Category: general freedom

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general freedom international affairs national politics & policies

Taiwan in Two Words

Taipei, Taiwan, China, freedom

“Two words from Taiwan’s leader threaten to upend U.S.-China ties,” headlined The Japan Times’ story.

Weeks ago, China’s totalitarian leader Xi Jinping mentioned his itch for peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan.* Or else. No pause in his warplanes crossing into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, nor withdrawal of the continual threat of military invasion. 

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen offered that the two countries were “not subordinate” to each other — which deeply hurt Xi’s feelings because . . . well, his Chinazis have their hearts set on subordinating Taiwan. In fact, the only thing preventing that deadly, freedom-suffocating Sino-subordination is the united weight — military and economic — of allied countries.

Japan, for instance. And the European Union, too — which just voted to deepen ties to Taiwan, ignoring Beijing’s demand to shun the island nation. 

At a CNN “town hall” last week, President Joe Biden vowed the U.S. would defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. Diplomatic folk tried to walk that back to “strategic ambiguity,” but billions of Asians heard him say it.  

“To whom does Taiwan belong?” asked Pat Buchanan earlier this year, in a column trudging through 70 years of weaselly-worded communiqués and diplomatic understandings.

But comedian John Oliver counters that “people who aren’t Taiwanese making decisions for Taiwan is a bit f***ing played out, historically.”

“So maybe the best thing we can do is move past talking about Taiwan like it’s some kind of poker chip in a never-ending game of us versus them,” he concluded on his HBO show Last Week Tonight. “Because the fact is Taiwan is not a plucky bulwark against the Red Menace, nor is it some island-sized Viagra to rejuvenate the Chinese nation. Taiwan is 23 million people who, in the face of considerable odds, have built a free democratic society and very much deserve the right to decide their own future in any way that they deem fit.”

Let’s call it: Not subordinate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Since Taiwan has never been a part of the People’s Republic of China, there can be no prefix “re” in the threatened unification — by missiles and machine guns. 

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education and schooling general freedom government transparency

Virginia is for Parents?

McAuliffe, Youngkin, Virginia, Governor, education

Virginia’s governor’s race offers 2021’s biggest prize. Might the outcome of the contest between former Governor Terry McAuliffe, the old Clinton pal, and Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin, portend partisan momentum going into 2022? 

In just the last dozen years or so, my adopted commonwealth has mutated politically from “Deep Red to Solid Blue.” There is, the FiveThirtyEight polling website explains, “a 13-election winning streak for Democrats in Virginia statewide races since 2012.” Though the McAuliffe/Youngkin race is “somewhat likelier to result in a Democratic victory,” it “could go either way.”

The biggest flashpoint? McAuliffe’s statement at the final debate: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” 

I quoted that last week in “Burning Down the House.” But in a comment, a reader named Doug argued that I was “taking McAuliffe’s comment totally out of context.” 

Now, McAuliffe’s words had been widely reported in precisely the fashion I had placed them, so I felt comfortable. But I had not listened to the entire exchange, specifically to what McAuliffe was responding. So I listened.

“What we have seen over the course of the last 20 months,” Youngkin told the debate audience, “is our school systems refusing to engage with parents.” Noting how he had spoken with parents upset about “sexually explicit material,” Youngkin charged that McAuliffe “vetoed the bill that would have informed parents” about those materials.

“I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education,” concluded Youngkin.

In response, McAuliffe called Youngkin “clueless” and then famously dissed parents.

“School boards are best positioned,” McAuliffe wrote in vetoing that 2016 legislation, “to ensure that our students are exposed to those appropriate literary and artistic works that will expand students’ horizons and enrich their learning experiences.”

Whether their parents like it or not.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom too much government

No Transplants for the Unvaxxed

organ transplant, socialized medicine, Covid

Because of a rare but dangerous side effect, heart inflammation, Scandinavian countries are now discouraging the use of the Moderna vaccine in younger people.

We’ve seen other reports of severe illness and even death because of, or at least soon after, COVID-19 vaccinations. But we’re assured that serious side effects are so rare and the vaccines so effective that the wisdom of getting vaccinated is self-evident.

But what’s more evident? They’re forcing you. 

If you’re “vaccine-hesitant” for any reason — even if you’ve already got immunity because of a COVID-19 infection — too bad. A public-private partnership to mandate vaccination is already costing many people their jobs.

Now it’s costing people a chance for a kidney.

So ordains University of Colorado Hospital, whose Kidney Transplant Coordinator, Katie Harmann, tells Leilani Lutali that she “will be removed from the kidney transplant list” until she is vaccinated.

Note that the opportunity is not being withdrawn because the prospective recipient is sick with COVID-19 and therefore is about to kick the bucket anyway. The hospital is treating the patient’s assessment of her own risk as irrelevant.

