Romanticizing the past is fear of future irrelevance

In so many ways, we are all in deadly danger due to … romanticism. Especially idealized and flat-out wrong notions about history.

Elsewhere, I talk about how the romantic side of humans… imagining and fantasizing wishes or nightmares, envisioned in vivid, luscious subjectivity… is an essential human trait! We’d be a drab, impoverished species without that rich, inexhaustible realm of delusion. Indeed, I make my living catering to it, selling imaginary trips of high vividness...

...delusions that are openly and honestly sold as delusions.  

Nevertheless, I argue here – and in Vivid Tomorrows  -- that delusion can also wreak utter hell. Across 6000 years of horrific misrule that we call “history,” our romantic figments have justified an endless parade of horrors.

And hence, running an actual civilization calls for something better. 

Let me make clear: all strains of human life, including politics, are rife with delusions! And alhough I am about to dive into the way that many of our neighbors have  gone particularly loco… I also avow that there are crazy romantics infesting and doing great harm, on my own political 'side.' I inveigh about those preening idiots, from time to time.

 But still… well… we must prioritize. One thing at a time?

Take the Mad Right’s relentless incantation-fetish about the 1950s, an era when – for sure – middle class white guys felt they were on top.  Though – um – even they, in vast majority, voted Democrat! Back then, the Greatest Generation guys remembered how FDR et. al. rescued the nation from previous, monstrous stupidities -- like an earlier effort by rich lords and inheritance brats to re-establish feudalism.  Those veterans, bolstered by New Deal policies and the GI Bill, set in motion the greatest surge in productivity and prosperity any nation ever saw.

Still, that unparalleled growth and progress was incremental and comparative! It was a build toward better days, not a culmination or lost paradise. Indeed, YOU have a duty, in case any of you ever face romantics who actually actually claim that America was a better place in the 1950s!  

If you run into that utter garbage, here is your ammo for shooting down that bald-faced lie-travesty. And yes, I mention not only FDR and Ike, but also utter the words Jonas Salk!  

== The cult memes keep flowing ==

Want another madness of the gone-loopy U.S. right? It’s one that infests all forms of conservatism. (Though sure, some portions of the left have their own bad habits.) Yes, it is rife even among conservatives who (sanely) despise Donald Trump. 

You've seen me talk about it before. But I'm going to keep hammering this as a lonely Cassandra, until I see someone out there joining me in denouncing a dangerously infectious madness.

It’s called cyclical history, and it is noxiously rampant now across the American right. See where I shred that grotesque fantasy-twaddle here.  

== Originalism Sin ==

Here's another one. Rising to a higher – though still dismal – intellectual plain, there’s a fetish among the dopey shills at AEI, Heritage and Federalist Society called originalism. It is the core rationalized excuse offered by the John Roberts majority for easily half of the jibbering-awful Supreme Court judgements they have shoved down our throats, in recent years. 

“The Founders clearly intended…”

Seriously? That is the argument? 

My friend Joseph Carroll offers three items that may rattle originalist cages. One I have seen elsewhere, but two of them not.

1. "I recently read that through most of the 19th century, there was largely no control of immigration, and immigrants were allowed to vote as soon as they arrived. 

Hence, under originalism, should we go back to both of those policies, and discard any later court decisions that justified limits on immigration and immigrant voting? 

2. "George Washington hated political parties. And I think they have no status in the Constitution. 

Hence, should an originalist want to preclude political parties from imposing any constraints on congressional procedures?

3. "Thomas Jefferson was a key original, but an anti-originalist in many ways. He wrote an essay to Madison in 1789 on the theme: "Earth belongs in usufruct to the living."  He spells out various implications, including a constitution not remaining valid once the new generation outnumbers the old who were alive when it was established. And he saw no validity for debts lasting long enough to saddle later generations with them. Using new life expectancy data, he decided that 19 years was a reasonable limit. That may be partly why he wondered about whether one needed a revolution every 20 years (as Mao tried!), and the 17 year validity of patents. (I presume that might also have to be true for copyrights.)"

To which I answer... hmmmm!

== Romanticizing the father of liberal enlightenment… as an apologist for oligarchy! ==

I know and like many libertarians - such as those who help run the Freedom Fest gathering, at which I used to speak occasionally... before the movement was entirely bought and suborned by Steve Forbes and other inheritance caste oligarchs, whose top priority is to prevent self-styled libertarian folks from ever waking up from the lord-worshipping trance.

... along with many others who cling to old loyalties, despite being nauseated by Trump, they repeat these magic words.... 

“I know that Republicans have gone insane… but … but democrats are worse!  

"THAT’S the ticket!  Despite all the proof to the contrary, democrats are even worse!” 

It's a koolaid incantation that gets repeated over and over, again and again, to excuse being complicit with the forces of restored feudalism.

Back to Adam Smith...

The ‘libertarian philosopher’ about whom I keep reminding folks - Adam Smith - pushed the one viable alternative to 6000 years of feudal lordship-stupidity. The alternative of fecund-flat-fair-open-transparent market competition by the widest range of healthy, educated, confident and unafraid competitors. 

Smith made clear that the chief enemy of such creatively competitive markets has almost never been ‘socialists!' Especially not the Rooseveltean or Scandinavian styles of limited socialism – e.g. efforts to uplift poor children, turning them into healthy, educated and confident competitors. The part that creates fecund market competition with the maxim “stop wasting talent!”

Indeed, the trait that has made today’s Mad Right -- and a majority of self-styled ‘libertarians’ – turn their backs on Smith is his savage indictments of oligarchic-aristocratic cheating by inheritance brats, the bane on both freedom and markets across 99% of the last 6000 years. 

… a malediction that now has surpassed French Revolution levels of wealth disparity and competition-suppression and cheating. 

Smith’s caustic denunciations of rentier-caste corruption – and the American Founders’ revolution against precisely that caste – plus later history’s hugely successful liberal rebellions against feudal slave-holders and then Gilded Age titans – led to today’s ironic desperation by shill orgs like Heritage and AEI and the GOP  to avoid ever mentioning that name.

Adam Smith.

A 'questionnaire on ideology'... The Great 'Libertarian' Hypocrisy... and Strategic Reserves of Oil etc.

First a blast about old older piece of mine that still may be (I've been told) a fast-track to at least some kinds of wisdom. 

My “Questionnaire on Ideology” is even more pertinent now than ever, allowing you to probe some assumptions and drivers that may underlie a lot of your own beliefs. Certainly, you'll come away with better understanding of what drives others, including both foes and allies!  

I promise at least one "Huh!' insight. More likely three or four!

Possibly as many as ten.

Okay, we're doing several riffs in the political realm, this time. Starting with a quick question: 

Why, oh why, has Pres. Biden's Attorney General not yet primly and judiciously, but firmly, UN-redacted Bill Barr's bowdlerized version of the Mueller report? ... And changed the insane 'advisement' of the Office of Legal Counsel that a sitting President cannot face legal action? (Replace it with 'slow' accountability, where a sitting President may not be distracted by legal troubles more than ten hours a week. But no one is above the law!)

On to this weekend's posting. Further down, I'll offer some observations about dry matters like strategic reserves of things like oil and Helium and metals... and why that one sub-topic, alone, illustrates the total and irreversible corruption of one of the U.S. political parties.  

But first... 

== Ah those libertarians ==

Lately - as it does - the Question of libertarianism has come up again.

I used to speak now and then at Freedom Fest, back before the Libertarian Movement became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Steve Forbes, AEI, Cato, Heritage, United Russia, the House of Saud, the Kochs and the world aristocratic cabal. Their latest catch-phrase? 

"The world is turning increasingly authoritarian. One thing that can keep us free? Creative destruction." 

I agree! Till they go on to scream that the only threat is government bureaucrats. Riiiiight. Shall we look to who is subverting us right now, and with what goals? 

Is it half a million mostly-sincere (sometimes a bit cloying) civil servants? A 'threat' that was never once mentioned by Adam Smith or by the U.S. Founders?

Or might freedom and competition be endangered by the same force that subverted or crushed those fine things for 6000 years? A recurring flaw in human nature that was denounced by Adam Smith and the Founders? I refer to the ever-returning pestilence of oligarchic cheating by inheritance brats who owned nearly everything already, but pushed oppressive schemes to own the rest? From 'divine' kings and lords to plutocrats conniving to give their lazy sons ownership over everyone else.

Right now....RIGHT NOW(!!) ... I ask you to name one exception across 60 centuries, other than the Enlightenment Experiment that you owe everything.

In fact, Adam Smith recommended civil servants as a counterweight to owner-rentier oligarchy! Hence that is one (of many) reasons why 'libertarians' almost never mention the words "Adam Smith" or "competition," anymore.

How much respect should we give a 'movement' that claims to love human freedom and competition... while letting itself be suborned to do the bidding of the ancient enemies of both?

A "Freedom Fest" that ignores the age-old enemy of freedom is - at best - a stunning irony. At worst, it is among the greatest, sell-out hypocrisies in all the world.

I'll come back, at the end, with a checklist of challenges for anyone using the word 'libertarian,' to see if they, he or she or wei are the real thing.

== Strategic reserves ==

Another lie judged false by PolitiFact: "Biden's war on American energy caused this crisis (in oil prices) and his only response has been to drain our strategic petroleum reserve." 

Oh, it's true that JoBee 'drained' the US strategic petroleum reserve to lower levels. But... well... all right... let's parse this out.

When oil/gasoline prices skyrocketed, Biden sold oil from the reserve, it's true. An action which: 

  (1) helped reverse the price climb for consumers (it worked) and 

  (2) made the US Treasury a lot of money, selling at high prices! 

Profit which he thereafter used to buy oil when the panic ended, to refill the reserve at LOW prices. 

It's called "Buy low and sell high." Adam Smith would approve. But today's Mad Right hates Adam Smith! (And he would certainly reciprocate, despising their feudalism-loving butts.) 

Democrats always do this during oil price swings. Obama and Clinton did the buy low and sell high thing too. Using the strategic reserve to both soften swings and to make the taxpayer billions in profits.

What do Republicans always do? They sell from our reserves at LOW-bottom prices to pals. The Bushes did it several times. Under Trump, the world's only large Helium reserve was sold off to pals for almost nothing. And now there's almost none to be had! Those who need Helium (e.g. for science or medical equipment) must pay those insider GOP pals an arm and a leg. And Party City blames this in part for going out of business.

In other words, anyone who believes 'conservative' pretensions at actually believing what they preach is a fool. And I have a standard wager on offer that Democrats are always more fiscally responsible than Republicans on matters of deficits and public debt. Always.

Please, oh please, step up with escrowed wager stakes on that.

== A final note on libertarians ==

I know these folks... in part because I have a reflexive dread of too much power accumulating in the hands of ANY power center! A reflex called Suspicion of Authority (Soa) that pervades nearly all American mythology!  

As I describe in VIVID TOMORROWS: Science Fiction and Hollywood, a baseline worry about oppression by elites is reasonable. And yes, SoA toward bureaucrats is worth discussing! 

In better times, when we aren't in an incited phase 8 of the US Civil War, Americans of left or right share the same passionate SoA worry, only aimed at different elites they suspect of grabbing power. And at some level, they all are right.

Alasm this reflex can tumble into cultism. Indeed, I have decrypted the cult of Ayn Rand, in ways that (I believe) no one else has. Those followers of a mad Neo-Marxist heretic used to be a side fringe of libertarianism, but it suits the world cabal of plutocrat looters to promote this pack of dogmatic loons.

It seems there's little to salvage. Still, let me conclude this longer-blog with yet another attempt to make things crystal clear.

I believe a 'libertarian' might be a non-hypocrite if they:

 

1. acknowledge that flat-fair-open COMPETITION - by the largest number and variety of knowing and unafraid participants - is the soul of productive creativity and the justifying practical outcome of freedom. That word, seldom mentioned anymore by 'libertarians', should be the heartbeat of the movement.

 

2. avow that freedom's worst enemies across 6000 years - the destroyers of markets and freedom denounced by Adam Smith - were principally armed bullies, owner-rentier lords, kings and inheritance brats, who used wealth and power to cheat. And that cabals of such oligarchs are a principal threat, to this day! And that Smith recommended calibrated use of civil servants and cheat-reducing law - even wealth levelling - as partial remedies. 

 

3. set a high priority to eliminating poverty, abuse or rights-limitations of any child on Earth - since those crimes waste talent! Talent that might otherwise deliver that child to market-participation, competition-ready.

 

Hence, feeding all poor kids NOW, while providing basic rights and education, must be a high priority for any libertarion who actually belives in market competition. And if the mass-bulk solutions to child poverty include tax supported interventions by 'government,' then libertarians should support that, while looking inventively for other viable solutions to replace or improve state interventions, What no sincere libertarian would do is whine or bitch about those near-term fixes - especially because of item #6, below - until alternative ways to rescue talent are ready.

 

4. that there is such a thing as a 'commons' meriting protection and preservation, including the natural world and the needs of future generations, and these are legitimate matters for negotiation between libertarians offering market solutions and liberals demanding state-organized approaches.

 

5. that there is plenty to discuss amid further negotiation among people of goodwill, over how to further our unique historical experiment in freedom and creative cooperation/competition and mutual respect. But there are forces in the world - hostile powers, cheaters, criminals, oligarchs and predators, who would act to destroy our enlightenment experiment. And hence some degree of united effort to thwart such forces is justified. 

 

6. and finally that no other human civilization ever produced so many libertarians! Especially including those millions - even graduates of public schools - who declare their own rambunctious independent mindedness and hostility to oppressive authority. Even if many of those folks aim their SoA ire at different authority figures than the libertarians happen to choose.

