Enjoying the view from Limbo
Rulers, like the rest of us, always do what they believe is best for themselves. They may also, as per their actual mandate, do what is best for the society and citizenry; but this latter motive is not the norm, and is entirely contingent on their judgment, in any given situation, that what is best for the society and citizenry happens to coincide...
When, in the aftermath of every well-publicized mass shooting, emotional or opportunistic people say things such as, “How many children have to die before you are willing to do something about guns?” they are not really engaging in dialogue, trying to understand alternative points of view, or even seeking any reply at all. They are merely trying to score rhetorical points against “the...
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published May 27, 2022
I just did a quick online search, and found exactly what I expected to find. In Ukraine, gun ownership is not regulated by statute, the country enjoys high rates of private gun ownership, and “Citizens are permitted to own non-fully automatic rifles and shotguns as long as they are stored properly when not in use.” Meanwhile, Ukraine is the only country on the...
Progressives are preternaturally disposed to defend their tyrannical inclinations by intellectual subterfuge, such as by turning issues around on their opponents through obfuscation. For example, it is typical for progressives today to defend their wish to confiscate guns or severely regulate gun possession on the grounds that in a civilized society, citizens would not be carrying weapons around in the streets — perhaps...
After a second mass shooting within a week, the propaganda servers inform me that, “Celebrities react to Boulder shooting, call for gun legislation.” And this is news because “celebrities” — professional fakers, pretenders, generally empty-headed people of little or no talent who (poorly) entertain others for a living because they never learned how to do anything adult or serious with their lives —...
Walmart in the U.S. has decided to play the virtue signal game by vowing to stop selling certain guns and ammunition, and even asking that customers in states with laws permitting the open carrying of firearms cease carrying their guns openly at Walmart stores. In other words, they are choosing to treat everyone who owns a gun as guilty until proven innocent, although...
Here is what progressive totalitarianism looks like. Read carefully, for the following statement has so much wrong with it that I am sure I will not come close to exhausting all of its outrages in this one short post: Serious discussions are taking place between House and Senate leadership on meaningful Background Checks. I have also been speaking to…
Over the weekend in America, two insignificant nobodies imagined they could make their lives meaningful by shooting dozens of strangers and claiming, to aggrandize their emptiness, that their aimless spiritual suicide was some sort of quasi-political statement. In carrying out their self-damnation, the two insignificant nobodies used guns, much like the ones owned by millions of law-abiding citizens who, in accordance with the...
Pleasure enlivens the desire for more pleasure, filling the soul with an insatiable craving for perpetual repetition, a relentless rhythm of titillation and release as inescapably compulsive as an ever-quickening circle dance. Yesterday it was El Paso, Texas: X number dead, the more the better, for the greater the number, the more justifiable our obsessive staring, and the greater our access to round-the-clock...
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published March 24, 2019
American progressives, ever keen to exploit a crisis, even one on the opposite side of the globe, are in breathless outrage mode over gun ownership again in the wake of the “New Zealand massacre.” Meanwhile, just below radar range, anti-republican activists are roving the country looking for soft underbellies to stab with “red flag” laws at the state level, thereby perplexing many conservatives...
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