** FILE ** In this Sept. 18, 2001 file photo, a red crane looms over the smoldering wreckage of World Trade Center Building 7 in New York. Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved one of the undying mysteries of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories.(AP Photo/Roberto Borea, File) ORG XMIT: WX104
There are two camps in the 9/11 war. Both are wrong. As a result, almost no one learns anything from the tragedy that occurred on and after September 11, 2001.
One camp is the “never forget” crowd. These are the proponents of Washington, D.C.s’ imperial, worldwide standing army. They insist people never forget the terrorist attacks because…well, it’s not entirely clear why we shouldn’t forget. Something about being vigilant, because “freedom isn’t free.” Or something.
It’s just a lot of fuzzy baloney used to justify massive military spending, the empire’s war or intervention du jour, and convince the gullible who join the military they are defending freedom, as if Americans would be less free if the empire didn’t invade Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Syria, or…
The other camp is the “truther” camp, convinced that because the government lied about a lot of things regarding 9/11, that those lies prove the attack was “an inside job,” perpetrated by the Bush administration and/or the Deep State to justify the decades of aggressive war abroad and totalitarianism at home that followed it.
Both camps conjure up villains people can blame for ills they ultimately brought upon themselves, at least in the aggregate.
First, the “never forgetters.” Are there any who aren’t somehow connected to the bloated, $800 billion/year and growing cancer called the U.S. military? Or at least believe the myth perpetuated in this nauseating Lee Greenwood song:
“And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free
And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me
And I’d gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land! God bless the U.S.A.”
It’s hard to get more wrong about “America” than those lyrics. First, the American principle is that freedom is a natural right, “endowed by our Creator.” It is not given by anyone, least of all soldiers consuming taxes in an unnecessary war. Not only was the freedom of Americans not in jeopardy during any war in my lifetime (born 1965), none were even “defensive” wars.
Goebbels couldn’t have penned better propaganda nor a bigger lie than this million-selling drivel.
Americans would have been far better off if the entire Cold War national security state were dismantled in 1991, including the global standing army – as Americans were promised it would be – and no wars fought in the past thirty years.
They would have been better off still staying out of WWII and letting the Nazis and Soviets destroy each other, instead of handing one evil empire half of Europe in its zeal to destroy the other.
Instead, the Cold War apparatus was redirected towards terrorism, its military and economic interventions in the Middle East provoking the 9/11 attack.
That brings us to camp #2, the “truthers.” A lot of these people are well-intentioned and have what the never forgetter crowd lacks: a healthy skepticism of their government and of government in general. But their zeal to prove government is evil (which it is) leads them to make improbable conclusions and ignore other explanations that fit the available facts much better.
Anyone inclined to question their federal and state governments, the national media, and corporate America – aka, “the establishment” – wonders how much longer the American public can possibly go on believing what they’re told. The long-suspected “liberal bias” of the media has morphed into outright falsehoods told the public about Covid-19, Ukraine, “climate change,” and a host of other issues.
One after another, previous narratives enforced by de-platforming dissenters has crumbled, although the establishment seeks to cling to as much of the previous narrative as minimally plausible.
For example, natural immunity to Covid was at first ignored as if it didn’t exist at all. Then, it was reported as waning faster than vaccine immunity. Once it was undeniable that natural immunity was broader, more robust, and more durable than vaccine immunity, the focus was shifted to the superiority of vaccine immunity and natural immunity together over merely natural immunity.
Why at that point were people with only natural immunity excluded from participating in large swaths of civil society while those with only the inferior vaccine immunity not excluded? A few people screamed about it; most did not. The dissenters were censored or simply drowned out by establishment information.
A particularly egregious lie perpetrated throughout 2020 and 2021 was that immunity to previous infection no longer existed after antibodies were no longer detected in the blood. Forty years after my last biology course, I knew this had to be wrong. Doesn’t the body remember previous infection even after antibodies disappear from the blood?
Of course it does. It’s called T-cell and B-cell immunity. B-cells produce new antibodies upon new exposure to the same virus and T-cells kill infected cells directly. This is not new or controversial information. But even now, people seem to operate on the assumption that immunity from previous infection ends once antibodies are no longer detected in the blood. The establishment does everything it can to encourage this false belief.
