Common Sense with Paul Jacob

On October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for the United States Presidency, Barry Goldwater, thereby launching Reagan’s political career. The speech came to be known as “A Time for Choosing.”

Two years earlier, Vasili Arkhipov, a flotilla commander present on the Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 in the Caribbean sea, defied the order of the sub’s captain, Valentin Savitsky, to launch a nuclear device. The captain had concluded that war had started while the submarine had been submerged. He had inferred this from the depth charges that American ships had deployed in order to force the submarine to the surface during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Captain Savitsky, seeking the necessary approval of two others on board, ordered political officer Ivan Masslenikov and the flotilla commander Vasili Arkhipov to launch a nuclear torpedo.

Masslenikov agreed. Arkhipov refused.

The date was October 27, 1962, and World War III was prevented by this one man, Arkhipov, who held his ground while facing the increasing anger of the submarine commander, refusing to approve a nuclear torpedo launch that would most almost certainly have triggered a conflict that would have doomed civilization, perhaps most or all of humanity.

That, we can now agree, was a “time for choosing” — and the correct choice was made.

On October 26, 1774, the first Continental Congress adjourned in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Exactly one year later, King George III of Great Britain went before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion. And one year later yet, to the day, in 1776, septuagenerian Benjamin Franklin (pictured, above) departed from America for France, seeking financial support for the American Revolution.

This week, the official public debt of the federal government of the United States hit $38 trillion. Many reports noted that it came quickly after hitting the $37 trillion mark, that it came during the federal shutdown, and that only during the pandemic did debt accumulate faster:

Reports were widely published, but were they widely read? Is this just ho hum?

This space last hosted news on debt accumulation markers in the trillions in mid-June. About two months later, the U.S. gross national debt surpassed $37 trillion (August 11, 2025), according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s daily financial report. This milestone came years earlier than the Congressional Budget Office’s 2020 projections, which had anticipated it after fiscal year 2030.

Seeking to illustrate the increased frequency of debt accumulation milestones, we offer this (with help from Grok):

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation has a number of graphs related to the subject:

On October 25, 1806, German philosopher Max Stirner was born. Stirner was known for his radical individualism, which under the name of “egoism” became culturally chic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, a major work that was famously attacked by Karl Marx, he translated into German Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (from its original English) and J.-B. Say’s A Treatise on Political Economy (from its original French).

Der Einzige und sein Eigentum has been translated into English as The Ego and Its Own and The Ego and His Own.

“Max Stirner” is a nom de plume, his birth name being Johann Kaspar Schmidt. He died in 1856, and his biography by John Henry Mackay, Max Stirner — sein Leben und sein Werk, was published in German in 1898 (enlarged 1910, 1914), and finally translated into English in 2005.

The only image we have of him was sketched by Karl Marx’s comrade, benefactor and abuse-buddy, Friedrich Engels. The portrait above has been adapted from that drawing.