Simone Weil, draft for a Statement of Human Obligations (1943).
It is the aim of public life to arrange that all forms of power are entrusted, so far as possible, to men who effectively consent to be bound by the obligation towards all human beings which lies upon everyone, and who understand the obligation.
Law is the quality of the permanent provisions for making this aim effective.
On Feb. 21, 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto.
On Feb. 21, 1916, the Battle of Verdun began with German bombardment of the city of Verdun, France. For ten months, the longest single engagement of the First World War, German forces attacked the French along a 20-kilometer front crossing the Meuse River. When the battle ended, with no change in the strategic position of either army, the combined death toll was over 300,000 (out of over 700,000 casualties).
On Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X was gunned down by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity in New York City.
“I need to pay higher taxes,” Bill Gates told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday.
He was making a case against Republican tax cuts, but his actual argument? Insignificant. It’s just another unlearned, narrow-perspective “growing inequality” farrago. But his conclusion intrigues . . . as a man-bites-dog story, because people have this goofy idea that rich people are somehow against government and for reduced taxes.
They aren’t. Not even most of the richest.
“I’ve paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else,” says the man worth $90 billion, “but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes.”
Why? To spend his money better than he could?
Were all the wealth of America’s billionaires confiscated whole and that sum would actually pay off the federal debt (which I doubt), what do you think Washington politicians would do? Go on the straight and narrow and never over-spend again?
No. Politicians would take the new influx of funds as a signal to go on an even bigger spending binge.
But what about his mere income tax increase notion? What then? As sure as the Blue Screen of Death it would be applied down to millionaires, too. And then rates for less-than-millionaires would likely go up. We have a history with this. And what would that do?
It would hit up-and-coming entrepreneurs the hardest. It would nip Bill Gates’s company’s competition in the bud.
But surely Gates wouldn’t be mercenary in his theatrical play for media adoration, would he?
Not Saint Bill!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and, like the grave, cries, ‘Give, give!’ The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.
Beginning on Feb. 20, 1944, and lasting through Feb. 25, 1944, the United States Strategic Air Forces (USSTAF) launched a series of missions against the Third Reich that became known as “Big Week.” In six days, the Eighth Air Force bombers based in England flew more than 3,000 sorties and the Fifteenth Air Force based in Italy more than 500. Together they dropped roughly 10,000 tons of bombs. The daylight bombing campaign was also supported by RAF Bomber Command operating against the same targets at night. The campaign helped the Allies achieve air superiority, so the invasion of Europe could proceed. While U.S. industrial might could entirely replace losses during the “Big Week,” Germany was unable to do so.
“Carrying cash is not a crime,” Institute for Justice attorney Dan Alban informs us, “yet too often the government treats it like one.”
Musician Phil Parhamovich learned that the hard way. He was porting his life savings, almost $92,000 — earmarked for a down payment on a recording studio — when cop-robbers of the Wyoming Highway Patrol stopped him for not wearing a seat belt.
It turned out to be an extremely expensive infraction. The officers intimated that it was illegal to travel with so much cash and pressured him to hand it over. Scared and believing that his alternative was jail, Phil signed a preprinted waiver letting them grab his life savings.
Preprinted waiver? This means it’s routine for these guys to try to legitimate their actions as they premeditatedly intimidate and rob people.
The state of Wyoming tried to keep the money. Fortunately, the Institute for Justice took Phil’s case, and a judge accepted the facts presented by Phil and his IJ lawyer. After months of tribulation and suspense, the robbery victim got his money back.
Another win for the good guys.
Thankfully, the Institute for Justice’s freedom-defenders have won a great number of such cases. Yet, IJ lawyers certainly cannot litigate all the forfeiture injustices being committed by government authorities all across the country.
That’s why the group is pushing to reform civil asset forfeiture laws, requiring a criminal conviction before property can be forfeited.
And you can help. How? Launch efforts in your town or state, or work to push infant efforts to a higher level. Take the initiative.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
One who would influence the masses must have recourse to the art of advertisement. The clamour of puffery is to-day requisite even for an intellectual movement.
February 19, 1942, was a sad day for constitutional rights, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas of the country as military zones. These zones were used to incarcerate Japanese Americans in internment camps.
After every major school shooting the calls for “doing something serious about guns” burst into the national conversation. And yet… considering how lame most actual proposals are … what is really the ultimate intention appears to be gun prohibition and confiscation. And the thing about that? It means that only the police would have guns.
Consider the Baltimore Police Department, then rethink that. Think on it hard. But first, click on over to Townhall.com for a full discussion of Baltimore corruption. Then come back here for more information:
On Feb. 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl, a brother and sister, were arrested at the University of Munich for secretly (or not so secretly) putting out leaflets calling on Germans to revolt against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.
In the previous year Hans had founded a group of students, who called themselves “The White Rose.” The group wrote and distributed six leaflets aimed at educated Germans. The leaflets made their way across Germany and to several other occupied countries. The Allies later dropped them all over the Third Reich.