Enjoying the view from Limbo
When you encounter a theoretical or artistic work that has been highly regarded by advanced societies since before you were born, perhaps even before your great-great-grandparents were born, the reasonable point of view is to assume that the work must have some sort of merit, perhaps even greatness, that justifies its longevity and enduring admiration. This is not to say that you must...
The U.S. Congress has passed, and President Biden has signed into law, The Inflation Reduction Act. This law will bring sweeping changes to the United States economy and society, and, indirectly, to the world. None of those changes will be in any way related to inflation per se, let alone to reducing it. So why, the innocent child might reasonably ask, is it...
Everyone knows that a greedy man will never reach the limits of his desire for more, for it is the essence of greed to acknowledge no natural limit to its ambition. Everyone knows totalitarians are intrinsically, definitively, obsessed with totality with respect to control, and that an obsession with totality admits of no inherent restraint or misgivings, for totalism in the quest for...
It is standard rhetoric for those who oppose their country’s “getting involved in a foreign conflict” to say that a government’s role in foreign affairs must be determined by considerations of “legitimate national interest.” On its face, this is a sound position, and one with which any person possessing a modicum of rational restraint, forethought, or political moderation ought to agree. However, that...
Anyone who says, whether stridently or matter-of-factly, whether publicly or in your living room, that in order to solve this or that problem, “we have to come together globally to take the necessary actions,” is showing you, in no uncertain terms, that he has wittingly or unwittingly accepted the premise that it is both good and necessary for the entire human race to...
I see that the estate of George Orwell, apparently related to its namesake’s legacy roughly as Nietzsche’s sister Elizabeth was related to his, has given its official stamp of approval to a feminist retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Though the new story will allegedly present Orwell’s dystopia from the perspective of Julia, Winston’s love interest in the original, the explicit emphasis on the “feminist”...
The dream entertained by men of a totalitarian mind is an illusion that will quickly dissipate, if not during their lifetimes then very shortly thereafter. For all such men are craving immortality, as indeed we all are, but their peculiar notion of everlasting life entails creating a society so all-encompassing in its centralized control — which is to say under their personal control...
Let us cut through all the hocus pocus about the “One-China Policy” and how it should be interpreted, about “historical claims,” and about “avoiding instability in the region.” First, there can be no stability in a region in which the dominant player is an aggressive totalitarian slave state with the biggest military in the world. A house presided over by an oppressive and...
Perfect equality of opportunity would require everyone to be born in precisely identical circumstances — not merely in homes of identical material wealth, but rather in circumstances entirely without differentiating conditions that might slant life ever so slightly in favor of this or that individual. Those truly equal in opportunity must necessarily be born among the same number of siblings, and in precisely...
Governments around the world are well along the path toward forcing all places of employment to monitor their employees or potential employees for vaccination status; forcing all private gathering places, such as restaurants or theatres, to restrict access to their businesses (i.e., their private property) to people with “their papers” in order; and forcing all individuals in and out of the “health care...
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