Ken's Weblog

People should not fear their governments; governments should fear their people.

Category: Politics

  • The reason for the masks

    In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

    Theodore Dalrymple

  • What is clown world?

    Recently I’ve been hearing the expression “clown world” used to describe the current state of America. It’s a strange and somewhat silly concept that I didn’t pay much attention to, but after seeing this quote I realized that there’s just no better way to describe it:

    Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries.

    Library Journal

  • Quote of the Day

    I am convinced that any organization with a “Trust and Safety Council” is neither trustworthy nor safe unless you fit into a political ideology.

    RMHansen

  • Purging unapproved opinions

    Major Internet Platforms Ban Alex Jones. Jones is a noted conspiracy theorist and the founder of the InfoWars website and podcast. In a Monday tweet, he confirmed that Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple had completely unpublished and/or removed his professional pages and podcasts. [Reason.com]

    It’s been well known for a while that those organizations hate anyone who’s not a liberal, and have a long history of censoring opposing viewpoints. It’s unusual for a bunch of them to get together for a coordinated purge like this, though. The most likely reason I’ve seen for it is that there’s a midterm election coming up, and the liberals are afraid of the very large Infowars audience being exposed to unapproved thoughts. For those who want to see what the Thought Police don’t want you to know, see the Infowars channel on BitChute.

  • A rare acknowledgement of reality

    Enforcing the Law Is Inherently Violent. Every law is violent. We try not to think about this, but we should. On the first day of law school, I tell my Contracts students never to argue for invoking the power of law except in a cause for which they are willing to kill. They are suitably astonished, and often annoyed. But I point out that even a breach of contract requires a judicial remedy; and if the breacher will not pay damages, the sheriff will sequester his house and goods; and if he resists the forced sale of his property, the sheriff might have to shoot him. [The Atlantic]

    The law professor being quoted was talking specifically about lawyers, but this is something that everyone should keep in mind when advocating for new laws, but unfortunately the sort of people who do advocate for new laws never do.

  • Current Immigration Laws Are Unconstitutional

    Does the Federal Government Have the Power to Regulate Immigration? Thomas Jefferson and James Madison Said No. Yet federal regulation of immigration is a power both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison maintained was “no where delegated to the federal government.” And since no amendment has granted that power since they made that argument in 1798, it is exercised by the federal government without the consent of the governed, legitimized only by the same kind of “activist Court” conservatives condemn when it sanctions federal power they don’t like. [Foundation for Economic Education]

    This is something I’ve been pointing out for years, so I’m pleased to see that someone else as noticed it. Sadly, it doesn’t really matter in practice since the government doesn’t care at all about the Constitution.

  • The reality of land ownership

    A simplified taxless state (part 1 of 3). Thus, we can talk of tier-one and tier-two land owners, where tier-one owners are those land owners capable of defending their territory against state-level aggression (or capable of performing state-level aggression), and tier-two land owners are those who are somehow at the mercy of the tier-one owners retaining ownership of the land the tier-two owners think they own, but actually don’t when push comes to shove.

    In cleartext, a state-level actor is the only type of actor capable of owning land. Within a state, there is arbitration for when tier-two “owners” are in dispute over a piece of territory. But between states, there is no international arbitration of land ownership – brutal aggression decides who owns what (whether one approves of that fact or not). When tier-two “owners” are in dispute, it is not much different from when two children are fighting over who gets to use family property: at the end of the day, it’s still the adults’ property. [Falkvinge On Liberty]

    The proposal is just a pipe dream, but it’s noteworthy for being based on the fact that private ownership of land is a lie. This is something I noticed years ago, but almost nobody else has.

  • Video of the Day

    Thanks to Joel Simon, I found this hilarious video about the liberal love of tolerance and diversity:

  • Quote of the Day

    The word baizuo is, according to political scientist Zhang Chenchen, a Chinese word that ridicules Western “liberal elites”. He further defined the word “baizuo” with the definition “People who only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment” and “have no sense of real problems in the real world”; they are hypocritical humanitarians who advocate for peace and equality only to “satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority”; they are “obsessed with political correctness” to the extent that they “tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism”; they believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”; they are the “ignorant and arrogant westerners” who “pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours”.

    Wikipedia

    I have no idea how to pronounce that, but I’m sure it’s easier to say than “SJW.”

  • Twitter’s new rules supposedly going into effect

    The Twitter Rules. You also may not affiliate with organizations that — whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform — use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes. We will begin enforcing this rule around affiliation with such organizations on December 18, 2017. [Twitter.com]

    Supposedly this new Twitter rule will be going into effect today, with people who violate it having their accounts banned. However, this is obviously not going to happen. If it did, every account associated with any government would be banned, as would anyone affiliated with any government (including employees and businesses that do business with governments). Since this covers not just activity but statements, mainstream media sources such as the New York Times and CNN would also be banned.

    But of course this is Twitter, so they’ll actually just be banning people who aren’t sufficiently enthusiastic Social Justice Warriors, because anything that makes a pinko sad is literally violence.