A new totalitarianism is emerging in our society. Not a communist or fascist totalitarianism but a technocratic totalitarianism. A kind of totalitarianism that is not led by “a gang leader” such as Stalin or Hitler but by dull bureaucrats and technocrats. As always, a certain part of the population will resist and won’t fall prey to the mass formation.
The Psychology of Totalitarianism Read Journal Article
In these times, when calls for crisis government and more emergency powers for the administrative state seem to grow louder by the day, the legislators in Congress — the people’s representatives and trustees — ought to pause, look around the Capitol, and consider the long tradition of freedom and dignity that is our inheritance and could still be their legacy.
Maimonides on the Liberty of the People Read Journal Article
I don’t care, I don’t know,
I don’t care to know.
I don’t know, I don’t care,
I don’t know how to care.
The Lockdowner’s Lament Read Journal Article
Social distancing was not really about preserving hospital capacity and it was not just about two weeks. It was really about the complete reconstruction of social life itself, critiqued as pathogenetic starting 12,000 years ago, with Covid as only the latest example of the costs of free association.
Social Distancing Was Supposed to Be Forever Read Journal Article
Religious persons today are a threat, but not to public safety as the narrative instructs us. They are a threat to the idea that the state is to be worshipped above all else, to the religion that’s trying to take their place, to the idea that it’s possible to find a compelling and complete sense of meaning outside of the state.
Why Did Covid Enforcement Target Religion? Read Journal Article
Science is like a weathervane: it gives you information, which you can use to decide on a course of action, but it doesn’t tell you what to do. The decision belongs to you, not to the swirling metal rooster. A weathervane can tell you there’s a stiff wind coming in from the northwest, but it can’t tell you how to respond to the data.
Follow the Science, Reconsidered Read Journal Article
In the early months, while secular folks were exhorting everyone to stay home, stay safe, mask up, and all the rest, religious leaders began pushing back against what they saw as encroachments on freedom of worship. It wasn’t just church closures or bans on choral singing they opposed. They cried out against the whole worldview underpinning the rules, a mindset that reduces people to their health and risk status.
Hey Covid, I’ve Got Religion Read Journal Article
During lockdowns and medical mandates, the power of the state and its corporate allies truly reached its apotheosis, and failed us miserably. Our times cry out for justice, for clarity, and for making a difference to save ourselves and our civilization. We should approach this great project with our eyes wide open and with ears to hear different points of view on how we get from here to there.
How Could We Have Been So Naive about Big Tech? Read Journal Article
Keeping the peace at all costs has become a sacred and unquestionable goal among large parts of our society, especially among its more credentialed sectors. This implacably strict pose positions multitudes into a spirit of acquiescence to power, no matter how dangerous or devastating the results.
How We Lost Agency and Acquiesced to Power Read Journal Article
The scapegoat mechanism is a speculative device to explain how some of the human systems, in a fairly broad sense of the phrase, establish and keep their order. The most fundamental tenet is that order is attained and sustained through the cyclic sacrifice of an entity that is internally excluded.
The Scapegoat Mechanism Read Journal Article
The people who orchestrated isolation in nursing homes in 2020, who enforced malnutrition on hundreds of millions, who condemned millions of girls to servitude, are not doing so with ‘right’ or ‘wrong‘ in mind. They don’t accept that such fixed concepts exist. If there is nothing beyond the physical, then their actions are rational and cannot be wrong.
What Is Man That Science Art Mindful of Him? Read Journal Article
There needs to be a to-be-abolished list and any federal government institution with the word agency, department, or bureau needs to be on it. The last few years have shown us the power of these institutions and the devastation they can cause. The only sure way of preventing it from happening again is to put a hard stop on all the bureaucracies that caused our suffering. Society itself, which is smarter than bureaucracy, can manage the rest.
How To Tame a Bureaucracy? Get Rid of It Read Journal Article
