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national politics & policies The Draft

The Draft Goes Hollywood?

“Whether you’re able to recall the last military draft or not, if you watch the show This Is Us, then you may have some familiarity,” says a column at Medium.com apparently authored by the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service.

The commission was set up by Congress to explore the idea of extending draft registration to young women, as a federal judge has ruled, or ending it altogether, as should be done — or even go all the way to impose a one- or two-​year compulsory national service requirement for every young high school grad.

According to the piece, headlined, “This Is Us and the Military Draft,” the “one thing” the commission, the military draft, and the October 21, 2019 episode of this NBC television program, “Nicky’s Number Is Called,” have “in common” is “the Selective Service System.”

Today, the agency threatens young men to register, keeping, at great expense, a badly out-​of-​date registration list that could be used to conscript those young men into the military. Back in 1970, Selective Service held a draft lottery live on TV whereby young men whose birthdates were picked first got involuntarily shipped off to Vietnam. 

A This Is Us 1970 flashback “gives us a glimpse of what that was like in one powerful scene.” Two brothers are at a bar waiting to learn their fate. The commission explains that one brother “is adamant that his birthday will be called.” Drinking heavily, he is more terrified than “adamant.” 

His birthdate is picked fifth out of 365 — making it a certainty he will be drafted. Immediately, his brother comforts him with, “We’ll get you to Canada.”

Is the commission signaling its support for my position? 

The draft is unconstitutional, unjust and unnecessary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Action Item: Go HERE to instruct the commission to tell Congress: Don’t extend draft registration to women, end it for everyone. No draft and no forced national service program.

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

The King’s Airball

“The thing is, LeBron, we’ve come to expect more of you,” writes Dan Wolken in USA Today, taking the National Basketball Association star to task for his comments taking Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey to task for having tweeted “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.”

Morey’s pro-​protester statement had caused a backlash against the NBA from the totalitarian Chinese government, threatening the league’s — and LeBron’s — continued access to China’s large and lucrative market of basketball fans.

LeBron James told reporters that Morey was “misinformed, not really educated” about the Hong Kong situation, before adding, witlessly, “I have no idea but that’s just my belief.”

“Yes, we all do have freedom of speech,” acknowledged James, “but at times there are ramifications for the negative that can happen, when you’re not thinking of others and you’re only thinking about yourself.”

Ramifications for whom? The people of Hong Kong yearning for freedom and democracy? Or was Mr. James … only thinking about himself?

Criticism came fast and furious. “@KingJames — you’re parroting communist propaganda. China is running torture camps and you know it,” tweeted Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. 

“Let me clear up the confusion,” responded the King of Basketball, if not public relations. “I do not believe there was any consideration for the consequences and ramifications of the tweet.  I’m not discussing the substance.”

And then LeBron further clarified, “My team and this league just went through a difficult week. I think people need to understand what a tweet or statement can do to others.… Could have waited a week to send it.”

Hong Kong protesters are now burning LeBron’s No. 23 jersey. 

Apparently, their freedom can’t wait a week.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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general freedom international affairs

Blizzard Fallout

“I’ve already deleted my Blizzard account,” offered the young man while taking my Starbucks order. 

Blizzard Entertainment is a video game developer based in Irvine, California. Earlier this week, the company rescinded the Grandmasters tournament winnings of Hearthstone esports player Ng Wai Chung, whose professional name is “Blitzchung,” banning him from pro competition for one year. 

Why? In a post-​match interview, the Hong Kong native, donning a gas mask, declared, “Liberate Hong Kong!”

The company claims Blitzchung violated tournament rules disallowing “any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard.” More likely, the censorship comes from Tencent Games, a large Chinese company, with a 5 percent ownership stake in Blizzard’s parent company.

“I can’t just sit there doing nothing,” Chung told reporters, “watching our freedom being destroyed bit by bit.”

Blitzchung’s courageous stand has, thankfully, received rewards, too, for he is receiving offers from other, more politically conscious gaming outfits. 

And Blizzard faces a serious customer backlash, along with employee walkouts and dissent.

On Wednesday, I bemoaned the fickle stand taken by Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey, who tweeted, “Fight for freedom! Stand with Hong Kong!” but then deleted the tweet under pressure from the Chinese government. Then, yesterday, an NBA spokesperson apologized that a CNN reporter was blocked from asking Rocket players a question about the controversy.

