Pope Leo confirmed Rothbardian.

Saturday plans c/o DAISIES (1966) ❤️‍🔥 🍰 Watch Věra Chytilová's radical masterpiece on the Criterion Channel.

Anarchist literature is now evidence of terrorism, according to the government. As is wearing black at a protest, carrying a first aid kit, or using Signal. Horrifying stuff is happening, it's happening quickly, and not nearly enough people are paying attention to it.

It's always a fallacy to go from "anti-Israel does not necessarily mean anti-Semitism" to "anti-Israel necessarily means not anti-Semitism." It's distressing, though not shocking, to see the fallacy spill over from the intra-left context to a way to interpret an actual near-Nazi like Joe Kent.

My two favorite movies of the year ("If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You" and "Blue Moon") were not even nominated for Best Picture. Sad.

Today a jury in Prairieland, TX will decide if the state can imprison people for their beliefs, if the state can criminalize ideas it dislikes, if the state can treat anarchists like terrorists. It's a horrifyingly consequential pivot point in our descent into authoritarianism.

We’ve launched @liberalism.org! It’s a online journal of liberal ideas, exploring the ways liberalism points to a better future and how we can get there, from me and my @theihs.org colleagues @jkuznicki.bsky.social and @uncanonical.net, and feature essays from top scholars, podcasts, and more.

Good piece by my friend @corymassimino.bsky.social reckoning with Murray Rothbard's rather mixed legacy. Cory acknowledges & discusses the worst elements of Rothbard's thought (including gross racism), but he also highlights Rothbard's insights and their relevance to left-libertarians.

"Rothbard is usually viewed as either a right-wing villain or right-wing hero. Often, the right-wing classification has merit. But it’s more complicated than that. People mostly overlook Rothbard’s left-wing tendencies." - @corymassimino.bsky.social c4ss.org/content/61027

I wrote about Rothbard's left-libertarian legacy for his centennial birthday:

I see the 7th George W. Bush administration is going well.

War brings suffering, misery, and ruin. We must never give in to war.

Lung surgery has failed to remove all of my mom's cancer (her eighth bout of it) so now she's pursuing radiation treatments. Any donations, shares, or well wishes are really, really appreciated. Thanks everyone. www.gofundme.com/f/support-je...

"Becoming President to cover up raping children, but running on releasing the very files that expose you" has got to be one of the biggest self-own in history, right?

A+ State of the Union counterprogramming by TCM.

I am thrilled to announce my big new project, Liberalism.org. Coming 3/12. It’s is a journal of liberal ideas, edited by @jkuznicki.bsky.social, with new podcasts from me and @uncanonical.net. It’s a project of @theihs.org, and has a superstar lineup of contributors. Sign up to get notified here:

I saw "The Princess Bride" in theaters the other day and the audience burst into raucous applause twice: first, when Inigo Montoya said "I want my father back, you son of a bitch," and second, when Rob Reiner's name appeared in the credits.

My good friend @michaelzigismund.bsky.social's close family suffered a devastating house fire. Any donations or shares are greatly appreciated. www.gofundme.com/f/helping-th...

This is a very good article by @helenrumbelow.bsky.social on how the Epstein emails shed light on the way hatred of women permeates the thought-to-be private correspondences of powerful men. www.thetimes.com/life-style/c...

The late great Steve Horwitz, less than a month into the first Trump presidency, already fully understanding the shape of things:

I spent two decades arguing with everyone over whether self-aware evil people exist (as opposed everyone having good intentions or rationalizations), and now every day I get proven right on the national stage and it sucks.

This is by far the most cartoonish politics has been in my lifetime. Extremely kind & decent people vs. the absolute dregs of humanity. It continues to baffle me that this is not equally clear to the whole country.

