In a reflective moment, George Orwell wrote, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.” Yet if you actually read his oeuvre, you’ll find a striking disparity: Orwell’s anti-totalitarian writing is massive, but his pro-socialist writing is wafer thin.
Tag: future
Karl Popper! Yes! Me Too!
“How despotism destroys the human sense of duty and responsibility, together with the people who try to fulfill them, may be seen from the unforgettable example of the White Rose in Munich, that close circle of students and one teacher who in the winter of 1942-43 put up posters calling for resistance to Hitler’s war.”
Attacking Non-Conformity
Attacks on extremism are merely attacks on non-conformity. It is a tactic of peer pressure and intimidation.
Bioethics: Tuskegee vs. COVID
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Bioethics is to ethics as astrology is to astronomy. If bioethicists had previously prevented a hundred Tuskegees from happening, COVID would still have turned the existence of their entire profession into a net negative for humanity. Verily, we would be better off if their field had never existed.
Politics Not a Good Look on Anyone
(My Eastern New Mexico News column for February 10, 2021)
When something is important to you, you want to share it. If other people don’t understand it, you want to explain it to them.
You usually want others to like and understand it as much as you …
Socialism Doesn’t Work
Last week, I reported on two myths about socialism. My new video covers three more.
President* Biden
The most suspicious point in favor of there having been election funnybusiness (a safe euphemism?) on a large enough scale to change the outcome is how desperate those on the “winning” side are to sweep the idea under the rug. To make it an off-limits…
What Donald Trump Has Shown Us All
It was a fluke, really – a case of the enemy having their guard down that enabled Donald J. Trump to navigate his way to presidential victory in 2016 to begin with. Personally, I chalk it up to overconfidence on the part of the establishment: A smug certainty that such an entrenched, politically-connected public figure as former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could easily wipe an outspoken billionaire-entrepreneur-turned-TV-personality off the map without much rigging of the system. But of course, they were wrong.
End the FAA
out and fill in your permit.
I don’t like any agency of the feral government, but right now I especially hate the FAA (almost as much as I hate the ATF, IRS, DEA, etc.).
I enjoy following the SpaceX Starsh…
Robinhood: Stealing from the Poor to Give to the Rich
Robinhood’s terms of service specify that it “may, in its discretion, prohibit or restrict the trading of securities.” That clause may or may not sufficiently cover the company’s posterior in a legal sense. But in this application, it gives lie to the company’s name and supposed mission.