Then, there are the “safe and effective” vaccines themselves. Americans were told by no less than the president himself, in addition to presumably more reliable sources, that the vaccines would keep them from getting infected with and spreading Covid. When that untruth was no longer defensible, the establishment tried to tell us they had never said any such thing, that the vaccines would only prevent serious illness from infection.
This begged the question of why, if they did not prevent infection and transmission, the vaccines would be mandated for employment and/or admission into publicly accessible spaces. If the risk to others is the same with or without the vaccines, what is the justification for the mandates?
Again, a few people asked; most did not.
Now, evidence is mounting that the vaccine is not only ineffective, but not as safe as previously advertised. Certainly, it is important to question all claims about the vaccines, positive and negative. The theory that Covid vaccines are a plot to depopulate the earth don’t seem to jibe with reality. But neither does the claim they are completely safe.
Alex Berenson was recently reinstated on Twitter following settlement of his lawsuit for de-platforming based on his reporting on all the lies of the Covid Regime, including the exaggerated danger of the disease itself, the ineffectiveness of the nonpharmaceutical interventions (lockdowns, mask mandates, etc.), and the ineffectiveness and danger of the Covid vaccines. Had the company been able to definitively disprove any of his reporting, no settlement would have been made.
“Promoter of misinformation” Steve Kirsch is willing to pay any “doctor, professor of medicine, epidemiologist, or public health official anywhere in the world” $50,000 to demonstrate on camera where his information on vaccine deaths is incorrect. There have been no takers.
Kirsch recently presented evidence from multiple sources of massive spikes in daily deaths five months after significant vaccine rollouts.
President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan has inspired criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. The right decries the unfairness to those who either paid off their student loans or worked their way through college without them. The left says the $10,000 ($20,000 for those who received Pell grants) is not enough to make a significant difference for most people struggling with paying back the loans.
But the one-time, lump sum forgiveness is only the tip of the iceberg on what Biden’s plan will do. The changes to the income-based loan repayment policies are much more significant and will create far more perverse incentives. Peter Schiff did an excellent analysis of this on a recent podcast.
The Obama era reorganization of student loans under government control set limits to the percentage of discretionary income one would have to pay. Borrowers were capped at a payment of 10 percent of all income over 150 percent of the poverty level. Any remaining principle after 20 years of those payments was forgiven.
Biden’s plan makes the following changes:
Discretionary income is redefined at income over 225 percent of poverty level
The percentage cap over this level is reduced from 10 percent to 5 percent
The maximum repayment term is reduced from 20 years to 10 years.
An example given on the White House’s fact sheet says, “A typical single public school teacher with an undergraduate degree (making $44,000 a year) would pay only $56 a month on their loans.” That translates to just $6,720 over the entire ten years the schoolteacher would be liable to make payments.
$6,720 is a mere 11 percent of the maximum total loan ($57,500) allowed to obtain a bachelor’s degree. The schoolteacher would be forgiven 89 percent of the principle and all of the interest under those circumstances.
For those who choose to pursue a graduate degree, the total loan amount allowed rises to $138,500. While it’s unlikely a graduate with a master’s or doctorate would earn that little, it is certainly not unheard of these days. In that case, the borrower would end up paying a mere 4.8 percent of the principle and none of the interest over the ten years.
The White House fact sheet provides a more likely scenario for those with advanced degrees. “A typical nurse (making $77,000 a year) who is married with two kids would pay only $61 a month on their undergraduate loans.” $77,000 is also a decent estimate for the average assistant professor or education administrator during the first ten years after graduation. That graduate would pay back just $7,320 or 5.2 percent of the principle and none of the interest over ten years.
As Schiff points out, not only does this incentivize people to max out the amount they borrow to go to college, it actually incentivizes people to pursue degrees with lower returns on investment (ROI) since that is where the maximum loan forgiveness occurs. Those who obtain STEM degrees equipping them to earn much higher incomes will pay a much larger percentage of the debt they incur.
Schiff’s analysis concentrates on the atrocious economics of the plan. But there is also a political element no one is talking about.
In another especially interesting podcast, Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop discussed the “awakening” of the right to the fact the state is not necessarily their friend, not even those institutions within the state (law enforcement, intelligence, the military) they have typically revered.
