Enjoying the view from Limbo
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published May 27, 2022
I just did a quick online search, and found exactly what I expected to find. In Ukraine, gun ownership is not regulated by statute, the country enjoys high rates of private gun ownership, and “Citizens are permitted to own non-fully automatic rifles and shotguns as long as they are stored properly when not in use.” Meanwhile, Ukraine is the only country on the...
There has been another mass shooting at an American school. Thus, there has inevitably been another uninterrupted news cycle focusing everyone’s rapt and mock-mournful attention on every titillating detail of the “terrible day”: The crying children, the traumatized parents, the heroic individuals who did their best to save lives, and of course every available tidbit on the killer’s identity, grievances, and personal story....
You can stop an expansionist tyrant by thwarting all his aims and pushing him back into his hole. Or you can empower and embolden him with completely gratuitous concessions and appeasement — usually at the expense of some convenient victims which you arbitrarily assume the moral authority to use as pawns in your appeasement game — so that the tyrant becomes more dangerous...
The vast majority of Trump supporters who wanted to prevent the certification of the 2020 electoral votes, including those who were prepared to fight on Capitol Hill to stop Joe Biden from becoming president on January 6th, 2021, were not, as per the standard talking point of our day, “trying to overturn an election.” Nor were they “trying to destroy American democracy.” On...
The problem with libertarians is that they believe that if everyone were left to live as he pleases, human life in general would improve. But when did men in general ever improve themselves through the unrestricted pursuit of what pleases them? Is pleasure happiness? Is comfort the good? Is greatness achieved through living without limits, without conflict…
I once had more readers in any given week than Nietzsche and Kierkegaard had in their entire lives, combined. I lost all those readers by choice, or rather I should say by lack of any agreeable alternative. The thought of “keeping them” was revolting, given what I would have had to do to myself to achieve that end. I now write — as...
We have cast off all the gods and their tyrannical ways, and hence all need of submission. Thus we define our freedom. And thus, having rejected the notion that there are gods, which is to say aspirations and ideals beyond our present limits, we happily submit to our own chains, rejecting all thought of anything beyond ourselves, which is to say beyond our...
Dr. Oz, a television celebrity who, like his endorser and “friend” Donald Trump, has tried to parlay empty fame and business success into a political career, slightly led Pennsylvania’s GOP senate primary after initial vote counting. Today, it appears that the absentee votes are tipping the scales toward one of Oz’s rivals, Dave MacCormick. Donald Trump’s response to this on social media: He’s...
I had an interesting written exchange with an independent-minded student recently, which I record here (personal details removed) as something to chew on for anyone facing a similar situation.
Student: I need someone who listens to me and who is curious about me.
Teacher: Yes, in general it feels meaningful to know….
2020 U.S. Election / America Descending
by Daren Jonescu · Published May 18, 2022 · Last modified May 19, 2022
Ben Shapiro is basically Rush Limbaugh for smug millennials, which is to say a moderately clever profiteer of the Republican establishment, but one who substitutes snotty rich boy arrogance and snide self-certainty for Limbaugh’s everyman persona, playful wit, and self-deflating vanity. Dinesh D’Souza is a less clever and less circumspect version of Shapiro; he doesn’t know how to hedge his bets against future...
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