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FYI Update

Minds Broken, Minds Healed

The difference between a “liberal” and a “leftist” is lost on many, especially on the political right. But understanding is coming. A liberal is a person ostensibly for an “open society” and against treating “the other” badly, but is also for the basic structures of society. A leftist, on the other hand, sees the causes of “the marginalized” and “the poor” and anyone not hyper-obviously benefitting from the current order as an excuse to tear down that order. “Fundamentally transform America” might be a slogan to excite a liberal, but a leftist sees it as a demand with immediate consequences. 

Leftists do wish for a fundamental transformation of America!

Liberals might still think that free speech, for example, is a good thing. Whereas a leftist sees it as a barrier to that fundamental transformation.

Rumination on this subject is all over YouTube. Consider Styx:

Of Democrats and their institutional liberalism, he says, “I find it very funny that Reagan broke their minds so much that they began trying to absorb far leftists . . . and now Trump is breaking their minds again.”

The problem with the liberal is an inability to deal with substantive challenge.

And leftists are proving to be just as much a challenge as Trump, now, especially with the recent anti-ICE riots (the subject of Styx’s talk), so liberals are trying to distance themselves from the left. But, Styx says, that isn’t working.

Author Andrew Doyle, in a recent book, is trying to understand whither “the woke.” He sees the woke as “unprecedented” for being authoritarian and successful at it while pretending to be powerless:

Doyle is the creator of the infamous “Titania McGrath” persona and Twitter account, and his new book is called The New Puritans. He expects that the new puritans of wokeness will wither quickly as a movement, because of the fundamental contradiction. The “unprecedented” contradiction.

The only big success in opposing leftist policies, on the other hand, is not in the U.S., it is far, far south. Hence the seemingly random placement of a Milei image at top. More updates to come on him and his Argentine movement.

Categories
Thought

Thomas Sowell

When someone removes a cancer, what do you replace it with?

Economist Tom Sowell, in conversation with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution’s Uncommon Knowledge, upon being asked what would be established to replace the Federal Reserve.
Categories
Today

July Fifth

The Liberty Bell left Philadelphia by special train on its way to the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, on July 5, 1915 — the last trip outside Philadelphia that the custodians of the bell intend to permit.

In 1937 on this date, Spam, the luncheon meat, was introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation.

The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, was formally certified by President Richard Nixon on July 5, 1971.

On July 5, 1995, Armenia adopted its constitution, four years after the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.

Categories
Common Sense general freedom obituary

Waiting for the Day

freedom, Independence Forever! Liberty

Towards the end of their lives, former President John Adams asked former President Thomas Jefferson whether he would live his life over again. 

The third president answered in the affirmative: “I think with you, that it is a good world on the whole; that it has been framed on a principle of benevolence, and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us.”

Not everyone agrees, of course. Jefferson called these people “gloomy and hypochondriac minds,” who “always count that the worst will happen because it may happen.”

Jefferson has a challenge to those whom we today call “the black-pilled”: “How much pain have cost us the evils that have never happened!” Jefferson confessed to lacking hope sometimes, but not as often as the perpetually gloomy.

Those of us who follow the news often have occasion for gloom — or alarm. But on July Fourth it is appropriate to remember the council of these two leaders of Independence. 

In 1826, as Jefferson and Adams approached their inevitable demises, both struggled — and succeeded — in their final goals: to make it to Independence Day. 

On the Third, Jefferson inquired, more than once, about whether it was the Fourth yet, wrote Albert Jay Nock at the end of his Jefferson (1926), “and when told at last that it was, he appeared satisfied. He died painlessly at one o’clock in the afternoon, about five hours before his old friend and fellow, John Adams; it was the only time he took precedence of him, having been all his life ‘secondary to him in every situation,’ except this one.”

According to Adams family lore, when Adams died a few hours later, he said, “Jefferson survives.” 

Wrong, as a point of fact. But in spirit?

On Independence Day, we should ask ourselves what of the founding survives.

Unlike the actual lives of those who made our Independence, and, to paraphrase Tom Paine, we can start Independence anew. And as John Adams definitely said on his last day, “Independence forever!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Augustine

Augustine

Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.

Love the sinner and hate the sin.

Augustine of Hippo, Opera Omnia, Vol II. Col. 962, letter 211.

