Tagged: Liberty

U.S. Presidential Debate: Live Report

I just tuned in for a few minutes of the presidential debate between Joe Biden’s ghost and Donald Trump’s tape loop, already in progress. By chance, a CNN hairdo/moderator was just embarking upon a line of questioning related to foreign policy issues, beginning with Ukraine. Here are my impressions: Biden is reciting talking points that are presumably being fed into his ear by...

Russian Wisdom, Russian Reality

Pushkin wrote the following lines almost exactly two hundred years ago, describing with grim fatalism his vision of liberty’s chances in his fatherland:

“With Freedom’s Seed”

“Behold, a sower went forth to sow.”

With freedom’s seed the desert sowing,
I walked before the morning star;

Dignity Be Damned

An article in The Hill outlines the negotiations taking place between Donald Trump’s campaign team and Mitch McConnell’s representatives, seeking to “lay the groundwork” for McConnell to officially endorse Trump’s presidential bid for the third time — Dr. Frankenstein debating over whether to support the bucket of innervated nuts and bolts that escaped from his own lunatic laboratory. The article quotes various unnamed...

Imperfections and Society

Human society will be imperfect because humans are imperfect. Progressives believe society can be corrected to eliminate the frustrating and limiting social effects human imperfection, by means of intentional and all-pervasive government intervention.
But government is comprised of humans; thus….

Public Discourse and Freedom

In a free society, thoughtful and engaged men would gather as rational agents responsible for their own shared well-being, to discuss what ought to be done. They would attempt to persuade their fellows, and the results of these orations and arguments would sway public purposes and policies, even create discernible swerves in the course of history. Public discourse would be not merely relevant,...

Notes from Social Distance

Joe Biden, in accordance with longstanding despotic tradition, has urged Americans to accept “shared sacrifice” in “the war” against COVID-19.  The meaning of “shared sacrifice,” in government-speak: Private citizens will sacrifice more and more of their liberty, and the government will take that liberty. Hence, “sharing.” So far, the United States of America has fought this “war” exactly the way she fought Vietnam:...

The Basic Question of Liberal Democracy

This week, I taught undergraduate students in face-to-face classes again for the first time since December of 2019. Every class, regardless of subject, has suffered from the virtual reality teaching imposed on all of us this year “by Covid,” i.e., by the government-media complex. Today, preparing one class for their first in-person Q & A session after their upcoming presentations, I forced each...

The War Analogy Revisited

If you were facing a necessary and inescapable war, one which would unavoidably result in significant loss of life on your side, which of the following strategies would you choose? (1) Pursue a short war with a decisive win, resigning oneself to heavy losses early in the name of getting the worst of it over with and proceeding to the victory parade as...

“Daddy, do something! Aaahhhhh….”

Today, I saw a headline on my MSN homepage: “Coronavirus keeps spreading as governments clamp down.” The headline linked to a New York Times (wouldn’t you know it?) item about the new draconian measures being implemented by the Italian government to basically prevent anyone from going anywhere out of his or her home without explicit government permission, in hopes of curtailing the coronavirus...

Slaves In Their Free Time

Essential liberty is slipping away from modern civilization, as the so-called free world succumbs by degrees to its homegrown form of tyranny, brilliantly forecast by Tocqueville in his speculation on a potential condition of contented self-enslavement which he called “soft despotism.” For everyone who sees this radical divesting of mankind’s birthright for what it is, however, there are a thousand others dismissing such views...