This resignation to ongoing government lockdowns, endless social distancing, mandatory mask orders, and travel restrictions—even as the virus wanes in the US—is damaging to our social and economic health, and may be particularly problematic for children who are separated from their peers.
Category: Blogs
The official Everything-Voluntary.com blog.
Fuck You, Facebook: I’m Leaving
Mark Zuckerberg was the first to create a program we now refer to as a social media network, and was thereby successful in establishing Facebook (more properly known now as Fascistbook) as the “industry standard.” When I first joined a decade ago, FB was relatively unfettered. You could write and post freely, with little chance of being banned or censored. All of that, in more recent times, has changed dramatically.
So Little Interest and Information
Get-out-the-vote efforts, which receive endorsement by a variety of social groups and media outlets, have acquired a wholly undeserved respectability.
Silence Is Not Consent in Politics, Either
When you undergo a medical procedure or volunteer for a research study, you’re presented with forms to sign, outlining what’s going to happen (and what bad things could happen), and expressly consenting to have those things happen. If you’re accused of rape, “he or she didn’t physically resist” isn’t an acceptable defense. In fact, express consent is the emerging standard, sometimes to seemingly ridiculous degrees (i.e. re-requesting consent at each stage of an encounter). Consent, I think we can agree, is a big deal in America today.
What Most People Care About
On March 26, 2020, at the once excellent but now mostly defunct website Daily Anarchist, Seth King broke almost five years of silence by publishing a piece that contained the following statement: “I don’t think libertarians, be they minimalists or anarcho-capitalists, are ever going to realize their dreams in this life. Freedom just isn’t popular.” Unfortunately, I’m inclined to concur.
Cultural Appropriation is a Silly Notion
As my dear friend Donald J. Boudreaux says, you can’t unjustly appropriate something that didn’t belong to anyone in the first place. No one owns a culture.
Politics and Violence Go Hand in Hand
As America’s latest long hot summer drags into autumn, politicians and pundits are getting louder and more shrill in their denunciations of political violence. Considering the sources, those denunciations smack of hypocrisy.
What Most People Apparently Believe
There will never come a day — ever — when the political class decides that there are numerous enough laws, enough taxes, and enough control mechanisms over people’s lives.
Overlords of The Deplorables
Political divisions in the USA now appear to have taken an unusually rigid form. There are two large blocs, the pro-Trumpers and the anti-Trumpers, who share little except each one’s hatred of the other. Trump’s policies, whatever they have been or failed to be, have relatively little to do with these divisions, which spring from a deeper source in the culture wars.
The Subtle Power of Changing Your Identity
One of the most powerful switches I ever made when changing my entire life was switching up my identity.