 

None of the above is meant to imply that libertarians should cease their reflex of skepticism toward statist 'meddling'! That reflex has many justifications. It merits a place at the table for discussion and argumentation and negotiation. 

However, it does call for libertarians who actually want a world of creative-competitive markets etc. to note those state endeavors that preserve talent, enhance flat-fairness and preserve essential commons and public safety... and distinguish those justifiable activities from other statist meddlings that seem less well justified by #1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

 

Those who claim to be pro-freedom and pro-creative-competition, who do not avow to the blatantly obvious facts of #1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are shrug-dismissible as tools of oligarchy, whatever masturbatory ‘freedom-incantations they recite into a mirror.

Poison fruit and why libertarians are tricked into hating civil servants more than tyrants.

I'll start with tools to pry libertarians out of fanaticism into negotiation. But if that bores you, skip ahead to where I demolish the fundamental premise of the current Senate hearings trying to demonize the FBI.

Note. Midweek I'll have a very important posting.

== Putting fundamentals to libertarians. Start with architecture! ==

A couple of months back I posted about how one of the recent campaigns by the New Confederacy was to rail against - and even crush - modern architecture. The far right's campaign includes demands for consistent fealty to Greco-Roman or plantation styles. At the time, I urged folks use this latest MAGA obsession in dealing with followers of Ayn Rand! 

Seriously, read THE FOUNTAINHEAD or watch the movie. (It’s Rand’s best and only bearable work of writing, actually making a few solid points about villainy in art & architecture, while keeping the rants under control.)  In fact, this is a matter of architectural innovation-repression is fundamental religion to Randians, spearing their very hearts!

This one fact alone - that MAGAts are ranting against creative freedom, exactly like The Fountainhead's villain Ellsworth Toohey, to demand orthodoxy-slavery of design — could actually sway some members of that wing of libertarians to realize something crucial… that confederates and inheritance brats and corporate looters are not 'lesser evils' than mere liberals. Where they are unmoved by the fact that Blue states are ending the damned Drug War, or that entrepreneurship flourishes under democrats and never Republicans... they cannot refuse to face this, when confronted!

== It can be worth the effort ==

Oh, most of us have libertarian friends. These range from some real freeping loonies all the way to truly sincere folks who see themselves fighting for the unique benefits of freedom and individualism, just as you are — though fearing Big Brother tendencies among bureaucrats. (And can you honestly assert that fear is always wrong?) 

There is a way to approach such folks. It’s not impossible! But like confronting most rigidly sanctimony-based systems, you need agility and judo. You start by making clear that you got no problems with the basic premise of many libertarianisms (and there are many)… the Adam Smith premise that competition is the greatest creative force in the universe, and hence that the widest variety of empowered, confident, knowledgeable and unafraid individuals and teams can - with competitive eagerness - come up with the most and best solutions to most problems.

Now comes the insane part. Almost no “libertarians” today ever actually use the C-Word… “competition”… anymore! They refuse to glance at 6000 years of the horror show called human history, and ask why flat-fair-open-creative competition failed in almost every other society, across all those dark eras. They don’t look and deliberately remain history ignoramuses, because any attention at all to facts would show that the destroyers of fair competition across 99% of those eras were kings, lords, priests, thugs and inheritance brats… almost never socialists or “bureaucrats.”

Oh, the latter can be another version of the same thing, power hungry mostly-males trying to build inheritable empires by suppressing others. The Soviet Union was essentially a czarist despotism slathered over with a thin veneer of egalitarian/socialist symbolism and incantations.

But to fixate only on bureaucrats, while ignoring the real enemies of freedom and competition across all those centuries?

That’s… just… stooopid. 

In fact, we got our spectacular (and spectacularly rare) renaissance of freedom, science, justice and vast productivity because we broke up centralizations of power and used bureaucrats carefully (as Adam Smith recommended) to make sure all children got at least a minimum of food and education and hence could actually start to… compete! 

Yes, compete even with the sons of the rich, those spoiled brats like Trump & Kushner who even Ayn Rand always portrayed as her chief villains. Let's repeat that. The top villains in every Rand tale weren't socialist saps but elite cheaters and inheritance brats. It's in your own sacred tomes, guys.

Dig it, Adam Smith would approve of most liberal “programs” that increase the number of competitors and lower the number of ignorant serfs. If it increases the number of skilled, competent and confidents competitors, it should be deemed "good" even by libertarian standards. And yes, that means a majority of 'liberal programs' should be deemed libertarian-good… though libertarians are welcome to offer alternative ways to achieve the same ends, with less complex bureaucratic meddling. (In that goal, I deem myself to be a libertarian!)

 And hence libertarians are utter hypocrites if they favor oligarchs over liberals. 

