Tag: freedom

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general freedom ideological culture

Freedom Festival

https://thisiscommonsense.org/pdf/CS5994.pdf

“Should white people celebrate Juneteenth?” National Public Radio’s Destinee Adams asked last year at this time, before advising, “Just don’t interrupt Black folks who are just trying to have a great time.”

I like to see folks have a good time.

“Each year,” offers The Wayside Youth & Family Support Network in Massachusetts, “Juneteenth is a day for Black people to celebrate freedom.”

The article sports the headline, “10 Things We Want White People to Do to Celebrate Juneteenth.”

Sounds like there’s a test. 

In “The Caucasians’ Guide to Celebrating Juneteenth,” The Root claims, “we created a CRT-free educational curriculum to help colonizer Americans resist the urge to gentrify this celebration.”

“Hold up, white people,” urges The Root’s Michael Harriot. “Before hopping on the Juneteenth bandwagon, you first need to realize that you have no say in driving the narrative about this special day.”

Thank goodness I have my own commentary program. 

Juneteenth celebrates enslaved people in Texas being freed on June 19, 1865 — the very last in our country to be held in bondage. Now that’s cause for jubilation for every man and woman who breathes free . . . of every race.

How was that “peculiar,” perniciously evil institution of slavery stopped? To put slavery in its grave, more than 360,000 American men “gave the last full measure of devotion,” as Abe Lincoln put it, to the “cause.” 

These men, mostly white but of both races, deserve a moment on Juneteenth.

So do the abolitionists from Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison to John Brown and Harriett Tubman . . . and all those (white and black) who risked so much to run the Underground Railroad. And eternal thanks to the white juries who voted to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act, refusing to send slaves back. 

Slavery is forever deserving of condemnation, certainly. But Juneteenth isn’t about slavery; it’s about emancipation, the triumph of freedom.

At my shindig, anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Look Around

China, war, freedom, slavery

Yesterday marked the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Not in China, where the Communist Party (CCP) has always clubbed down any public remembrance of the thousands murdered on that day by the bullets from the so-called People’s Liberation Army. 

While Hong Kong long witnessed massive June 4 vigils — even under COVID restrictions — that changed after the draconian National Security Law in 2020. Still, this year public silence required the Chinazis to arrest more than 30 Hong Kongers, some for “suspicion of carrying out acts with seditious intent.”

Seems our “leaders” quite quickly forgot about the Butchers of Beijing . . . and only now are waking up to the threat the CCP poses via their embrace of totalitarianism, their military build-up, the biggest since World War II, and their claims to Taiwan as well as the entire South China Sea.

“China has been bullying its neighbors for years,” explains Chris Chappell, host of China Uncensored on Rumble, before adding: “Now its bullying is coming back to bite it.”

Chappell notes that “[e]ven countries that kinda hate each other, like Japan and South Korea, have been teaming up because of the China threat.”

Mr. Chappell offers:

  • “Thanks to China, last year Japan announced a plan to double its military budget.”
  • South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol recently called Taiwan “a global issue” and joined President Biden in “[opposing] any unilateral attempts to change the status quo.”
  • “Australia is beefing up its military — specifically in response to China.”
  • “The Philippines . . . has moved back to closer ties with the United States, allowing the U.S. to expand its military presence there.” 
  • “India is also increasing its defense budget.”

This allied response has been spurred not by U.S. arm-twisting, but good old-fashioned fear. 

Chappell also applauded open collaboration with the U.S. and NATO by South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. But he dubbed NATO’s declaration of China as “a security challenge” “the understatement of the year.”

Attested by the weekend’s near collision of Chinese and U.S. naval vessels in the Taiwan Strait.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Note: China Uncensored also plays on YouTube, but, as Chappell complains, “YouTube frequently demonetizes, suppresses, and secretly unsubscribes people from this channel.” 

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First Amendment rights general freedom judiciary too much government

Hollowed-Out America

covid, freedom, hysteria

While Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s comments in Arizona v. Mayorkas are worth studying in full — the case is about immigration — his thoughts on the late pandemic panic stand out.

“Since March 2020,” Justice Gorsuch writes, “we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes,” and the judge goes through a long list of decrees, including:

  • Closing churches but not casinos
  • Threatening violators with both civil penalties and criminal sanctions
  • Surveilling church parking lots, recording license plates, and issuing warnings against attending even outdoor services.

And he adds that the federal government got in on the tyrannies.

“Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces,” he notes. “They can lead to a clamor for action — almost any action — as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat.” Gorsuch acknowledges this is not exactly a revelation: “Even the ancients warned that democracies can degenerate toward autocracy in the face of fear.”

There is a deeper problem, though, for the “concentration of power in the hands of so few may be efficient and sometimes popular. But it does not tend toward sound government.”

