Enjoying the view from Limbo
Hidden premise. — To envy is to resent another for having what you might have had instead. But this implies an assumption that you could have had what the other has, which you would only know if you had actually achieved it yourself, in which case you would have no reason to envy. Hence, envy is, among other things, a convenient veil of...
The aggressive effort to reduce “Western” or “European” civilization to its alleged sins — racism, sexism, imperialism, systemic inequality, cultural appropriation, greed, and the rest of the neo-Marxist talking points — serves as a convenient diversion from the truth that these same sins, such as they are, may be found equally, though perhaps with regional variations, in all times and places. By hiding...
The reason bureaucrats love to produce litanies of rules designed, in substance and in spirit, to reduce everyone to generic, interchangeable minions is obvious: Bureaucracy is the definitive realm of the generic, interchangeable minion, in whose work flexibility, contextual choice, and free-thinking are not merely discouraged but absolutely counterproductive. Is it any wonder that the denizens of such a mechanized realm succumb, in...
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...
In the freest nation, the best men would be least attracted to a job in government, let alone a lifelong career there. Freedom expands possibilities for living, and incentivizes men of initiative and intelligence to invent new possibilities. In such a climate — one in which the “collective will” of the state is limited precisely to the extent that the individual will is...
“Property is theft” is the cleverest expression of greed and envy. It is greed masked as righteousness, and envy proffered as insight. Every enlightened person today — from every successful social science professor, acclaimed film director, and bestselling pop singer, to every socially adjusted teenager and right-thinking government office worker — says “the system” is set up to enrich the few at the...
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