Enjoying the view from Limbo
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 12, 2026 · Last modified July 13, 2026
Partisans.– A comprehensive explanation for today’s hyper-partisan politics (aka tribalism) would merely be an elucidation of this aphorism from Nietzsche, published in 1878: Not suited to be a party man. — He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon. From which we may...
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...
Once, while discussing Brave New World with a Korean student, I introduced Alexis de Tocqueville’s incisive warning of a new political danger simmering within the age of modern liberalism, a tyrannical form of democratic paternalism which he evocatively named “soft despotism.” The aptness of this contextual discussion was obvious, for at its best, Huxley’s dystopian novel is little more than a progress report...
Proponents of soft despotism have long understood that with the proper attention to universal schooling and heightened public sentimentality, it is possible to gain absolute power over the majority of any population if one is patient enough to plant the seeds and cultivate them carefully. However, soft despots have also long understood that there will always be a significant proportion of any population...
Of all the relationships I lost due to Trumpism, the two cultists with whom I had previously maintained the most personal and friendly interaction (and who initially shared my contempt for Trump and his appeal), but who succumbed most completely to the allure of idolatry — the group paranoia, the inability to communicate respectfully with anyone outside of the cult, the susceptibility to...
We are living in an age of universal enslavement, a truism that will inevitably sound hyperbolic to men whose ears remain forever attuned only to the soporific music of soft despotism and relative material comfort. Those few, however, who are capable of blocking the hypnotic sounds of mindless pleasure well enough to see our global situation for what it truly is, and for...
Donald Trump and his owner, Mitch McConnell, spent two years of Republican control of the White House and Congress doing exactly nothing to advance Trump’s “signature campaign promise” (most hypnotizing cult mantra), “The Wall.” Then, with Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives, Trump rejected a deal that would provide less border funding than he allegedly wanted, which in turn was far...
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...
And then where would we be? Tocqueville’s soft despotism is defined here: no clouds, no struggle, nothing to overcome, no accomplishment of value; just the comfort of never having to worry much about it — where “it” means life. If there were no clouds, The sun would have no courage, Nothing to break through
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