“If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny.”
– Elon Musk: entrepreneur, spacefarer, and annoyer of the Woke. (Quoted by Yaron Brook here.)
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I have been struck in my reading of the media, in conversations with people in the City and elsewhere, as to how the topic of COVID-19 has suddenly disappeared from regular conversation. It is true that the UK came out of lockdowns a bit earlier than some other countries. It is true that the embarrassments of the Boris Johnson Downing Street machine meant that Mr Johnson was afraid to reimpose any controls given that no-one would take him seriously. (One reason I am very sad about the passing of the late P J O’Rourke is the sport he would have had the expense of various governments over such hypocrisies). Even so, it is striking how fast Russia’s attack on Ukraine was able, in a flash, to take the bug away. Gone. Kaput. This is a virus that seems to know the news agenda. Amazing. But we should not forget the past two years or more of lockdowns, of the pettiness, the bullying, the hysteria, the use of fear, the “what we can get away with”, the suspension of civil liberties, the North Korean-style worship of “Our NHS”, and indeed, we shouldn’t overlook the heroism of medical staff who dealt with the crisis particularly in the early months when the full nature of this bug was unknown. We should not forget China’s refusal to enable a clear analysis of what caused this shitshow, or its bullying of those who asked questions, of the biases of the World Health Organisation, the questionable actions and financial involvements of people such as Anthony Fauci in the US and the unease in asking if this bug came from a lab. We should not forget the shenanigans over PPE contracts in the UK, the frauds over loans to businesses, the cowardice and horribleness of the teaching unions and damage to education. We should not forget the stoicism of lorry drivers, supermarket workers, farmers, delivery drivers and logistics workers. We must not forget how parents could see what their children were learning online, and were shocked. We must not forget these things. March 10th, 2022 | 61 comments - (Comments are closed)
 An interesting article in Reason, the US magazine, about central bank digital currencies, which appear to the reverse of the libertarian, ground-up approach of Bitcoin’s original champions:
This raises the old debate that I have read about and been involved in over the years – can technology tools really help free us from the State, or will the State simply adjust and use said tools for its own purposes? Down the years I have seen how entities such as the Internet, 3-D printing, social media platforms and so forth will empower individuals at the expense of Big Government, but that’s not always worked out. The brute fact is, in my view, is that to push back against the State, it is necessary to win battles of ideas, and that is a slog. No wonder some hope that technology can help. Maybe it has to be a mix: good ideas that are spread, and new ways of living and working that feed off them. A few years ago, David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman) had a good book out, Future Imperfect, where he wondered about such matters. Strongly recommended. He gave a talk on the issues here. March 4th, 2022 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Mr. Putin finds himself in a struggle now because of the bravery of 41 million Ukrainians, not the strength of Europe or the United States.” March 3rd, 2022 | 185 comments - (Comments are closed)
“This is the man whom Canadians have thrice elected, which speaks for a country that—with the exception of a courageous and steadfast minority—no longer values its freedoms and traditions. Fear and ignorance triumph over patriotism and reason. Some might be inclined to argue that Canadians had little choice given there was no credible opposition and that vote-heavy Toronto, Montreal and Halifax effectively determine the outcomes of elections in this country. Nonetheless, Trudeau was always a popular favorite despite his autocratic nature and a clear tendency to abuse his office. Trudeau is working to remake Canada in his own tarnished image. He can do no other. That is who he is.” February 20th, 2022 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
The deaths of those whom you have met and influenced you for the better is a kick in the gut, a punch on the nose and reminder that cancer really, really sucks. And that is the sort of sentence that the late P J O’ Rourke, literary jester, mocker of fashionable nostrums, lover of fast cars and travel to dangerous places, could have written. I met Mr O’Rourke about a decade ago, in what was the aftermath of the 2008 financial smash. He was charming company (my wife was bowled over by him – you have to watch these silver-tongued Irishmen) and retained the fizz that I recall from his coruscating book, Republican Party Reptile. I read that, I think, in around 1989, and then got my hands on anything he wrote. When he became a traveling correspondent for RollingStone magazine (a fact that today strikes one as impossible, such is the tribalism of our culture), I followed his columns closely. Parliament of Whores, written in the early 1990s and on the cusp of the Bill Clinton decade, stands the test of time as a brilliantly funny takedown of Big Government. Then came classics such as Eat The Rich and All The Trouble In The World. I don’t quite think he kept the standard of searing wit + commentary at that level into the later 90s and into the current century. He did “serious stuff” with an amusing turn, such as a fine book about Adam Smith (he discusses it here) and could turn on the brilliance, but I think some of the energy had fallen off. He was a Dad with all the responsibilities that brings, and younger and less funny and more aggressive voices began to dominate the noise level in the public square. (Or maybe that is a sign that I am getting old, ahem.) O’Rourke, to the anger of some, wasn’t a Trump