All the way through the pandemic, and even now, we have been barraged by messages about “misinformation and disinformation” about the disease and the treatments (proactive and reactive) against it. And the people in power — bureaucrats as well as politicians — were called “experts” while actual experts (along with earnest amateurs) were hounded, their ideas suppressed. 

Now we know that much of what was then held as good information was in error, even lies. 

Very unsound governance: Gorsuch characterizes it “a shell of a democracy.” 

“Hollow.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability Fourth Amendment rights international affairs media and media people

Freedom Isn’t the Danger

Justin Trudeau, freedom, authoritarianism

After reading the Honorable Justice Paul Rouleau’s “Report of the Public Inquiry into the 2022 Public Order Emergency,” you may demand a palette cleanser.

Matt Taibbi wrote a full article, “The West’s Betrayal of Freedom.” 

I’m going to quote an anarchist. 

For both Taibbi and me, Justice Rouleau’s bizarre defense of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leveraging of emergency powers to freeze truckers’ bank accounts during last year’s lockdown protests leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

If you have a taste for freedom.

Which people in the news media, as well as in government (but do I repeat myself?), decreasingly demonstrate. Mr. Taibbi, reacting to both Rouleau’s report and mainstream journalistic coverage, notes the general tenor of both, which he says read “like all the tsk-tsking editorials in the West you’ve read since Trump, which used every crisis to hype the idea that freedom = danger.”

Rouleau excuses the tyrannical (anti-protest, anti-free-speech, anti-due-process) Canadian government’s attack upon the truckers because it “met a threshold.” You see, “Freedom cannot exist without order.”

But that’s placing the matter downside up. Freedom provides its own order. 

It just so often happens to be an order that tyrants don’t like.

Freedom creates order: when neither you nor I infringe upon the other’s sphere of life, that is an epitome of orderliness. Crime and government (but do I repeat myself?) upset that harmony.

“Liberty,” explained P. J. Proudhon, is “not the daughter but the mother of order.”*

When politicians forget that freedom provides the order we need, they make anarchists look good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

freedom,order, morn

* Proudhon, the first major writer to treat “anarchist” as a non-pejorative, was arguably not an Antifa-type anarchist — and the full quotation, presented here on Tuesday, talks about a Republic. Make of that what you will.

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What He Says and What He Means

Joe Biden, lies

A handy reference chart.

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general freedom ideological culture

It’s a Heroic Life

movie critics, It's a Wonderful Life

“An icon with such well-established status is an irresistible target,” The Bulwark’s Claire Coffey writes about the holiday season favorite, It’s a Wonderful Life, “and the competition to come up with the definitive contrarian takedown of the film is now a Christmas sub-tradition in its own right.”

Last year, I had to correct Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse, who belittled protagonist George Bailey as “the tortured Boy Scout-type,” arguing that Mary, his wife, was “the real hero.”

One of the nicest things about the movie is that mythical Bedford Falls has a lot of ordinary heroes . . . just like in real life. And Mary is right at the top of the list. But with her husband George, whom she dearly loves, not instead of or as his chief competition. 

“George Bailey Isn’t the Hero of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” insists the headline to Mickey Randle’s recent column at Collider, where we learn that “many of [George’s] responses to hardship” are “less than admirable.” I don’t know about “many,” but George does throw something of a tantrum upon discovering that his business will go bankrupt and he likely end up in prison. 

Hate me if you must, but I might throw a momentary fit, too, at that set of circumstances.

“Mary bears almost identical burdens,” notes Randle, “and always responds productively.” Of course, even Mary gets angry in one scene and smashes one of her favorite records. Apparently, this wonderful woman is not perfect. Who knew?

Randle concludes by calling the movie “significant because of its observations on gender,” suggesting: “We just have to remember to see things from Mary’s perspective.” 

But can anyone who knows Mary claim that George is not a hero from her perspective?

One major point of attack on the film has been the idea that, if George “had never been born,” the sweet and beautiful Mary would certainly not be “an old maid,” as depicted. Granted, her being single would not be for lack of trying by every able-bodied, cisgendered male person in Pennsylvania. But in her piece at The Bulwark, Coffey gets this right by noticing, “Mary could marry any man in town. She doesn’t want to. She wants George.”

Seems to me the criticism is intended to obscure the powerful moral of this movie: that good guys and good gals are winners, not losers. And that two people in love and committed to doing what they think is right are as unconquerable as anything this world has ever known. 

When push comes to shove, I put my faith in that tantrum-throwing George Bailey and the record-smashing Mary Bailey . . . working together. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hong Kong Help

Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong, freedom

“What can we do to help?” the woman asked after seeing the Acton Institute’s new documentary, “The Hong Konger.” The film tells the life of billionaire Jimmy Lai, the owner of Apple Daily, the pro-democracy newspaper shut down by the Beijing-controlled Hong Kong government. 

