Fake news is as old as news itself. Political reporting in particular has always served as a tool of those who hold or seek to gain a grip on power. Respectable news sources, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, are not and never have been strangers to the distribution of false, twisted, or selectively partial and slanted reports. Less prestigious news outlets have also played the game. Perhaps the only new development on this front recently is the use of the Internet to spread fake news quicker and farther than the old media could. The news cycle revolves constantly now, and hence news, true and false, is placed before the public on an instant, worldwide scale as never before.
Tag: propaganda
But Who Will Build The Libertarian Society? The Inconsistency of “Immigration Control”
A popular rationalization for “immigration control” is a coupling of the reality that the State currently “taxes” (forces/extorts) people to pay for “welfare,” roadways, etc., and the chance (which proponents claim is fact) that “immigrants” “will vote to take your freedoms away.” This carries the linguistic baggage of layer upon layer of delusion, but in the end it either boils down to the State being rightful owner of all property, or at least acting as if it were, and violently controlling everyone and their property.
2016: The Year Nerd Culture and Free Speech Died
When it comes to all things nerd, 2016 hasn’t been our best year. Between nerd culture icons like Leonard Nimoy, Gene Wilder, or Alan Rickman passing away, or music icons like George Michael, Prince, or David Bowie dying, or nerd-cultural-phenomena like Star Wars being transformed into SJW propaganda, and other nerd-staples being made into Feminist and SJW “philosophical” outlets (here’s looking at you, Marvel Comics, Star Wars generally, and Joss Whedon), nerds the world over have begun to ask “Is this the end?”
The True Political “Spectrum”
The purported differences on the “statist” or “authoritarian” side are merely variances in propaganda and state intrusion; all states intrude in “the market” by nature/definition, so all “cross overs” into that realm (statism) are fundamentally the same in that they advocate a violent monopoly forcing itself on everyone else.
What’s a Secular Heretic to Do?
Secular and religion-based political systems can bear an uncanny resemblance. Observing their respective dogmas, catechisms, and sacraments, we might even wonder, with William Cavanaugh, whether the divide is as sharp as we commonly think. Recent events certainly call the distinction into question. We see that a secularist can be as much a fanatic who is willing to denounce heresy and impose his will through violence as any religionist.
5 Ways To Think Like a State
Do you notice a pattern when dealing with any aspect of the government at nearly any level? We all have. Experience shows that if something is going to go really wrong, predictably waste your time, annoy you and attack your dignity, and finally just prove to be totally ineffective at accomplishing the task, there’s a good chance that it involves the government. This is one of the most persistent and yet least acknowledged features of modern life.
Taxation Isn’t Only Theft, It’s Destruction
Where the state is, there also is the growth of the state. Why does a state’s scope enlarge? One theory is that interest groups seek to use the state’s taxing power for their own benefit. I would like to suggest a complementary theory. When the power to tax is conferred upon rulers, many harmful incentives necessarily are conveyed with it. These encourage the rulers to expand their destructive acts.
How Work Became Drudgery Once Again
Young people, college graduates especially, are not feeling hopeful about their careers. Mired in student loan debt, facing a labor market that has been stagnant for as long as they can remember, and deciding between a job where they’ll be miserable and moving back in with their parents, millennials have grown skeptical toward market capitalism. Yet, if they looked at the history of the matter, they would be amazed how far we’ve strayed from a free market in labor in the past century. Their plight is not due to economic freedom, but to a century of centralized efforts to regiment and regulate the labor market and the very mind and soul of the worker.
There are No Good Cops… or Cop Defenders
Faced with the avalanche of despicable and unrelenting boot-licking propaganda from the John Birch Society (JBS) and its local disciples, you might believe that cops were not 53 times more deadly to Americans than terrorism. You might believe that 960 Americans had not already been slaughtered by the American Gestapo in 2016. You might even believe that being a cop was an unusually dangerous job. You might believe these things… but you would be incorrect on all counts.
The Five Institutions of the Market Economy
Let us see what the basic institutions of the market economy are. We may subdivide them for convenience of discussion into (1) private property, (2) free markets, (3) competition, (4) division and combination of labor, and (5) social cooperation. As we shall see, these are not separate institutions. They are mutually dependent: each implies the other, and makes it possible.