The U.S. gets criticized by many other nations, but when it’s the French, you just know an important threshold has been crossed: The worst part about it, of course, is that this time around, the French are right. Mark your calendars, Gentle Readers; it’s an occasion worth remembering.
Category: government
Sep 23 2021
Authoritarian Theft Part 2
Concerning my tirade of yesterday, Mike Hendrix adds a report on an incident I should have included: After the FBI seized Joseph Ruiz’s life savings during a raid on a safe deposit box business in Beverly Hills, the unemployed chef went to court to retrieve his $57,000. A judge ordered the government to …
Sep 22 2021
Authoritarian Theft: Three Cases
“Taxation is theft!” rises the cry from thousands of freedom lovers. And it is so, if viewed through the lens of direct comparison. After all, what practical difference is there between the highwayman who points a gun at you and says “Your money or your life,” and the IRS agent who assesses you for …
Aug 08 2021
The Instruments Of The Faith
First, a few thematic quotes: No power is strong enough if it labors under the weight of fear. – Cicero Fear is an acid which is pumped into one’s atmosphere. It causes mental, moral and spiritual asphyxiation, and sometimes death; death to all energy and growth. – Horace Fletcher Fear is …
Jul 31 2021
How Can We Be Sure?
The great goal of the knowledge-seeker is practical certainty. Note the modifier: for most propositions in this universe of discourse, absolute certainty is unattainable. That’s in the nature of causal propositions. Only in completely formal systems such as mathematics can we be absolutely certain of anything. This has critical implications for the sciences. …
Jul 03 2021
Who Should Be Allowed To Vote?
Victory Girls’ Nina Bookout has a good piece on the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding Arizona’s new anti-fraud statute and the Democrats’ reactions: Democrats are really good at gaslighting temper tantrums. Some great ones have been taking place since SCOTUS announced their decision on the Arizona voting rights case. In a nutshell …
Jun 30 2021
The Fear Weapon
Allow me to lead off with a snippet of an old essay by humorist P. J. O’Rourke: Something is happening in America, not something dangerous but something all too safe. I see it in my lifelong friends. I am a child of the “baby boom,” a generation not known for its sane or …
Jun 08 2021
Thoughts After Rereading An Old Book
Uncle Frank never let that word “citizens” pass without a tirade. “We are not a government!” he always yelled. “We are not a government! We must not think like a government! We must not think in terms of duties and receipts and disbursements. We must think in terms of the old loyalties that bound …
Jun 03 2021
Suspicions Confirmed
You knew there was something dodgy, as our English cousins would say, about the way the government and the media heaped endless plaudits on Anthony Fauci. You knew, from the way Big Tech defended Fauci’s pronouncements from contradiction, close scrutiny, or even analytical discussion, that there were reasons to question them—and him. You knew, …
May 28 2021
So Perhaps We Weren’t Crazy After All?
Say what you will about Fox News and its steady slide to the left, it continues to provide a platform to at least one honest, courageous reporter: The evidence will be hard to gather, and probably harder still to verify and collate. However,. given the Chinese ruling class’s undisguised intentions: To rise to …
May 22 2021
Neutrality
The title word has a checkered history. There are any number of people who’ll tell you that “you can’t be neutral about X,” where X is something they particularly favor or disfavor. And to be fair, there are subjects on which I would view perfect neutrality – i.e. “I’m neither for it nor against …
May 14 2021
A Bee That Stings Like Muhammad Ali
You really can’t do it any better than this, from the Babylon Bee: Nation Wishes Someone Would Have Warned Them About Dangers Of Unchecked Government Power U.S.—Concerned citizens from all over the nation were really pitying their unfortunate lot in life that not a single individual in recent memory had risen up …
May 14 2021
Supreme Laws
You may have seen this snippet before: “The Constitution is the supreme law, the foundation for all other law. If it doesn’t mean exactly what its text says—the public meanings of the words as ordinary people understand them—then no one can possibly know what it means. But if no one can know what …
Apr 11 2021
Damn It All, I Was Just Getting Down To Work…
…when this came along. (Thank you, Adrienne.) The whole article is worth your attention – your careful attention. Don’t accept it uncritically. Think about it, ask yourself (and others) why governments would want to depopulate their own jurisdictions, and whether the means proposed by Dr. Yeadon is a plausible method. Ask also …
Mar 30 2021
The Experts, The Politicians, And The Wuhan Virus
Karl Denninger has produced a compendium of “expert” errors and lies about the Chinese Coronavirus and its social and political outcroppings. It’s an exceptionally useful item that everyone should read. If you’ve harbored suspicions that the Kung Flu has little to do with public health and a lot more to do with the aspirations …
Mar 20 2021
“Domestic Terrorism” (UPDATED)
I pay almost no attention to the mainstream media. While I’ll occasionally take note of one of their distortions or deceptions, normally I ignore them. They’ve fouled their own nests so thoroughly as to have forfeited all credibility as sources of verifiable information. Nevertheless, the media are important: not because they convey important …
Mar 08 2021
The Poison As Antidote
This short piece at the website of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) is a sharp, well focused destruction of federal welfare policy these past fifty-five years. It’s not the first, of course; many have remarked on the failure of federal welfarism in much the same fashion. Yet it serves as a reminder …
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