To paraphrase part of their discussion, the 20th century myth that elections are a time when all Americans “come together” to make important decisions is giving way to what they described as the more realistic, 19th century perception: that politics and elections are about seizing power and using that power to help one’s friends and hurt one’s enemies. The Biden student loan plan couldn’t fit this framework better.
Obviously, no one who has the desire and ability to get into medical or engineering school will opt to pursue a degree with lower ROI simply because they will have to pay less of their loan principle. But the reverse is definitely true. Someone who might otherwise forego an advanced degree in sociology, education, or the much-maligned gender studies will now have a virtually irresistible incentive to enroll.
Guaranteed student loans themselves have grossly expanded academia and inflated the cost of higher education, even before the government took over and removed what little market discipline remained. The ratio of administrators to teachers and students has also exploded, providing jobs for the otherwise useless advanced degrees in education administration.
Biden’s plan will allow tuitions to make another leg up in price, underwriting another explosion in professors, administrators, and students who otherwise might be forced to do something more productive. And the political views and loyalties of that combined population is close to uniformly leftist. Economics departments were once exceptions to the rule. Increasingly, that is no longer true.
While it is virtually impossible to complete a university degree in any major without being exposed to a certain amount of leftist indoctrination, it is most intense in precisely the fields of study most likely to grow the fastest under Biden’s new plan. It will not only reward his friends but grow their ranks exponentially.
The Republican Party remains viable in American politics solely because of the federal system. Were decisions made based purely on a simple national majority, all decisions would be made by the Democratic Party. President Biden’s student loan plan has the potential to produce enough left-leaning voters to overcome those federal constraints. If Republicans want to remain politically relevant, they need to dismantle this monster at their earliest opportunity.
In an interview with Joe Rogan that dropped August 25, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that not only did Facebook suppress the 2020 New York Post story concerning Hunter Biden’s laptop, but that it was done in response to a request from the FBI. It was the latest in a long line of official confirmations of facts previously excoriated as “conspiracy theories.”
Conservatives consider this a giant smoking gun to point to in their quest to treat social media companies as something other than purely private companies. Some libertarians are making the case Facebook and other social media companies were “coerced” into censoring information helpful to Republicans, including in 2020.
I don’t believe the officers at social media companies feel coerced, even after having been hauled in front of Congress. It’s more likely they took away from those hearings that they have to do better at something they believe is a legitimate duty: to prevent “misinformation.”
Either way, Zuckerberg’s comments provide both groups with proof that something must be done. What must be done is a thornier question.
First, it’s worthwhile to unpack Zuckerberg’s statements. There is much nuance there.
Rogan followed up Zuckerberg’s statement to ask whether the FBI requested Facebook censor the Hunter Biden story in particular. Zuckerberg replied, “No, I don’t remember if it was that specifically, but it was, it basically fit the pattern.”
Fit what pattern? The pattern of supposed Russian propaganda that damaged Donald Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and which again would damage Trump’s opponent in 2020. Because, you know, Putin puppet.
Zuckerberg goes on to say, “We just kind of thought, hey look, if the FBI, which I still view as a legitimate institution in this country, it’s a very professional law enforcement, they come to us and tell us we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously.”
Zuckerberg’s use of the word “still” is significant here, as the interview was recorded after the controversial FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. It was obviously either a message to or at least an acknowledgement of the many people who no longer view the FBI as a legitimate institution, both because of the raid and its role in Russiagate fiasco over the first two years of Trump’s presidency.
It would be easy to point at some of Zuckerberg’s statements and conclude them as proof he is colluding with the government specifically to prevent Trump or anyone like him from getting elected again. I didn’t hear that. It sounded more like someone who firmly believes in the civic religion and wants to think about himself as doing the civic duty every “captain of industry” has. Or something.
That begs the question whether Zuckerberg would have suppressed a story damaging to Donald Trump under similar circumstances. It’s hard to imagine he would, but it’s possible. From his perspective, he might view it as a defending Nazis marching in Skokie sort of thing. But I wouldn’t bet my own money on it.
I walked away from the interview with the impression Zuckerberg is a typical business owner. He sounded like the vast majority of them when it comes to politics: trying his best to be as conventional and uncontroversial as possible. And like it or not, uncontroversial has meant a left-leaning centrism for at least the past one hundred years.
