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Common Sense

Google as a Powerful Evil

“We’re like rats in a Skinner box,” says psychologist and researcher Robert Epstein.

In “Electoral Fraud, Google-Style” (April 25, 2022), Paul Jacob looked at Epstein’s work on how Google manipulates elections. Now, Google’s political bias has become obvious. That bias’s efficacy, however, requires some science to understand. In Michael Shellenberger’s recent podcast interview, Epstein explains how he has studied what Google does:

There is indeed some new information here. Epstein says that in 2022, had Google not engaged in its manipulations, the GOP would have gained a two-seat majority, not lost by two seats.

The amount of power Google has is amazing. And simply by using the platform, we have given that power to the company.

Remember, as has become clear since — and something Epstein does not talk about — Google was seeded with Deep State money. It has never been an innocent partner.

Recent coverage of Google on Common Sense with Paul Jacob includes “Google’s Evil AI” and “Big-Gov-Google-Plex” and “Google Can’t Have That.”

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Common Sense general freedom Thought

Happy New Year–2024

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months. The reflection is awful, and in this point of view, how trifling, how ridiculous, do the little paltry cavilings of a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world.”

from “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine
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Common Sense ideological culture

One by One

Before gratitude became a platitude, it was a way of life, a philosophy.

It’s been expressed in American culture chiefly as an “official day” proclaimed by the State: Thanksgiving. We trace this back to the Pilgrims’ early days in Massachusetts — as I have done here and here — but there is much more to it than the Pilgrim story. On December 18, 1777, during the Revolutionary War, an official Thanksgiving was declared over a victory in battle. But as historian Brion MacLanahan has noted, Virginians experienced not only “the first representative government in North America” but also “hosted the first English thanksgiving.” 

In 1619.

Sadly, the “nationalization” of late November’s holiday was not anodyne, as MacLanahan has taken pains to elaborate: it was a way for Yankees to replace Christmas, which Southerners celebrated but Purtian-dominated New England did not.

Still, let’s not relegate gratitude to sectarian politics or religion. For the philosophy of appreciation is much, much older than our America.

 “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others,” said Marcus Tullius Cicero, whom our Founding Fathers called “Tully.”

Epicurus, earlier, found the key to happiness — or “ataraxia,” as he called it (a kind of spiritual peace) — in storing up good memories and concentrating on them, rather than on one’s woes. This is gratefulness. It is a discipline. 

It is not just a day or a good idea, it’s a key to virtue, as Cicero said.

But most of us of my generation probably remember the idea in a Sunday School song: “Count Your Blessings.”

Name them one by one.

As the world seems to spin into a kind of craziness, it may be hard to begin. So much madness and folly! Let me help:

We live in interesting times, and it is fascinating.

And maybe, if we keep our heads, we can help in setting some things right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Common Sense

Auberon Herbert

If we cannot learn, if the only effect upon us of the presence of the dynamiter in our midst is to make us multiply punishments, invent restrictions, increase the number of our official spies, forbid public meetings, interfere with the press, put up gratings — as in one country they propose to do — in our House of Commons, scrutinize visitors under official microscopes, request them, as at Vienna, and I think now at Paris also, to be good enough to leave their greatcoats in the vestibules — if we are, in a word, to trust to machinery, to harden our hearts, and simply to meet force with force, always irritating, always clumsy, and in the end fruitless, then I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and an evil time.

Auberon Herbert, The Ethics of Dynamite (1894).

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Common Sense

William Carlos Williams

Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.

William Carlos Williams, letter to James Laughlin (January 14, 1944), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 219.
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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture

Two Days & 50 Years

Tomorrow is Independence Day in these United States.

But so was yesterday.

It was in the papers:

This day the Continental Congress declared the United Colonies Free and Independent States.

Pennsylvania Evening Post, July 2, 1776.

For it was two days before revising and accepting Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence that Congress officially declared its independence from King George III.

This Common Sense site has explained this quirk of history before. The Lee Resolution of July 2 declared that

  • the colonies should be “free and independent States”
  • they were “absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown” and that the connections should be “totally dissolved”
  • New “foreign Alliances” should be formed
  • And a “plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.”

Congress also commanded that a declaration be drawn up, and it was done quickly, accepted two days later.

The confederation document, on the other hand, took another year to work up, and four years beyond that to adopt.

John Adams, for all his faults as the Second President under the later U.S. Constitution, was a true friend of liberty and regarded the day as historic. “The second day of July, 1776,” he prophesied, writing to his wife on July 3, 1776,

will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

He was off by two days. It was the Fourth that would be celebrated.

Fifty years later he was off by much less: he died on July 4, 1826, uttering “Thomas — Jefferson — still surv —”

Jefferson had died a few hours earlier.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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