Tag: freedom

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general freedom The Draft

Why Not Ask for Help?

pandemic, shut down, epidemic, freedom, voluntary, covid,

“When this is all over, the NHS England board should resign in their entirety,” Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, quoted an employee of Britain’s National Health Service. 

Horton agrees. It’s “a national scandal.”

But now things are looking up.

“[T]he British government asked people to help the National Health Service,” reports The Washington Post, “it called for a ‘volunteer army.’”

“The NHS is ‘rallying the troops’ for the war on coronavirus,” reads the NHS webpage, “with volunteers being called up to help vulnerable people stay safe and well at home.”

The results? 

“Within four days, 750,000 people had signed up,” The Post quantified, “three times the original target and four times the size of the British armed forces.” 

The newspaper story recounts several endearing tales of people inspired to serve their fellow Brits. And now the website’s sign-​up page notes recruiting has been paused — to process the applications.

That’s certainly not the tack taken by New York’s Bill de Blasio. “Mayor de Blasio today called on the federal government to institute an essential draft of all private medical personnel to help in the fight against COVID-​19,” informed the city’s website.

Sadly, the mayor wasn’t alone. At Foreign Policy, University of Massachusetts professor Charli Carpenter asked, “But why isn’t compulsory service on the menu of policy options right now?”

Why would a politician and a professor demand to conscript citizens of a free Republic? 

Without ever asking for volunteers. 

Meanwhile, ABC News notes that “[m]ore than 9,000 retired soldiers have responded to the U.S. Army’s call for retired medical personnel to assist with the response to the novel coronavirus pandemic,” and others are rushing to help. 

As free people are known to do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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pandemic, shut down, epidemic, freedom, voluntary, covid,

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general freedom international affairs national politics & policies

Friends & Enemies

China, Taiwan, freedom, corona virus, epidemic, pandemic, authoritarian,

When times get tough, you learn who your friends are. 

Take the United States’ relationships with Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. The island nation sports a population roughly the size of Australia’s, about 24 million; just across the Taiwan Strait, what we used to call “Red China” holds the world’s largest number of people.

Like the United States, Taiwan has a democratically elected government that recognizes basic human rights such as freedom of speech. What do the Taiwanese want from us? They’re hoping for a military ally, one capable of deterring the free-​speech-​squelching, democracy-​detesting Chinese communist state from making war on them.

In this pandemic, already nearly 24,000 Americans have died from COVID-​19 and over half a million have tested positive for the virus that appears to have originated in Wuhan, China. Worldwide, nearly 2 million souls have contracted it and, by the time you read this, more than 120,000 of them will have perished.

Excluded from the World Health Organization (WHO) at China’s insistence, Taiwanese medical professionals nevertheless managed to warn the international community on December 31, reports the Financial Times, that “its doctors had heard from mainland [Chinese] colleagues that medical staff were getting ill — a sign of human-​to-​human transmission.” 

Yet, on January 14, the WHO tweeted that “Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-​to-​human transmission.” Six days later China publicly informed the world that this virus could be spread from human contact.

“A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did,” notes Axios, “the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.”

Thanks for the warning, Taiwan. Thanks for nothing, China.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Taiwan has also generously provided N95 face masks to the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, even while facing continued military provocations from China. 

China, Taiwan, freedom, corona virus, epidemic, pandemic, authoritarian,

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general freedom too much government

Tyranny Resurrected

Corona Virus, Covid, epidemic, pandemic, hysteria, panic, religion, freedom,

Right after 9/​11, much overkill was directed at the unsuspecting.

Friends of the Dumb Joke Brigade told dumb jokes when everybody was On Edge. It soon became clear that tasteless jocularity had morphed into an actionable offense.

And should anyone on September 12 have had the temerity to sit in a theater studying credits when all others had filed out? Heaven forfend! What schemes might the nonconforming cinephile be plotting alone in the dark?

Twenty years later, we’re at it again. 

We can argue (we do) about which social-​distancing strictures are properly enforceable in our efforts to slow the pandemic. 

But surely some lines inarguably should not be crossed.

I don’t refer to the lone paddle-​boarder or to the man who played catch with his kid in a park. I refer to parishioners who attended worship services at King James Bible Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi in their cars. Listened to the sermon on the radio in their cars. If the metal-​and-​glass shells in which attendees were encased couldn’t block the corona-​fumes, what the heck could?

Nonetheless, eight Greenville police officers showed up to distribute $500 fines.

The state’s governor discourages but has not banned drive-​in church services. It was Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons who has banned them.

The church is suing. Its lawyer, Jeremy Dys, says, “Americans can tolerate a lot if it means demonstrating love for their fellow man, but they will not … tolerate churchgoers being ticketed by the police for following CDC guidelines at church. This has to stop now.”

Beyond violating fundamental human rights, the city’s position also makes no sense.

