On the hundredth day of 1998, the Northern Ireland peace talks ended with an historic agreement, dubbed the Belfast, or Good Friday Agreement. The accord was reached after nearly two years of talks and 30 years of conflict — 19 years ago today.
The increasingly close governmental control of social and economic life in recent years has tended to strengthen separatism by enhancing the prizes of political power and thus the intensity of the struggle for it, and for this reason it has accentuated concern with ethnic differences between the rulers and the ruled. . . .
Peter T. Bauer, United States Aid and Indian Development, p. 7.
On April 27, 1759, English philosopher and author Mary Wollstonecraft was born. Wollstonecraft married anarchist philosopher William Godwin and the couple had one daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Wollstonecraft herself wrote one infamous and valiant effort in the emancipation of women, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, in 1792.
English philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, and political theorist Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England, on April 27, 1820. Among Spencer’s most famous books are First Principles, Principles of Ethics (chiefly its first part, The Data of Ethics), The Study of Sociology, The Man versus the State, and two editions of Social Statics. Spencer was an evolutionary theorist as well as a religious and political philosopher, and coiner of the phrase “survival of the fittest.” He called the basic principle of a free political order “The Law of Equal Freedom.”
On April 26, 1777, Sibyl Ludington, aged 16, rode 40 miles to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British. Her ride was over twice as long as the more famous Paul Revere’s.
On the same day in 1805, United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, an important event in the First Barbary War. In April 26, 1865, Union cavalry troopers cornered John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia, shooting him to death. There was no interrogation.
Vladimir Putin may not be as powerful as feared.
Not only does he apparently not pull the strings of the much-accused-of/now-cleared-of-collusion “Trump Puppet,” Putin also does not write comic lines for the “acting” president of Ukraine.
You see, a few days ago Ukrainians held a run-off election to choose a new leader, and the man who won — Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky — is, like the U.S. president, a celebrated entertainer.
In 2015, he began playing the role of Vasily Goloborodko in the TV show, Servant of the People. His character is a high-school history teacher who rants in class against government corruption. Soon a video of his extemporaneous tirade goes viral, and, voila, Goloborodko ascends to the presidency!
Zelensky’s actual transit to the real presidency may be less funny but is just as remarkable.
A Kiev teacher quoted by the Los Angeles Times admitted the election was rather crazy. “But at least we have a choice. They don’t have that in Russia.” In the Times’ lede, Putin is identified as “by far the biggest loser of the night.” The anti-Russia trajectory of Ukrainian politics is reported to be steadfast.
The anti-corruption movement, however, may be a bit iffier.
Meanwhile, the eighth season of HBO’s political satire Veep is underway, and I am told it is as chillingly accurate as ever. Last week the anti-heroine Selina Meyer, played by Julia-Luis Dreyfuss, again stumbled her way into political success, this time by “accidentally” “colluding” with the Chinese Government.
Is this meant as a nod to Russiagate or a pointed Hillary Clinton commentary?*
Seems a lot like Ukrainian politics.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Two decades ago the “Chinagate” scandal roiled the second term of the Bill & Hillary Clinton Administration.
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The virtues of the free market do not depend upon the virtues of the men at the political top but on the dispersed powers of substitution exercised by men in their role as consumers. In that role, a truly competitive market enables them to exert the energy which enforces the neutrality of business decision-making in respect of race, colour, creed, sex, class, accent, school, or income group
William H. Hutt (left, above), The Economics of the Colour Bar (1964), p. 174-5.
“So, my bottom line is there is no need to continue to register people for a draft that will not come; no need to fight the battle over registering women, and no military need to retain the MSSA.”
The MSSA is the Military Selective Service Act. It authorizes the Selective Service System (SSS) to register young men for a possible draft and, should conscription resume, manage that process. The law allows the government to imprison those who do not register.* I know, I violated the Act 38 years ago by refusing to sign my name on a draft registration form.
But the quoted statement, above, wasn’t mine. No sirree. That was testimony from Dr. Bernard Rostker, the director of Selective Service back in 1980, when President Carter re-instituted mandatory registration.
Rostker made two cogent points at yesterday’s National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service hearing:
Come some future emergency, the former director contends that a draft could be instituted just as quickly without this ongoing registration program. Sure, but that misses the bigger picture: This country has never needed conscription to raise an army. Americans — from Pearl Harbor to 911 — have always stepped up voluntarily.
Mr. Rostker advises “suspending draft registration.”
He took the words right out of my mouth — though I prefer “abolish.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The maximum penalty is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but no one has been prosecuted for decades. Most of the enforcement effort comes in denying driver’s licenses, college loans and government jobs to men who don’t register. Commission Chairman Joe Heck explained at yesterday’s hearing that 75 percent of registrants do so in order to complete a license or college application.
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Where there are no rights, there are no duties.
Nearly 180 years ago, the Jesuits who ran Georgetown University sold 272 enslaved persons to save the institution from insolvency. In a non-binding referendum earlier this month, the university’s undergraduate students voted to impose a student fee of $27.20 per semester to fund reparations for the descendants of those slaves.
Small potatoes? Well, when the slavery reparations idea catches fire outside of a student body, the dollar amounts talked about expand beyond mere double digits.
Which can be awkward. The leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), complains that slavery reparations are often “used . . . to ridicule African-Americans, as if what black people are interested in is a check.”
Nonetheless, White House aspirant Rep. Julián Castro (D-Tex.) reminds Democrats that “when it comes to Medicare for All” as well as “tuition-free or debt-free college, the answer has been, ‘We need to write a big check.’” Castro contends Uncle Sam ought not skimp on “compensating the descendants of slaves.”
The slicker Democratic contenders for the 2020 presidential race have conveniently embraced legislation introduced in the House by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) to establish a commission to study the idea — allowing presidential aspirants to talk up the proposal to black audiences while assuring less enthusiastic audiences that they are merely committed to studying it.
One lesser known candidate, author Marianne Williamson, didn’t get the memo, however. She proposed “a $100 billion plan of reparations to be paid over 10 years,” to be disbursed for purposes of “economic and educational revitalization to be achieved within the black community.”
By federal spending standards, a tiny figure. But even at ten times that figure, check-propelled revitalization seems unlikely.
Students of politics take note.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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When we buy a product in the free market, we do not ask: What was the colour of the person who made it? Nor do we ask about the sex, race, nationality, religion or political opinions of the producer. All we are interested in is whether it is good value for money. Hence it is in the interest of business men (who must try to produce at least cost in anticipation of demand) not only to seek out and employ the least privileged classes (excluded by custom or legislation from more remunerative employments) but actually to educate them for these opportunities by investing in them.
William H. Hutt (left, above), The Economics of the Colour Bar (1964), p. 173.