The NBA may be scared of totalitarian China’s economic bullying, but fans are speaking out. At exhibition games between NBA and Chinese Basketball Association teams, in both Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., fans wore shirts and held signs saying, “Free Hong Kong.” 

Speaking truth to power across the globe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Stand By Your Tweet

Last Friday, Daryl Morey, the general manager of the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets, tweeted a graphic repeating the Hong Kong protesters’ chant, 

“Fight for freedom!

“Stand with Hong Kong!”

But before I could hit “like,” he deleted it amid the massive backlash from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese companies it rules. 

The owner of the Rockets, with billions in NBA business at stake, immediately distanced himself from his GM — and human rights — tweeting that, “@dmorey does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets” and “we are NOT a political organization.”

Rockets star James Harden apologized on Chinese state television, adding, “We love China. We love playing there.”

Despite suggesting that it does not “Stand with Hong Kong,” the NBA did reiterate that “the values of the league support individuals’ educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them.”

“I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China,” GM Morey penitently explained in yet another tweet. “I was merely voicing one thought, based on one interpretation, of one complicated event. I have had a lot of opportunity since that tweet to hear and consider other perspectives.”

On Facebook, Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai posted a defense of China’s anti-​democratic action in Hong Kong. “Supporting a separatist movement in a Chinese territory is one of those third-​rail issues,” the Taiwan-​born businessman wrote.

Let’s hope Hongkongers — for the last 18 weeks risking life and limb by demanding basic democracy, rather than totalitarian control by China — were not counting on a more steadfast commitment from Morey. 

Or the wealthy owners of the Rockets or Nets. 

Or the NBA. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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national politics & policies Popular too much government

E‑Panic

One of the better arguments for government relies upon sobriety: we want rational, measured responses to threats, not panicky, hot-​headed reactions. We have a rule of law to prevent revenge and vendetta, replacing them with justice and civil order.

But when we expand the concept of “threat” far beyond interpersonal violence and to dangers from our own foolish or merely misguided behavior, “sobriety” too often doesn’t even seem an option.

Take drugs. 

Specifically, take “vaping.” 

That is the innovative technology of “e‑cigarettes” that can be used to replace the smoking of tobacco and other drugs with inhaling drug-​laced water vapor.

Vaping is far less dangerous than tobacco, at least for emphysema and lung cancer, but it is not harmless. Several hundred people across several of these United States have become very ill and a few have died of a mysterious lung disease.

So of course the Surgeon General calls it an epidemic, and the White House and Congress take up the cause to regulate and even prohibit vaping. And India just “became the latest country to ban electronic cigarettes,” according to Bloomberg

Whoa, the subject has barely been studied, and what we know so far is that it was not major-​brand nicotine e‑liquid, but, instead, boutique product that has caused most of the casualties. 

The leap to legislation has been too quick for consumers to alter their own behavior with new information.

Besides, prohibition and regulation haven’t worked to prevent the current opiate overdose crisis.

The rush to “do something very, very strong,” as President Trump puts it, is the very opposite of why we say we want government.

Its lack of sobriety is … sobering.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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general freedom ideological culture Popular

Slavery Is Not Free-​Market Capitalism

Tarring free-​market capitalism and limited government with the brush of slavery is old hat. What is new is that prominent journals and major media figures now shamelessly slop that brush around.

Indeed, the argument is so often made that addressing it from several angles, as I have — twice in the last few outings of Common Sense — is important. Today I make an additional point.

The fact that human beings were treated as property, to be sold and mortgaged and disposed of at will, does not make slavery “free market.” If we legalized and institutionalized the market in stolen goods, that might make those markets legally above board — but not morally

It is this moral argument against stolen goods that undergirds the case against slavery. 

Always has.

For slavery is stealing the rightful property of the people enslaved — their property in their own bodies. 

Richard Overton called this “self-​propriety” in 1646, and at about the same time John Locke, following Hugo Grotius, wrote of every man having “a property in his own Person.” This is the old liberal way to think about personal freedom when you are dealing with property: self-ownership. 

“Free market capitalism” rests on it just as slavery abridges it.

Unfortunately, there has been a successful campaign to muddy up this logic and its history. Teacher Lawrence Ludlow recently informed readers of American Thinker about the results of this indoctrination: today’s students have “somehow ‘learned’” that “slavery was isolated to the United States instead of practiced worldwide for ages” and that “Westerners were the most enthusiastic practitioners of slavery instead of being among the first to abandon it.”

Freedom is not slavery and the truth shall set us free.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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