Tag: freedom

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crime and punishment defense & war general freedom Second Amendment rights

Spree Shooter Shot Dead

handgun, self defense, freedom, 2nd Amendment

We need to be reminded every now and then that shooting rampages can often be stopped as soon as they start — if only a good guy with a gun is on site and willing to use it. 

Or good gal.

Dennis Butler, a 37-year-old with an “extensive criminal history,” recently targeted the attendees of a party in Charleston, West Virginia.

Earlier, someone at an apartment complex had asked Butler to drive more slowly because there were children around. This made him feel explosive rage. So he fetched a semi-automatic weapon that he owned illegally and started firing into a crowd of party-goers at the complex.

A woman with a gun and presence of mind happened to be at the party.

“She’s just a member of the community who was carrying her weapon lawfully,” says police spokesman Tony Hazlett. “And instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives.”

No one in the crowd was reported to be injured.

I hope that if this heroic woman had been carrying her weapon unlawfully, relevant authorities would have cut her some slack. But it’s good that she didn’t have to deal with such a complication.

Butler is dead — shot multiple times by the woman with a gun. Police haven’t reported her name.

Just as well. We wouldn’t want her to become a target of gun-control groups upset that she used a pistol rather than sharp words to dissuade Butler from killing everybody.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom local leaders term limits

Freedom in Granite

Governor Sununu, New Hampshire

“In the past two years,” the Cato Institute announced last January, “Governor [Chris] Sununu and the State of New Hampshire have topped Cato’s rankings for both our Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors and our recently released Freedom in the 50 States report.”

How? Why? 

The governor points to “a long history of local control,” insisting that “town meetings matter.” 

He also cites the state’s executive council which, along with the governor, publicly debates “every contract over $10,000,” as well as a two-year gubernatorial term that “sucks” for him but gives citizens “all the say.”

Most of all, consider the sheer size of New Hampshire’s House of Representatives.

“When you have one of the largest parliamentary bodies in the free world with 400 members representing only 1.4 million people,” Gov. Sununu explains, “by definition” it has to be “one of the most representative bodies of government in the world.”

He elaborates that “they only get paid a hundred bucks a year. I mean, it’s like herding cats. Don’t get me wrong, it has its ups and downs. But that’s one state representative for about every 3,000 people. Like town selectmen, your representative in Concord is going to be somebody you know, somebody you see at the grocery store, somebody you can easily reach and who can hear you. It’s very different from other states where you have one person representing a district with tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

“Which means the control is really at the individual level,” Sununu adds, and “an individual citizen has much more say on how their taxes are spent or what’s going on in their schools or whether that pothole is going to get filled or not.” 

Sounds like citizens are more in charge.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom

Injustice By Quota

arrests, quotas

Let’s say there are 100 murders — in a certain city in 2021. How many arrests for murder should there be in that city that year?

We can’t know in advance. Setting lagtime aside, consider the other factors. Some of the killers may have killed more than once. Some of the murders may never be solved. Some honest arrests may prove to be mistaken. We can only say: “As many arrests as possible, so long as persons are arrested for murder only if and when there is good cause to do so.”

Properly, one establishes sound criteria for making arrests and good investigative procedures. Not quotas. The same principles apply to every kind of arrest.

“Yes, Paul Jacob. But all this is bleedingly obvious. Why go on about it?”

Alas, what is really basic common sense to you and me apparently clashes with the desire of some within and without police departments for “proof” of effective results. Proof like total number of arrests. (Of course, in a police state, you might arrest half the population, far exceeding any quota, and still get lots of crime.)

The errant fondness for arrest quotas is at least being ended, almost, in Virginia, where the governor has signed legislation to prohibit Virginia agencies and police departments from using them.

I write “almost” because the legislation does not include a ban on quotas for traffic tickets, which are like being half-arrested. Tickets are one way municipalities make money.

Well, maybe we can all just stop driving.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom too much government

Worse Than Shanghaied

Shanghai, China, covid, masks, oppression

Two years into the pandemic, we in America are now mostly arguing about masks.

We’ve suffered pretty repressive measures, here. But we haven’t had to cope with:

● Being literally imprisoned in your home. Stopped from going out even to get food.

● Having fences erected around your home. “What if a fire breaks out?” one Shanghai resident asked a reporter. “I don’t think anyone in their right mind can seal person’s homes.” (Well, fire is not a virus.)

● Being ejected from your home and forced into public barracks for people infected with COVID-19.

● Being ejected from your home so that it can be disinfected.

● Being subjected to a “zero COVID-19” policy, zero common sense.

This is the fate of millions in Shanghai and elsewhere in China.

In the U.S., maybe you were harassed for conducting unmasked church services or keeping your shop open. Maybe you got arrested for paddle boarding, alone, in the Pacific Ocean.