Categories
Today

July Fourth Events

1054 – A supernova was spotted by Chinese, Arab, and possibly Amerindian observers. The celestial event occurred near the star Zeta Tauri, remaining, for several months, bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.

1776 — The Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence that had been submitted by committee members Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams, thus formalizing its policy of secession from the empire of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1803 — The Louisiana Purchase was announced to the American people.

1804 – Nathaniel Hawthorne, American author of The Scarlet Letter, House of Seven Gables, The Blithesdale Romance, and other classics, was born. Hawthorne became part of the Young America literary movement spawned by Loco-Foco political activism in New England.

1826 – Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, died a few hours before John Adams, second president of the United States, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the United States’ Declaration of Independence.

1826 – Stephen Foster, composer of “Old Black Joe,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” and many other classic American songs, was born.

1827 – Slavery was abolished in New York State.

1831 – Samuel Francis Smith wrote “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” for Boston’s July 4th festivities, set to the tune of Great Britain’s national anthem, “God Save the King/Queen.”

2009 – The Statue of Liberty’s crown re-opened to the public after eight years of closure that resulted from security concerns following the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture property rights too much government

The Big Decommodification

Mamdani, New York City, public housing, socialism, communism

Tired of that rundown shack you live in — for which each month you must cough up the rent money or a mortgage payment? No doubt, you’re chomping at the bit for the chance to move into clean, spectacular, state-of-the-art government housing.

Well, you’re in luck! That is, if you live in New York City.

You see, on Tuesday evening, Sean Hannity informed his Fox News audience that Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats’ mayoral nominee, has a “plan to slowly eliminate home ownership in New York City.”

“If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full decommodification of housing,” Mamdani declares in a 2021 video for the Gravel Institute. “In other words, moving away from the status quo, in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market.”

He says, “We’ll have to go beyond the market.”

That “has to be” the solution? Why? Because Mamdani’s socialist/communist dogma dictates that government should be the provider of all shelter? The “decommodification” must be “full” and complete. No private home can be permitted to be bought or sold . . . or lived in anymore.

Surely that would solve our problems.

The democratic socialist suggests that the government “gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership,” urging the city to “fully commit to a new era of social housing . . . using our wealth to build beautiful, high-quality social housing projects that offer good homes and strong communities to everyone.”

Yes, taxpayers, get ready to invest in the sparkling future of public housing. Cabrini-Green here we all come! 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Aquinas

Lex naturae … nihil aliud est nisi lumen intellectis insitum nobis a Deo, per quod cognoscimus quid agendum et quid vitandum. Hoc lumen et hanc legem dedit Deus homini in creatione.

The law of nature … is nothing other than the light of the intellect planted in us by God, by which we know what should be done and what should be avoided. God gave us this light or law in creation.

Thomas Aquinas, On the Ten Commandments (c. 1273).

Categories
Today

July Third

On July 3, 1775, George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1952 on July 3, Puerto Rico’s Constitution was approved by the Congress of the United States.

Categories
deficits and debt international affairs

Billions and Billions

China, gold, national debt, foreign policy

While we were going about our business, and maybe even soaking in some summer sunshine, the “US National Debt,” as the federal government’s explicit financial obligation is called, passed the $37 trillion mark. 

As if to mark the occasion, the Chinese government unloaded a whopping eight billion, two hundred million dollars worth of U.S. Treasuries onto the market.

It’s a lot of money.

It’s a lot of debt.

And now China no longer holds it. 

Thus they are not quite as invested in our future.

Is that scary?

Well, everything about our federal debt load should scare us. If we are placid and unperturbed now, how many extra billions and trillions would it take to shake us?

If you are especially concerned about world stability, it might make sense to comfort you with this . . . interesting . . . piece of information: China still holds over $750 billion in United States debt.

A more important piece of information might be what the Chinese central bank has been replacing the U.S. debt with: gold.

Lots of gold.

About 200,000 kilograms of gold!

Nicholas Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, insists that “a single asset has overtaken the US dollar’s position as the world’s de facto reserve currency.” That asset is gold.

We aren’t on the gold standard, but it looks like we may be falling backwards into something like one.

It makes me wonder if there is still gold in Fort Knox . . . and just how much. 

Mr. Trump? 

Congress? 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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