Enjoying the view from Limbo
Death by Education / Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost
by Daren Jonescu · Published June 1, 2020
Few things frustrate me more than attempts to leap over common sense and honest appraisal with the shorthand of collective beatification for certain classes or groups within society. For progressives, the sainthood-bound groups include teachers and “activists.” For conservatives, the saintly groups are “cops” and “our brave men in uniform.” Both sides, meanwhile, will always race to outdo each other in fawning gratitude...
Last Sunday, I received an e-mail from a serious student who has been studying painting. She had taken a day trip to a nearby cape to enjoy the ocean view, and had come away with some difficult questions about the value of her artistic pursuits. In particular, she reflected that she would never be able to capture more than “a shadow” of the...
A few hours ago, I concluded an e-mail reply to a reader about COVID-19, experts, “flattening the curve,” and the abuse of statistics, with this exhausted summary: “I’m getting tired of this story, since there is nothing left to save here, no one left to persuade, and no benefit to be had from muttering common sense into the ether. Slaves want to be...
In recent years, it has become a popular part of the vernacular to say, in a variety of situations, “This will not end well.” This melodramatic expression should now be edited for the coronavirus pandemic, to “This will not end.” Several weeks ago, there was a lot of discussion, grounded in firsthand reports and hard evidence, of the fact that in many jurisdictions,...
Headline I just read on MSN: “Masks seem to work, even as some refuse them.” Darned humans, always refusing to do as they are told. Perhaps if we condescend and preach to them long enough, and publicly shame them forcefully enough, they will finally learn how to comply.
In other news:
Today, America’s Lord and Master, “Dr. Fauci,” is making a plea for Americans to continue taking his word as gospel truth forever and ever, and to sacrifice every iota of dignity and self-government they ever thought they deserved, even though it is now ridiculously obvious that he has no idea what the hell he’s talking about, and has been dead wrong about every...
In Citizen Kane, there is a wonderful, breathlessly paced little moment when young newspaper publisher Charles Foster Kane is confronted with a wire from a reporter concerning a war the reporter was sent by Kane to hype for the paper’s readership: Kane: Read the cable. Bernstein: “Girls delightful in Cuba. Stop. Could send you prose poems about the scenery, but don’t feel right...
In Part One, I addressed Professor Michael Levitt’s reasonable objections to government lockdowns as a response to the coronavirus pandemic, noting that although he states the obvious lying along the periphery (though nothing I haven’t been saying here in Limbo since February), he completely avoids the heart of the issue, namely tyranny. Today, we turn to the lunatic fringe of obviousness, Ann Coulter....
Michael Levitt is a Nobel Prize-winning professor at Stanford University. Ann Coulter is a cerebral hemorrhage masquerading as a political commentator. Both spoke the truth over the weekend — or rather, both stated the obvious, while conveniently avoiding or overlooking the deepest implications of their respective truths. First, today, the rational side of the equation. (Coulter can wait until I find a more...
Freedom is the natural political hope of the uncertain. Tyranny is the dream of the certain. The profound awareness of uncertainty compels humility before the past, respect for one’s contemporaries, doubt concerning authority (including one’s own), and skepticism toward all claims to ultimate knowledge. The profound illusion of certainty tempts a man into disdain for the past, condescension toward his contemporaries, lust for...
Follow: