As we turn the page to a new calendar year, here’s hoping that 2020 is (a) as interesting as the year just past, while being (b) a bit more productive of freedom, accountability, and all the good stuff we strive to achieve in our personal, family, business and community lives.
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“Classy guy,” won’t be the moniker afforded comedian Bill Maher when his time on Earth comes to an end.
“I guess I’m going to have to reevaluate my low opinion of prostate cancer,” Maher told his HBO audience regarding the death of libertarian billionaire David Koch at 79.
“As for his remains,” continued Maher, “he has asked to be cremated and have his ashes blown into a child’s lungs.”
You get the tenor of his “humor.”
“[David Koch] and his brother have done more than anybody to fund climate-science deniers for decades, so f—k him!” Maher argued. “I’m glad he’s dead, and I hope the end was painful.”
The HBO celeb likely hoped his crass takedown of the already deceased would go viral. “I know these seem like harsh words and harsh jokes,” Maher conceded, “and I’m sure I’ll be condemned on Fox News . . .”
But perhaps not reprimanded more universally, since such political viciousness has become ubiquitous. For instance, when a questioner at the Minnesota State Fair mentioned Koch’s passing, applause erupted.
“I don’t applaud, you know, the death of somebody,” Sen. Bernie Sanders chided the crowd (to his credit). “We needn’t do that.”
Celebrating someone’s demise is sickening. Moreover, in the case of David Koch, and brother Charles, so many of the non-stop political attacks have been erroneous — condemnation for positions they do not hold, for things they have not done. Not to mention ignoring all the wonderful benefits they have provided our society.
Bill Maher is a professional punk, so I’m not shocked. But David Koch was a hero.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
N.B. Lovers of liberty lost another champion last week: Eric Dixon. For years, Eric has been a huge help to Common Sense in a myriad of important ways. He also assisted a number of other liberty-oriented and free-market groups, including U.S. Term Limits, the Cato Institute, Missouri’s Show Me Institute, the Atlas Network, the Libertarian Party, and more. A lot of people will miss Eric, not the least of whom will be me.
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In a recent Washington Post essay — “Is the individual obsolete?” — syndicated columnist George Will tackled the “you didn’t build that” theme that President Obama blurted out on the 2012 campaign trail, borrowed from a not-obscure-enough (and now former) Harvard Professor, Elizabeth Warren.
“What made Warren’s riff interesting, and Obama’s echo of it important,” wrote Will, “is that both spoke in order to advance the progressive project of diluting the concept of individualism.”
Mr. Will called it “a prerequisite for advancement of a collectivist political agenda,” adding “the more that any individual’s achievements can be considered as derivative from society . . . the more society is entitled to conscript — that is, to socialize — whatever portion of the individual’s wealth that it considers its fair share.”
Some fairness.
“This collectivist agenda,” he explained, “is antithetical to America’s premise, which is: Government — including such public goods as roads, schools and police — is instituted to facilitate individual striving, a.k.a. the pursuit of happiness.”
It’s a great read, but of course, George Will ‘didn’t produce that.’ Without the Post publishing it, without the police preventing progressive lynch mobs from stringing him up prior to typing it up, without the delivery person tossing it on my driveway or Al Gore’s amazing internet . . . I couldn’t have read it.
To some, these “unremarkable” facts diminish Mr. Will’s work product. To me, it shows just how crucial his contribution is — creating jobs for all these other folks.
After all, I don’t purchase the newspaper merely to provide jobs for paper boys, printers or the police. That’s simply a beneficial byproduct.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Something big may be about to happen.
Trump impeachment? Financial collapse? War with Iran? — each is all-too-likely, none desirable. But I am referring to space.
In The Economist, May 14th, we read of Jeff Bezos’s itch to live off-planet.
The article is “Amazon’s boss reckons that humanity needs an HQ2,” which tells us that on “May 9th the founder and boss of Amazon, who also runs Blue Origin, a private rocketry firm, unveiled plans for a lunar lander. ‘Blue Moon,’ as it is called, is just one phase of a bold plan to establish large off-world settlements.”
And then comes the obvious literary-cultural reference: “It is a vision ripped directly from 20th-century science fiction.”
Can we dismiss it as space opera, though? A number of major figures, not least of whom is Elon Musk (whose Space X has often been mentioned here), are talking seriously about near-term orbital, lunar, and Martian habitation.
