On May 12, 1943, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.
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Axis in Africa
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J. H. Levy
Cowper’s Mahometans ate up the hog while denouncing it as an unclean thing, by judging each piece — as the phrase of the empirical Socialist goes — ‘on its merits.’ So you are being made to swallow Socialism bit by bit.
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Union, disunion
On May 11, 1858, Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. State.
Nine years later, to the day, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg’s independence and neutrality were affirmed in the Second Treaty of London.
Is the number 15 “magical”?
The “democratic socialists” now dominating the Democratic Party first went for the $15 national minimum wage notion. Now it’s a cap on consumer credit interest rates, at 15 percent.
What’s next, 15 mph speed limits? Age 15 allowed to vote?
Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest?
At Reason, Peter Suderman explains why “Bernie Sanders’ New Plan Will Make It Tougher for Poor People to Get Credit Cards.” The arguments proffered by Senator Sanders and his House co-sponsor, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, more than “suggest that people who choose to use payday loans don’t, and perhaps can’t, understand the choices they are making. . . . It is a form of benevolent condescension built on the belief that poor people can’t count.”
Now, it may be that, generally, poor people do not figure their finances as well as better-off people. In fact, that’s demonstrated in the literature. But is that really the point?
The problem is, the methods they choose to help the poor make the poor less well-off. Because they take away options: “What Sanders is actually bragging about is eliminating choices,” Suderman explains. “In essence, Sanders is proud of having eliminated useful financial tools for the poor.”
What’s really going on here is the magic of persuasion. Fifteen is a “sticky number.” It will be used again and again as self-described socialists push for more and more unworkable government.
A bit of enchantment that just so happens to make one persuader a three-house millionaire . . . and a bartender from the Bronx the talk of the nation.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Charles Dunoyer
It is impossible for a government to levy taxes and distribute large amounts of money without by that very process creating large numbers of enemies of its authority and those jealous of its power.
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Victoria Woodhull
On May 10, 1872, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for President of the United States.
In a landmark Supreme Court decision on May 10, 1893, the tomato was ruled a vegetable, not a fruit.
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The Very Opposite of Force
One persuasive trick is to say the exact opposite of the truth, and say it with confidence.
What is that?
The proverbial “big lie”? Gaslighting? A “reality distortion field”?
Whatever you call it, U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) used it at a hearing of the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee last month. Interrogating Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Rep. Norcross “demanded to know why free-market groups supported financially by the DeVos family have . . . backed campaigns trying to persuade teachers to quit their unions,” as The Detroit News told the story.
The New Jersey Democrat was referencing Secretary DeVos’s enthusiasm for a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that undermined the special privileges of public employee unions by disallowing them from their practice of collecting “fees from non-members to cover collective bargaining costs,” The Detroit News explained.
Norcross pulled out all the stops: “In reality, teachers are being targeted, spammed, coerced by groups such as the Mackinac Center for Public Policy — that you probably know something about — and from the Freedom Foundation,” he accused.
Now, all that the Mackinac Center had been doing was informing teachers that they were not required to pay dues to unions to which they do not belong.
The very opposite of coercion!
Is the truth so repellent to the Democrat that its mere statement looms large enough to seem “coercive”?
Scott Adams, Dilbert creator and author of Win Bigly, argues that, when it comes to persuasion, “the facts don’t matter” . . . unless they are connected to emotion.
Well, calling free choice “coercion” sure connects to my emotions.
Negative ones.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Yves Guyot
I have heard a socialist ask, “Will collectivism change the soil and the sunshine of Medoc?” No, but wine does not come into existence of its own accord, the vine-stocks and the conditions of soil and of climate do not produce fine harvests spontaneously, but need to be properly utilised, and require an annual expenditure upon the cost of cultivation; and subordinate officials without a direct interest are not the men to apply the required attention to this kind of production.
Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies (1910), Book VII, “Collectivist Organization.”
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John Brown
On May 9, 1800, abolitionist revolutionary (and, technically, insurrectionist, possibly a terrorist) John Brown was born.
In 1883 on this date, Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset was born.
Last week’s coup in Venezuela flopped, it’s reported. But “coup” isn’t quite right: a popular rebellion failed to spark defections from key military commanders, who have become the end-all and be-all of Nicolás Maduro’s reign-at-rifle-point and rule by decree.
Anyone with open eyes can see the illegitimacy of the Maduro regime. When governments shoot their own people and run over them with tanks or armored personnel carriers, there ceases to be any use in debating the fine points of political philosophies.
Facing the current impasse, opposition leader Juan Guaidó told a CBS News reporter he is “open” to U.S. military intervention, adding: “I want a free election now, no dictatorship, for kids in Venezuela not to starve to death.”
That doesn’t mean the U.S. should intervene, which I think would be a mistake for both us and, ultimately, the people of Venezuela — possibly turning a widely supported uprising into a protracted civil war.
“Before the bombers take off, let’s just answer a few quick questions,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggests. “When was the last time we successfully meddled in the political life of another country? Has it ever worked? How are those democracies we set up in Iraq and Libya and Syria and Afghanistan?”
I don’t doubt a sweeping military victory should the U.S. invade Venezuela, but it is getting out that always proves so difficult.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Note: Last week, a number of Venezuelan soldiers did indeed switch their allegiance from the despot to demonstrators — reminding me of the inspiring pacification of the initial Chinese troops sent to restore “order” in Tiananmen Square some 30 years ago. The head of Maduro’s Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN) also defected.
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