On February 1, 1835, slavery was abolished in Mauritius. Twenty-six years later, in the American Civil War, Texas seceded from the United States. On this date in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed a Joint Resolution from Congress formally submitting the proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery (and involuntary servitude), to the states for ratification.
At Townhall on Sunday, I applauded the Women’s March on Washington for being peaceful, despite Madonna’s F-bomb laden speech, culminating with her daydream of “blowing up the White House.”
We’ll never know how many more folks marched in that much-heralded event than attended last weekend’s pro-life march, because the mainstream media did not pay enough attention to the later, inconvenient-to-their-narrative event, and crowd-counters didn’t count.
The two marches did “intersect” (figuratively) when a pro-life group was kicked out as a “partner” to the women’s march.
“If you want to come to the march you are coming with the understanding that you respect a woman’s right to choose [abortion],” declared Linda Sarsour, one of four chairwomen for the women’s march, who was described by the New York Times as “a Brooklyn-born Palestinian-American Muslim racial justice and civil-rights activist.”
In its favor, the pro-life march, anti-celebrating the 44th year since the Roe v. Wade decision, had far more tasteful placards — despite the fact that pro-life protesters are often remembered for grisly signs picturing aborted fetuses. I particularly liked a sign held by a young women, reading:
“We are having a clump of cells.” — [said] No One Ever
Speaking of young people, Slate magazine reported that “the demographic outlook for the pro-life movement looks anything but bleak,” citing a 2015 poll wherein “52 percent of millennials said the label ‘pro-life’ describes them somewhat or very well.”
Remember, the pro-life movement has been marching all these years not to secure government benefits for themselves, but to protect others.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Another major source of stop-gap revenues to fund Hitler’s popular tax and rearmament policies was Germany’s — and later much of Europe’s — Jewish population. By late 1937, civil servants in the Finance Ministry had pushed the state’s credit limit as far as it would go. Forced to come up with ever more creative ways of refinancing the national debt, they urged their attention to property owned by German Jews, which was soon confiscated and added to the so-called Volksvermögen, or the collective assets of the German people.
Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (2005), Jefferson Chase, trans., p. 41.
On January 31, 1849, the Corn Laws were abolished in the United Kingdom, one of the most impressive and far-reaching anti-protectionist moves of all time. “Corn” stood for all grains, including wheat, oats, barley, etc.; the free-trade agitation by John Bright and Richard Cobden was one of the main impetuses for the reform.
On Jan. 31, 1865, the United States Congress proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, submitting it to the states for ratification. The Amendment’s main section reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
On Jan. 31, 1990, the first McDonald’s fast food restaurant opens in the Soviet Union. Having once traveled to Moscow, I’m exceedingly thankful for this.
The United States is no longer a “full-fledged democracy.”
According to a New York Post story, our union is, instead, a “flawed democracy.”
Hmmm. Where to begin?
Despite the article’s featured photo of President Trump, the downgrading of America’s democratic status occurred prior to the billionaire’s swearing-in.
Technically, of course, the United States is not now nor has ever been a full-fledged (much less a flawed) democracy. We live in a republic . . . if we can keep it.
As is often the case, folks use the term “democracy” not to indicate it as a form of government — a pure democracy — but as a shorthand for a country with democratic elections, where “basic political freedoms and civil liberties are respected,” and with “an independent judiciary.”
An organization associated with The Economist, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), has for a decade been rating the world’s countries based on numerous political factors. For the first time, this year, the United States has dropped out of the top tier and into the second, joining the likes of Botswana, Ghana and India.
“The U.S. is the second-highest ranking flawed democracy,” the Post noted, “coming in right behind Japan and tying with Italy.” Norway garnered first place among the 19 “full-fledged democracies,” including most Western European countries.
Why was the U.S. downgraded? The EIU report explained the lower score “was caused by the same factors that led Mr. Trump to the White House: a continued erosion of trust in government and elected officials.”
So, if the American people simply placed their heads in the sand, blindly trusting politicians, we’d be “full-fledged,” eh?
Full-fledged fools fiddling away our freedom, that is.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Leo Tolstoy, Christianity and Patriotism (1898).
On Jan. 30, 1948, Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, known for his non-violent, non-cooperation struggle for freedom and national independence, was assassinated by a Hindu extremist.
On Jan. 30, 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s home was bombed in retaliation for his work on the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
On Jan. 30, 1972, British soldiers killed fourteen unarmed civil rights marchers in Northern Ireland in what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” Soldiers shot 26 unarmed protesters and bystanders – 13 males, seven of whom were teenagers, died immediately, while another man died of his injuries nearly five months later. In the immediate aftermath, an investigation by the British Government largely cleared the soldiers and British authorities of blame. A second investigation begun in 1998, released a report in 2010 declaring that all of those shot were unarmed, and that the killings were both “unjustified and unjustifiable.”
Not quite fitting today’s “non-violence elicits violence” theme, on January 30, 1835, Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot former military leader and then-President Andrew Jackson, but failed. He was subdued by a crowd, including several congressmen. That marked the first attempt on the life of a sitting U.S. president.
You have seen the signs, you know the times. But where do you stand on protest vs. rioting?
Paul Jacob plies his common sense trade at Townhall, addressing precisely this issue. Why not join him, then click back here?
On January 29, 1761, Albert Gallatin was born. Gallatin served as the fourth United States Secretary of the Treasury — a post in which he served longer than any other in American history — advanced the anthropological and linguistic study of native Americans, and became the subject of a biography by Henry Adams. Called the “father of American ethnology,” he has been honored with a 1967 U.S. stamp as well as many placenames, including the Gallatin National Forest in Montana.
Reich officials often justified their policies toward Jews with arguments about economic necessity. For example, one German bureaucrat stationed abroad during the war made the reasonable-sounding — if morally abhorrent — assertion that the sale of Jewish assets was ‘an effective means of price regulation.’
Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (2005), Jefferson Chase, trans., p. 199.