Tag: Common Sense

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international affairs

Victory & Surrender

courage, caution, strength, fun, play

Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker sums up in a single word the recently announced framework of an agreement between the United States of America and the Taliban: Surrender.

“This current process bears an unfortunate resemblance to the Paris peace talks during the Vietnam War,” writes Crocker in a Washington Post op-​ed. “Then, as now, it was clear that by going to the table we were surrendering; we were just negotiating the terms of our surrender.”

He’s not wrong. 

It may seem strange that, after successfully toppling the Taliban government, a savage regime that had given safe haven to Al-​Qaeda to launch its 911 attacks against us, we would now, nearly two decades later, be anxious to cut a deal with that same Taliban, even possibly bringing them into a power-​sharing role.

Anything to get the heck out of Kabul and back to the good ol’ USA. And it is a recognition, right or wrong, that the Afghan government is unsustainable.

The alternative? Keep a significant contingent of U.S. troops in Afghanistan … forever. Or until we have fashioned a brand new westernized-​Afghanistan that is no possible threat to us.

Yep, forever. 

“Winning may not be an available option,” contends a new Rand report, “but losing … would be a blow to American credibility, the weakening of deterrence and the value of U.S. reassurance elsewhere, an increased terrorist threat emanating from the Afghan region, and the distinct possibility of a necessary return there under worse conditions.” 

The same mistaken reasons we stayed in Vietnam. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom media and media people national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Happy Birthday, America!

Tom Paine, Thomas Paine, Laurent Dabos

What? Oh, sure, I know the United States of America has its birthday on July 4th, that day in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.

Let’s agree I’m early. (Oh, how I wish it were July.)

But the interesting thing about history is how we get to those moments wherein the great “we” declare our independence or fill the streets or storm the beaches — or the polls. The many big, important days that lead to THE day.

Today is such a date, because 242 years ago on January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense. Without this day 242 years ago, we wouldn’t have had Independence Day six months later. 

Using common and direct language, and speaking to all the “inhabitants of America,” Common Sense made the case for both independence from Britain and the establishment of a democratic republic. Boy, did it make the case. On a per capita basis, Paine’s pamphlet is the bestselling American publication in history. 

His pamphlet or parts were read publicly, reprinted in newspapers and spread throughout the colonies. This common man — barely an American,* having landed on our shores in November 1774 — used the universal language, speaking truth to power.

“Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression,” Paine told his fellow Americans. “Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”

The original idea of these United States was freedom. 

And that, my friends, is Common Sense. (I’m Paul Jacob.)

 

* Of course, this makes Paine almost quintessentially American.

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Common Sense ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies too much government

The Underground Amphibian

Purple Pig-Nose Frog, Ghats mountain range in India, KEK, Kekistan, endangered

A new species of frog has been discovered, and I’m just happy it has nothing to do with online japes and jibes about Trump, social justice, or an ancient Egyptian deity. But before you can say “Praise Kek,” please note:

Sometimes a frog is just a frog.

But this frog is special, living most of its life underground. It is purple. And though this is not stressed in the reports, it’s markedly gelatinous.

In an article entitled “New Purple Pig-​Nose Frog Found in Remote Mountains,” Jason Bittel explains that the frog comes above ground only when it rains — which in the Western Ghats mountain range in India is during monsoon season.

Named after the discovers’ late colleague, Dr. Subramaniam Bhupathy, it is dubbed Bhupathy’s purple frog (Nasikabatrachus bhupathi). I have to tip my hat to them, so to speak, for the herpetologist’s first name seems more fitting for a submerged-​in-​earth amphibian: “Subramaniam purple frog” would almost qualify as a pun. And, as readers of these Common Sense squibs will confirm, I am not always so valiant in resisting the art of the pun.

But you don’t read these commentaries for science news. 

So, a moral.

Around the world, amphibians are disturbingly under threat. As Alex Jones hyperbolizes, “they’re turning the frogs gay!” But be that as it may (or, more likely, may not), even under greater threat is political common sense.

Let’s hope it, too, will emerge with the coming monsoon.

In India? Your neighborhood? Kekistan?

Probably not in Washington, D.C. But it’s Friday, we can at least hope.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard porkbarrel politics property rights responsibility tax policy too much government

No Rich No More

Connecticut, taxes, revenue, budget, tax and spend, wealth, common sense

Connecticut has a budget problem. There’s not enough money to spend.

WTNH-​TV in New Haven paraphrased the situation along with the response of Connecticut’s very progressive governor: “Income tax revenue collapses; Malloy says taxing the rich doesn’t work.”

The news story explains, “Connecticut’s state budget woes are compounding with collections from the state income tax collapsing, despite two high-​end tax hikes in the past six years.”

