Category: Liberty’s Labors Lost

Democratic Devolution

On social media.– I have never once wondered what Plato ate for lunch. Nor what Dante looked like on the beach, what Shakespeare gave his children for their birthdays, where Vivaldi spent his summer vacation, or which card game Swift played with Stella. Yet our world is now awash in the lunches, beach pictures, birthday parties, vacation diaries, and personal hobbies of a...

Populism In Microcosm

The U.S. Libertarian convention has chosen its presidential nominee, i.e., has chosen the man who will be the flagbearer for freedom defined as the liberty to get stoned or marry your dog — if that is your “rational preference.” There was one moment in Chase Oliver’s acceptance speech — captured and disseminated by Al Jazeera, for obvious reasons — when the new figurehead...

From the Libertarian Convention

The American Libertarian Party is holding its national convention. Plenty of dope is being smoked (or chewed), and a lot of people in T-shirts declaring their hatred for authority and their belief that government is for losers — in other words, that everything would be so simple and cool if people were just allowed to do whatever the f___ they liked, man, and...

Republicans Against Free Speech

The Republican Party in the U.S. Congress has advocated and voted for an anti-free-speech bill of the most extreme and unconstitutional sort. The Suck Up to Jewish Donors Bill, publicly known as the Antisemitism Awareness Act, explicitly adopts the arbitrary and absurdly broad definition of antisemitism created out of whole cloth by an “intergovernmental organization” calling itself the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and...

American Dreaming, Kremlin Style

A few Republicans in the U.S. Congress are finally willing to admit to themselves, and more importantly to the world, what so many have refused to face until now with regard to their populist faction’s opposition to offering any further aid to Ukraine, and to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s newfound willingness to concede the need for some form of Ukraine package. As Texas...

A Few Political Questions Answered

Q. What would Donald Trump have to do to change your mind about him? A. He would have to replace his rational faculty with that of Thomas Jefferson, his temperament with that of Ronald Reagan, and his principles with those of George Washington. Unfortunately, his life, past and present, shows him to be on the very opposite end of the spectrum on all...

RFK Jr. Notes

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the third party presidential candidate who is essentially running as Donald Trump with a fully developed brain — admittedly a significant step up from the worn-out brain stem that is currently running as the real Donald Trump — has made headlines this week by declaring, to the incredulous consternation of the CNN talking hairdo who was interviewing him, that...

Telltale Sign of Putin’s Western Apologists

Listen to Elon Musk talking about the “tragic loss of life” in Ukraine that could be ended if only the Ukrainian government would concede its losses and sit down to negotiate with Russia, because a happy Russia is a profitable Russia. Listen to Senator Mike Lee, a former freedom-pitching politician who, having sold his soul to Donald Trump’s cult of populist demagoguery for...

Candy Floss Conservatism

Candace Owens, a profiteering self-promoter and political putterer who barely saves herself from being dismissed as equivalent to the blustering conspiracy buffoon Alex Jones by being cuter and blacker than Jones — two qualities always valued at a premium in the popular “conservative media” — has been cut loose by The Daily Wire, a nonsense outfit most closely identified with a slightly cleverer...