It got pretty bad. But what we are seeing in Shanghai is the reality of a totalitarian regime when it chooses to fully exercise its power to repress. At any moment, the Chinazi state may make it impossible for millions to take the simplest steps to survive.

Shanghai residents may not even complain about their fate. To the extent they have voiced any complaints publicly, the Chinese government has struggled to eliminate all traces of the complaints.

Here, at least, we can gripe. 

But what does a people do when not allowed to protest or argue against their oppressors?

They scream. At night, the people of Shanghai yell out their windows.

Think of it as the soundtrack of mass misery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights too much government

Four of Five Doctors Disagree

Salem Witch Trial

“Thank goodness I don’t live in X,” we may say as we follow the news.

Billions live in Russia, Ukraine, China, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Cuba, New York, Chicago, Seattle, California, Canada, and other statist hellholes. The rest of us live elsewhere. Perhaps we congratulate ourselves on our wise choices of birth location and/or subsequent residencies.

But people are copycats.

As producers, we are often inspired by great achievements and seek to emulate them. The destroyers among us, somewhat similarly, are eager to adopt the latest in fashionable assault on what the producers are doing.

So we don’t necessarily escape if, say, California prohibits physicians from discussing things medical whenever their judgment conflicts with state-approved doctrine. Because next thing you know, lawmakers in Tennessee or Virginia will be saying, “Gee, that’s right, gag the doctors. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Legislative masterminds in California now want to harass doctors who recommend a non-government-approved treatment for COVID-19. If AB 2098 is passed, it would authorize California medical boards to discipline doctors for “dissemination of misinformation” related to COVID-19.

The bill implies that no doctor can legitimately disagree with another about a particular case. (Yeah? See the history of medicine.)

When I say that this legislation assaults truth and truth-seeking — which requires freedom of speech as a necessary corollary of freedom of thought in medicine or in any field — I speak for Californian doctors and California patients.

I speak also for us all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Witch Trial of George Jacobs by Thompkins. H. Matteson

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education and schooling general freedom national politics & policies

The Explosion in Alternatives

home school, student, education

“Across the country, we’re in the midst of an unprecedented explosion in homeschooling and alternative education,” Sharyl Attkinson reported last Sunday on her weekly news program, Full Measure, citing a “mass exodus from America’s public schools.”

And it’s not just about pandemic measures like mask mandates. In February, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly recalled three school board members over their fixation on wokeness to the exclusion of in-person education. And the school board’s antics in liberal Loudoun County, Virginia, turned last year’s race for governor into a referendum on whether parents have any say-so at all. 

They do, apparently. 

Though I have covered the enormous growth of alternative education during the pandemic — here and here, for instance — I have been looking for more specifics. 

“Relative to pre-pandemic levels,” Corey DeAngelis with the American Federation for Children told Attkisson, “homeschooling has at least doubled,” and now accounts for “closer to 4 million students.”

Too good to be true? I double-checked. The U.S. Census Bureau used the same language as Attkisson and DeAngelis: “the global COVID-19 pandemic has sparked new interest in homeschooling and the appeal of alternative school arrangements has suddenly exploded.”

At the end of the 2019-2020 school year, “about 5.4% of U.S. households with school-aged children reported homeschooling,” according to their Household Pulse Survey. “By fall, 11.1% of households with school-age children reported homeschooling.”

The increase was five-fold for “respondents identified as Black or African American,” with 16.1% homeschooling.

“Still more students have left for religious schools,” reminds DeAngelis, “or other private schools.”

Attkisson also pointed to a jump in support for school choice.

Parents of the world unite. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs

A Naïve Victory

gold medal, Olympics, China

The warning was loud and clear. It came from China’s government and was echoed by Nancy Pelosi: during the Beijing Olympics, don’t dare protest the brutal policies of China’s government lest it come down upon you like a ton of bricks.

An Olympic athlete has found a way to both heed and spurn this counsel.

In what the New York Times calls a “rare rebuke,” Swedish speedskater Nils van der Poel has given one of his gold medals to the daughter of a Chinese-born Swedish publisher being imprisoned by the Chinese government.

Last November, Nils saw a production by Civil Rights Defenders that told of how Gui Minhai, a publisher of works criticizing the Chinazi regime, is now incarcerated in China. He had been abducted by Chinese operatives while vacationing in Thailand.

The skater felt obliged to do something in protest “since I had the opportunity that very few people have.”

Gui’s daughter, Angela, shrugs off any suggestion that the skater’s gesture, lacking immediate power to free her father, must be naïve.

“A little bit of naïveté is important to try to effect change,” she says. “I think it’s very important that Nils giving me his medal to honor my father is understood as honoring political prisoners like him, many of whom are increasingly Hong Kongers and Uyghurs.”

What about it, fellow Olympic winners? If you follow Nils’s example, you’ll no longer have your medal. But you’ll still have your victory. 

