On March 7, 1644, Massachusetts established the first two-chamber legislature in the American colonies.
One hundred thirty years later, to the day, British forces closed the port of Boston to all commerce.
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- What is the percentage of tenured faculty on American campuses who are still unambiguously on the side of free intellectual exchange?
- What is the percentage of them who are willing to express that position openly?
Sociologist Charles Murray asked those questions near the end of his reflections on Thursday’s Middlebury College event, in which his speaking engagement was interrupted by shouting mobs and he and his colleagues were physically attacked*.
Murray thinks the answer to the first question is “more than 50 percent.” He doubts that is the answer to the second.
He is pessimistic about free inquiry on campus.
And has reason to be.
College faculty members are closing ranks, as many at Middlebury did, calling Murray — famous for books such as Losing Ground and The Bell Curve — “a discredited ideologue paid by the American Enterprise Institute to promote public policies targeting people of color, women and the poor”** and “not an academic nor a ‘critically acclaimed’ public scholar, but a well-funded phony.”
Mark J. Perry has listed many more complaints, all offered as reasons not to listen or debate with the famous intellectual.
That was last Thursday. On Saturday, a pro-Trump, “Proud Boys” march in Berkeley culminated not only in violence, bloodied faces, destroyed property, but also in the burning of a purloined “Free Speech” placard.
The University of California at Berkeley seems uninterested in controlling the mobs. Berkeley City Police have poorly defended non-leftist protestors. It’s open season on freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble.
Unless something is done, officially, mobbing will be the new normal. And our basic rights? A memory.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* His colleague Professor Allison Stanger was seriously injured in the riotous shoving and grabbing. Murray tweeted yesterday, “Everybody in the mob could be criminally prosecuted, but those who injured Prof. Stranger must be.”
** It is worth noting that his recent Coming Apart was entirely devoted to the economic performance and culture of white Americans.
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John Hawks
‘Neanderthal’* is a bad word. It means . . . Well, you guys know what it means. It depends which political party you are, what it means, right?
* Pronounced with a soft th; John Hawks, explaining why the hominid Homo neanderthalensis should be pronounced with a ‘hard T’, “Are We the Last Neanderthals?” 24th Chicago Humanities Festival, Nov. 2, 2013.
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Lana Peters & others
On March 6, 1967, Soviet Premiere Joseph Stalin’s only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, defected to the United States. (She later took the name Lana Peters, upon marriage to William Wesley Peters. The marriage was short-lived.)
| The March 6 date also marks term limits advocate and initiative organizer Paul Jacob’s birthday. He was born on the anniversary of the births of Michaelangelo, Cryano de Bergerac, and Alan Greenspan. He is also, obviously, the reason this site, ThisIsCommonSense.com, exists. (It continues, however, only through the continued support of readers like you.)
| On this day in 1820, the Missouri Compromise was signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brought Maine into the Union as a free state, and made the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.
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Townhall: Cowards Clapping for Courage
The new president delivered a fairly successful first address before Congress. But it was not without its problems. One big one serves as this weekend’s subject at Townhall. Click on over, then come back here.
https://youtu.be/QN1tjLs777s
- FEE: Why the Joint Session Standing Ovations Creeped Me Out
- Miami Herald: How Carryn Owens ended up at Trump’s speech to Congress
- YouTube: The Americanization of Emily
- The Atlantic: Fighting Terrorism With a Credit Card
- Van Jones: Trump became President in that moment
- Time: The State of the Union’s Most Despicable Moment
- NPR: In Emotional Moment Of Speech, Trump Addresses Navy SEAL’s Widow
- Miami Herald: Slain SEAL’s dad wants answers
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A Banned Book
On March 5, 1616, Nicolaus Copernicus’s book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was placed on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books. This censorship notwithstanding, the Earth continued to revolve around the Sun. The book had been first published in 1543 in Nuremberg.
| In 1770, the Boston Massacre took place on March 5.
| March 5 is magician Penn Jillette’s birthday. He turns 62 today, beginning his 63rd year of life.
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Brion McClanahan
What kind of press do we need or want? A fair and objective press? No. We need a free and independent press, and modern media has gone the way of the 18th and 19th centuries. That is a good thing.
Brion McClanahan, “Fake News,” The Brion McClanahan Show, March 2, 2017 (on how Internet media is bringing news back to its honest and openly partisan origins … and why Tom Brokaw is a pompous, know-nothing windbag)
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What We Want (From the Police, The Pols)
Polling data and conclusions:
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The Constitutional Congress
On March 4, 1789, the first bicameral Congress of the United States met in New York, New York, in accordance with the new Constitution.
Two years later on the same date, Vermont was admitted as the fourteenth state of the union.
In a twist in World War II allegiances, Finland declared war on Nazi Germany on March 4, 1945, beginning the Lapland War.
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Mary Shelley
I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, detail (above) of a portrait by Richard Rothwell, oil on canvas, first exhibited 1840.