Enjoying the view from Limbo
Donald Trump is parading around another “greatest deal ever made,” this one with the European Union. And once again, like his deal of the century with Japan, the trumpeted victory is a permanent (until Trump changes his whim of the month) fifteen percent tariff on most goods from Europe, as though fifteen percent were a great accomplishment because it is only half as...
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 14, 2025 · Last modified July 16, 2025
If your most important contribution to the world was something you did for material gain, then you have not contributed anything of great importance to the world. The profit motive exists, and works well, but what profit motivates is not of a higher nature. Or rather, even the most potentially beautiful activity becomes pedestrian and merely practical to the extent that profit is...
“And yes, I’m doing this for profit!” With those smug, pseudo-principled words, every popular “conservative media icon” and “conservative intellectual” tells us, point blank, that we have every reason not to take him seriously, and no reason whatsoever for trusting one word that comes out of his mouth. The modern world of liberty and self-governance is crumbling at speeds that even the bleakest...
Elon Musk, a multi-billionaire who has devoted his whole adult life to getting as rich as possible, often by selling out all free market principles to gain government protections and special government contracts, and an overgrown baby who flirts with libertarianism in the post-Ayn-Rand-follower sense, i.e., freedom redefined as license to indulge in recreational drugs and have all the mindless fun you want...
What was the democratic world fifteen months ago? Clearly, it was not what it appeared to be, even to the most hardened skeptics and cynics. It is one thing to believe, as the skeptics and cynics did at that time, that most men, if push came to shove, would choose comfort over freedom, and would succumb to promises of security at the expense...
Rush Limbaugh had an excellent radio voice and manner. He spoke with a rare combination of mellifluousness, somewhat ironic pomposity, and down-home charm. He was the Johnny Carson of talk radio hosts — no one built a brand entirely around his own unique persona with more ease, humor, or confidence. At the peak of his rise to fame as a conservative talk radio...
It does not follow from the belief that men should be free to do a thing that we must respect or even honor them for doing that thing “well.” The value of freedom lies not in its deliverance from the overwhelming force and painful limits of the true and the good, but in its opportunity to pursue truth and goodness without artificially imposed...
To all of you still half-inclined to put any stock in any “conservative media” entities, from the radio hosts to the podcast and social media hipsters to the publishers of the “major” commentary websites, I have this one question for you — or rather, one question I wish you would put to those “conservative media” entities: Would they do it for free? I...
I have no time for people who tell me the profit motive is freedom, or that greed is a virtue. The profit motive is merely one of a thousand reasons to act in the state of freedom — certainly a practically useful reason, but hardly definitive of the state of freedom, anymore than what Aristotle calls useful friends (co-workers, regular customers) are definitive...
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