The latter differ with you over how to fill society with millions of vibrant competitors. The former disagree with the goal and will crush it with all their might.

== Their last refuge... The Fruit of a Poisoned Tree ==

The current Senate hearings of hypocrite (and blackmail victim) Lindsey Graham and other GOP shills is just more of the same baseless distraction. The essence is this: The FBI counter-intelligence division found plausible evidence that Russia was waging many kinds of information war on the U.S. including election meddling. The record shows that some agents expressed an eagerness to hunt down evidence of collaboration with those efforts by influential Americans. Because those officers expressed eagerness to find such evidence... all evidence that they subsequently found - including all proof of crimes - should be tossed out!

Yes, that is what the whole and entire 'logic' of the Foxite defense of the GOP and Trump amounts to. They should never have looked at all, because the investigators were biased! They wanted the investigation to succeed, therefore anything they found - including evidence of crimes and treason - must be tossed!

In essence, instead of defending the GOP and Trump for their actions, it is entirely "Don't look! Nobody look! Tax returns, Deutsche Bank, Russia, blackmail... don't anybody look!"

If your life depended on it, you cannot explain that logic. So it's never spelled out that explicitly. But syllogistically that is what it all boils down to.  "Never look!"  And the Roberts Court has supported ending 240 years of Congressional oversight. 

That is not how the principal of fruit from a poison tree works. And dig it, that is the ONLY straw that Fox has been able to clutch. And they extend it to mean: “We don’t want to know about any crimes that these FBI ‘deepstaters” might have been looking into!”

That's your "Obamagate." People charged with finding out if a crime is being committed... looked.  On receiving intel reports of secret dealings between the soon-to-be National Security Advisor and Kremlin spy handlers, they committed the criminal felony of glancing for fire under tons of smoke. They looked. Oh no! Criminal FBI!

But... but if there's no 'collusion' why the desperation not to let us - and congress - see the Deutsche Bank records, which clearly will show billions of Russian oligarch money flowing not just to Trump but McConnell and dozens of others? 

How can you side with obstruction of standard subpoenas and witnesses and 250 years of congressional oversight... After cheering for 25 years and half a billion dollars of "clinton investigations"?

"Investigations" that - after 25 years grilling every single Clinton aide and accountant and dog walker - offering millions of Koch dollars for 'whistle blowers'  - wound up finding nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch.  The most-probed humans in history are proved to have been among the most-clean.

So now you defend ending 250 years of oversight when the flashlight is showing mountains of Republican turpitude? Why? What's the cult hiding?

Covid misconceptions. Billionaires don't donate to Biden! And a letter about covid to "Dear libertarians...."

Before talking covid... you know that for years I've warned that a trumped-up "war" with Iran would serve the interests of all our nation's enemies, from the Republican Party to the Iranian mullahs, themselves, and above all Vladimir Putin, who would finally rake in all the chips. I've long praised the US Navy for calmly defusing one provocation after another, avoiding a "Tonkin Gulf" (and you all still do need to stay alert, also knowing the words "Gleiwitz" and "Reichstag Fire.")
So, why am I not beating that drum now? Because our military, intel and other officers have eyes and brains. Given that our entire 'deep state' is on red alert against efforts by Putin/Tehran/Fox/Trump to trigger an October War, what other tricks are possible?
We don't know! That's why I keep saying some zillionaire - instead of just joining the herd donating to the Biden campaign - should try some of the special things I suggested here.
Especially the "Henchman of the Year" Prize, to lure whistle-blowers and tattlers into the open. There is absolutely no better use of a million dollars, than to staunch the nefarious schemes and cheats that are right now hatching in preparation. It's the henchmen who can offer proof! And if nothing else, this would make the plotters distrust their henchmen.
Well, there is one other thing, that could do even more good. Joe Biden could start talking about pardoning the first few to step forward from among the hundreds likely now being blackmailed into treason by the KGB. Whatever they are being blackmailed for, any of them who turned the tables on their blackmailers would be salvageable 'heroes' - at least enough to find some forgiveness and a stairway out of hell. Someone in Biden's campaign should contemplate how good that would look, even if it spurred no defections. But if it did...
And yes, all this and more is in the book.
== Cautionaries about Covid/Covfefe-19 == 

As you might guess, I'm very busy these days, on often one podcast/ interview/ conference a day, sometimes two, even three. Along the way I've learned a lot. About how vaccines work, for instance, and how it's not enough just to make antibodies, or even 'neutralizing antibodies" that are effective against a viral attack. 

Look up Antibody-based Enhancement (Ab), where the victim's immune system manages to stymie one viral strain, only for the next variant to hijack those antibodies and use them as trojan horses, or spears, to attack and invade more fiercely than ever! While rare, this does happen to some promising vaccines, especially in Dengue, where the first wave can be mild and the second devastatingly lethal. Indeed, discovering such potentially dangerous quirks is one reason we have large scale trials before releasing vaccines.

