Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Think of the VPNs

It’s for the kids. Let’s remember that. If bureaucrats and politicians get massive amounts of new power to lord over us, this is just a happy side effect.

Reclaim the Net reports that during recent debate in the U.K.’s House of Commons about a Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, lawmakers rejected proposed amendments that would have required age verification to use virtual private networks (VPNs) and certain other services.

That’s good. People use VPNs to avoid being tracked and identified by such tyrannical governments as those of China or the United Kingdom.

And any ID requirement would increase the chances that governments discover the identity of users no matter what rules VPN providers are supposed to follow to prevent this.

But Brits cannot relax just yet. Amendments that lawmakers did approve would compel Internet service providers to “restrict children’s access to specific online platforms, impose time-of-day limits on when services can be used, and mandate age verification across nearly any platform that enables users to post or share content.”

Time-of-day limits? Aren’t parents the ones who tell their kids when it’s bedtime?

If we do descend into a dark totalitarian night with no freedom, no privacy, a telescreen in every room, we’ll have to look on the bright side: It was for the kids. The kids needed to be protected from algorithms, choice, freedom, the deficiencies of merely parental oversight, and books with pages addictively connected to adjacent pages.

Those kids. Always causing trouble.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Arnold Bennett

Journalists say a thing that they know isn’t true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.
Arnold Bennett, The Title (1918).

Today

In Wartime

On March 17, 1941, the U.S. Selective Service held its first lottery for the draft, in preparation for World War II. (Image, above, from the Morning Oregonian, from that year.)

On March 17, 1780, General George Washington granted the Continental Army a holiday “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence.”

ideological culture subsidy

Ÿnsect Repellent

Klaus Schwab, WEF, World Economic Forum, insects

You vill eat ze bugs!

Sorry, Klaus. Not interested.

When the World Economic Forum (WEF) began trending a few years back, the world’s normal folk became somewhat alarmed at what we were hearing. (Notice how I include myself among “the normal”?) Witnessing a German player at the game of non-governmental organizations pitch “the Great Reset,” as WEF’s founder Klaus Schwab dubbed it, and boast about how he had snuck his acolytes into major governments across the world (especially in Justin Trudeau’s administration) was alarming enough. Seeing him dress up in Bond-villain garb and talk like a Hollywood caricature of a Nazi leader? Chilling.

But perhaps worst of all: ze bugs.

Yes, he was trying to get us to eat insects. Great source of protein, he said; the food of the future, he said.

Looking the part, he inspired . . . revulsion, just as did the bugs he wanted us to consume. We were all ready to drop him into a remake of Soylent Green when his star faded; it had become clear that Americans, at least, were not copacetic with the creepy-crawly eatery plan.

And, as if to prove that Schwab’s Great Reset of our diet will not be driven by cartoonish elitists, Ÿnsect — Europe’s largest insect farm — has officially gone bankrupt.

The hundreds of millions in public and private funding, including nearly €200 million in taxpayer money from French and EU sources, could not stave off collapse. The mealworm producer, hailed as a sustainable protein pioneer for animal feed and pet food, entered judicial liquidation in December amid soaring costs, dismal revenue (just €656K in 2023 vs. €80M losses), and market rejection

Industrial-scale bug farming looks like a no-go.

Despite subsidies.

A win for civilization.

And this is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Jacques Ellul

[J]ust because men are in a group, and therefore weakened, receptive, and in a state of psychological regression, they pretend all the more to be “strong individuals.” The mass man is clearly sub-human, but pretends to be superman. He is more suggestible, but insists he is more forceful; he is more unstable, but thinks he is firm in his convictions. If one openly treats the mass as a mass, the individuals who form it will feel themselves belittled and will refuse to participate. If one treats these individuals as children (and they are children because they are in a group), they will not accept their leader’s projections or identify with him. They will withdraw and we will not be able to get anything out of them. On the contrary, each one must feel individualized, each must have the impression that he is being looked at, that he is being addressed personally. Only then will he respond and cease to be anonymous (although in reality remaining anonymous).
Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1962).