Lutali says, “I feel like I’m being coerced into not being able to wait and see [whether the vaccine is the right thing to do], and that I have to take the shot if I want this life-saving transplant.”

This is the reality of rationed care in a largely socialist medical system.

And this is what Democrats lust for, even demand; and it is what they are working mightily to ensure — that our current messy, mixed healthcare system will soon become even more bureaucratic and restrictive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

The Unhinging of the World Mind

group mind, psychosis, isolation

Dr. Mattias Desmet, of the University of Ghent, teaches Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895) and how crowd psychology explains totalitarian movements. 

But even he didn’t see, right away, how “mass-formation” (his Le Bonian theory) explains the madness of the coronavirus pandemic.

I am still processing Desmet’s ideas, having caught parts of his Pandemic Podcast interview, but judge them important enough to pass on.

Le Bon’s main conjecture was that crowds, in certain conditions, form a “group mind,” the “psychological crowd” quite distinct from the individuals inside it in their normal course of life. Desmet, expanding on this, says that when key conditions are met, alarming developments can occur. When people suffer from

1. social isolation, with

2. lack of ‘sense making,’

3. free-floating anxiety, and

4. and general discontent,

they can become unhinged.

Into this situation comes the hinge to hang it all on: a demagogue, a revolutionary political party, or . . . news purveyors pressing one theme relentlessly. In the current pandemic, politicians, bureaucrats, and mainstream media offered a focusing issue and a means of alleviating it: mask-wearing, lockdowns, and subsidized, rushed-to-market vaccines.

And then mandates galore.

This sort of crowd can get really ugly, lashing out at newly created “enemies” (the unvaccinated!) to set up a social system easily exploited by the unscrupulous, the connected, and the fanatical.

Desmet has been studying socialism and fascism, and has a book in the works. He says that about a third of today’s population is caught up in this “mass hypnosis.”

Hitler used Le Bon’s book as a how-to. We should use it as a how-not-to.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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unhinged/network

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Accountability general freedom media and media people social media

Unlinked at LinkedIn

Microsoft, Bing, LinkedIn, China, Uyghurs

Congressman Jim Banks is rebuking Microsoft for censoring its LinkedIn account holders who criticize the Chinese government.

This includes users in the United States.

“LinkedIn is pressuring U.S. citizens to remove posts critical of China’s dictatorship because, apparently, ‘regional laws’ compel them to do Xi’s bidding,”  Banks tells the Washington Examiner. “That’s a lie. LinkedIn is simply selling out America’s values and national security in order to boost its bottom line.”

The congressman has written to the company, which connects job seekers to job providers.

He demands answers about how LinkedIn cooperates with Chinese censorship.

His allies include Carl Szabo, VP of a trade group called NetChoice. Szabo says that American tech firms “should actively push back on such [censorship] demands. China suppressing the profiles of American users should not be happening.”

Microsoft has a history of aiding and abetting the Chinese Communist Party, Chinazi Party for short.

Although Google withdrew its search engine from China in 2010 rather than (continue to) help China censor search results, the Bing search engine currently operates in China. And you can’t be a search engine in China without helping the CCP to censor.

Microsoft has even provided facial recognition resources used to track the Uyghurs, a Muslim population that the Chinese government has subjected to mass incarceration and torture.

A few years ago Microsoft apparently retreated on that facial-recognition front. But it shouldn’t be doing anything to help the Chinazi government to censor and repress. 

Nobody should.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fifth Amendment rights First Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights general freedom

Three Decades of Justice

IJ, Institute for Justice, law

Since September 1991, the libertarian law firm founded by Chip Mellor and Clint Bolick has been fighting for the rights of its clients against governmental assault.

For no charge, Institute for Justice helps people stripped of options fight for:

● The right to keep one’s land (and what’s on it).

In 2001, the city of Mesa, Arizona launched eminent-domain proceedings against Bailey’s Brake Service, owned by Randy Bailey. The plan was to destroy the shop and give the land to a hardware store, not a constitutionally permitted “public use.” Bailey and IJ eventually prevailed in court.

● The right to make a living despite arbitrary professional licensing.

The Louisiana State Board of Cosmetology demands that aspiring hair braiders submit to hundreds of hours of training and pay for an expensive license to ply their trade. IJ is challenging the requirement on behalf of clients Ashley N’Dakpri, Lynn Schofield, and Michelle Robertson.

● The right to keep one’s cash despite arbitrary civil forfeiture — i.e., the power of police and prosecutors to grab your money or other belongings without charging you with a crime.

One recent victim is Marine Corps veteran Stephen Laura, whose $86,900 was looted by the Nevada Highway Patrol. The Institute has agreed to help him get it back.

And so on.

It doesn’t look like governments will stop interfering with our ability to live and work any time soon. 

“Eternal Vigilance”? Thy name is IJ.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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