Other immunological side effects happen. With the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine that Gerald Ford rushed out, the Guillame-Barré side effect was so nasty it gave birth to the current anti-vaxxer movement. Anything similar with a covid vaccine could spur vaxxers to plunge us back into the dark ages... 

...like those execrable years before the Greatest Generation saved mine from Polio and Diptheria, And yes, before Jonas Salk became the most-beloved American, terrified parents kept children indoors, away from friends and swimming pools, all summer long. 

What? You think this was our first quarantine? (Salk was the first American to approach the adoration that the Greatest Generation gave previously to Franklin... Delano... Roosevelt.)

All of which is to say that things are more complicated than reflex dogma. Not only is it dangerous to rush out the first vaccine. It's also foolish to ignore the fact that many of today's covid-asymptomatics (35%) and shruggers (the 60% who supposedly shrug it off after two weeks spent moaning in bed) are revealed to have damage afterwards in their kidneys, livers, skin, the G.I. tract and nerves. 

Those Ancillary Effects are what terrify me, since many remain hidden. even now. "Symptom relapse" is another serious problem and everyone I've met online who was infected reports having it. And there are suspected cases of "lurking" -- where the virus seems completely gone, only to spew forth later.

(Note, Spanish researchers have just put out an alert to watch out for MOUTH RASHES, which are much more dangerous than "Covid Toes," since they can make you a super-spreader. And yes I still try to scratch and sniff a lemon, daily.)

"Flattening the Curve" isn't just about making sure we have enough ICU beds, though that has saved innumerable lives. (I was involved across March-April in efforts to design DIY ventilators.)  Curve flattening is also about giving science enough time to catch up and provide situational awareness...

...something we would have had, if testing had been prioritized as a matter of national urgency, instead of sabotaged with suspicious relentlessness. And now the Trump White House is railing against a stimulus bill including money for accelerated testing and contact tracing! Consider how only Putin and his carnival barker would want to sabotage us that way.

Four months or so ago -- about the era of Gilgamesh -- back when we thought this might be just a 'bad flu' restricted to problems with lung fluid excess -- some commentators suggested "this will rock our complacency and get us taking the pandemic threat more seriously, so we'll be better prepared when something really bad hits." Well, this has proved to be worse than a 'bad flu"... 

...but that logic still holds. Some of my past sci fi has been more pertinent than I’d want! My Hugo-nominated story “The Giving Plague” deals with our complex relationships with viruses and such, including the several paths a parasite can go down, in “negotiating” with us hosts. Get it free at on my website.  

== Covid concerns that relate to... Libertarians! ==

Okay, all of that leads to the Great Swedish Experiment in going for "herd immunity," a notion much beloved of some libertarians I know, leading to the latest meme from the White House. When it didn't 'just go away,' and after a dozen other trial balloons, now it's "we're just going to have to live with it."

National Review carried an article extolling wonderful Sweden, and well.... the current condition of National Review has William F. Buckley spinning in his grave so fast that he's generating megawatts of good, clean electricity for Connecticut. (He and Barry Goldwater would have been enraged by the current right's all-out war against science and every other fact-centered profession.) 

Still, it is important to read views that dissent from the near-universal opinion I've seen expressed by sage researchers - that Sweden's experiment is a disaster. 

Consider using the standard formula for epidemics, when a disease has an R(0) replication ratio around TWO, you can make do with herd immunity if HALF of the population is fully resistant and non-contagious. 

But when R(0) gets above FIVE, as does Sars-CoV-2 when there's indoor mingling, you need 80% of the population to be fully resistant and non-contagious to get herd-immunity. And that's if every asymptomatic-infected and shrugger is fully immune and no longer spreading. It ignores the way super-spreaders appear to reach R(0) = 20+.

As for the memic aspect to this, as you know, I am an Adam Smith acolyte who believes that there should always be adult-libertarian voices at the table, questioning government over-reach. What troubles me is the reflex to assume that the major threats to liberty right now are only nanny-state bureaucrats, when human history offers a very different warning. 

Even if we include as "socialist" the murderously oppressive USSR (which in fact was Czarist+ fascist Russia using different symbols and incantations), even so, far less than 0.01% of the generations who suffered oppression had their freedoms and entrepreneurial options crushed by socialism of any kind. The vast majority of our ancestors across the last 6000 years were oppressed by one force... oligarchic-lordly inheritance cheaters of the kind who Adam Smith denounced and the U.S. Founders fought.

