July 2019

Saikat Chakrabarti, the “brains” behind the actress AOC said in an interview:

The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.

Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?

Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.

I’m almost convinced that this guy knows very well that the policies he champions will nuke us into Stone Age. He just hates America and wants to see it destroyed.

In the end, it’s just another communist conspiracy, not the first and unfortunately not the last.

It’s not Trump’s fault that the person representing Baltimore’s ultra-violent rat and rodent infested mess is black.

I know that Dems don’t believe in holding people with Pokemon diversity points, such as indeed blacks, responsible for the disasters they create.

A black person then is immune from criticism simply by virtue of being black.

I tend to agree — I mean, what can you do?

In a paper on Rawls by Zofia Stemplowska and Adam Swift:

For example, being tempted not to pay one’s fair share of taxes in a situation in which one lacked assurance that others were paying theirs is something to which even those with a sense of justice, who would not commit graver sins, are susceptible.

Taxes may be both useful and inevitable on the local level, but I object to imbuing the tax state with any sort of holiness and to claiming that there is any “fairness” in forcing people to fork over their money under threat of punishment.

Imposition of taxes is an unfortunate coercive injustice, to be done as a last resort and reluctantly. There is nothing fair to it at all.

Until the invention / emergence of capitalism, history was almost entirely a horrifying record of the violence of kings.

It’s an endless, tedious, and meaningless tale of the conquerors and expropriators dutifully destroying what little the people were able to build.

In a feminist critique of John Rawls, Martha Nussbaum claims that the traditional family is not “natural,” essentially because the state and the laws regulate it.

Strange.

1. The institution of the family may be called natural, insofar as it may be the culmination of thousands of years of social evolution. It may have proven itself successful over many trials and tribulations. The legal regime surrounding the family may then be the accommodations that contribute to the “natural” family’s usefulness and stability rather than arbitrary whims of the rulers or deliverances of philosophers.

2. From the fact that the state does involve itself into the family Nussbaum surprisingly derives the conclusion that it ought to so involve itself; even more, that the state’s power to shape the family ought to be unlimited. Presumably, we should put her in charge of government and let her remake family law. What a non-sequitur.

The worst thing about identity politics is that it’s a distraction from ideological politics which is what politics, if we are to have it at all, should be.

Stop people from considering ideas and divide them up into warring tribes, and the looting will continue uninterrupted.

“Trump is a racist!” scream the headlines.

Who cares? The self-esteem of your race — whatever it is — is not anyone’s concern.

We need to create a single individual super-oppressor of whom everyone is a pathetic victim.

Since all victims are allowed to be exclusive, to discriminate, and so on, this will serve to instantly restore freedom of association for all.

This one horrible bogeyman is then to be forever denounced, hated, and denied all rights, but it’s a small price to pay.

In fact, let’s elect this monstrous creature and then blame it for all earthly ills. “You see, Timmy?” mothers would tell their children, “He is why you got sick.” This of course is a terrible burden for anyone to bear, so we’ll do it once every 4 years or so.

I think at least 20 prominent people have already by now demonstrated they’d take the job.

Mutually assured destruction: Americans are slaves of the US president X, and the Chinese are slaves of the Chinese president Y.

Y would love to extend his dominion and grab X’s slaves, but X threatens to wipe out Y’s slaves for such an attempt. Y is deterred. And vice versa.

Peace is assured, and the property rights of both X and Y are secure, because armed slave owners are polite slave owners.

In addition, though it is hardly important, the slaves are content.

Biden:

We’ve got to recognize that kid wearing a hoodie may very well be the next poet laureate and not a gangbanger.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are too many black men, and I might add women, in prison.

Next poet laureate? What? A diamond in the rough? Street rat-cum-prince? Aladdin?

Only in the movies, dude.

And what does it mean, “too many” in prison? What do raw numbers have to do with the case?

If some are in prison unjustly, then they must of course be released. But perhaps on the contrary, numerous gangbangers are walking the streets freely, having committed major crimes. They then deserve to be punished.

For all we know, there are too few blacks in prison. If Biden had argued against the drug war, he might have made an important point. Far be it from him to say anything useful, though.