Unfortunately, nonsense is, in these days of panic, not uncommon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Corona Virus, Covid, epidemic, pandemic, hysteria, panic, religion, freedom,

Photo from Joel Bradshaw

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free trade & free markets too much government

The Exceptions Disprove the Rules

freedom, prohibition, rules, regulations, red tape, bureaucracy,

“I’ve instructed my prosecutors not to charge certain low-​level nonviolent offenses to avoid people being held in jail unnecessarily,” Maryland’s Attorney General Marilyn Mosby informed the state’s Republican governor. She also urged the governor “to release all inmates in state prisons who are over 60,” explains The Washington Times, “approved for parole or scheduled to complete their sentences within the next year.”

This is all to avoid a prison pandemic. Meanwhile, the “Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Monday that it would permit states to create laboratories for designing COVID-​19 tests,” Reason magazine tells us, adding that the FDA “has also decided to permit pharmacists to make their own alcohol-​based hand sanitizers.”

Reason’s Robby Soave asks the obvious question: “Why do the people who are working hardest to fight the coronavirus have to ask a slow federal bureaucracy for permission to save lives?”

The New York Times reports that Dr. Helen Y. Chu, an infectious disease expert in Seattle, tried mightily to perform tests on subjects, early in the epidemic, to track how the virus was spreading. She was stymied every which way.

By bureaucracies.

The kludge of bad regulations and laws merely adds cost and annoyance during normal times; during emergencies they present major stumbling blocks to public health.

So, when our leaders make special exceptions, they demonstrate that the regulations were always bad — now just worse.

Real leadership would nix these rules, permanently.

And, for that matter, end the war on drugs — and prostitution and other victimless crimes.

One of the infractions Maryland’s AG decided to go lax on, however, is public urination. That crime has victims and ought to remain a public health violation.

Though perhaps not worth imprisonment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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freedom, prohibition, rules, regulations, red tape, bureaucracy,

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general freedom international affairs

Totalitarianized

Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, democracy, freedom,

Legislation introduced last April to allow the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to mainland China motivated millions into the streets in protests that have not yet ended … 

… including a major pro-​democracy rally scheduled for tomorrow in Causeway Bay.

Traveling to Hong Kong and Taiwan months ago, the glimpse I caught of Hongkongers’ courageous struggle spurs me to applaud George Will’s judgment in Sunday’s Washington Post: “Nothing more momentous happened” in 2019. 

The extradition bill has been withdrawn, sure, but Hongkongers know well that without real democracy they have no long-​term hope of avoiding the repressive rule of the Chinese Communist Party … which may no longer be “communist,” but remains totally totalitarian.

Ask a million Uighurs. 

Carrie Lam, the city’s Beijing-​installed chief executive, has long labeled the protesters “selfish rioters.” But new pro-​democracy candidates won nearly 90 percent of seats in last month’s local elections, demonstrating which side the public is on. 

This year began with newly un-​term-​limited Chinese President Xi Jinping threatening military action against Taiwan. The island nation of 24 million, some 100 miles off the coast of the mainland, has been offered the same “one country, two systems” arrangement China has with Hong Kong … what Mr. Will dubbed “a formula for the incremental suffocation of freedom.”

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-​wen, is “loathed by Beijing,” reports the South China Morning Post, “because her party refuses to accept the idea that Taiwan is part of the so-​called one-​China principle which denies the island’s independence.” 

Her opponent in the upcoming national election on the 11th, like some in the NBA, “favours much warmer relations with mainland China.”

The Taiwanese, however — like Hongkongers — appear increasingly resistant to being totalitarianized.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

2019 Commentaries on Hong Kong and Taiwan

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Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, democracy, freedom,

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national politics & policies The Draft

Five Days Left!

draft, registration, slavery, war, freedom,

You may have noticed me take notice … repeatedly … of an otherwise little-​noticed National Commission on Military, National and Public Service (NCMNPS). It was established by Congress in 2017 to look into the issue of extending draft registration to women or let the federal courts end registration for not including women.

While I protested the atavistic practice, loud calls could be heard to bring back military conscription partially or universally … or to impose a year or two of national “service” on all young people when they turn 18 — despite its utter lack of value.

The last day of the year — Dec. 31, 2019 — is your deadline to quickly and easily express your thoughts on the draft here. 

Thankfully, as the Commission is finishing its work (making its report in March — don’t forget to share your thoughts!), Rep. Peter DeFazio (D‑Ore.) and Rodney Davis (R‑Ill.) have introduced House Resolution 5492. “To repeal the Military Selective Service Act, and thereby terminate the registration requirements of such Act …”* 

“Today, with the introduction of H.R. 5492, the report of the NCMNPS due in March 2020, and Congress likely to be forced by pending legal cases to choose between ending draft registration and trying to expand it to women as well as men,” 1980s draft registration resister Edward Hasbrouck writes at AntiWar​.com, “we are closer to ending draft registration than at any time since the requirement for all young men to register with the Selective Service System was reinstated in 1980.”

Speak loudly to the Commission now and let’s carry all the big sticks we can to Congress in the new year with one simple message: Pass H.R. 5492. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The legislation would also end what are sometimes lifetime penalties imposed by federal agencies and state governments against those who fail to register.

Draft Links of Note: https://thisiscommonsense.org////2019/01/01/paul-jacob-on-the-draft/

Archive of Posts on the Draft: https://thisiscommonsense.org////category/the-draft/

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draft, registration, slavery, war, freedom,

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