Enjoying the view from Limbo
The schoolyard sore loser as international pitchman. Donald Trump has just announced that he is suing Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter) for “censorship.” For a man who serially threatens lawsuits (and a lot of other things) and then backs away, this definitive step forward is quite noteworthy. Here is what it shows me: Donald Trump, a lifelong grifter and name salesman...
A couple of months ago, I wrote here about two of the most unlikely topics for this website: A contemporary pop musician and a contemporary display of genuine courage. The first topic is unlikely because I have little interest in, and even less respect for, most popular artists of the day; the second is unlikely because genuine courage, of the sort that involves...
I hope I would never materially damage other people’s lives or deprive them of their basic freedoms merely to protect myself from the inevitable risks and discomforts of living as a human being. I hope I would never rationalize my fears and insecurities to justify demanding that strangers be forced to live for my benefit, preference, or safety, against their own genuine or...
About a week ago, I noted here that the global governance consortium and its media spokesmen are currently in a race against time to impose universal vaccination on every human being as a moral and regulatory condition for being allowed to participate in “normal life” again. They are doing this partly to serve the financial interests of the big pharmaceutical companies and their...
Death by Education / Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost
by Daren Jonescu · Published June 4, 2021
The sense of urgency governments are exuding today over the universal push to vaccinate everyone against COVID-19 is palpable — as is the reason for the sense of urgency. If the world were allowed to emerge from the pandemic without universal vaccination having been achieved first, the people who advised restraint, moderation, and the necessity of reaching herd immunity from the outset would...
The current rivalry between the United States and China has much less in common with the Cold War than with the old Russia-China tensions. For the Cold War was, as common parlance would have it, “a clash of ideologies,” whereas today’s semi-hostile relations between the U.S. and China are really just a turf war between ideological allies whose respective self-interested ambitions have inevitably...
Modern politicians smile for the cameras because they want to look normal and like “one of the people.” When they smile — at nothing, as a pose, to present themselves as smilers — they look like idiots who do not take life or politics seriously. Hence, they achieve their end perfectly: They look eminently normal. They look exactly like “the people.” Today’s political...
What was the democratic world fifteen months ago? Clearly, it was not what it appeared to be, even to the most hardened skeptics and cynics. It is one thing to believe, as the skeptics and cynics did at that time, that most men, if push came to shove, would choose comfort over freedom, and would succumb to promises of security at the expense...
Oligarchs play demagogues to cajole and placate the ill-informed, safety-and-comfort-obsessed majority by inciting distrust and hatred of the genuine best men — the sober, non-tribal, intellectually courageous lovers of goodness and beauty. Together, these two groups, the demagoguing oligarchs and the ignorant majority, forge a tyranny, operated by and for the oligarchs, but advertised as being operated by and for the safety-and-comfort-obsessed majority....
Fast talk usually means weak thought. Speed, as a rule, is superficiality’s colorful mask. In rhetoric, whether political, legal, or academic, the fast talker hopes to mesmerize your senses with how many words he can spew forth without a pause, in lieu of engaging your reason with the profundity of his ideas. The incessant and rapid flow disrupts sober attention and evades hard...
Follow: