Good morning. Mother’s Day in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:03 PM for 14h 25m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 45.2% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1869, the First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United…
Liberty
Daily Bread, Disinformation, Law, Liberty, Politics
Daily Bread for 2.3.22: Responding to Disinformation
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning. Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 17. Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 5:11 PM for 10h 05m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM. On this day in 1690, the colony of…
Daily Bread, Ethics, Liberty, Public Health, Reasoning, Religion, Vaccines
Daily Bread for 9.6.21: Formation, Moral
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning. Labor Day in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 78. Sunrise is 6:26 AM and sunset 7:19 PM, for 12h 53m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 0.4% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 2008, the federal government takes control of the two largest mortgage financing…
City, Culture, Education, Liberty, Populists, Right-wing Populism, School District
Jane Jacobs with Useful Advice on Responsibility (for Whitewater, Richmond Township, Delavan, Etc.)
by JOHN ADAMS •
In Jane Jacobs’s Death and Life of Great American Cities (describing large cities, not small towns), she writes of business owners’ sense of responsibility for the sidewalks near their shops: First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other…
Culture, Law, Liberty
Thin-Skinned in Whitefish Bay (and Places Nearer and Farther)
by JOHN ADAMS •
There’s a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about complaints against public speech in Whitefish Bay that’s illustrative of threats to free speech in small towns, including Whitewater. In Whitefish Bay, a group called Bay Bridge placed an anti-racism sign in a designated space at the public library. The sign drew the ire of some Whitefish…
Libertarians, Liberty, Never Trump
Ron Elving’s Laughable Description of Libertarianism
by JOHN ADAMS •
Perhaps readers will excuse me for taking a year to respond to Ron Elving’s description of libertarianism in $2 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Bill Presents A Reckoning For Libertarians (3.28.20). It wasn’t worthy of a prompt reply, but it’s also unworthy of taking space yet longer in my task queue. Elving writes: Let us all have a…
America, Ethics, Legislation, Liberty, Music, Politics, Wisconsin, WISGOP
The Party Demands Unity
by JOHN ADAMS •
One reads that WISGOP Bill Would Make It Illegal For Sports Venues to Skip National Anthem: It would be illegal for some sports venues to skip the national anthem before games under a new bill proposed by a Republican legislator. Stevens Point Republican Sen. Patrick Testin’s Star Spangled Banner Act, proposed Wednesday, would require the anthem…
America, Elections, History, Law, Liberty, Never Trump, Presidential race 2020, Resistance, Trump, Victory
2020: ‘But Not Just That’
by JOHN ADAMS •
Tim Miller – who is always worth reading, writes of 2020 as The Worst. But Not Just That. These paragraphs resonate: Most importantly, 2020 will always be the year that we joined together and toppled the greatest threat that our fragile union has faced in many decades. Turning out more people to vote against the president-strongman…
Authoritarianism, Bigotry, Law, Libertarians, Liberty, Never Trump, Trump, Trumpism
The Libertarian Remnant
by JOHN ADAMS •
Shikha Dalmia is a libertarian, and as a libertarian who is true to those beliefs, she is necessarily opposed to the authoritarianism of Trump and in Trumpism. Because the definition of libertarianism has been distorted beyond any true meaning by opportunistic or ignorant rightwing donors, she’s lost her job Reason magazine. Conservative donors pay the…
Authoritarianism, Law, Liberty, Never Trump, Portland, Trump
Trump’s Illicit Attempts Remain Illicit
by JOHN ADAMS •
A man may unsuccessfully attempt a robbery or murder, yet one would rightly see him as a wrongdoer. The failure to achieve an evil end does not absolve those so attempting from moral culpability. See Attempts. So it is with Trump, now: his attempts to subvert the election through lies and (baseless) lawsuits are no…
America, Liberty, Never Trump
Our Fight
by JOHN ADAMS •
Equality, Gender, Liberty
Daughters
by JOHN ADAMS •
America, Authoritarianism, Books, City, Liberty, Trump, Trumpism, Tyranny
Snyder’s On Tyranny
by JOHN ADAMS •
Prof. Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: ‘Lesssons from the Twentieth Century’ (2017) recently came my way. By design, it’s a brief presentation of twenty lessons that Snyder has discerned after a long career as a historian, with significant study and research on twentieth-century European history. It’s a small, inviting pamphlet addressing a big, unwelcome subject. We’ve…
America, Democrats, Liberty, Never Trump, Trump
The Democratic National Convention 2020, Second Night: The Roll Call Vote That Looks Like America
by JOHN ADAMS •
Under the threat from Trumpism, the Democrats of this convention have built a coalition, of themselves supportive independents, that looks like America. In their roll call vote last night, one saw the success of their efforts. Those opposed to Trump might have wilted under pressure from the power of the federal executive branch, but they…