Enjoying the view from Limbo
Donald Trump is trying to execute in the 2026 midterm elections the same strategy he used in the 2020 presidential election: Start telling people months ahead of the election that the Democrats are planning massive voter fraud, though without providing any evidence to support this; on election night, stand up and declare that the election fraud he predicted has really happened, though without...
It is very true that videos can lie. It is equally true that government officials can lie. But when several videos shot independently by several different people from several different angles present one consistent picture, while several government officials mouth one script written or approved by one government official, then we are being asked whether we are more inclined to believe several different...
Do you remember back in the days before 2016, when tens of millions of Americans, Republican Party voters, defended the right to bear arms, against all critics, arguing that the real reason for the Second Amendment had nothing to do with hunting or recreational shooting, but was all about the God-given right of a free people to arm themselves against a potentially tyrannical...
Fact vs. Fiction.– No one thinks or invents anything important due to the influence of alcohol or other drugs. But everyone who feels an immoderate attachment to a drug of choice has a vested interest in telling himself that these artificial intoxicants enhance thought and inventiveness. And every…
I was recently asked, by a student seeking to understand the full conditions and practical implications of the philosophic life, a question which has, in one form or another, probably occurred to, or rather preoccupied, the mind of every person attracted to philosophy in a serious way from the sixth century B.C. to the present. I paraphrase her question closely: “Let’s suppose everyone...
To everyone who has ever accused me personally, or any other critic of Donald Trump for that matter, of suffering from the non-existent ailment (but all-time great example of psychological projection), “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” I offer the following: Dear Jonas, Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an...
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 20, 2026
Ted Cruz, who back in the latter days of 2016 willingly defined himself for all time as the single most spineless and snivelling anti-man in American politics, now seeks to reassert that title against increasingly aggressive competition, by stating, in support of his master’s latest evidence of mental deterioration, that it is “overwhelmingly” in America’s “national interest” to acquire Greenland. As though concepts...
Against Stoicism.— Each of us, when we slam a window on our finger or stub our toe, is instantly two years old again. If you think this reveals a profound truth about our nature or “undermines all our pretenses of reason and civilization,” then you are either of the nature of a materialist cynic who shouts his atheism, prayer-like, to the heavens, or...
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 13, 2026 · Last modified January 14, 2026
The leaders of the MAGA cult, looking at every video of an ICE shooting in Minneapolis, insist that they see, and therefore that you must also see, an honorable law enforcement officer being rammed by a car driven by a domestic terrorist and therefore fully justified in defending himself with lethal force against this act of extremist violence. The cult submits its perceptual...
The president of the United States told The New York Times within the past few days, with perfect equanimity and matter-of-factness, that his authority and decisions with regard to foreign policy, up to and including any threats and military engagements against America’s allies, are limited only by “my own morality, my own mind.” This may provide reassurance, or more likely rapture, to his...
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