The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.
— Václav Havel
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Today is Friday, December 29th. It is Tick Tock Day, Still Need To Do Day, and National Pepper Pot Day.
On This Day
In 1607, Pocahantas saved John Smith from murder.
In 1778, British forces captured Savannah.
In 1835, the Treaty of New Echota was signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.
In 1845, the United States annexed the Republic of Texas.
In 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment killed 300 Lakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the Wounded Knee Massacre.
In 1913, Cecil B. DeMille began filming Hollywood’s first feature film, The Squaw Man.
In 1940, the Luftwaffe firebombed London, killing almost 200 civilians.
In 1975, a bomb exploded at LaGuardia Airport, killing 11 people and injuring 74. The perpetrators were never identified.
In 1989, writer, philosopher, and dissident Václav Havel was elected the first post-communist president of Czechoslovakia.
In 1994, Turkish Airlines Flight 278 crashed on approach to Van Ferit Melen Airport in Turkey, killing 57 of the 76 people on board.
Today’s Birthdays
Actor and nitwit “environmentalist” Ted Danson is 76. Actress Patricia Clarkson is 64. Actor Michael Cudlitz is 59. “Journalist” Ashleigh Banfield is 56. Actor Jude Law is 51. Actress Alison Brie is 41. Actor Iain De Caestecker is 36.
The Links
Unemployment rates lower in 20 states over year ended November 2023 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor)
“Maryland had the lowest jobless rate in November, at 1.8 percent. The next lowest rate was in North Dakota, at 1.9 percent.”
The Poverty of Slavoj Žižek’s Collectivist Vision of Property Rights (Foundation for Economic Education)
“By holding that the commons belongs to everybody already, the positive conception renders economic life a matter of consuming as much as possible of what is already considered yours before everyone else has a chance to consume it first. By giving others the freedom to consume anything you produce without your consent, it transforms any investment in production that would otherwise be a sustainable act of self-betterment into a self-defeating sacrifice to whoever is the most proficient at leeching off the productivity of others.”
50 Years Ago, Gulag Archipelago Unveiled A Haunted World (The Federalist)
“Prior to Archipelago’s release, Americans and Western Europeans had been exposed to only glimpses of communist inhumanity, mostly from the few survivors who had escaped their dystopias by fortitude and fortune. But their voices were seldom heard, drowned out by a cacophony of Soviet apologists who insisted socialist coercion represented the ideal manner for ordering other people around. Central planning is benevolent, you see.”
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