Categories
ideological culture public opinion too much government

Socialism vs. Socialism vs. Socialism

State Socialism, collectivism, obedience

“Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America,” said President Trump in a mid-term election spot. “America will never be a communist country.”

But what does he mean by those words? 

Vice President J. D. Vance was asked to define socialism at a press conference soon after the ad ran. 

The word, he said, is “a very hard term to define these days because . . . you know, classically, you would think, socialism is about prioritizing workers. And yet, in reality, I bet most of the self-described socialists running across America are going to howl about this announcement, today, which is prioritizing American workers over foreign workers, so, I don’t know what the term means any more. 

“I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context, is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls’ sports. That’s what I see that unites the socialists that I see running across the United States of America today.”

Vance focused on the woke nonsense (the boys in girls’ sports reference) because that is what he sees. By pointing to socialists’ opposition to administration policy against Microsoft replacing American workers with foreign ones, Vance was aiming to note an irony. 

Most folks, however — including from National Review and the Orange County Register — see a bigger irony in his defense of Trumpian policy by recourse to workers’ socialism.

It’s just protectionism, of course, but instead of frankly favoring home-grown businesses, it’s framed to favor American over foreign workers.

Yet, many economists insist that protectionism is just socialism in short pants.

“You can’t defeat socialism with an alternative form of collectivism,” explains Agustina Vergara Cid of the Register, “only with its opposite: the principle that the individual is not a means to any group’s end.” 

That’s unfortunately not how Trump or Vance approach the issue . . . but that may be of limited relevance, considering that their failures led to a backlash sending actual communists into Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Francis Amasa Walker

Protectionism is nothing if not socialistic. It proposes, in the public interest, to modify the natural course of trade and production, and to do this by depriving the citizen of his privilege of buying in the cheapest market. Yet the protectionist is not to be called, therefore, a Socialist, since the Socialist would not only have the state determine what shall be produced, but he would have the state itself undertake the production.

Francis Amasa Walker (Davis R. Dewey, ed.), Discussions of Economics and Statistics, Volume II (1899), p. 260.

Categories
Today

McNamara

On November 9, 1960, Robert McNamara was named president of the Ford Motor Company, becoming the first non-Ford family member to serve in that post — only to resign a month later to join the newly elected John F. Kennedy administration.

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Update

Effrontery in Alaska

Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola must be granted extra points — for effrontery. After her campaign’s plot to engage in spreading confusion among the Alaskan electorate on the Republican spaces on the ballot was uncovered, you might think she’d slink her way into obscurity.

But that’s the old way, maybe. Not the new way.

Paul Jacob has covered that story, of scheming and anti-democratic trickery. The latest update is that her backers are suing the “state Division of Elections to disclose, ‘without further delay,’ the names of Alaskans who sent absentee ballots the agency turned down, according to a complaint filed on Nov. 6 in the Superior Court for the State of Alaska.

Accusing state elections officials of having “constructively denied and obstructed” the Peltola campaign’s request for public records pertaining to rejected ballots, the group said in the filing that the Nov. 18 certification deadline is fast approaching and any delay in releasing the records costs Peltola the opportunity to help ensure that qualified voters have their ballots counted.”

Tom Ozimek, “Peltola Campaign Sues Alaska Over Rejected Absentee Ballots,” The Epoch Times (November 7, 2026).

After such indecent trickery as engaged by the campaign in the Dan J./Dan S. Sullivan matter, this all may be a form of effrontery. Nevertheless, it remains true that the State must conduct its elections in an open and fair manner, obeying the letter of the law.

That being accepted, the State of Alaska has made a public statement about the lawsuit — which could, indeed, force an outcome on an extremely close race: “the Alaska Department of Law said the absentee ballot information Peltola’s campaign seeks is preliminary and that the Division of Elections has long treated such data as confidential.”

A lot of eyes will be on this case as well as the race itself.

Categories
Thought

William Graham Sumner

The history of civil liberty is made up of campaigns against abuses of taxation. Protectionism is the great modern abuse of taxation; the abuse of taxation which is adapted to a republican form of government. Protectionism is now corrupting our political institutions just as slavery used to do.

William Graham Sumner, “Protectionism: the -ism which teaches that waste makes wealth” (1888).
Categories
Today

JFK Won

Montana was admitted into the United States federal union as the 41st state on November 8, 1889. On the same date in 1960, John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the 20th century, becoming the 35th president of the United States.