You have the right to record and publicly discuss the conduct and activity of law enforcement, including ICE. That's First Amendment 101. And the federal government can't coerce private companies into censoring speech about ICE, just because it doesn't like what people have to say. LAWSUIT:

I unironically enjoyed the Super Bowl very much last night. The score was close for nearly the entire game and it featured some of the best defensive gameplay I've ever seen. I hope it portends more defensive and low-scoring games next year. Football is just better when everything feels earned.

I appreciate this. I thought I couldn't be surprised anymore. But then here comes the "libertarian" complaining that the real problem with the child rapist oligarch government cover-up is that it's stirring up a witch hunt.

The nothing-to-see-here from some pundits to the Epstein files, and their tisc-tisc-ing at those calling for social consequences for the men who cozied up to him after it was clear to everyone what he was, show how political factionalism and rank contrarianism can stamp out discernment and humanity.

Now I don't think there's great odds that Yarvin/Vance/etc will succeed in their explicit aspiration to just outright abolish all that court stuff, but it is worth noting that said ultimate intention is responsible for why they barely bother to remember the courts still exist.

white flight from the human condition

People underrate how left-wing pro-wrestling fans are. "Sports for theatre kids" as they used to say.

The whole internet turning into digital sleuths combing through the child rapist oligarch files to post their findings on social media while the child rapist oligarch government tries desperately to cover it up is really the ultimate culmination of our current era, isn't it?

Related: A lot of folks think having the maximally cynical read on everything makes them savvy, but a reflexive cynicism is just a kind of inverted naïveté

child rape is the logical endpoint of the rightwing politics of domination, of the reinscription of social hierarchy through the exercise of raw power

"Mr. President, it looks like you raped girls. Do you have a response?" "Why don't you smile more, bitch?"

A big benefit of a liberal society is that it empowers people to drive creepy and abusive men out of polite society and undercuts mechanisms by which those guys make themselves relentlessly toxic presences in people’s lives. Liberalism is freedom of association and non-domination.

The story of our illiberal moment is that a lot of creepy and abusive guys used to be able to get away with acting out their urges on women, minorities, children, and other disempowered groups. Then liberalism empowered those groups to tell them off, and they hate it and turned against liberalism.

This would also be Kane's reaction to "Citizen Kane." There is no greater real world analog for Kane than Trump.

It's not just that, he's also trying to will into existence his wife being talented, his (re-)marrying well, his leading a happy life. It's part of Kane's lifelong aim to will his personal reality into being (which he eventually accomplishes by shrinking his world down to the size of a snow globe).

herbert marcuse wrote that, as nazism increased the range of normal behaviors and beliefs that were considered aberrant and punishable by death, it also permitted behaviors long considered taboo, particularly around sex - incest and pedophilia most notably

the postcolonial reification of indigeneity is another aspect of woke 1 that needs to be jettisoned under woke 2

using "moralist" as a pejorative is a huge red flag unless explicitly narrowly critiquing a specific kind of *conservative* moralism that stigmatizes anodyne deviance (eg sex, drugs, and music as sins) or justifies maximal punitivism for minimal transgression (eg cutting off hands for stealing)

It's more important than ever to think clearly and carefully about conspiracy theories, which is exactly what I tried to do in my latest essay. I truly hope it is of some use in these epistemically challenging times. isonomiaquarterly.com/wp-content/u...

"While ICE is still able to make arrests, the number of people they have so far been able to grab is far lower than what they would have done if the community was slower to organize." - @mutual-a.bsky.social c4ss.org/content/60977

I genuinely have no idea how to convey this to the American people, but I think the biggest impediment to any kind of immigration reform is that people are convinced that "legal" and "illegal" are immutable, intrinsic categories instead of a rapidly-shifting arbitrary constellation of regulations.

fascism's romanticization of suicide combines its nihilism with its nostalgia, its irony with its sentimentality

liberalism is a radical and revolutionary doctrine again

if only there was a term for armed agents of the state who remain anonymous and who you're not allowed to name. police whose identities are secret. give me time, i'll come up with something