Seriously, how can any sincere defender of freedom and markets ignore that dismal tendency in human nature? For those who have elite wealth and influence to use it to cheat instead of letting others compete fairly? A libertarianism that ignores that absolutely central societal flaw - and Adam Smith's remedies -- is not a movement that's anywhere near as cerebral or honest as it thinks it is. 

Nor is it scientific or helpful in a crisis such as this, yammering about 'freedom to not wear a mask' while meekly obeying laws against nudity. Oy.

The Libertarian Dilemma - and yes, Papa Heinlein would be pissed

Before getting to my libertarian jeremiad, a couple of items.

Know someone who might make a good candidate for office? Not just Congress, but even more important are state legislature seats in states that might get flipped out of gerrymander hell, if we get a big enough wave? Here’s a primer. 

Civics and the Future of Democracy: Yep.  Many - including Richard Dreyfuss - have pushed for re-establishment of civics curriculum in US schools. I agree. But what is never mentioned is how civics requirements at university would be a spectacular weapon in international culture war. A million foreign students in the U.S. would be exposed to insidious time bomb ideas they would then take home.  Oh, and our kids would be better citizens. That too.

And yes, much about this in Polemical Judo. 

== Again, the libertarian dilemma ==

I wince when many of you speak up about libertarianism, because, generally, folks don't have a clue what they are talking about, picturing smarmy-smug, lapel-grabbing Ayn-Randroids who rave their solipsistic superiority without a scintilla of life accomplishment to back it up .  Yes, those irritating yammerers exist... as do the incredibly similar far-lefty flakes and sanctimony junkies who wreak harm on every cause they claim to support. Neither group represents anything cogent. (See my thorough take-down of Rand-ism.)

(Key difference. Liberalism contains a ditsy far-left. Todays entire right consists of toxic delusion.)

I know the variants of libertarianism pretty well, from genuine followers of the soulful and insightful enlightenment genius, Adam Smith, to those reciting Murray Rothbard's hypnotic catechisms and the followers of Milton Friedman, whose 'advice' led to reducing the ROI investment horizons of American business from ten years, to five... to three months. I even witnessed - almost first-hand - the birth of the neo-feudalism movement -- incel-ingrate monsters who insist they would be top dogs in a medievalist world, such as I portrayed in The Postman. 

But it is the middle of that spectrum -- decent folks who sincerely believe that they are championing in freedom -- where some real opportunities... and dangers... lie.

In fact, I've just been invited for the sixth time to speak at a major libertarian gathering... that's twice the number of times I've been invited to major Democratic ones. The most remarkable (to me) mainstream libertarian trait is that maybe a quarter of them exhibit a willingness to argue and enjoy a good tussle, and many of those wind up on the speaker committees. Hence, I get invited back, even after raising uncomfortable points...

...like the fact that the core word for the entire movement should be competition, the greatest creative force in the universe. Competition provides freedom with all the pragmatic justification it needs, exposing many of the vague, moralizing shoutings of the "F-Word" as both unnecessary and often sanctimonious excuses for its opposite.

I'll get back to that in a moment. But first a necessary-contemporary riff.

== Choose a different 'second choice" ==

The one thing you always hear at these gatherings is "I hate both Republican and Democrat parties! Liberals want freedom in the bedroom and Republicans want freedom in the boardroom. I want both and won't compromise!"

Except they do. The Koch brothers bought and paid for the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, top whorehouses pushing that aristocratic hierarchy means freedom. Steve Forbes threw decades of lavish parties at libertarian get togethers with one aim... to ensure the GOP will remain categorized as "less-bad than Democrats," so that a couple of million libertarians will hold their noses and keep checking GOP boxes in the voting booths. They know that if these folks ever do see how they've been had, they'll influence millions more to stop supporting the party of oligarchy.

Okay. The cliché is "Liberals want freedom in the bedroom and Republicans want freedom in the boardroom." Except... is it true? It is! If you define "boardroom" to mean a narrow, incestuous caste of 5000 CEO golfing pals appointing each other onto corporate boards, allocating winners and losers and dividing up markets, re-creating the same tediously stupid feudal owner-lord pyramid that repressed enterprise in 99% of societies for 6000 years. The same oligarchy Adam Smith denounced and that the Founders and the real Tea Party rebelled against.

If instead you want freedom to engage in vigorously creative competitive enterprises in flat-fair markets, then things are different. Democrats promote both. Republicans neither. Period. 

Heck, make that more than an assertion. Let’s bet on it! Deposit $5k in escrow with a reputable law firm so I’ll know I’m not wasting my time with another Kremlin-boy blabbermouth. I'll take your cash, sure.