It is hard to wrap my head around an imminent private space colony project. It has always been something for the indefinite future, not something I expected to see.
There remain scoffers, of course (and they may well be right), as well as more paranoid speculations — are the higher-ups, the most insidery of insiders, tipping their hand to a “breakaway civilization” event, perhaps to avoid worldwide catastrophe?
“People now have more information” than in the past, wrote Thomas M. Disch in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World (1998), “and they are smarter, overall, as a consequence — even in those ways they choose to be dumb.”
I am keeping an open mind on whether Bezos’s proposed lunar colony is dumb or genius.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
N.B. The government is also jumping on board the Moon bandwagon, with the president floating a similar-to-Bezos schedule.
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“Baseball is life,” say fans, meaning not merely that “the rest is just details,” but also that there are broader lessons to be gleaned from the game.
Yesterday, on Mother’s Day, I told my mom how big a fan of hers I am, and the two of us Detroit Tigers fans mulled over the latest brouhaha. A man in the cheap seats caught the homerun ball hit by Albert Pujols . . . and wouldn’t “give it back.”
That hit and resulting run gave the Los Angeles Angels and former St. Louis Cardinals slugger his 2,000th lifetime “run batted in,” or RBI, putting him in a very exclusive club: fifth on the all-time RBI list.*
Law student Ely Hydes, who caught it, claims stadium security and team representatives descended, pressuring him to give them the ball in exchange for, say, a picture with Pujols and some autographed swag. Hydes, a Tigers fan, wanted to think about it, however. He left.
The Twitterverse erupted.
The charge?
Selfishness — for not turning over a baseball “that would mean so much more” to Pujols.
At EconLog, David Henderson was having none of it: “[E]ven to suggest that Hydes, a law student in debt, is immoral for not giving some of his wealth to a very wealthy man, is breathtaking.” That baseball is likely worth at least $25,000 and could fetch more.
Asked by reporters, Pujols was clear: “[Hydes] has the right to keep it. The ball went in the stands, so I would never fight anybody to give anything back.”
“Pujols’s attitude is admirable,” notes Henderson. “He defended a stranger’s property rights.”
As diehard Tigers fans, Mom and I still take issue. The Angels won that game 13-0. Following tradition, Hydes should have thrown the opposing team’s homerun back onto the field.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Almost emblematic of our national pastime, there is disagreement over whether Pujols moved into third or fifth place. Major League Baseball says third, because RBIs weren’t officially counted until 1920. Babe Ruth batted in over 200 runs prior to that, and the Chicago Colts’ poor Cap Anson retired after the 1897 season. Thankfully, Baseball-Reference calculated those previously unaccounted for RBIs. Here’s the all-time list:
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Answer: Television’s most intelligent game show.
Question: What is Jeopardy?
The show tests non-trivial knowledge, with the twist being that contestants are given the answer and must buzz-in quickly to supply the question.
Longtime viewers are most concerned these days about beloved host Alex Trebek’s battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. But, like Trebek, fans are talking about James Holzhauer, the 34-year-old professional sports gambler from Las Vegas, who has amassed over $1.6 million by winning 21 games in a row.
That puts him in second place for consecutive victories all-time — surpassing Julia Collins, with 20 straight wins in 2014, and moving toward Ken Jennings, who triumphed in 74 consecutive games back in 2004, earning over $2.5 million during that streak.
Most amazing are the massive amounts of money Holzhauer garners night after night.* “He has no weaknesses,” Trebek told Good Morning America, noting that Holzhauer “has a strategy” and “he’s a gambler.” “He has forced me to change a view that I’ve had for many years . . . that the Ken Jennings record will never be broken.”
There are detractors. “It’s just not fun,” argues Washington Post columnist Charles Lane.
Others may take the thoroughly postmodern view that Mr. Holzhauer didn’t really “build this” success on his own. If not for public education and libraries, how could he have amassed such knowledge? How did Holzhauer get to LA for the program? He certainly didn’t build those roads or airports.
I think James Holzhauer is an incredible individual, deserving his success. And some of my best friends are librarians.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Holzhauer’s talents also bring out the best in others. Earlier this week, contestant Adam Levine ended with an impressive $53,999 . . . only to finish second to Holzhauer’s $54,017. In his fourth contest, Holzhauer smashed Roger Craig’s single-game record of $77,000. Today, Holzhauer’s is the only name on the Top 10 List of highest single-game scores — his best a whopping $131,127
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