Enjoying the view from Limbo
The notion that democracy is best served by restricting the public exchange of ideas to only those ideas pre-approved by one political party or faction is absurd. The notion that allowing ideas with which you disagree to be uttered in a public forum constitutes a threat to your freedom is a clear admission that you lack confidence in your own ideas or your...
Tyrants and time.— In the final years of an ambitious tyrant’s reign, he typically takes his shot at ultimate glory — and ultimately hits himself. Why? Because he mistimes the shot. All his earlier calculations and preparations were undertaken with patience and painstaking forethought, so much so that the preparation and forethought themselves almost became the essence of the game. At the end,...
“Why should the world risk nuclear annihilation over what is essentially just a border dispute between Russia and Ukraine?” So ask the Glenn Greenwalds and Tucker Carlsons of the world. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that such people are not being directly instructed by the Kremlin to pose the question that way, but that it represents their sincere, independent view...
Here is Rand Paul, trying to score libertarian points against the Biden administration’s policy of supporting Ukraine against Vladimir Putin’s invasion: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY): “The countries that have been attacked, Georgia and Ukraine, were part of the Soviet Union … since the 1920s.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “That does not give Russia the right to attack them.” pic.twitter.com/jnlRP6wAsN — The Recount...
What is The Establishment? / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 25, 2022 · Last modified April 26, 2022
Today, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken wasted several hours of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s time by playing tag-along following Boris Johnson’s attention-grabbing visit to Kyiv last week. We all know by now that the Biden administration is hellbent on helping Ukraine do just enough to prevent Vladimir Putin from achieving his “aims” in that country, but without going...
The essential philosophic question, according to existentialism — whether it declares itself openly or not — is “Why bother to live?” Or stated more positively, “Why not choose to die?” This question, the existentialists suggest, inevitably arises from history’s revelation that all meaning is illusory, and therefore all answers futile, all purposes contradictory — all life “absurd,” to use the term identified most...
I do not always agree with Garry Kasparov on general matters of ordinary politics, but on Putin and the current stage of Putin’s war of conquest against the West, I know of no other popular voice today who speaks with such clarity and uncompromised principle. Of the many appeasing & contrary to history and reality pieces I have read during Putin’s war of...
I have taught a significant number of foreign students in Korea who have come here for any number of reasons, from participating in formal academic exchange programs to being drawn by a fantasizing obsession with K-pop singers. I have enjoyed many memorable experiences with these visitors to my classes over the years. Recently, however, two particular cases occur to me often. One was...
The spoils.– Deliberately kill tens of thousands of civilians on the road to victory — “the awful reality of war.” Deliberately kill tens of thousands of civilians on the road to defeat? National ignominy and shame that will live for generations. Russia today, along with, incidentally, all of Vladimir Putin’s well-known international apologists and allies in “alt-right” demagoguery and its media affiliates. French...
Vested emotional interests, almost inescapable in life, are a constant threat to rational deliberation. If heightened by extreme circumstances, they may prove the enemy of reason itself. The current gulf between the two sides in the debate over the 2020 U.S. election and its fallout provides an object lesson in the danger of allowing one’s mind to become immersed in emotional interests, which...
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