Blandly conventional is also the safest way to be when you’re looking to maximize revenue from sources across the political spectrum. Don’t forget Facebook also takes a lot of heat from the left for not censoring enough. That Zuckerberg’s and other Facebook officers’ personal biases are with the left make it even more likely that they would be able to view MAGA Republicans as “extremist” but Bernie Bros. as merely pushing the envelope a little.
Like all businessmen, Zuckerberg has to navigate through our grossly overregulated economy, with the threat of more regulation hanging over his head at all times. He has to consider a workforce that skews much younger and more liberal than that of the typical industry. And a majority of his customers lean left. The USA may be a federated republic, but Facebook’s customer base is not.
I am not even suggesting all of this is conscious on his part. When you spend 23 hours per day eating, drinking, and sleeping running a large company, you don’t have the bandwidth to develop complex political ideas, nor do you have the motivation to do so. When asked their political opinions, most business leaders want to sound smart and offend as few potential customers as possible.
Running a successful business means constantly overcoming distractions and stops. It’s a little like running a gauntlet. Someone complains about misinformation? Hire fact checkers. Others complain about equity issues? Make your employees go through equity training. Another group says you’re polluting the environment? Adopt ESG protocols.
Rather than part of a focused political agenda, these are all obstacles to be batted aside – or clubs to avoid being brained by – as you try to keep your head down and make it through the gauntlet to another profitable quarter.
You’re trying to make widgets and these distractions knock you off course. How do I make them go away as cheaply and quickly as possible? This is how business owners think. Take my word for it.
President Biden today announced he would forgive up to $20,000 in student loans for people making less than $125,000 per year, with several other qualifications determining the amount each applicant is eligible for.
Biden’s political opponents have raised very reasonable objections to this politically motivated favoritism just over two months before the mid-term elections. What about people who paid off their loans? Why only student loans and not others arguably taken to underwrite more productive efforts than women’s studies or French poetry?
Why does someone who borrowed money to start a profitable business that employs people have to pay back its loans when someone who works a tax-subsidized job does not?
While calling out such blatant vote-purchasing for its violation of equal justice under the law and other statist dogma is perfectly valid, let’s not forget the economic law demonstrated by this bailout: the government cannot “invest.”
Politicians love to use that word for its wealth transfer schemes. “Invest in infrastructure,” “invest in working families” (which families don’t work?), and, in this case, “invest in education.”
Merriam-Webster dictionary provides two relevant definitions for the word “invest.” Government-guaranteed student loans doesn’t meet either of them:
1: to commit (money) in order to earn a financial return
2: to make use of for future benefits or advantages
Had the government’s “investments” in student loans met the definition of the word, there would be no need for a bailout. The money spent on tuition would be paid back out of the additional earnings students realized over and above what they would have earned without going to college.
That they not only aren’t in the black based on additional earnings to what they would have earned with a high school diploma, but can’t pay the loans back at all, should end once and for all the ability for politicians to claim they are “investing” in anything.
This excludes all the student loan borrowers who can pay back their loans but now will shift some of that burden onto others. Doctors, lawyers, university professors, and other affluent debtors will force plumbers, taxicab drivers, and construction workers – not to mention other doctors, lawyers, etc. who worked their way through school without student loans or who already paid them back – to pay their debts.
The grand experiment with government “investing” in higher education has produced two returns: people who can’t earn enough to pay back the loans and people who can but choose to force somebody else to do so.
All the same arguments against student loan bailouts can be made against public education in general. Why are homeowners forced to pay for public schools whether they use them or not, while wealthy renters pay nothing? Why is the service called “education” Sovietized in the first place? Is there something special about education that makes the government owning its means of production successful?
Of course not. Just look at the results. The more the government has “invested” in education, the less literate and numerate graduating students have become. Like every government-provided service, the cost keeps going up and the quality keeps going down.
Education, healthcare, infrastructure, transportation, the military – they are all the focus of massive government “investment.” And those investments all continue to produce the same returns: skyrocketing prices and plummeting quality.
Everything the government does is Afghanistan.
Investors in the private sector aren’t better people. They merely work under different incentives. When private sector actors invest, they stand to lose their own money. This powerful incentive doesn’t produce perfect results, but it produces infinitely better results than government spending. And when private sector investments go bad, no one else is forced to pay for their mistakes.
That is, unless one is on the Christmas list of the ultimate government investor, the Federal Reserve System. Its “investments” in stimulating the economy are the most damaging of all, producing steadily rising prices, artificial booms, disastrous busts, and more and bigger bailouts over time.
