On May 30, 1989, student demonstrators unveiled a 33-foot high “Goddess of Democracy and Freedom” statue in Tiananmen Square.
We hear too much about “successful” mass murderers — from news readers, journalists, and so-called experts.
And it is hard not to think about the disturbed gunmen who kill as a way to feel powerful for a few seconds as they seek revenge for whatever they hate about their lives.
Now families in Sante Fe must deal with the horror.
We don’t hear as much about the good men who interrupt such rampages.
A report about how a killer was stopped on May 24 begins with these matter-of-fact words: “A gunman who opened fire at an Oklahoma restaurant Thursday evening was confronted by two people who saw what was happening, got their guns and shot him dead, police said.”
The gunman was able to wound three people. But before he could hurt others, Carlos Nazario and Bryan Wittle, outside the building as the shooting began, quickly grabbed firearms from the trunks of their vehicles and ended the threat.
A week earlier, Mark Dallas, a police officer on duty in Dixon High School in Dixon, Illinois, had exchanged gunfire with a recently expelled student, stopping him before anyone else could be shot. The attack took place in a gym where many students were gathered for a graduation rehearsal.
Mark Dallas happened to be an officer of the law. But you don’t need to be a policeman to use a gun justly and well in a bad situation. What you need is training and presence of mind — the willingness and ability to protect yourself and others.
And you need the gun.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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G. K. Chesterton
Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer.
On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the last of the original 13 British colonies to ratify the Constitution. It joined the newly re-formed union as the 13th State of the federation. On the same date in 1848, Wisconsin was admitted as the 30th U.S. state.
Hong Kong’s General Chamber of Commerce was founded on this date in 1861. In other commerce news — or, history — the pharmacist John Pemberton placed his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal on May 29, 1886.
Parisian ballet-goers rioted at the premiere of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring on the spring day of May 29 in 1913. The caricature, above, was drawn at the time to portray the event, which is a cultural landmark of the 20th century.
In 1990, the Russian parliament elected Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
May 29th birthdays include
* 1736 – Patrick Henry, American lawyer and politician, first Governor of Virginia (d. 1799)
* 1874 – G. K. Chesterton, English essayist, poet, and playwright (d. 1936)
* 1906 – T. H. White, Indian-English writer, author of The Once and Future King (d. 1964)
* 1917 – John F. Kennedy, American lieutenant and politician, 35th President of the United States (d. 1963)
* 1929 – Harry Frankfurt, American philosopher and academic, author of On Bulshit (2005)
Michael Bloomberg is rich. He’s also in politics — a public health crusader.
And, for years, he “has personally funded and promoted all sorts of regressive taxes and regulations in an attempt to push people around,” the folks at Americans for Tax Reform tell us. “He uses the coercive power of the government to force people to live their lives as he sees fit.”
Onstage at a globalist event, One-on-One with Christine Lagarde — who is managing director of the International Monetary Fund — Bloomberg blurts out his approach to government policy regarding what he calls “those people.”
“If you raise taxes on full sugary drinks,” he says, “they will drink less and there’s just no question that full sugar drinks are one of the major contributors to obesity and obesity is one of the major contributors to heart disease and cancer and a variety of other things.”
Against the charge often made that such taxes fall heaviest upon the poor, he is forthright. Regressive? “That’s the good thing about them because the problem is in people that don’t have a lot of money.”
Notice that he is not talking about a public service campaign to help people learn how to drink (and eat) better. And he is not talking about removing all the government policies that have encouraged bad eating and drinking habits (as well as lethargy) — the government programs to encourage the overuse of high fructose corn syrup; the welfare state’s poverty trap that stifles life at the lower incomes; the subsidized consumption of food and drink — he wants to add another government program.
He can only see betterment by increased governmental bullying.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Jorge Luis Borges
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Dead Men’s Dialogue” in Dreamtigers (1960)
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Greek voters
On May 28, 1952, the women of Greece gained the right to vote.
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Townhall: Defending Your Right . . . to Die
Something about Democrats and death — click on over to Townhall.com. Then come back here:
- NBC News: Congress OKs letting terminal patients try unapproved drugs
- Common Sense: Hooray for Congress!
- Goldwater Institute: U.S. House Joins Senate in Passing Right to Try Law, President Pledges to Sign Bill
- Bloomberg: ‘Right-to-Try’ Drug Law Offers No Miracle Cure
- CBS News: “Right to try” bill passes, but will it help terminally ill patients?
- NPR: Right To Try Act Poses Big Challenge For FDA
- The Hill: ‘Right to try’ is an ill-considered bill
- Right to Try – National Movement
- Senate Bill 204
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Mary Wollstonecraft
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
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The Model T Era Ends
On May 27, 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi began his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian unification.
In 1927 on this date in May, the Ford Motor Company ceased manufacture of the Ford Model T, the last of this model coming off the line the day previous. Over 16 million Model T Fords had been sold, and was a world transformative product. On the 27th, the company began to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.
Exactly 70 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Paula Jones could pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he was in office.
In 2015, 27 May, the commercial space company SpaceX was approved as a contractor to the U.S. military for satellite launches; SpaceX has since led the world in its use of re-usable booster rockets which, after sending up orbital rockets, return to a sea surface platform for a safe vertical landing.