Enjoying the view from Limbo
When the alternative to being what they hate is being what you hate, you must ask yourself which of those alternatives you would prefer to avoid. All and Some.– If you want any of your life, you must accept all of it. Coming to terms with that fact and its deepest implications is perhaps the greatest challenge of the serious life, and its...
We are all supposed to defend the idea of democracy today as though our lives depended on it. In fact, anyone who fails to do so, or who dares to ask questions such as whether this democracy we are all bound to defend amounts to anything in practice but the blunt force of absolute majority rule, is condemned or ridiculed as an enemy...
Books / Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published May 10, 2023 · Last modified May 12, 2023
One of the more overt and disquieting symptoms of the English-speaking world’s sleepy descent into totalitarian self-obliteration, aka “social democracy,” is the recent trend in the publishing world towards the shameless raping of famous works of literature in the name of rendering them more inclusive (read relativistic and propagandistic), by revising their content — i.e., changing the words and ideas bequeathed to us...
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...
These days, hordes of uncivilized, desperate-to-be-cool white people are accosting other white people in restaurants and cafés demanding that the latter raise their fists to verify their support for one of the most prominent communist slogans du jour, “Black Lives Matter.” Ask these hate-filled, inhuman thugs to define “black,” “life,” or “matter,” as those terms are employed in that slogan, and you will...
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...
Things have become quite awkward today for Americans inclined to inquire freely into issues of moral and politico-economic propriety, or historical justice. Even asking the wrong question, apart from leaning toward any particular answer, can place one at risk of public “cancellation,” unemployment, or being lambasted by a late-night television comedian. As a public service of sorts, then, let us take a few...
Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published December 30, 2017 · Last modified December 12, 2021
Progressivism, particularly in its neo-Marxist form, is as rife with self-contradiction as any big lie can be. Orwell captured this inherent self-contradiction well, albeit somewhat superficially, in Animal Farm (“Some animals are more equal than others”) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (e.g., Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Love, etc.). By “superficially,” I mean that Orwell defined the overt hypocrisy of Marxist revolutionaries well at the...
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