We have no choice but to pay for Biden’s latest vote buy. But let’s not let him or any other politician continue to call their loot distribution “investment.” Doing so should be tried in The Hague as a crime against veracity.
This started as a tweet, grew into a lengthier Facebook post, and finally this short primer. The left has run amok and can hopefully be checked by a Republican landslide in the mid-terms. But understand there can be no free society while either the left or the right dominates American thought.
Here are a few thoughts on each:
The right
The abstract “America” conservatives seek to preserve or restore is actually the 19th century classical liberal society conservatives of the time fought tooth and nail.
And that classical liberal society was destroyed by the world wars and the New Deal, both of which most modern conservatives venerate.
Allying with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis – instead of standing back and letting them destroy each other – was the final nail in the coffin.
The universally condemned policy of “appeasement” was actually the smart play that could have saved Western Civilization.
Looking at a map makes clear allowing Hitler to re-annex Danzig would have resulted in his continuing his expansion plan, which he clearly stated in Mein Kampf was NOT south or West. It was east, to claim the “borderlands of Russia.”
Even as late as June 6, 1944, now a conservative holy day, there was an opportunity to not invade France and allow the Nazis and Soviets – at that time still fighting a bloody war of attrition near the Russian border – to complete their mutual destruction.
Imagine no Cold War. There needn’t have been one had the “neocons” of the time, like Churchill, not got their way.
Yet, today’s conservatives venerate both the war and Churchill, the very forces that destroyed the last hope of the civilization they seek.
The U.S. became a garrison state solely because the Soviets were allowed to seize half of Europe, something they could not have done had the U.S. not entered the war.
The national security state refused to demobilize after the Cold War ended. It morphed into the War on Terror, again with full-throated support from the right.
Now, the national security state has declared the right the terrorists and it’s coming after them. What tragic, poetic justice.
And even now, conservatives cannot let go of the myths that allowed the means of their own destruction to be built. They want to “reform” or “restore” the national security state, rather than destroy it.
The left
The left is much simpler to understand. After history proved once and for all that communism is not only an inferior economic system to capitalism, but fatal to any society that implements it, the left began attacking capitalism on different grounds.
One must understand, though, that everything the left does is a means towards the end of changing the economic system from capitalism to some form of socialism or communism. Thus,
The left doesn’t care about “the environment.” It’s just a means to the end of changing the economic system.
The left doesn’t care about African Americans. They are just a means to the end of changing the economic system.
The left doesn’t care about LGBTQ or “trans” people. They are just a means to the end of changing the economic system.
The left doesn’t care about Immigrants. They are just a means to the end of changing the economic system.
The left doesn’t care about “hate speech.” That is just a means to the end of changing the economic system.
None of this is a secret. Read Marcuse.
Every campus riot over a conservative speaker, Black Lives Matter march, Women’s march, LGBTQ march, destruction of statues, attack on language (pronouns, etc.) are all tactics out of the 1789 playbook the left has used in every revolution since.
These are all means to the end of changing the economic system. Period. Once you understand that, you understand not to engage the left on any of these grounds.
I had the opportunity last night to watch the sixth and final episode of the HBO documentary, The Anarchists. Director and executive producer Todd Schramke accomplished the primary mission of any good documentary filmmaker: he made an interesting miniseries about interesting people. He also managed to weave the events filmed over the course of three to four years into a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
While this made the series entertaining, it did fail one basic requirement of a good documentary: it failed to inform. After six approximately 50-minute episodes, I was left with more questions than answers. It’s worthwhile to review what the series got right and what it either got wrong or omitted.
The philosophy
It starts out on a positive note, clearly delineating what most people associate with the term, “anarchy,” from what the series’ protagonists are advocating. Because so many political philosophers over the centuries have operated from the assumption that chaos and disorder would result in the absence of government, most people believe the word itself means chaos and disorder.
It’s analogous to most people believing the word “inflation” means rising consumer prices, rather than the expansion of money and credit by the banking system. They confuse the effect with its cause.
Schramke clarifies that the definition these anarchists are working from is, “the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation without political institutions or government.”
While accurate, that definition on its own is incomplete. The reason anarcho-capitalists (the type of anarchists presented in the series) do not believe chaos and disorder would result from the absence of government is they have a plan to secure life, liberty, and justly acquired possessions (hereafter “property”) without government.
Anarcho-capitalists do not believe in a world with no rules. They merely believe in a world with no rulers. The natural law that no one may violate the property rights of another would still be in play in an anarcho-capitalist society. But instead of a monopolist institution like government, the defense of those property rights would be provided by the free market.
By leaving this crucial aspect of anarcho-capitalist thought out of the definition, the viewer is left to assume anarcho-capitalists believe their society would depend upon everyone “doing the right thing,” with no recourse when they don’t. This is completely inaccurate.
Anarcho-capitalists (for the most part) recognize force must be used at times to defend property. They simply don’t believe a monopoly will provide that security as efficiently as would competing firms in a free market.
The other, more egregious flaw occurs just after the 28-minute mark of Episode One, Schramke says:
“If you want to trace the origins of this philosophy, all roads will take you back to one of the most polarizing writers of the 20th century.”
He is talking about 20th century novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand (the episode cuts to a Mike Wallace interview with Rand), who obviously had an influence on several of the people in the series. Two are named “John Galton” and “Juan Galt,” respectively, and there are other references to Rand and her work throughout.
But Rand not only wasn’t an anarchist; she was openly hostile towards both anarchists and libertarians in general. In her own words,
“More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called “hippies of the right,” who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.”
The truth is the origins of anarcho-capitalism are much older than Rand, who had an inflated view of the originality of her ideas. I haven’t found a single tenet of her philosophy that cannot be found in the writings of John Locke, particularly the Essay on Human Understanding and the Second Treatise of Government.
As far as I am concerned, Rand’s chief contribution was to translate these ideas into mid-20th century psychoanalytic jargon. No anarcho-capitalist I know of would point to Rand as the definitive authority on the philosophy. Many admire her valuable work but also recognize she made a lot of errors.
Anarcho-capitalism, or non-communist anarchism, traces back at least as far as Lysander Spooner and through 20th-century thinkers like Murray Rothbard, who was kicked out of Rand’s “court” precisely because of his anarchist ideas.
While we see links to Rothbard’s For a New Liberty as Schramke films his web searches on anarchism, we are told nothing about this more rigorous presentation of the anarcho-capitalist society. We are left with the simplistic notion that anarcho-capitalism simply means “nobody telling me what to do” or “as long as I don’t harm anyone, I can do what I want.”
In Schramke’s defense, he simply may be making the best of what he has to work with. In one scene, the likable but tragic figure, Nathan Freeman, after having been dismissed from his role as event organizer of Anarchapulco, attempts to set up a vendor booth on the conference grounds. When the new organizer tells him he is not allowed to do this, Freeman protests that this violates anarchist principles, saying words to the effect of, “I thought if I’m not harming anyone, I can do what I want.”
But Freeman was harming someone. He was violating the property rights of the event’s owners, who had every right to decide who can sell products on their property and who could not, and also had the prerogative to charge a fee for such privilege at their discretion. Were it a true anarcho-capitalist society, the owners could not only exclude Freeman, but use force to remove him if he refused to comply.
Indeed, this foundational pillar of anarcho-capitalism is found nowhere in the series. The viewer is left with the idea anarchism is simply a license to party, use and sell drugs, and enjoy the beautiful Acapulco climate.
The “community”
In fairness, most of this is due to the extensive footage of the annual Anarchapulco conference, which like most conferences here in Statistland is a combination of informative presentations and partying one would never do in one’s hometown. Fair enough. But little is shown the viewer about the “community” constantly referenced in the series and how it purported to be an anarchist one.
To begin with, it is unclear how many people comprise this community. We are shown a half dozen or so adults – the Freemans and their children, Lily Forrester and John Galton, Erika Harris, Juan Galt, Paul Propert, Jason Henza, and the guy who steals Jason Henza’s wife (his name escapes me). Were there more? How many more? Five? Five hundred? We don’t know.
More importantly, we are not told how this group of people represents or purports to represent an anarchist community. All we know of them is they have all moved to a major city in an even more authoritarian and socialist country than the one they left, although it is presented in the first episode as being inviting to anarchists because it is a “failed state.”