And a little more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom nannyism national politics & policies paternalism

Self-Inflicted Death — by Vax?

vaccine, depression, suicide

It’s been disheartening how little alarm has been raised about the rise of suicide (along with drug use, obesity, and other markers for despair) in reaction to the lockdowns and de-humanizing mask mandates — especially among the young.

But there’s another way suicide has become an issue with the pandemic. It’s a little roundabout.

Adverse effects of the vaccines have been severely under-reported. A number of maladies are associated with the various vaccines, including micro-clotting and myocarditis — that latter up especially in younger people who have been vaccinated.* 

But some adverse reactions are fatal — those up 40 percent in the adult population, says the CEO of one life insurance company. 

Our leaders and vaccine promoters don’t talk about this: if they admitted fatal side-effects, the push for universal, mandatory vaccination might be generally considered inhumane,even monstrous. But insurance companies have a more pressing concern.

Last month, a Frenchman with a large life insurance policy died of the jab. His family cannot sue the drug company — legal immunity having been granted during the emergency — so his heirs and assigns sued to collect on the insurance. The court denied the claim. 

“The side effects of the experimental vaccine are published and the deceased could not claim to have known nothing about it when he voluntarily took the vaccine,” the court’s logic runs. “There is no law or mandate in France that compelled him to be vaccinated. Hence his death is essentially suicide.” 

And suicide is not covered in most term life insurance policies. 

The message: you take your chances with the vaxxes. 

If more such cases come to light, this may be the issue that fatally undermines the Vaccine Mandate Narrative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs media and media people

Exclusion-Enforced Inclusion

covid, Canada, Justin Trudeau, authoritarianism, freedom

When the prime minister of Canada told the world that “Building Back Better means” not only helping the “most vulnerable” but also “maintaining our momentum on reaching the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” it might behoove us to look it up.

It’s not a secret.

It’s part of what Davos globalist Klaus Schwab calls “The Great Reset.” And the links between Schwab and Justin Trudeau are not tenuous: “what we’re really proud of now is the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau,” gushed Schwab weeks ago.

Well, Trudeau really had a chance to prove his Klausian globalist mettle last week.

Trudeau had indeed leveraged the coronavirus pandemic to institute tight statist controls on the Canadian population, right out of Schwab’s playbook.* But his vax mandate for truckers led not merely to supply-chain problems in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the massive convoy protests in Ottawa.

So how did Schwab’s proud privileged prodigy perform?

First, he went into hiding. And then, while the protesters were explicitly directed against the vaccine mandates — notwithstanding the fact that 90 percent “of Canada’s cross-border truckers . . . has had two shots” — Justin Trudeau couldn’t help himself, condemning “the antisemitism, Islamophobia,** anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia that we’ve seen on display in Ottawa over the past number of days,” he proclaimed in a tweet. “Together, let’s keep working to make Canada more inclusive.”

Well, mandating vaccines is forced inclusion, the ominous part of the Schwab/Trudeau agenda, enforced by exclusion. 

No wonder the growing opposition, sporting anti-Klausian signs such as “Mandate Freedom.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The ’book in question being Schwab’s explicit program in Covid-19: The Great Reset.

** Some participants are undoubtedly many of those phobic things, but evidence at the rally? Scant. As Tucker Carlson pointed out in his coverage, the protesters even shoveled snow and picked up trash after themselves.

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general freedom international affairs media and media people nannyism too much government

Government Under Siege

Ottawa, truckers, covid, protest

“This city is under siege!”

“This is a threat to our democracy!”

“There’s a nationwide insurrection!”

“This is madness!”

This is not a recording from January 6th and, no, it’s not happening here in these United States. Look north. Those are the words of Ottawa’s Police Chief Peter Sloly.

Sloly was addressing what The Washington Post reports are “big rigs and other vehicles — emblazoned with signs blasting [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau in obscene language and reading ‘Mandate Freedom,’” adding that an estimated “5,000 people and at least a thousand tractor-trailers and other vehicles clogged the streets of Ottawa over the weekend.” 

“The situation at this point is completely out of control,” Ottawa’s mayor told a radio audience, “because the individuals with the protest are calling the shots.”

“It’s not a protest anymore,” argues Ontario Premier Doug Ford. “It’s become an occupation.”

Meanwhile, this anti-vax-mandate effort spurred by these truckers is spreading across the country, including “the blockade of an important U.S.-Canada border crossing” in Alberta.

I can certainly see how these government officials might feel they are under siege, with an occupying force impinging on their freedom to act as they wish. Not a good feeling at all.

But isn’t that the same feeling these truckers and others are experiencing? Aren’t they being occupied by a government that demands a measure of control over their bodies? Their very livelihoods? That is willing to block their ability to earn a living to gain that control?

Public officials might ask themselves how come so many people are so upset that it looks like an “insurrection.”* 

And then consider their position as public servants, that they may be in the wrong. Not the protesters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The Post story mentioned only four arrests made so far in Ottawa, none for insurrection.

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