Enjoying the view from Limbo
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...
2024 U.S. Election / Liberty's Labors Lost
by Daren Jonescu · Published May 27, 2024 · Last modified May 29, 2024
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...
The irrelevance of relevance, the relevance of irrelevance.– Being relevant is largely a function of being of this moment, whereas what is most needed at any given moment is precisely what is not of this moment. Hence, it may be possible to achieve fame or admiration in one’s lifetime while also being what is most needed, but only if, or to the extent...
If the history of civilization has taught us anything — and by “us,” I mean non-progressives, progressives being constitutionally opposed to learning from history — it is that government will never be perfect, will rarely be good, and will usually be dreadful. Tyrannical impulses, fatal compromises of principle, and catastrophic blindness are such intractable facts of the human condition that it is an...
In the eternal battle between cats and birds, I am always on the side of the birds. Make no mistake, though: I know the battle is eternal, which is to say that it is both essential and without hope of ultimate resolution or victory. I have chosen my side nevertheless, or rather perhaps I ought to say that I have been chosen by...
The world may already have ended: I just noticed that Noam Chomsky of all people has publicly stated something aligned with what I myself was thinking during my morning walk today. Specifically, he commented about a year ago that AI systems such as ChatGPT are “basically high-tech plagiarism. It’s a system that…accesses an astronomical amount of data and finds regularities and strings them...
I humbly offer here my own new translation of “Mirrors,” a poem by Jorge Luis Borges. The poem has existed in English translation for decades, and in more than one version, perhaps most popularly the translation of Alistair Reid, which is the one through which I first discovered this wonderful work. However, for reasons I will discuss below, I believe this new attempt...
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...
Columbia University is under siege, 1960s style, by violent “protesters” whose goals are, shall we say, mixed. From a brief news clip survey of the ongoing mess at Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, it appears that some of these “students” are merely hoping to win a Muslim holy war against Israel by screaming about it from the cozy campus of an elite American university. Others,...
Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 29, 2024 · Last modified May 4, 2024
One of the most universal and predictable bromides, spoken by people of all temperaments and political persuasions, in reply to any contemporary warning about the societal dangers inherent in this or that significant change in information technology, educational norms, economic relations, popular entertainment, or public mores: “But that’s what they said about X back in the day.” This rejoinder is meant to carry...
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