A Kind, Painless, Stable Life

On this day:

1535
Sir Thomas More is executed for treason against King Henry VIII of England.
1557
King Philip II of Spain, consort of Queen Mary I of England, sets out from Dover to war with France, which eventually results in the loss of the City of Calais, the last English possession on the continent, and Mary I never seeing her husband again.
1777
American Revolutionary War: Siege of Fort Ticonderoga – After a bombardment by British artillery under General John Burgoyne, American forces retreat from Fort Ticonderoga, New York.
1885
Louis Pasteur successfully tests his rabies vaccine. The patient is Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog
1892
3,800 striking steelworkers engage in a day-long battle with Pinkerton agents during the Homestead Strike, leaving 10 dead and dozens wounded.

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“We are at a wonderful ball where the champagne sparkles in every glass and soft laughter falls upon the summer air. We know at some moment the black horsemen will come shattering through the terrace doors, wreaking vengeance and scattering the survivors. Those who leave early are saved, but the ball is so splendid no one wants to leave while there is still time. So everybody keeps asking — what time is it? But none of the clocks have hands.” George Goodman, who wrote as 'Adam Smith,' writing, in 1968, of a high-flying stock market in “The Money Game.”

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In 1660, John Milton faced numerous obstacles as he worked on his epic poem, “Paradise Lost.” His role as an advocate for republicanism left him politically disgraced during the Restoration reign of Charles II. His second wife had recently died. And, of course, he had gone blind. Lying in bed at night, he composed verses of a vast poem that encompassed nothing less than the creation of the world and the fate of mankind. In the morning, he would dictate fresh lines to his daughters.

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A cockroach can survive for about a week without its head, dying eventually of thirst rather than injury. Any parallels with states or governments is coincidental.

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Pennsylvania’s public-school employees’ pension fund is $41 billion short of what it needs to pay promised benefits. Promised.

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Were Jim Crow laws as restrictive of voters as Gerrymandering?

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A Kind, Painless, Stable Life

The autocrat cannot help himself; he's got to interfere. If it can appear to be virtuous, all the better. And nothing draws the autocrat like disparity.

So Trump steps across all boundaries to intrude into international sports, fouling the World Cup and contaminating the game, regardless of the outcome.

Is nothing safe from these people?

Socialism despises competition and its fallout of failure. In a way, it is an intolerance of the nature of life with its ups and downs--and eventual fatal denouement. Those who relentlessly try to interfere with all social and economic events are actually attempting to smooth the uncertainties of living and homogenize the outcomes of social and economic interactions.

We see encountering risk and overcoming it as success. They see risk as a basic enemy of life. And they are willing to sacrifice progress--the result of risk-taking--to eliminate it. In the back of their self-declared kind minds, they believe their ingenuity can substitute for the creative destruction of the marketplace. It's a wonder that they allow our dangerous social interactions, like school and romance. Clearly, they hate sports.

Perhaps this explains the Left's hysterical, aggressive reaction to the chaotic Virus.

But the Left is tolerant; they do allow for some disorder. They are quite willing to endure the messy period of social disruption as they sort out whom they will allow to assist their leadership. And, of course, the purges. The New State must eliminate all those incapable of seeing the new future. Unanimity is the enemy of risk; the creation of unanimity is not.

Creative disorder, for all its positives, is disorder and will leave pain and failure in its wake. The socialist prefers their own power to create pain and failure.