Enjoying the view from Limbo
America Descending / Pandemic that Ate a Planet / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 16, 2023
Death counts, be not proud.– If you want to sound credible criticizing pandemic alarmists for padding the Covid death numbers and overstating the efficacy and safety of the vaccines, then it would be a good idea to stop shouting “Aha! The vaccine again!” every time an athlete, actress, or geriatric rock star happens to die. Reminder to both tribes: Dying was invented, and...
Ideas and Reflections / Pandemic that Ate a Planet / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published December 13, 2022
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, of whom I am not an admirer, has incurred the faux wrath of the progressive social media mob by asking whether the state of Colorado forcing a small business owner to undergo compliance training because he preferred not to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple was tantamount to putting the man through a re-education program....
Dr. Deborah Birx, Anthony Fauci’s righthand fabricator in the Trump administration’s totalitarian overreach squad during the pandemic, has now said in a television interview that she and they knew they “overplayed” the vaccines, which, while they (allegedly) reduce the risk of severe illness, do not significantly reduce either the risk of contracting Covid-19 or the risk of spreading it to others. She further...
Government vs. God / Liberty's Labors Lost / Pandemic that Ate a Planet
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 11, 2022
A young woman I have known for many years, who has been my student and my teaching assistant, and with whom I have engaged in many lively discussions about philosophy, the Bible, and global politics, has reached a sudden impasse in her life plans and her career path — an impasse defined by vaccine mandates. We live in the era of mass intimidation...
The United States Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate on private businesses as unconstitutional. The three dissenting “liberals” on the court, however, objected that the majority’s decision constitutes judicial “overreach” because the anti-mandate justices were choosing to overlook the opinions of “experts.” This dissenting opinion represents a classic, almost perfect example of progressive thinking. Striking down or objecting to...
Liberty's Labors Lost / Pandemic that Ate a Planet / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 5, 2022
A few days ago, I took a student for lunch and enjoyed my first experience of being asked to present my proof of vaccination as a condition for being granted the privilege of eating soup in a restaurant. I took the opportunity to explain to my student, with whom I happened to be reading Brave New World that day, the special emotional significance,...
America Descending / Pandemic that Ate a Planet / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published November 22, 2021
Bill Kristol, who has chosen to express his disdain for the divisive and anger-infested rhetoric of the Trump cult that destroyed “his party” by throwing his support behind the Marxist front group that calls itself the Democratic Party today, has outdone himself, even by his own high standards of collegial, grinning, Harvard-man hypocrisy. Responding on Twitter — where the intellectuals gather — to...
Noam Chomsky has joined the rising chorus of those who would like to use the pandemic as an opportunity to push the world toward Chinese-style totalitarianism, suggesting that the most suitable way to manage the “problem” of unvaccinated individuals is for the community to isolate these people and, if necessary, let them starve. Referring to the prospective condition of the unvaccinated after they...
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...
Liberty's Labors Lost / Pandemic that Ate a Planet
by Daren Jonescu · Published September 9, 2021 · Last modified September 10, 2021
Who knows?– When popular perceptions of reason and truth reach the point at which the categories of “legitimate opinion” and “dangerous misinformation” have become coextensive with the concepts “from the authorities” and “opposed to the authorities,” the last traces of independent thought and freedom of speech will have vanished from public discourse. The Washington Post reports the sad story of Benjamin Franklin, who...
Follow: