Can the behemoth help itself? Is there nothing it will not contemplate?
https://youtu.be/UqByX959pxg
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Google “Mind Control”
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Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian philosopher and outspoken anti-fascist.
Morality, and the ideal of freedom which is the political expression of morality, are not the property of a given party or group, but a value that is fundamentally and universally human. . . . No people will be truly free till all are free.
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Wilde Released
On May 19, 1897, Irish author, playwright, and poet Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was released from Reading Prison, where he had finished, in ill health, his hard labor sentence for “gross indecency.” His “Ballad of Reading Gaol,” first published pseudonymously in a periodical with wide circulation amongst criminals, quickly achieved the status of a classic, and one of only two great works following his imprisonment.
He died less than three years later, in exile in Europe. His most famous works include the play The Importance of Being Earnest, the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the fascinating essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.”
Two articles on Sen. Rand Paul appeared in my Reason feed the other day. Up top.
So it was hard not to look.
They were “John McCain: It ‘Wasn’t Incorrect’ to Say Rand Paul Was ‘Working for Vladimir Putin’” and “Rand Paul’s Plan to Balance the Budget by 2023 Will Get a Senate Vote This Week.”
The latter story is the bigger one, of course. In it, Eric Boehm asked, “Do Republicans have the guts to impose strict spending caps?”
His answer was “probably not.” Good guess.
“Passing the Kentucky Republican’s so-called ‘Penny Plan’ would be a dramatic reversal for Congress,” Boehm wrote, “which earlier this year approved enormous spending hikes that busted Obama-era spending caps and threaten to put the country on pace for a $1 trillion annual deficits. . . . Paul tells Politico that it will be a ‘litmus test for Republicans who claim to be conservative, but are only too happy to grow the federal government and increase our debt.’”
I am afraid the litmus paper has turned . . . red. As in red ink. As in accumulating debt till we drop.
Yesterday Paul’s plan was voted down, 21-76.
In the other Reason piece, Matt Welch noted that Arizona’s senior senator stands by his calumny, last year, against Kentucky’s junior senator. Paul had delayed “ratification of Montenegro’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).” McCain, a gung-ho NATO expansion proponent, accused Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin.”
If Putin really seethes with ill will towards America, wouldn’t he want to see the country burdened with debt?
So, on this vote, those 76 senators who didn’t “stand with Rand” are undoubtedly working for Putin.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photo of Rand Paul by Gage Skidmore | Photo of John McCain from Wikimedia Commons
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Rose Wilder Lane
This is the nature of human energy; individuals generate it, and control it. Each person is self-controlling, and therefore responsible for his acts. Every human being, by his nature, is free.
Rose Wilder Lane, Discovery of Freedom (1943).
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Heresy and Slavery
On May 18, 1593, playwright Thomas Kyd’s accusations of heresy led to an arrest warrant for fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe.
Kyd was the famed author of The Spanish Tragedy, and “Kit” Marlowe [pictured] was known for a number of plays, including The Jew of Malta and The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.
Marlowe died a few weeks later, on May 30, without having been arrested. The circumstances of his death were bizarre, suspicious — as if written by a playwright.
On May 18, 1652, Rhode Island passed the first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal.
Just-retired Scot Peterson is a millionaire, thanks to the generous taxpayers of Broward County, Florida.
You know Peterson as the sheriff’s deputy assigned to protect students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, who, instead of entering the building where the shooter was mowing down 17 unarmed students and teachers, protected himself by waiting outside.
Peterson claimed “he remained outside the school because he didn’t know where the gunfire was coming from,” noted BuzzFeed. But “[r]adio transmissions from the day of the shooting have since contradicted Peterson’s defense . . .”
Following the cowardly non-performance of his duty, Peterson promptly retired and began drawing his pension. As the Sun Sentinel newspaper reported Tuesday, his monthly check is for $8,702.35 — an annual salary of $104,428.20.
Should the 55-year-old live to the age of 75, he’ll draw more than $2 million.
In fact, the cowardly Peterson is being further rewarded with a $2,550 annual raise — earning more in retirement than he was earning while actually working.
I use the word “earning” and the phrase “actually working” loosely.
Reacting to the news, the father of one of the murdered students called Peterson’s lavish pension “disgusting” and “outrageous.”
Recoil at the thought of this derelict policeman raking in such mega-moolah during decades of retirement — but that isn’t the only outrage.
How can Broward County afford to pay even their bravest police officers millions of dollars in retirement?
They can’t . . . for much longer.
Regardless, elected officials dare not do anything about it. They fear incurring the wrath of public employee unions . . . and risking their own pension windfalls.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Isabel Paterson
In arguing against free enterprise capitalism, the collectivist always adopts the false assumption of a fixed number of jobs in that system. Conversely, in arguing for collectivism, he always assumes that there will be as many jobs as there are workers. The government will make the jobs.
Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine, 1943.
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Watergate!
On May 17, 1973, televised hearings regarding the Watergate scandal began in the United States Senate. Sen. Sam Ervin chaired.
Little did participants know that the name of the hotel in which the White House-arranged break-ins occurred would provide a template for most future political scandals: “-gate” would be suffixed to nearly every other possible designator of scandal. Hillary Clinton’s problems regarding a private Internet server has been called “Emailgate,” for instance.
This could be called a suffix meme. Or insufferable meme, if you prefer.
A clever “meme” made the rounds earlier this year showing, in two columns, what it would be like were guns regulated like cars.
How reasonable that would be!
“Title and tag at each point of sale”; “Driver training”/“Gun training”; Liability insurance on each vehicle/gun”; etc. It seems sound, no?
No.
The memester failed to address a context: our car and driver regulations apply to vehicles and drivers on government-run roads. On your own property you can drive all sorts of vehicles, unregulated. And it is on their own property that most gun owners’ firearms stay most of the time.
So, treating “guns like cars” would put government deeper into our private affairs.*
The meme came into an economist’s view packaged under the slogan “doing nothing means more people die.” He saw problems. For example, “someone might propose that each person above the age of 10 years old be interned in a mental-health camp, until and unless experts appointed by the state certified that he or she was not a danger to society.”
Same logic — we cannot do nothing, can we?
Another economist dubbed the problem we have identified here as “a simplistic model of public policy.” Policy advocates tend to assume that if you change a policy we get only one effect. Not true.
A third economist (I’m going for a trifecta!) discovered that even adding safety features to cars comes at a cost in human life: feeling safer, drivers compensate . . . and it is non-drivers who suffer. More drivers hit more pedestrians.
Be cautious when you drive, sure. Be cautious when you shoot, of course.
But be cautious, especially, when you prescribe new laws.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Not to mention that gun rights are specifically enshrined in the Constitution and vehicle rights . . . not so much.
