On June 30, 1801, Frédéric Bastiat was born. Bastiat became one of the most important French Liberal School economists, following Condilliac and Jean-Baptiste Say, best known for his books Economic Harmonies and Economic Sophisms and two monographs, “The Seen and the Unseen,” and “The Law.” He was a brilliant stylist and perceptive critic of state-managed trade. His influence on conservative, libertarian and “limited-government thought” has been vast.
The emergency number of “999” was introduced in London, June 30, 1937, the first of its kind — arguably the best innovation in better government service in modern times.
The period of Prohibition — called the noble experiment — brought on the greatest breakdown of law and order the United States has known until today. I think there is a lesson here. Do not regulate the private morals of people. Do not tell them what they can take or not take. Because if you do, they will become angry and antisocial and they will get what they want from criminals who are able to work in perfect freedom because they have paid off the police.
On June 29, 1914, the day after the shooting of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Austrian interrogations confirmed that the Serbian government was behind the assassination. Serbia denied involvement.
Thus continued the series of events that led to “The Great War,” now known as “World War I.”
“Why were you the lone voice out there going after the neo-cons, going after the people who took us into these wars?” Chris Mathews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, asked presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) after Wednesday night’s debate.
Pro-peace candidates do well with voters, but still most politicians and the mediaremain hawkish. The only time “the mainstream media fawned” over President Trump was after airstrikes against Syria.
“I deployed to Iraq in 2005 during the height of that war,” she told Mathews. “I served in a medical unit where every single day I saw that terribly high human cost.”
Contrasted with former Vice-President Joe Biden, who voted for the Iraq War as senator, Gabbard pledged not to “bend to the whims of the military-industrial complex or the foreign policy establishment.”
“Today the Taliban claimed responsibility for killing two American service members in Afghanistan,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow had posed during the debate. Noting that “leaders as disparate as President Obama and President Trump” have wanted “to end US involvement,” Maddow inquired of Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), how he might get us out?
Instead, he argued: “We must be engaged in this.” That led Gabbard to cut in, calling Ryan’s answer “unacceptable.”
“We have to bring our troops home from Afghanistan,” she declared. “We are no better off in Afghanistan today than we were when this war began [nearly 18 years ago].”
Offered the opportunity, not one of the other eight candidates on the stage addressed the country’s longest war.
This is a problem, since, as I’ve repeatedly posited in this space, there is no plan to defeat the Taliban, only to negotiate power-sharing with them.
June 28 birthdays include that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher, in 1712.
On this date in 1914, 19-year-old Gavril Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and the Archduke’s wife Sophie. The Archduke had earlier missed a bomb thrown at his car, which necessitated a change in the motorcade route, which the driver forgot, which is why the car paused at the precise intersection in which Princip fired his fatal shots.
The shooting began a series of events that led to “The Great War,” now known as “World War I.”
On June 28, 1992, the Constitution of Estonia was signed into law.
The American university system is enormous and it plays an enormous role in making the nation what it is — it is not too much to say, in fact, that it is an equal partner in the military-industrial-academic complex that essentially runs the country.
Ireland’s prime minister — or “Taoiseach” — is enthusiastic. “Speaking at the launch of the Climate Action Plan in Grangegorman today,” the Independentreported last week, “Mr [Leo Eric] Varadkar said the government would establish a Climate Action Delivery Board in the Department of the Taoiseach to oversee its implementation.”
The plan will deeply affect “almost every aspect” of Irish life. “The Government plans to force petrol and diesel cars off our roads,” the Independent elaborates, “introduce new buildings regulations and change the school curriculum in a bid to counteract climate change.”
Though the scope of the effort is breathtaking, Mr. Varadkar pretends he is being oh-so-humble and cautious, “nudging” citizens rather than going for a “coercive” approach.
Typical politician’s whopper, of course. Higher taxes on fuel and plastics, banning oil and gas boilers in new buildings, forcing private cars off city roads — this is all force.
Pretending otherwise is something akin to a Big Lie.
And all in service to the cause of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions by two per cent a year each year for the next ten years.”
Varadkar says he is doing it for the young and at the behest of the young . . . who have been propagandized to believe “that the world will be destroyed in a climate apocalypse.”
Well, the Taoiseach didn’t use the word “propagandized,” and insists that disaster is “not inevitable, it can be stopped, action can be taken.”
But Ireland’s contribution to the planet’s “greenhouse gases” is negligible. If all the Irish held their breaths and keeled over for the cause, they wouldn’t make a carbon dioxide burp of a difference.
Paul von Mauser was born on June 27, 1838, and would go on to become a weapons designer. In 1869, Emma Goldman was born, to later become known as a feminist, anarchist, and early leftist opponent of Soviet Communism. In 1880, Helen Keller was born on this date.
