Enjoying the view from Limbo
Gallup, the leading purveyor of the pseudoscientific propaganda technique called “opinion polling,” has released the results of its annual survey of “the most admired man and woman living in the world today.” And for an amazing eighth year out of nine, the winner on both sides is: “None/No opinion.” In fact, None/No opinion won the Most Admired Man title with an impressive 26%...
Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published December 30, 2017 · Last modified December 12, 2021
Progressivism, particularly in its neo-Marxist form, is as rife with self-contradiction as any big lie can be. Orwell captured this inherent self-contradiction well, albeit somewhat superficially, in Animal Farm (“Some animals are more equal than others”) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (e.g., Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Love, etc.). By “superficially,” I mean that Orwell defined the overt hypocrisy of Marxist revolutionaries well at the...
As a longtime contributor to American Thinker, I share the dismay of many readers at AT’s changing standards since the editors jumped onto the Trump train. In addition to the way this has affected me personally — I can’t speak my mind as freely over there as I once did, and many old readers have understandably fled for the hills, displaced by Breitbartians...
When someone says New Year’s Eve is one of his favorite holidays, and expresses dismay at my lack of New Year’s Eve plans, I feel I am talking to an empty shell. New Year’s Eve has no religious, moral, or intellectual significance. It is nothing but an opportunity — one justified by the calendar, and therefore appearing vaguely “natural” — to have fun....
This is my second pass at Christmas on this website, and over the past year I’ve had the good fortune to make many new friends here in Limbo through the “Contact” page. It’s been a pleasure and honor to get to know some of the really remarkable people who are taking a little time out of their lives to read my writing, and...
A major star of Korean pop music (or K-pop) has committed suicide, seemingly due, in part, to a long-term bout with depression. The Korean and international media response is divided between pitying tributes to Kim Jonghyun the artist and pseudo-serious consternation over mental health issues. Meanwhile, almost everyone is evading the greatest concern at the center of this story: suicide. Kim, 27, was...
Here’s the narrative: Cutting business taxes allows for higher profits, which fosters new investment and hiring. New hiring means more high-paying jobs. More high-paying jobs mean that even with reduced personal income tax rates, gross federal tax revenue will not be affected. Everybody wins: individuals are wealthier, and the government can still afford to pay for the entitlement behemoth. That narrative, which has...
This fall in Korea was colder than normal. Mention this obvious fact to anyone who hasn’t been living under an ice floe these past twenty years, and you will see the wheels turning: “Should we talk about the cause of this unusually cold weather, or leave it unstated but understood?” The cause in question, of course, is global warming. How do we know...
One of the great modern diseases is our obsession with quantifying the intrinsically unquantifiable. The successes of the modern natural sciences have fostered an unjustified faith (and faith is the right word, since this belief is pure dogma) that a superficial approximation of scientific method may be applied to human life itself — to morality, society, education — with similarly salutary results. The...
The GOP’s McConnell-Rove establishment — to which Donald Trump normally clings when it’s decision-making time, rather than brand-selling time — judged Roy Moore an enemy of its uniparty state long before any allegations of dating relationships with young women, and in one case an underage girl, came to light. (That, recall, was why Trump supported McConnell’s lackey Luther Strange against Moore in the...
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