On August 20, 1991, Estonia issued a decision to re-establish independence on the basis of historical continuity of the Baltic country’s pre-World War II statehood, sloughing off Soviet rule since 1940.
On August 20, 1935, Ron Paul was born. Paul is now famous for his heroic congressional record, his several presidential campaigns, and for books such as End the Fed and Liberty Defined.
Democracy does not attach men strongly to each other; but it places their habitual intercourse upon an easier footing.
Click on over to Townhall for the latest public schooling debacle. Then come back here for more testimony.
This article is now archived on this website.
On August 19, 1919, Afghanistan gained full independence from Great Britain. The British attempts to maintain an imperial presence in this region elicited an earlier, infamous essay in protest by English sociologist and anti-imperialist Herbert Spencer (pictured), “Patriotism” (Facts and Comments, 1902).
On this day in 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest, a crucial event leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In 1999, a mass rally of Serbians demanded the resignation of Slobodon Milosevic.
An interesting point about a little-talked-about media bias:
On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women’s suffrage.
Eighty-eight years later, Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharaf resigned under threat of impeachment.
The next year, Rose Director Friedman, economist, wife of economist Milton Friedman, sister of economist Aaron Director and mother of economist David D. Friedman, died. With her husband she had written one of the most popular pro-liberty books of our time, Free to Choose. She had been born in late December, 1910, in Staryi Chortoryisk, in Ukraine, to the Director family, prominent Jewish residents.
With her husband she co-authored their memoirs, Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People, which appeared in 1998. Together they founded the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, with the aim of promoting the use of school vouchers and freedom of choice in education. She also helped produce the PBS television series, Free to Choose, and assisted her husband in writing his 1962 political philosophy book Capitalism and Freedom.
“We’re not going to make America great again,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo proclaimed at a bill-signing ceremony this week. And then, further poking the president, the governor added, to gasps from the audience: “It was never that great.”
America — for all its faults, failings, and wrongdoings — has been a tremendous force for good, for freedom. At the same time, talking about how great we are really seems . . . what’s the word? Boastful.
“We have not reached greatness,” Cuomo went on to clarify. “We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution.”
This is pie-in-the-sky stuff. Utopianism. The state government of New York is not going to succeed — or even actually try — to “engage” every citizen “fully.” Neither will the Empire State help “every” female New Yorker to self-actualize . . . while magically wiping out “stereotyping.”
When very real governments fixate on fantasy, they can only fail. Achievable responsibilities — like fixing roads, improving schools, enforcing laws — fall by the wayside.
Both President Trump and Governor Cuomo would do well to concern themselves with running the government. Leave the greatness to the rest of us.
Oh, and the rest of the story?
“I’m Andrew Cuomo, and I work for you,” the governor said in a 2010 video announcing his entry into the gubernatorial race.
“Together,” he went on to declare, “we can make New York great again.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On August 17, 1786, American backwoods hero and politician, David Crockett, was born. Famous as a politician, he brought personal principle and honor and a “common sense” approach in representing Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives. He later served in the Texas Revolution, dying at the Battle of the Alamo.
Crockett grew up in East Tennessee, where he gained a reputation for hunting and storytelling, which helped make him a legend in his own time. After being made a colonel in the militia of Lawrence County, Tennessee, he was elected to the Tennessee state legislature in 1821.
In 1825, Crockett was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he vehemently opposed many of the policies of President Andrew Jackson, most notably the Indian Removal Act.
You see now how little nature requires, to be satisfied. Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things, and I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatsoever state he is.
Daniel Boone, Daniel Boone’s Own Story & The Adventures of Daniel Boone
President Trump’s promise not to cut one dime from Social Security and Medicare doesn’t square with the fiscal cliff these programs are headed for. To save the system, benefits must be cut, taxes must be raised, or both.
Or else replace the system.
No wonder, then, that John Stossel insists we “Fix Social Security Before It Goes Broke,” and rescues a decades-old proposal: “private accounts,” which he says “would certainly pay retirees more than Social Security will ever pay.”
In Chile, where they have tried this, private accounts have worked out pretty well, contributing to the once-impoverished country’s rise to “the richest country in Latin America.”
Had the United States adopted such a system, at Social Security’s inception, the amount of capital flowing into projects big and small would have not merely prevented the stagflation of the Seventies and brought us almost unimaginable wealth, it might have turned political eyes towards accountability, prudence and stability.
But, because Social Security was set up as a Pay As We Go system, we paid . . . and the money went.
It got so messed up that by the 1980s Ronald Reagan charged Alan Greenspan with “fixing” it. That “fix” mainly meant increasing taxation. The decades of revenue surge over outflow was spent by Congress for war and handouts. And now we’re reaching a repeat of the late 1970s’ Social Security insolvency.
Meanwhile, Chilean leftists “hold street protests against private accounts,” Stosssel reminds us. “They’re angry because capitalists get a slice of the pie.”
Back in the USA, Democrats demand that more benefits be wrung from Social Security. Are they dead set on proving why socialism doesn’t work?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
