Enjoying the view from Limbo
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published November 10, 2021
So much of the ruin of modern civilization, with its once-noble attempt to realize practical liberty, may be traced to the gradual calcification of democratic political institutions into freedom-stifling tunnels of partisan loyalty. This hardened devotion to a group or tribe eventually entails little or no demand that one’s party exhibit any of the characteristics or impulses that originally attracted one to it;...
Ann Coulter, one of the most audacious and enduring stars (read “unprincipled profiteers”) of the so-called conservative media, has read the tea leaves and, after a few years helping to foment the unique brand of anti-American hatred that is “MAGA,” suddenly realized that there was no future in it, i.e., no long-term career prospects in the Trump cult industry. That is to say,...
I live in a world they will never care to understand. They live in a world I wish I could not understand.
I have no memory of ever having felt lonely while alone — but many memories of feeling lonely in company.
I have always disliked myself most….
When the political discourse of your age has whittled itself down to such ranting characters as Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg, you may be certain that politics has ended, and something else has taken its place — something ugly, soulless, and brutal. Donald Trump is a laughably stupid vulgarian “businessman” who has successfully raped the fragile minds of tens of millions of true...
Failed rhetoric.— “Everyone knows that” is merely a rhetorically aggressive way of saying “Everyone believes that” — for there is literally nothing that everyone knows. And nothing could be more certain than this: Anything that “everyone believes” is likely false, since most people are completely ignorant of all but the most quotidian facts. Hence, when a person insists on a point of argument...
The political problem.— If the best people — the most talented, most thoughtful, most learned, most dedicated, most nobly motivated — went into politics, the world would be almost exactly the opposite of what it is right now. But the best people, by definition, will never enter politics — or if they do, will fail and come to despise themselves. For “best,” in...
If every social event, to be enjoyed to the fullest, must be accompanied by alcohol, this means that the real “event” is the drinking itself, while the social gathering is merely the accompaniment or sidelight. That is, if eating with friends, chatting with friends, camping with friends, and commiserating with friends, all have one thing in common — alcohol — then one is...
Madison Cawthorn is a twenty-six year old freshman Republican congressman who got elected, (a) because he is young and handsome, (b) because he is in a wheelchair, (c) because he lied during his election campaign about how he was on his way to the Naval Academy before the accident that crippled him (in fact, as he was later forced to admit, he was...
According to progressive morality, which is really progressive politics, to disagree with or disrespect someone’s choices and attitudes — provided they are the correct choices and attitudes of the moment — is to violate his rights. This is tantamount to saying that rights are essentially protections against being judged. To judge a person’s preferences (in relativist lingo, his “lifestyle”) is thus inherently to...
I just read the following headline from Reuters — one of the world’s largest and most widely-read news agencies — related to the Hollywood gossip story of an actor’s accidental shooting of a cinematographer on a movie set: “Gun not thoroughly checked before Alec Baldwin fired fatal shot.” Really? It wasn’t thoroughly checked. Well, who could have guessed? I mean, prior to this...
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