*
“Today, with the introduction of H.R. 5492, the report of the NCMNPS due in March 2020, and Congress likely to be forced by pending legal cases to choose between ending draft registration and trying to expand it to women as well as men,” 1980s draft registration resister Edward Hasbrouck writes at AntiWar.com, “we are closer to ending draft registration than at any time since the requirement for all young men to register with the Selective Service System was reinstated in 1980.”
Speak loudly to the Commission now and let’s carry all the big sticks we can to Congress in the new year with one simple message: Pass H.R. 5492.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The legislation would also end what are sometimes lifetime penalties imposed by federal agencies and state governments against those who fail to register.
Draft Links of Note: https://thisiscommonsense.org////2019/01/01/paul-jacob-on-the-draft/
Archive of Posts on the Draft: https://thisiscommonsense.org////category/the-draft/
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Washington, Decembrist
On December 26, 1799, four thousand people attended George Washington’s funeral where Henry Lee III honored him as ‘first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.’
The Decembrist revolt againt Tsar Nicholas I occurred on the 26th of December in 1825. It was, alas, put down. Later revolts would prove less liberty-minded, more communist, and far bloodier.