In 1752, throughout the British Empire, September 2 was followed, the next day, by September 14, as the government adopted the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days.
On September 14, 1944, Maastricht becomes the first Dutch city to be liberated by allied forces.
On Sunday, former Pres. Barack Obama acknowledged — in the breach — the “wise American tradition of ex-presidents gracefully exiting the political stage and making room for new voices and new ideas.”
The former president’s talk at the University of Illinois made big news in large part because it was a direct attack on the current president.
“We have our first president, George Washington, to thank for setting that example,” Mr. Obama explained to the students. “After he led the colonies to victory, as General Washington, there were no constraints on him, really. He was practically a god to those who had followed him into battle. There was no Constitution. There were no democratic norms that guided what he should or could do. And he could have made himself all-powerful; he could have made himself potentially president for life. Instead, he resigned as commander-in-chief and moved back to his country estate.”
Noting that “six years later” Washington was elected president, Obama added, “But after two terms, he resigned again and rode off into the sunset.”
The two-term limit, constitutionally imposed on modern presidents, was established as a tradition when self-imposed by the man known as the father of our country.
“The point Washington made, the point that is essential to American democracy, is that in a government of, and by and for the people, there should be no permanent ruling class,” the former president concluded, “. . . only citizens, who through their elected and temporary representatives determine our course and determine our character.”
On that, Americans across the political spectrum can agree.
It’s called term limits.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration: detail from “The Resignation of General Washington, December 23, 1783,” oil on canvas, by the American artist John Trumbull.
Circumretit enim vis atque iniuria quemque,
atque, unde exortast, at eum plerumque revertit.
Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) (First Century BC), Book V, lines 1152–1153 (tr. Rouse).
John Calvin [pictured above] returned to Geneva on September 13, 1541, after three years of exile. His subsequent work in church reform and theology became known as Calvinism, and profoundly influenced the course of European and (eventually) American civilization, including several concepts of servitude and liberty.
On the same date in 1989, Desmond Tutu led South Africa’s largest march aganst Apartheid.
If you have a lick of sense, you wouldn’t emblazon images of Ché Guevara on your chest or your wall — and yet Ché t-shirts and posters have been a pop culture hit for decades now.
He is cool, we are told, because he was ¡Viva la Revolución! and all that.
But it could get worse. You could be emblazoning a hammer and sickle.
Walmart’s website is there to help. Under “men’s sleeveless,” for example, we see an artistic rendering of the old Communist symbol, frankly identified as a “Soviet Hammer and Sickle,” white on black for $14.97.* Walmart files it under “Pop culture.”
Aren’t men’s sleeveless shirts called “wife beaters”? Should we now call them Kulak Killers?
It’s hip to murder millions!
No wonder Lithuania and several other Baltic countries — who suffered greatly under Soviet rule — object. Indeed, many of these countries go too far in actually banning the symbols. Now, they have contacted Walmart requesting a cessation in hawking the offensive merchandise. “You wouldn’t buy Nazi-themed clothing, would you?” Lithuania’s foreign minister Linas Linkevicius tweeted. Or sell such items.
But a few people might. Certainly, a lot of people do buy stuff that others regard as “Nazi.” Sometimes to be “cool”; other times to make a controversial political point.
At the Uhuru Store, Gavin McInnes’s “ProudBoys Official” sells a “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong” t-shirt for twice the price of Walmart’s Hammer and Sickle shirt — and that surely has annoyed leftists who have seen it.
I’m waiting for the death of cool.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The shirts also come in Navy, Royal and Gray. I guess to get a red commie shirt you have to go for the sleeves.
Non omnia possumus omnes.
We cannot all do everything.
Virgil, Eclogues (37 BC), Book VIII, line 63 (tr. Fairclough).
On September 12, 1848, Switzerland became a unified federal state with a constitution limiting central government powers and providing decentralized state (canton) power patterned on the U.S. Constitution.
In 1880 on this date, H.L. Mencken was born. One of his earliest books was a debate with a socialist, The Men versus The Man (1910); his greatest lasting contribution was probably The American Language (1919) and its supplements (1945, 1948). His work has been collected in numerous anthologies, such as Alistair Cooke’s Vintage Mencken (1955) and the author’s own Mencken Chrestomathy.
Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee again demonstrated why Congress’s approval ratings bob about in our toilet bowls. Amid the spectacle of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, one senator spoke not about judicial philosophy, but political reality.
“What’s the hysteria coming from?” asked Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), noting the circus-like atmosphere. His answer? The Supreme Court “is increasingly a substitute political battleground,” because “the Congress has decided to self-neuter.”
Blunt assessment.
“In our system, the legislative branch is supposed to be the center of our politics,” Sasse argued, adding dejectedly, “It’s not.”
Why not?
“What we mostly do around this body is not pass laws,” he offered. “What we mostly do is decide to give permission to the secretary or administrator of bureaucracy X, Y, or Z to make law-like regulations.”
“More and more legislative authority is delegated to the executive branch every year. Both parties do it,” explained the senator. “The legislature is impotent, the legislature is weak, and most people here want their jobs more than they really want to do legislative work . . .”
Sasse continued, “The real reason, at the end of the day, that this institution punts most of its power to executive branch agencies is because it’s a convenient way for legislators to be able to avoid taking responsibility for controversial and often unpopular decisions.”
Better to blame the bureaucracy.
“If your biggest long-term thought around here is about your own incumbency,” he said dismissively, “then actually giving your power away is a pretty good strategy.”
But “when Congress neuters itself,” warns the Cornhusker State solon, “it means the people are cut out of the process.”
A powerful case for term limits.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The progress of civilization necessitates the giving of greater and greater attention and intelligence to public affairs.
September 11 marks several dates in the history of the clash between the West and the Islamic East:
• In 1526, the Ottoman army occupied Buda after the crushing Hungarian defeat in the Battle of Mohács.
• In 1565, Ottoman forces retreated from Malta, ending the Great Siege of Malta.
• In 1609, an expulsion order announced against the Moriscos of Valencia began the expulsion of all Spain’s Moors.
• In 2001, Muslim jihadists associated with Al Qaida hijacked two airliners flying out of Boston, Massachusetts, one out of Newark, N.J., and another out of Washington’s Dulles airport, commandeering two of those jets into the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon near the nation’s capital. The fourth crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania — making this flight, United 93, the only one of the terrorist attacks that day prevented from achieving its target, the agency of the prevention being the united efforts of civilians on the flight.