Medio tutissimus ibis.
You will be safest in the middle.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book II, 137.
Paul Ehrlich was a biologist whose 1968 The Population Bomb went off when I was just a lad. He died last week at the ripe old age of 93. Professor Ehrlich warned of the dangers of overpopulation, proclaiming that in “the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”
Instead, for the first time in history, the percentage of the human population living in misery and dire poverty declined steadily.
But that did not mean his work was shelved as a bad theory, falsified by evidence.
Everywhere, when I was growing up, I witnessed a rising tide of anti-natalism, the doctrine that young adults shouldn’t have babies, or — if they did — should have only a few. Mankind was a cancer on the planet, we were told, and too many believed it.
Which affected breeding patterns.
And policy.
The current population reality is the opposite of what the Ehrlichs said it would be. All over the world, except for places in Africa, legacy populations are declining. In the United States, our population would be declining were it not for immigration. Elsewhere, the replication rate is plummeting — and it’s not just the West, but in China and Taiwan; both Koreas, as different as they are; and in Japan.
Without growing populations, our modern (if jury-rigged) social safety net pension systems are jeopardized, as is the possibility of finding caregivers to aging-and-dying populations.
We cannot blame it all on Ehrlich of course. There are many factors at work. But is it possible to be more wrong than he was?
What should the young do now, to mark Ehrlich’s passing?
You could do worse than make some more babies.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Jacques Ellul
Naturally, the educated man does not believe in propaganda. He shrugs and is convinced that propaganda has no effect on him. This is, in fact, one of his great weaknesses, and propagandists are well aware that in order to reach someone, one must first convince him that propaganda is ineffectual and not very clever. Because he is convinced of his own superiority, the intellectual is much more vulnerable than anybody else to this maneuver, even though basically a high intelligence, a broad culture, a constant exercise of the critical faculties, and full and objective information are still the best weapons against propaganda.
Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1962).
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly was published. By the end of the nineteenth century it had become the country’s second best-selling book, after the Bible.
Last weekend, Cenk Uygur, of the alternative news commentary show The Young Turks, focused on the Iran war, including one of its stranger developments, rumors that the Trump Administration is planning to arrest a different news commentator, Tucker Carlson.
And try Mr. Carlson for treason.
“If @TuckerCarlson is actually arrested, the government will have crossed the Rubicon,” Mr. Uygur posted to X. “Whatever ridiculous charges they bring up, everyone will know real reason was that he opposed the war and Israel. He’ll be considered [the] first American political prisoner within our own country.”
A factual corrective to this was provided Sunday, on this site, at least about the historical background of imprisoning journalists critical of a U.S.-involved war: Woodrow Wilson did that. He “crossed the Rubicon” over a hundred years ago. And he wasn’t the first president to do so.
But is there any real push to try Tucker Carlson for treason?
Robbie Soave, writing on Tuesday, surmised that, considering Carlson’s connections with the administration, the commentator is not likely paranoid or making things up.
And you can certainly find arguments pushing a treason case, and worse — for example, Israeli journalist and historian Yair Kleinbaum wrote in JFeed that “Carlson, Fuentes and Owens Must Be Jailed Inside a WWII-Style Internment Camp.”
At least, apparently, “while America is locked in a struggle against the dark forces of Shia Islam.” (Note that one consequence of the Iraq War was to attack Sunni Islam and install Shia Islam in Mesopotamia.) “Once the war is won and the threat is neutralized, we can release them,” Kleinbaum concludes.
Let’s hope this treason talk is all rumor. Arresting Tucker Carlson won’t improve the popularity of the Iran War.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Arnold Bennett
The price of justice is eternal publicity.
Arnold Bennett, Things That Have Interested Me, Second Series (1923), “Secret Trials.”
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House of Lords, House of TV
On March 19, 1649, England’s House of Commons passed an act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it “useless and dangerous to the people of England.”
This was during Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector, after the execution of Charles I. The House of Lords did not again meet until the Convention Parliament of 1660, under the Restoration of the monarchy.
On March 19, 1979, the United States House of Representatives began broadcasting its day-to-day business via the cable television network C-SPAN.
“F*ck this sh*t.”
That’s how the erudite opponents of Michigan’s Citizen Only Voting Amendment responded to supporters submitting a petition with more than 750,000 voter signatures to place the measure on the November ballot.
Sans the asterisks, actually, which I supplied.
Back in 2022, these oppositionists, fraudulently calling themselves Voters Not Politicians (VNP), helped politicians weaken Michigan’s voter-enacted term limits.
Now they’re fighting an initiative that I’m promoting, which would: (1) clarify that only U.S. citizens are eligible voters at the state and local level, (2) mandate that the Secretary of State check the voter rolls to ensure it contains only citizens, and (3) require photo ID to vote.
VNP argues this measure is “voter suppression,” after actively urging their liberal activists to “disrupt circulation” of our petition in order to suppress a vote on it. “If this campaign gets enough signatures to get their proposal on the ballot,” VNP acknowledged, “it’s likely to pass.”
Why might voters support the amendment?
“In Michigan, there have been incidents where non-citizens have not only been allowed to register but then were able to cast ballots,” explained a recent Detroit News editorial. “While the number of incidents is few, that the loophole exists at all is unacceptable.”
At a capitol news conference before delivering 199 boxes of petitions, Sen. Ruth Johnson, a former two-term Secretary of State, told reporters, “You need ID to get a library card to check out a book. You need ID to get a fishing license. And you should have an ID to vote.”
“Only citizens of the United States should be voting in our elections,” offered Rep. Ann Bollin, a former local election clerk. “It is not rocket science. It is common sense.”
This is [expletive deleted] Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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James Madison
No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.
James Madison writing as Publius, The Federalist, No. 62 (1788).
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A Saturnian Moon
On March 18, 1899, Phoebe, a satellite of Saturn, became the first moon to be discovered with photographs, taken in August 1898, by William Henry Pickering.
Also on the Eighteenth of March:
- The Sunflower Student Movement (2014)
- President Eisenhower signed a bill bringing Hawaii into the United States (1959)
- South Africans voted to get rid of the color bar (1992)