Hmmm. Despite the tax increases? Or … “because the state of Connecticut depends too much on its wealthy residents,” as the report continued, “and wealthy residents are leaving …”

A Yankee Institute report notes that “the exodus of wealth from the state as top earners and businesses relocate to more tax-​friendly states” is a major problem. Institute President Carol Platt Liebau calls it a “terrible cycle of tax increases followed by deficits followed by even more tax increases.” 

Yet, state legislative Democrats are back pushing more tax hikes on “the rich.” Senate legislation would jack up the tax rate — retroactively — on those with income of $500,000 or more. House legislation would slap a 19 percent surcharge on some hedge fund earnings. In response, the head of the Connecticut Hedge Fund Association testified that his “industry is populated by exactly that type of person that will move based on tax policy.”*

A song by Ten Years After comes to mind: 

Tax the rich, feed the poor
Till there are no rich no more

Doesn’t sound like a good idea even in song.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It’s worth noting that Gov. Malloy is now “against raising taxes again to fill the deficits and is instead focusing on spending cuts …”

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general freedom ideological culture individual achievement too much government

The Pattern Here

Thomas, Sowell, intellectual, race, Common Sense

Thomas Sowell, who retired from his syndicated column last week, may be the greatest public intellectual of our time.

Though he is “an original,” an iconoclast, his work is best seen as the carrying on of a tradition. Or two.

Consider his most famous research area: race. An African-​American, Sowell is the age’s most persuasive dissident to the dominant strains of racial advocacy. He brought much common sense to a subject beset with unhinged passion.*

And yet even here he was obviously drawing on traditions that, if not well known, were firmly established.†

One of Sowell’s most important contributions, in books such as A Conflict of Visions and The Vision of the Anointed, is his distinction between two very different ways of looking at the social world:

  • the “constrained vision” .… of most conservatives and classical liberals; and
  • the “unconstrained vision” … of so many socialists, anarchists and progressives.

For many conservatives, this is Sowell at his best. But is it original? A few of my readers could probably lecture me on its origins in a famous essay by F. A. Hayek, “Individualism: True and False.”‡

Over at the Foundation for Economic Education, David R. Henderson addresses the one area where I tend to disagree with Sowell: foreign policy. Henderson gently calls out Sowell’s apparent credulity regarding the dishonesty of our war party leaders. Sure, Henderson writes, “[t]here are downsides to distrust.… But there are upsides too.”

Mourning the loss of trust in presidents, Sowell blames it on presidents lying to us in recent decades. But, as Henderson notes, “war presidents” lying to us about war is not new — providing examples.

Pity that Sowell, of all people, does not see the pattern here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* See Sowell’s Ethnic America: A History, Race and Culture: A World View, and The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective; but also popular argumentation, such as Pink and Brown People and Black Rednecks and White Liberals. And then there is the important Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?

† Economists W. H. Hutt and Gary Becker, at the very least, provided the background for Sowell’s research with their respective books The Economics of the Colour Bar and The Economics of Discrimination.

‡ See F. A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order. In another essay, Hayek provides Sowell with the seed of Knowledge and Decisions.

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Thomas, Sowell, intellectual, race, Common Sense

 

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Accountability insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

The Democracy Now

Donna Brazile, CNN, Hillary Clinton, question, illustration, Common Sense

Once upon a time, the Democratic Party was fondly referred to as “The Democracy.”

But that was a long time before the Clintons took control of the party’s heart and soul. It’s certainly been an insider’s game since.

Case in point? The deliberate scuttling of the Bernie Sanders campaign. Debbie Wasserman-​Schultz lost her chairperson-​ship of the Democratic National Committee because of her (WikiLeaked email) collaboration with the Clintons over the dirty tricks that made sure Bernie got nowhere near the top levers of power.

And now we have Donna Brazile, covertly doing all she can to ensure the election to the Presidency of arguably the most corrupt politician of our time.

This political operative left CNN’s talking head ranks under a cloud — she had leaked to Clinton campaign communication director Jennifer Palmieri details about a question to be asked at a CNN-​hosted presidential debate. Though CNN is not for nothing popularly known as the Clinton News Network, even CNN muckety-​mucks felt betrayed.

But when interviewed by the indefatigable Megyn Kelly of Fox News, Brazile defended herself from the charges — “as a Christian woman” who understood “persecution”; she also compared her interviewer to a thief, and blamed Russian hackers.

Now, as a result of another WikiLeaks email exposure, Brazile has been caught again. The network has severed ties with her, and she’s defending herself with lines like “I try to learn as much as I can, share as much as I can.”

Unquestionably.

Having proven her loyalties, it looks like Ms. Brazile’s on track for a job in the new administration.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Donna Brazile, CNN, Hillary Clinton, question, illustration, Common Sense

 

Illustration based on original (cc) photo by Tim Pierce on Flickr