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Update

Midterm Election Results, November 2026

On Tuesday, the midterm elections gave Democrats next-session control of both chambers of Congress, capturing the House and Senate in a classic repudiation of the president’s party:

Senate — Democrats appear to hold a majority of 54–44, with two races still undecided:

  • Mississippi: Democrat Scott Colom leads incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith by roughly 1,700 votes (~96% counted). A recount is anticipated given the margin; county clerks have ten days to certify.
  • Alaska: Democrat Mary Peltola leads incumbent Republican Dan S. Sullivan by roughly 600–650 votes, with tens of thousands of ballots outstanding. Because it is a four-way ranked-choice contest, tabulation may not conclude until after Nov. 18. If Peltola prevails, the Senate would be 55–45.

Either outcome leaves Democrats firmly in control.

House — Democrats have flipped more than two dozen Republican-held seats and are projected to reach approximately 258–259 seats (to roughly 177 for Republicans), up from 214 before the election — a net gain in the neighborhood of 40+ seats. Approximately 30 races remained uncalled as of Friday, concentrated in California, Alaska, Maine, Montana, and Florida.

Governorships — Democrats flipped governorships in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas, and now hold more governorships than Republicans for the first time since before 2010.

What Comes Next
  • Recount and litigation watch in Mississippi and Alaska; parties on both sides have established recount funds.
  • An Alaska legal dispute over a second candidate named Dan Sullivan on the ballot (Dan J., last updated here on Halloween) could extend past the count itself.
  • Democratic majorities arrive with subpoena and oversight power, setting up an active investigative agenda against the administration through 2028.
Historical Context

Since 1982, only 1994 (−54) and 2010 (−63) produced larger House losses for the president’s party — and only twice (1998 and 2002) has the president’s party gained House seats at all.

Sources

Categories
Thought

Étienne de La Boétie

C’est le peuple qui s’asservit, qui se coupe la gorge; qui ayant le choix
ou d’être serf ou d’être libre, quitte sa franchise et prend le joug;
qui consent à son mal, ou plutôt le pourchasse.

It is the People who enslave themselves, who cut their own Throats: Who having the Choice of being Vassals or Freemen, reject their Liberty and submit to the Yoke, who consent to their own Evil, or rather procure it.

É. de La Boétie, A Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (anonymous translation published by T. Smith; original work composed ca. 1548).
Categories
Today

Rock, Return, Release, Rocked

The Seventh of November

1492: The oldest meteorite with a known date of impact struck a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France.

1504: Christopher Columbus returned from his fourth and final voyage.

1775: John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, started the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by offering freedom to slaves who abandoned their colonial masters to fight on the British side during the Revolution.

1940: The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in a windstorm a mere four months after completion.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall Voting

Is Democracy Undemocratic?

ballot measure, money, Colorado, initiative, women's sports, trans

“Blue-state voters buck the wave — and demand sanity on trans athletes.”

That’s how The New York Post headlined an opinion piece by Jennifer Sey, founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics, applauding victories for ballot initiatives in four states that will keep biological males out of women’s sports. 

In Arizona, while the incumbent Democratic governor won reelection by nearly 13 percentage points, a proposition requiring “people to play on the sports team and use private locker room space based on their biological sex” passed by almost 18 points. 

Nebraska voters passed Initiative 442 to ban male participation on female sports teams by better than a two-to-one margin.

Deep blue Washington state likewise voted overwhelmingly to protect girls’ sports with Measure 638 garnering 57 percent support.

Democrats won the U.S. Senate seat in Colorado by nearly 25 points and the race for governor by more than 27 points. But even with opponents of prohibiting men in women’s sports outspending its proponents by better than 16 to one, Proposition 134 nonetheless prevailed.

“Ballot measures are a function of funding more than anything and are wildly undemocratic,” Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, posted on Instagram.

Strangio is badly mistaken, as spending on the issue in Colorado so clearly demonstrates; not to mention delusional as well, in calling a public vote not only somehow “undemocratic,” but “wildly” so.

An election report by NBC News’ Adam Edelman said that “Republicans and conservative groups also placed a series of measures targeting transgender individuals on the ballot in several states.” Yet these ballot measures were not targeting transgender women. 

This issue is about sports, basic fairness, and protecting biological women. Even blue state voters understand.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Past Common Sense on the issue:

My Sporting Double-Standard — Paul Jacob on the birds, bees and basics of athletic competition. (August 28, 2026)
Trouble with Definitions — Paul Jacob on knowing a man or woman when he sees one. (January 15, 2026)
Trans-Violent — Paul Jacob on thug activism for trans dominance. (April 12, 2023)

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