We are not told how most of the members of this community support themselves financially. Lily and John are somehow involved in selling drugs, although Lily maintains they were not competing with the Mexican cartels in the opioid trade. There are several references to Nathan Freeman continuing to work after the family moves to Acapulco, presumably still running his software company, Red Pill. But we don’t know for sure and are not told whether he is still complying with U.S. tax laws on the income he generates.
Beyond that, we know nothing about how the other members of the community support themselves. Neither do they seem to have attempted to replace the government’s property protection functions with any organized private institution. Some have not even armed themselves, judging by what we are told of the tragic cartel hit on Lily and John, resulting in the latter’s death and serious wounding of housemate Jason Henza.
Schramke provides no other insight into the nature of the community in Acapulco. As far as the viewer knows, they are simply people sharing the same political beliefs who moved to Acapulco and either took jobs within the local community or started businesses, all under the authority of the several layers of municipal, state, and federal government as they exist in Mexico today.
So, where is the anarchism?
Schramke forms his series into a cautionary tale about the dangers of anarchy, articulated by Lily Forester in a speech to the Anarchapulco conference in the last episode. But we don’t see any evidence of an even partially-anarchist society. Instead, we are presented with a group of people who seem to embody the hippieish strawmen in Ayn Rand’s condemnation.
The final episode closes with a quote from founder Jeff Berwick: “There’s quite a few people who came here who were just damaged, you know, just because they didn’t fit in in society. But they kinda felt like they had a bit of a, a bit of a community. I don’t know why that makes me emotional.”
The anarchist society proposed by anarcho-capitalists wouldn’t be a community of “misfits.” It would be comprised of the same people we see every day – farmers, doctors, plumbers, CEOs, cashiers, auto mechanics, etc. – pursing the same, mundane lifestyle they do in our present, statist world, simply with better security of their property than currently provided by the government.
Due to the choices or ignorance of either the director, his subjects, or both, viewers new to the concept of anarcho-capitalism will have no idea it would look nothing like what was presented in the documentary. Worse, they will take away from the series that anarchism was attempted and failed in Acapulco 2017-2020. Based on what is shown in the series, nothing of the sort occurred.
NBC, ABC, and CBS today all feature stories about the FBI returning Donald Trump’s passports, seized in its August 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago. This just four days after the Washington Post reported that federal agents were looking for “nuclear documents” among the boxes of materials taken from the White House during the raid.
Wait. Both those statements can’t be true, can they? Is it really plausible the Justice Department genuinely believes or ever believed there are nuclear secrets among the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago but was willing to return Trump’s passports just a few days later?
It has now been eight days since the raid. Were there “nuclear documents” among the materials seized or not? Certainly, the Justice Department knows the answer to that question. Why has no reporter asked?
If there were a genuine national security threat to the United States among those papers, the government would have known it within hours of taking possession of them. It would have assigned as many agents as necessary to review the documents and confirm or deny the threat immediately. Had a genuine threat of that magnitude been confirmed, a flurry of other national security activity would have been reported in the days since the raid.
It isn’t just that the government and its media apparatus got it wrong or provided information that turned out to be inaccurate later. They lied. They said things they knew at the time they said them weren’t true and continue to do so.
On Friday, Newsweek reported that the former president was “digging his legal hole “deeper and deeper” by calling the reporting on nuclear documents “a hoax,” according to legal expert Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor,
Kirschner was lying, too. First, being a former prosecutor, Kirschner is well aware that statements Trump makes to the media when not under oath cannot damage him legally. More important, Kirschner knew that if there were anything of consequence among the seized documents, Trump wouldn’t be at liberty to post his statement on Truth Social.
He wouldn’t be at liberty at all.
The “digging his legal hole deeper and deeper” statement smacks of the avalanche of headlines 2017-19 indicating that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was “closing in” on Trump for conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. Week after week, month after month, “anonymous sources” confirmed the latest strand in the rope that would hang Trump had been woven into place.
Mueller was never “closing in on Trump.” The media that reported he was knew it. The “anonymous sources” claiming to leak inside information of the investigation knew it. And deep down, a large portion of the public who wanted to believe Trump was a Russian agent, knew it, too.
Yet, they all kept saying it in unison.
Like “recession,” there may not be one, official definition of “dystopia.” But a society in which every public institution, along with a good percentage of the population, not only regularly repeats assertions they know to be false but persecutes anyone who dissents is at least in the ballpark. When the lies form the bases for coercive government policies, then, like two quarters of negative GDP indicating a recession, you have a “good rule of thumb.”