Lai went from rags to riches in the city’s free enterprise system, but presently sits in a jail cell already convicted of a ridiculous fraud charge (for which he was sentenced to a whopping 69 months) and awaits trial for violating the totalitarian national security law that criminalizes anti-government speech. 

This week, that trial was postponed until next September. A conviction could keep him in jail for the rest of his life.

What can we do?

Well, for Lai and the others: precious little, beyond prayers. 

We should focus, instead, on what these freedom-fighters have done for us. Their agitation — culminating in the 2019 protests that brought millions (close to one of every three HK residents) into the streets to demand basic democracy and human rights — woke up the world to the threat posed by the Chinese regime.

Lai could have taken his wealth and left to sip Mai Tais on a sunny beach on the far side of the globe. The student leaders of the protests — the best and the brightest — likewise knew how long their odds were, how dangerous their stand. 

Yet, Lai and the protesters stood up to the Chinazis anyway. Why? Because good people must stand up to evil . . . or evil wins.

We must also honor their sacrifice by preparing to protect ourselves, our freedom and all that we hold dear against this tyranny. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Allowed to Make a Living

Bureau of Occupational Affairs

In 2014, Sally Ladd started a service to help clients in the Poconos rent out their vacation homes. She posted notices on Airbnb, arranged for cleaning, and performed other chores.

But then, in 2017, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs — one of the many government agencies in the world that should not exist — told her that she was operating in Pennsylvania as a real estate broker without a license and must get one or shut down.

The obstacle was senseless. Ladd was already satisfying her customers. And getting the license would have entailed more than 300 hours of schooling, two exams, three years of apprenticeship, and opening an office in Pennsylvania. (Ladd lives in New Jersey.)

She had to shut down.

But she didn’t give up. 

She teamed up with Institute for Justice, which filed suit, arguing, in IJ’s words, that “forcing her to get a full-blown real-estate license violated her right to earn an honest living under the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

At first, a lower court would not even consider the case, a decision overruled by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2020. Finally, on October 31, 2022, a trial court affirmed that the “licensing requirements are unreasonable, unduly oppressive, and patently beyond the necessities of the case,” and therefore unconstitutional.

Once again, it’s IJ to the rescue! 

In a world filled with government agencies that shouldn’t exist, the Institute for Justice exists to check them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Stuck in the Middle with US?

China, United States, Taiwan

Is Taiwan, the island democracy of 24 million, really caught in the nation-state equivalent of a lovers’ triangle?

“Taiwan is caught in the middle of escalating tensions between the U.S. and China,” is how National Public Radio headlined its recent story about Communist Party-ruled China “speeding up its plans to seize Taiwan.”

“Entangled in a geopolitical power struggle between the US and China, the wants of the Taiwanese people get overshadowed,” informs CNA, the Singapore-based English language news network, pitching its weekly hour-long news program, Insight, which sought to present “the Taiwanese perspective to being caught between giants.”

Nothing new. 

“As China challenges the global dominance of the United States,” NBC News reported back in 2020, “tiny Taiwan finds itself stuck, rather uncomfortably, smack dab in the middle of the conflict between the two international giants.”

The Taiwanese are no doubt uncomfortable. In a recent survey, nearly 40 percent now believe a Chinese military invasion, killing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or more, to be likely. 

They are not torn, however, between two superpowers. Taiwan is — most assuredly — not preparing to defend against an armed attack by the United States. 

In fact, Taiwan is coordinating its national defense efforts with the U.S., hoping and praying for direct U.S. help in defending themselves from totalitarian China.

Taiwan is not stuck with us. Nor we with them. We are simply allies in deeply valuing societies where individual lives matter. 

Against a superpower for whom they don’t

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Minority Medical Opinion Squelched

covid, censorship, wrong think

The Bill of Rights was originally understood as curbing the power only of the federal government.

This began to change with the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from depriving persons “of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Thanks to the “incorporation doctrine” interpretation of this amendment, provisions like the First Amendment now apply as much to state and local governments as to the federal government.

Except that many officials, disdaining these protections, simply ignore them.

So although obliged to make no law “abridging the freedom of speech,” California’s government is abridging the freedom of speech of doctors. A new law authorizes state medical boards to penalize doctors who utter speech contradicting “contemporary scientific consensus” about COVID-19.

Doctors are suing the Newsom administration to block the law from taking effect. According to their complaint, this anti-“misinformation” law would impede their ability to communicate with patients.

The doctors argue that the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech applies to expression of minority views as well as majority views; indeed, that minority views “particularly need protection from government censorship.”

Also that nobody can ever know “the ‘consensus’ of doctors and scientists on various matters related to prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”

Of course, free speech rights should protect even persons who say the moon is made of green cheese, let alone of those who disagree with official pronouncements about a vexing new virus and what to do about it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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