“Honestly, what would George Orwell have written about this planet of ours, four decades after that ominous year 1984 passed from his fiction into history? And yes, in case you think that, as in his novel 1984, published in 1949, a year before his death and just as the Cold War (a term he was the first to use in an essay in October 1945) was getting underway, our world, too, seems to be heading for a nightmarish future, I suspect that — were he capable of returning to this planet of ours — he wouldn’t disagree with you for a moment. Phew! Sorry for such a long, complicated sentence, but little wonder given the way our world is now tying itself in knots.” (11/12/24)
“For years, press freedom advocates warned the Biden administration not to hand future authoritarians weapons to wield against their critics in the media. No-one listened, and now we’re all going to face the consequences. But it’s not too late for the Democrats to avert some of the harshest repercussions.” [editor’s note: The Biden administration WERE authoritarians wielding weapons against their critics in the media – TLK] (11/12/24)
“In 1994, Republicans won a sweeping victory that cost Democrats control of the House and Senate for the first time in 42 years. Even the Democratic speaker of the House, Tom Foley, lost as Republicans nabbed an eye-popping 54 seats (along with eight in the Senate). Republicans and conservatives exulted in this historic and, it was widely assumed, permanent political realignment. Two years later, Bill Clinton won re-election with 379 electoral college votes to Bob Dole’s 159. A loss, however painful, is not the end of the world.” (11/12/24)
“The results of the 2024 election have confirmed a reality that is too frequently denied by Democratic Party leaders and strategists: The American working class is angry — and for good reason. They want to know why the very rich are getting much richer, and the CEOs of major corporations make almost 300 times more than their average employees, while weekly wages remain stagnant and 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They want to know why corporate profits soar while companies shut down factories in America and move to low-wage countries. They want to know why the food industry enjoys record breaking profits, while they can’t afford their grocery bills. They want to know why they can’t afford to go to a doctor or pay for their prescription drugs, and worry about going bankrupt if they end up in a hospital. Donald Trump won this election because he tapped into that anger.” (11/12/24)
“Ludwig von Mises had several experiences throughout his life, counted among them when he was drafted and served as an Austro-Hungarian officer in the First World War. Initially, he served as an artillery officer on the Eastern Front, then, for a short time, he was called to Vienna to work in Department 13 (relating to military economy) of the Ministry of War of the Empire of Austria and Hungary.” (11/12/24)
“[I]n an election year in which there was fury from the middle class over how much it costs to get by in today’s America, some observers — especially in the party’s left flank — were appalled at the barely hidden embrace of big money. … a line from Illinois governor and Hilton hotel heir J.B. Pritzker — ‘Take it from an actual billionaire, Trump is rich in only one thing, stupidity’ — caused ‘raucous applause from an audience overjoyed to have found its newest billionaire idol.’ Sirota and others who heard it knew instinctively that this was not a winning message for the party that once dominated American politics in the mid-20th century by turning out the working class, and Tuesday’s results proved them right.” (11/12/24)
“Democrats and their media enablers are trying to make sense of last Tuesday’s election – the biggest shift to the right since Ronald Reagan became president in 1980 – searching for where they went wrong. The good news for the GOP is that they haven’t got a clue. The main disconnect is that they fail to acknowledge that tens of millions of Americans actually like Donald Trump; many even love him. Democrats are so blinded by hatred (there’s a reason that Republicans have coined the TDS label) they literally cannot fathom that Trump is personally popular.” (11/12/24)
“When the Biden administration withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021, many people saw a watershed moment. After two decades of war, American leaders had finally concluded that there was no hope of transforming the Greater Middle East using military force. ‘We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build,’ President Joe Biden said. ‘And it’s the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.’ This humility proved short lived. Over the past year, the United States has found itself drawn into a nation-building fervor once more, this time of a more vicarious sort.” (11/12/24)
“The rise of Christianity is a great puzzle. In 40 AD, there were maybe a thousand Christians. Their Messiah had just been executed, and they were on the wrong side of an intercontinental empire that had crushed all previous foes. By 400, there were forty million, and they were set to dominate the next millennium of Western history. Imagine taking a time machine to the year 2300 AD, and everyone is Scientologist. The United States is >99% Scientologist. So is Latin America and most of Europe. The Middle East follows some heretical pseudo-Scientology that thinks L Ron Hubbard was a great prophet, but maybe not the greatest prophet. This can only begin to capture how surprised the early Imperial Romans would be to learn of the triumph of Christianity.” (11/12/24)