Today

Belated Confirmation

On March 16, 1995, the state of Mississippi formally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state of the Union to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment had been officially ratified in 1865, one hundred thirty years earlier.

James Madison, fourth President of the United States and “Father of the Constitution,” was born on this date in 1751.

Update

The Treason Question

“Tucker Carlson has claimed he is facing potential criminal charges,” explains a Newsweek report, “stemming from his conversations with people in Iran after U.S. government agencies ‘read my texts.’

Posting on X, the former Fox News host said the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was preparing “a crime report” to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the basis that he was “acting as an agent of a foreign power” by conversing with individuals from Iran. Carlson denied these alleged claims.
”Tucker Carlson Facing ‘Foreign Agent’ Charges, He Says—’They Read My Texts’,” Newsweek (March 15, 2026).

The administration faces increasing pressure to do something about Tucker, but also increasing criticism. When Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, an Israeli trade official, tweeted that “Tucker Carlson should be arrested and tried for treason,” she got blowback, not least from Glenn Greenwald:

Who the f**k are Israelis to dictate that American journalists should be arrested and prosecuted for “treason”?

As always, these Israelis are not alone. They have a horde of loyalists in the US echoing this.

By “treason,” they mean: speaking and reporting critically on Israel.

But Hassan-Nahoum got some X support from Meghan McCain:

Secretly communicating with an enemy of the United States during an active war conflict makes you a traitor in my book.

Full stop.

Clayton Morris, of the Redacted podcast, responded with historical context:

The last time the US declared war was June 1942. There’s no declaration of war. Full stop.

So, for full historical context, note that the last time a U.S. president imprisoned war critics outright was in World War I, when Woodrow Wilson’s war machine

closed down about 75 newspapers and magazines, prevented the distribution of specific issues of many more, and put journalists on trial in federal courts. This entire operation was managed from the landmark Washington building that would become, 100 years later, the Trump International Hotel.
Adam Hochschild, “America’s Top Censor — So Far,” Mother Jones (September-October 2022).

While Donald Trump has said the war in Iran is almost over, we will see how long it drags on. We may also see that, when push comes to shove, the administration will go so far as to imprison its critics, such as Tucker Carlson.

Tucker Carlson’s discussion of the alleged case against him:

Thought

Will & Ariel Durant

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (1968). This pronouncement is often attributed — with grave authority — to Will Durant alone, cited as from a 1946 Ladies Home Journal article, “What Is Civilization?” This appears to be incorrect: read the article, it’s excellent; but the apothegm is not to be found there.

Today

Julius & George

March 15 was “the Ides of March” in the Roman calendar. On that date in 44 BC, Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a handful of prominent senators.

On the same date in AD 1783, General George Washington eloquently entreated his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. His plea was successful: the threatened coup d’état never took place.

Update

Hormuz, the Chokepoint

“The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively shut with Iran attacking vessels and its Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, vowing to keep it blocked,” Roshneesh Kmaneck summarized yesterday, at Firstpost. “This has led to panic about the supply of oil and natural gas. Countries are now scrambling for alternative routes. But experts note that none of the options can replace the oil normally shipped through the critical Gulf chokepoint.”

Roughly 20 percent of global petroleum production is in jeopardy. While Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can work around the obstruction using a pipeline, Iraq and Kuwait and other major users of the passage cannot:

Share of the petroleum cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz, by country.

Rep. Tim Burchett’s comment, quoted by Paul Jacob on this site yesterday, remains of course completely unaffected by the addition of other countries’ supplies passing through the region. “How much oil does America get from Iran? Zero.” Well, North America gets about 2.5 percent of all of the Hormuz-squeezed oil (not exactly zero, but close). Regardless, the economics of supplies and demands worldwide still contribute to the determination of gas prices in America.

And Burchett remains a bonehead. No update required on that.