“The same thing will happen in China that happened in Chile. Political freedom will ultimately break out of its shackles. Tiananmen Square was only the first episode. It is headed for a series of Tiananmen Squares. It cannot continue to develop privately and at the same time maintain its authoritarian character politically. It is headed for a clash. Sooner or later, one or the other will give.”
–Milton Friedman
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.
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
Now a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has determined that the state failed to show that “gender-based classification was necessary to boost California’s economy, improve opportunities for women in the workplace, and protect California taxpayers, public employees, pensions and retirees.”
No news yet on whether the state will appeal.
In 2018, Brown had conceded that the law was probably doomed to be judged unconstitutional. But he apparently regarded questions of legality or constitutionality as irrelevant.
“It’s high time corporate boards include the people who constitute more than half the ‘persons’ in America,” he burbled in his signing message.
Fines for disobedience were to be steep: $100,000 for initial violations, $300,000 for subsequent violations.
Of course, it is neither immoral nor a crime to choose a man instead of a woman for a post. Making specific hires criminal depending upon the complexion of a business’s other hires amounts to the politicization of everything, swapping the goals of business for the goals of ideologues. It is destructive of individual rights and the requirements of conducting business profitably to compel employers choosing personnel to be guided by any considerations other than relevant qualifications. Or by any assessment but their own.
Managers of all non-government organizations should be free to use their own best judgment in hiring and contracting, whether the work involved is that of clerk, CEO, or board member.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
Kelly Gallaher is an activist in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, who provoked the ire of Village Attorney Chris Smith.
Seeking punitive damages, Smith has sued Gallaher for inflicting “emotional distress.” Her sin is penning “hundreds of posts on social media” criticizing Smith and other officials and their policies. (Hundreds! So many scribblings by just one person?)
The issue that apparently caused him to say “By Gawd, this is the last dang straw!” is term limits.
Recently, the town’s board of trustees voted to lengthen their elective term from two to three years. Gallaher and others called for a referendum to reverse the term-fattening.
To assuage concerns, Smith claimed that changing term limits had been discussed since 2018; in other words, the change wasn’t something being sprung without prequel. When Gallaher, remembering no such previous discussion, found no evidence of it, she suggested that Smith had lied.
Smith demanded a retraction. Gallaher didn’t want to retract, but did, fearing a lawsuit. Smith sued her anyway.
“The village attorney thinks he can use his law license to bully a political opponent into silence,” says Robert McNamara, the IJ attorney assigned to defend Gallaher. “But government officials are not in charge of how members of the public talk about politics, which is something we’ll be happy to explain to him in court.”
A politician so far from the spirit of American free speech is a politician who needs something more than a withering rebuttal in court. Think: recall vote.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
In these censorious times, why not applaud any sincere testament upholding freedom of speech?
Even if called “diversity,” in Netflix-speak.
According to the revised memo, the company supports “a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values. . . . If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”
This is probably not about Netflix’s willingness to rent The Wizard of Oz no matter who objects to the spectacle of weepy tin men or broom-riding green-faced women in pointy hats.
Recently, Netflix has been roiled by employee protests against videos they find annoying, especially Dave Chapelle’s comedy special “The Closer.” Chapelle, who appears to lean more left than right, turns out not to be the type to run his riffs by a lefty censorship board.
Now let’s see how Netflix follows up on its delicate suggestion that working for Netflix “may not be the best place” for employees demanding censorship. Will Netflix show the door to all sullen saboteurs of speech-diversity?
Also, will it more fundamentally diversify its own original content?
In any case, good for Netflix for resisting the mob, for now. Until further notice, it’s two full thumbs up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
“At risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist,” Musk posted on Saturday. “This would be a great loss for the world.”
A very significant observation, at odds with so much of the Official Narrative of Approved Subjects and Opinions.
Recognizing that depopulation is the big problem for the developed nations of the world, not over-population rubs up against most of what we’ve been told for years.
But it’s true.
Japan is not alone, here, in showing a demographic collapse. It’s merely the most advanced in population decline. Russia is in a bad way, and many European countries’ native populations are in zero population growth. The United States, too, is growing only because of immigration, legal and illegal.
Behind the numbers, though, is a disturbing reality: the instability of our welfare state policies. In America, and in most advanced nations, government-run social pension programs require a growing population to properly service. Yet, Social Security, by removing the need to have children as a natural safety net (where we beget offspring to help take care of us in old age), actually disincentivizes the population growth that might make the system sustainable.
Elon Musk did not offer a fix. But by pointing to a very real problem, he’s done us a great service, speaking simple truth instead of propaganda.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)