America, 1910
1910 was well before my own time, of course, but I knew at least ten people who lived through it as adults, and discussed the era at some length with one of them, my great uncle Dave. And so this is an era I feel I can still reach out and touch. Continue reading “The West That Was, Part 2”
There’s a common refrain that “Bitcoin fixes this.” Sometimes it’s used well and other times less so, but I’m being very serious when I say that Bitcoin fixes society. And in this article I’ll explain precisely how Bitcoin is able to do this at the largest scale. Continue reading “Society: Bitcoin Fixes This”
A great tragedy of our era is that young people have no feeling of what Western civilization was like. In the government owned and operated schools where they sat for years, they were presented with a litany of the West’s failures, most of them exaggerated, or even imagined. Continue reading “The West That Was, Part 1”
The modern world will allow you to join any of a thousand collectives, but it will punish you for standing on your own, as a self-willed entity. People who commit this crime understand that they are outlaws in the present world. And if at first they don’t understand that, the world makes sure they know. Continue reading “The War Against Will”
I’ve written about Ross Ulbricht before, but I want as many people as possible to know about this horrible miscarriage of justice.
I’ll be brief, but I want you to have the facts. I think they matter a great deal, not only for getting Ross out of prison – a place he clearly does not belong – but because the administration of justice in America, at least in cases that people in power care about, has been deeply corrupted. Continue reading “Why Ross Ulbricht Must Be Pardoned”
It has become a common belief among Americans that they should “respect the office” of an official, even if they don’t respect the person holding that office. The same, of course, goes for “the law.” And while I understand that people saying such things are trying to be virtuous, they are mistaken. Continue reading “Why Americans Shouldn’t Respect Offices or Laws”
Guilt, as I’ve noted before, is the great vulnerability of the Western world. I’ll pass up an explanation of why for today, but the validity of this statement is made ever so clear by the fact that political types rise to power by championing one class or another of victims, portraying everyone else as somehow guilty. It works brilliantly, and by it bizarre and unbalanced people leap into power. Continue reading “We Must Stop Trying To Be Unassailable”
It struck me some time ago that the people we think of as “geniuses” tend to arrive, over time, at surprisingly similar sets of conclusions. It further strikes me that a simple list of such thoughts might be of value.
And so, here is a list pulled from my quotes file and presented without commentary. Enjoy: Continue reading “What Geniuses Believe”
Millions of decent people are wasting their time and energy, trying to identify the secret bad guys of the world, then prove that they’re right.
What I want to say is that it’s a magnificent waste. Even worse, monster hunts keep people with strong ethics on the Establishment Plantation.
So, here are five reasons why I’m not interested in secret bad guys: Continue reading “Why I Don’t Care About Secret Bad Guys”
(Originally published September 28, 2020.)
As we grew up, nearly all of us were inundated with stories of our glorious national fathers, our beautiful democracies, and so on. And being young, we for the most part believed them. The system gave us our prosperity, our comfort, our medicine, our sense of importance. Continue reading “2020: The Year The System Showed Its Real Face”