Hypocrisy test! Illinois is the latest blue state to end the war on pot users - name the reds who are ending the Drug War or criminalization of 'deviance.' The GOP supports assassination to spark war without due process and over the objections of professionals. Monopoly skyrockets under GOP rule... yet libertarians cling to the notion that Republicans are somehow "less-bad" than democrats, under whom deficits decline and at least some efforts are made to encourage market competition.

And hell yes, I prove all of the above in Polemical Judo.

== Is liberal meddling always bad for markets? ==

I said the true test is whether a libertarian - like followers of Adam Smith - wants freedom along with plenty of creative competition... or if they have been suborned to fulminate passionately about a fundamentally unlimited right to property. 

Oh, property rights are important, to the degree they protect our ability to seek Smithian betterment and wealth through creative activities. But like water, air, food, alcohol etc.... all good things become toxic in excess. And the one thing all non-Smithian libertarians refuse to do is look at what propertarianism did to 99% of human societies, across 60 centuries.

What about liberal meddling? All that do-gooder flood of "programs" to help the poor etc. A standard reflex of the right is to declare - against all evidence - that such interventions are counter-productive and hurt those they intend to help. And above all, they undermine our competitive drives.  But Adam Smith knew that for a false incantation and an utter lie, 250 years ago.

Dig it. If an activity markedly increases the number/fraction of people who are liberated from inherited, non-chosen constraints ... if they are freed to engage their talents and work and all pertinent knowledge to compete in open-fair-flat markets... then a burden of proof falls on anyone who claims "that's an assault on freedom!" Even the doyen of capitalist economics, Friedrich Hayek, said the most fundamental need of an "invisible hand" economy is to maximize the number of knowing, empowered and confident market participants, and what better way to maximize that number than by reducing the number of children with malnourished, or empty, or pollution-tainted brains?

And yes, that means libertarians should favor public education, public health, anti-poverty interventions, civil rights and infrastructure development... efforts that are COOPERATIVE, that wind up enhancing COMPETITION. 

While vigorously criticizing specifics of implementation -- proposing less-governmental and less-paternalistic approaches -- any honest libertarian would admit that a baseline of state involvement just makes sense.

== Quote Heinlein at them! ==

Heinlein did! Try reading his prescriptive utopia BEYOND THIS HORIZON, which portrays a wild and woolly competitive future in any realm that involves creativity, but in which his alter ego character says "Of course, food and shelter are free! What kind of people do you take us for?"

Again: Robert Heinlein saw it all in our future - America diving into  “Crazy Years.” Throttle your rightist or libertarian sci fi fans into reading these lines from Papa H! Better-yet, read to them aloud! I tell you, for a select but important subset of our population, there’s nothing more effective. Especially the 3rd excerpt!

“As for ... the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this, our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past.

“It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.”

Heinlein tore into the potential for an alliance of oligarchs and pulpit pounders taking over America... a cabal that would –

“–promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negroism, and a good large dose of anti-‘furriners’ in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening – particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington.”

And yes, see this riff and many like it, in Polemical Judo.

== Arise you AdamSmithian moderates and heroes of enlightnment! ==

Alas, feudalist-oligarchs have used oceans of money -- and whore-shill faux "academes" like Cato and Heritage -- to subsidize a tsunami of invectives shifting the libertarian movement's focus from Competition to the P-Words... utter defense of Property, Power and Privilege, at all cost. This despite the blatant historical fact that 99% of nascent flat-fair-open market systems across all of history were destroyed not by government bureaucrats or do-gooder socialists, but by feudalist-oligarch owner-cheater lords, bent on replacing flat-fairness with inheritance of Power for their sons, who never created any goods or services at all.

The varied oligarchies are uniting against us. Communist hierarchs and "former" communist boyar-mafiosi, petro-sheiks and coal barons, gambling moguls and Wall Street parasites. There are no greater enemies of flat-fair-open competition, which threatens their sons with the worst of all possible fates... having to earn their own way in the world.

Those oligarchs are desperate to maintain this hypnotic trance. They know that libertarians would have influence far beyond their numbers, if they ever rediscovered the C-Word and its fundamentals. Hence, at all of these gatherings, you see giant screens raving against bureaucrats and socialists and nosy lib'ruls... and nothing at all about those who were the foremost Enemies of Freedom across nearly all of the last three hundred generations.

=================

Housekeeping announcement. I was proud of the fact that I was among the last public figures whose blog allowed unmoderated comments. CONTRARY BRIN is one of the oldest blogs extant (from the 1990s) and the comment community is pretty terrific, with a few odd irritant regulars who are sometimes a bit... endearing. But all innocence ends and ours lasted until the 2020s! Moderated comments are a bit slower. Be patient... and fight for a civilization worthy of the stars.