Enjoying the view from Limbo
Decadence, in normal language, means “deterioration” or “decay.” (The Latin root suggests falling down and the French derivative form suggests decaying.) For a long time in English, the word has been used only about human behavior and social conditions. If we say someone is decadent, we are saying his way of life is deteriorating or wasteful, such as one who lives for luxury...
Should we be surprised that “Lula,” the Brazilian bore much adored among international socialists, is publicly blaming Ukraine and the U.S. for the war, accusing them of having precipitated the conflict by refusing to “negotiate” with Vladimir Putin or to make concessions to him in advance, i.e., by neglecting to adopt appeasement as their official stance before making Putin angry? Or that Noam...
Private property, contrary to two centuries of socialist activism against the idea, is essentially a moral tenet, one of the most universal and naturally occurring of all moral tenets. As such, it is perhaps the single most effective social tether on the monster of coercive violence which lurks just around the corner in all human societies. And while in common perception it is...
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 20, 2021 · Last modified July 31, 2021
Today’s mass entertainment is obsessed above all with two themes: superheroes and zombies. This is self-revealing, as we are indeed trapped in the age of the undead, whose only mode of living is to suck the life out of others, and whose only hope of being saved from their emptiness is to lose themselves in the last realm of imagination left for hollow,...
Garry Kasparov describes socialism, correctly, as communism with “better marketing.” He abhors dictatorship and all evidence of authoritarianism, and believes it is incumbent on free nations to take hard stands against global aggressors like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and the Mullahs in Iran. Why, then, is he a consistent and vocal supporter of the Democratic Party? Please do not say, “Because at least...
In case you were wondering why I had not posted any kind of Canada Day observations in time for the big day, as per previous years, the answer is simple: I do not care. Canada Day does not really exist, because Canada no longer exists. I hold a passport for an imaginary geopolitical entity that is now nothing but an Orwellian update of...
Last week, I noted that the made-up “anti-Asian hate crime” mantra being manufactured by the American media in the aftermath of a local crime story involving a sick young man in Atlanta has thus far failed to gain any traction in the general population. Today, after a week to get organized and really make a statement, I read this new remarkable headline at...
Among Nietzsche’s many excellent insights into the mind of nineteenth-century socialism, here is one from his early days (1878) that particularly appeals to my way of thinking: The Socialists demand a comfortable life for the greatest possible number. If the lasting house of this life of comfort, the perfect State, had really been attained, then this life of comfort would have destroyed the...
Here is an enthusiastic rant about socialists by Razumihin, Dostoevsky’s crystallization of the good-natured man of common sense, in Crime and Punishment: I’ll show you their pamphlets. Everything with them is ‘the influence of environment,’ and nothing else. Their favourite phrase! From which it follows that, if society is normally organised, all crime will cease at once, since there will be nothing to...
Patterico has a very good post at his blog today, examining both sides of the “Trump vs. the socialist” dynamic that is causing principled conservatives and constitutionalists in America to lose sleep as they look ahead to November 2020. For some time, he has been toying with the idea of voting for a Democrat (hopefully a “moderate” one) as a small stand against...
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