Episode 390 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following entries to r/shitstatistssay: RustNeverSleeps77 writes, “Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them, and they returned fire. It was reasonable self-defense…” (Full thread here.); Foucelhas writes, “Modern capitalism would not exist without slavery and genocide.”; DoverBoys writes, “You’re supposed to pay taxes. You’re not ‘smart’ to get away with paying little, you’re just cheating the system. A real supporter of their country would pay taxes. That’s what makes countries work.”; Aditya writes, “We as a society can’t live in a vaccum and isolated from each other (unless you are a part of some tribe living in Andaman or Amazon). Some things are best provided collectively, for they are cheaper and efficient that way.”
Tag: slavery
History as the Red Pill
It’s a meme now to call any radical mind-changing moment or idea a “red pill,” hearkening back to the red pill which awakens Neo to the nature of his machine slavery in The Matrix. Everybody has their own version of the red pill, and their own idea of what is being revealed when it is taken. I think studying history – and particularly studying the history of thought – is one such red pill.
“Prussian” Indoctrination – The Other Side
In doing a little searching for “The Prussian model” of schooling, I ran across an essay that claims to expose “The Invented History of ‘The Factory Model of Education’”. It’s important to get the other side, so I read it and I’ll give you my thoughts here.
CDA Section 230, 1/3 of 1% COVID-19, Teacher Strikes, & Uighur Slavery (39m) – Episode 339
Episode 339 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: the Trump Administration’s desire to remove CDA Section 230 platform liability protections for altering third party content; the United State surpassing 4 Million COVID-19 cases, which according to recent research is probably 10x higher, producing a death rate of 1/3 of 1%; the possible national teachers’ union strikes over reopening in-person instruction without certain safety precautions; and a coalition group putting pressure on businesses benefiting from Chinese Uighur slavery.
Song of the South
Nobody asked but … I have spent most of my life living below the Mason-Dixon Line, 72 out of 77 years, and 68 of those in Kentucky. Kentucky is a border state. Several of my great greats were Union fighters and a few were Confederate. Honestly, I don’t know why any of them participated in…
Falsifying Liberty
I believe liberty to be worthwhile, to say the least. I also believe it is objectively superior to any alternative. This means I should try to falsify this hypothesis to myself. If I can’t think of ways which– if they held up– would prove my belief is based on a falsehood if it is, my belief is worthless.
The Dystopian Nightmare is Already Here
Based on what we are seeing right now at both the government and corporate level, it is clear that the 2020 “pLandemic” is being pushed as a strategy to exclude rebels and freethinkers from the market and to ostracize them from society altogether. It starts with demanding masks and temperature checks, but it will soon include mandatory vaccinations and biometrically encoded “COVID-passports” being required at both government and corporate checkpoints.
On Socialism
As most economists and political scientists agree, capitalism is “the private ownership of the means of production” and socialism is “the public/state ownership of the means of production.”
Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty: The New Republic
I’ve been waiting to read the fifth volume of Murray Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty for over 30 years. Now my former student Patrick Newman, professor at Florida Southern College, has miraculously undeleted this “lost work.” Patrick’s quasi-archaeological efforts are nothing short of amazing, but how does the actual book hold up?
Democrats & Jim Crow: A Century of Racist History the Democratic Party Prefers You’d Forget
In the last Presidential election, Donald Trump was lauded for his performance among black voters – he scored 4 percent of female black voters and a whopping 13 percent of black male voters, the highest since Richard Nixon. This isn’t shocking. Black voters have voted en masse for the Democratic Party since the mid-60s and the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the social welfare programs of the Great Society. This solidified black voters behind the Democratic Party, but they had been moving there since the New Deal.