fan, and said so. He moved quite more explicitly libertarian, having a gig at the CATO Institute think tank. By his early 70s, I did not read or hear much of his doings, and that was a shame in the age of Greta, Cancel Culture, “Save the NHS”, Great Resets, Chinese nastiness and the Keto Diet. (I am kidding slightly about the last point.) P J O’Rourke’s death saddens me as much as did that of two other fine men whom I met over the years and who died from cancer over the past couple of years: Brian Micklethwait and Sir Roger Scruton. They were all very different men, but they shared a common love of liberty, a mischievous wit and a hatred of cant. (See an essay here by Brian about O’Rourke’s essay on the wonders of fast cars and how Brian saw some of the same lessons from the innovations around music tech.) I will miss P J O’Rourke and his chuckling, optimistic and sane voice. And I will miss the chance to share another whisky and cigar with him too. February 16th, 2022 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The politicians’ challenge is to wrest well-functioning energy and financial markets back from a financial, activist and media class that seems unshaken by the anticonsumption, income-redistribution miseries their agenda is inflicting. Culture war, indeed.” February 11th, 2022 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have been snaffling up the new series, Reacher, based on the hugely popular Jack Reacher novels of UK-born author Lee Child. They have become classics, as classic as the Travis McGee novels of John D Macdonald. (McGee lives in a boat, in Fort Lauderdale, and those novels are set in the 60s. Wonderful stuff.) Anyway, a new Amazon Prime series is out. Already, I detect a certain discomfort among some highfalutin types that the main character, played by Alan Ritchson, lacks “depth”. Ah, not enough politics, or angst, or regret at wasting the bad guys. Plus he seems quite a draw for the ladies. In other words, Reacher is solid, heterosexual, no-messing entertainment like a traditional Western, and you can just imagine how well that goes down in certain quarters. Anyway, I left this comment on a Facebook thread:
February 11th, 2022 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
“So too is the Tory party a tragic paradox. It is led by a professional optimist, but weighed down with an almost superstitious pessimism, as commentators prophesy a shift in the “natural political cycle”. It believes in individual free will, but has surrendered to the apocalyptic terrors of climate change, and the inevitability of welfarism in an ageing society. It is repulsed by radicalism, but champions Net Zero and draconian lockdowns to stay in vogue with certain voters.” – Sherelle Jacobs.. She is writing in the Daily Telegraph (£). February 9th, 2022 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality.” – Johns Hopkins University, in a recent overview of the impact of lockdowns in handling COVID-19. JH is not some sort of fringe group. Big cheese billionaires such as Michael Bloomberg give oodles of their money to the place. Its standing as a place for medical research is very high. In the very early days of covid, when information was only starting to come out and when some of the figures looked horrible, lockdowns for a few weeks might have been defensible, much as how one reacts often swiftly to a threat and learns to dial down the reaction later as more data comes in. But that didn’t happen, and in part because of a dangerous inertia, a manipulation of sentiment, and even the idea in some minds that locking down whole populations for months on end might be a quite good thing in its own right. The trashing of the Swedish approach, the demonisation of the Great Barrington Declaration, are all part of this. Apologies: Link now fixed. February 7th, 2022 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The pandemic tempted governments and their elite allies to treat citizens as passive objects to be dictated to, bullied and coerced en masse—an attitude not unlike that found in China, Cuba and North Korea—instead of as active thinking subjects with whom government is in partnership. With few exceptions (the Nordic countries are the best examples), governments failed to find ways to affirm that despite the pandemic, citizens were still individuals imbued with inalienable rights and independent moral standing. This is, after all, how most people see themselves in modern society—as free autonomous beings rather than as laboratory rats in a series of social science experiments.” – Arthur Herman, writing in the Wall Street Journal ($). Herman is the author of excellent books about the Scotland’s contributions to the world, the Royal Navy, and philosophy. February 1st, 2022 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Not only is it impossible to find the climate change satire in Mr. McKay’s movie that he claims is there. Alas, there’s no market for parodying the aspects most in need of parody. Millions of us have grown too comfortable pronouncing ourselves passionate about a problem we don’t bother to understand. Our politicians have stopped asking whether policies advanced in the name of climate change (e.g., electric cars) would actually have an effect on climate change. A certain kind of Harvard left-winger won’t countenance any proposal that doesn’t also fight capitalism, racism and patriarchy. A cadre of scientists make a profession of believing whatever the media needs them to believe. They are easily recognized because they employ the modifier “existential” for a climate problem that doesn’t actually threaten human existence. In this sense, “Don’t Look Up” fails not on its own terms, but on the terms its director foists on it, because no movie would be brave enough to take on the shibboleths that have subsumed the climate debate. – Holman W Jenkins Jnr, Wall Street Journal ($) He is referring to the Netflix film Don’t Look Up. January 30th, 2022 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
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