It certainly doesn’t matter what “dystopia experts” say.
An article on Revolver today laments the sad state of the U.S. military. Calling its soldiers “too fat” and its generals, “woke, parasitic, and incompetent,” the news outlet longs for the bygone days when Americans had, “the military they once did, and the one they deserve.”
This on the heels of the unprecedented FBI raid on former President Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. Conservatives have had a five-year-long reality check on the true nature of that organization, which conspired with the intelligence community to manufacture the Russian collusion narrative that dominated much of Trump’s presidency.
Even then, conservatives couldn’t face the reality that the FBI has always been a political organization, placing top priority on its own survival and expansion of power, as longtime observer of the federal bureaucracy, Dr. Frank Sorrentino, said on a recent episode of Tom Mullen Talks Freedom.
Likewise, they can’t see the military for what it is and has always been: just another government bureaucracy primarily concerned with its own survival, expansion, and ever-increasing funding. Instead, conservatives cling to myths about the military’s glorious past and the need for a great leader to come in and restore its previous virtues.
This unwillingness to acknowledge reality no matter how hard it punches them in the nose is tied to the most basic pillars of conservative thought. Unlike the libertarians who founded the United States, conservatives do not believe governments are instituted among men to secure natural, inalienable rights. That would require a view of human nature wherein man was capable of good and evil; government being the institution to restrain the evil side.
Conservatives don’t share that view. They believe man by nature is completely depraved, his savage instincts tenuously held in check by government power and longstanding societal customs. They truly believe law enforcement is out on the front lines of a war every single day, risking their lives to keep civilization from devolving into chaos.
This dovetails with the conservative view of Christianity, which sees man as fallen and only redeemable by the grace of God. Forget Jesus’ own words that, while sinners, we are also “the light of the world” and the salt of the earth.” Conservatives only hear the sinner part. Many seem to regard the Apocalypse as the most important book in the New Testament, its warlike imagery about the “end times” suiting their worldview much better than Jesus’ admonishment to Peter to “put your sword back in its sheath.”
And so, the unmasking of one federal institution after another, starting with the so-called “intelligence community,” proceeding to federal law enforcement, and now even the military, represents an existential crisis for conservatives. They should finally acknowledge these institutions were never what they thought they were. But they can’t. To do so would undermine their entire view of the world.
Instead, they yearn for the days when the “rank and file” FBI agents rooted out dangerous threats that might otherwise have destroyed the republic and the military heroically won “the good war” and saved the world from tyranny. They decry the sad comparison between political hacks like Christopher Wray and James Comey vs. hardnosed, incorruptible Elliott Ness (actually a Treasury agent) or between the fat, woke, and dimwitted Mark Milley vs. the steely-eyed General Patton.
While liberalism, based on a mad quest for absolute equality, provides no path to freedom, neither does conservativism, which is at its root based upon a suspicion of liberty itself. If we’re interested in a free society, conservatism’s myths must be busted once and for all.
The myth of the noble, apolitical FBI is an easy one. Right from the beginning, the agency was a political organism through and through. It’s longtime director, J. Edgar Hoover, infamously kept files on everyone from Congressmen to presidents to ensure his position and power could never be questioned. Neither was he particularly interested in pursuing organized crime during most of his tenure, preferring to target a series of “Public Enemy Number One” solitary criminals.
Apologists for the agency who acknowledge its corruption during the Hoover years point to a “golden age” after his tenure where the FBI supposedly became the apolitical force for good conservatives imagined it to be. But this is just more hokum.
A statue of the blindfolded lady justice in front of the United States Supreme Court building as the sun rises in the distance symbolizing the dawning of a new era.
This is an attempt to answer the question, “what is justice?” in as few words as possible:
All human beings are created equal in one way only: no one has an inherent right to rule over another.
Based on this equality, all human beings own themselves.
Self-ownership means exclusive use and disposal of one’s body, thoughts, words, deeds, and legitimately acquired possessions (i.e., “life, liberty, and estates”), called by the general name of “property.”
Everyone has a right to his or her property (and nothing else). No one may violate the property of another.
Property may be exchanged only with the mutual, voluntary consent of all parties.
“Justice” is the preservation of property or the making whole of someone whose property has been violated.
