If folks want a click deeper on the nihilist penguin meme I wrote something up a few months back. In it, I said cheekily:
“After all, if the colony insists that its generous welfare states can accommodate millions of refugees while making no effort at their assimilation and then blames you when the outcomes are predictably bad, then you might be excused for wanting to storm away from them towards your certain death. Just saying!”
“In other words, libertarianism is an ideology that tends to take things too far because it assumes that it contains all the answers to the big questions about politics.”
Ironically, Yglesias never explains "what libertarians get wrong about freedom". He needs to drop silly ideas like "extremism" being inherently bad and "democracy" being inherently good and read more libertarian economics. He currently sees the state as needed in cases that libertarian economists have debunked. If he seriously tries to refute those arguments, then he will realise that he can't and so become more libertarian himself.
Mmm- re Sparta, they restricted citizenship not to the **wealthy** but to the **hereditary military aristocracy** - not at all the same thing and in fact pretty much worse way to do things. A wealthy merchant was never welcome.
Really the Roman genuis of integrationism is vastly under-appreciated - the Roman attitude that so long as one integrated, you're Roman worked brillianty (along with the creation of one big fat common Med. Market) - a Libyan heritage Emporer (Severus) is something you'd have never seen in Greek states tradition.
BUT it does require assimilation and integration (all the while being famously integrationist of bits and pieces of the Empires component cultures, Syrian mystery cult? Cool brand yourself with a bit of Romaness and all good).
If folks want a click deeper on the nihilist penguin meme I wrote something up a few months back. In it, I said cheekily:
“After all, if the colony insists that its generous welfare states can accommodate millions of refugees while making no effort at their assimilation and then blames you when the outcomes are predictably bad, then you might be excused for wanting to storm away from them towards your certain death. Just saying!”
https://tailwindthinking.substack.com/p/culture-bites-vol-1-untroubled-animals
“In other words, libertarianism is an ideology that tends to take things too far because it assumes that it contains all the answers to the big questions about politics.”
Ironically, Yglesias never explains "what libertarians get wrong about freedom". He needs to drop silly ideas like "extremism" being inherently bad and "democracy" being inherently good and read more libertarian economics. He currently sees the state as needed in cases that libertarian economists have debunked. If he seriously tries to refute those arguments, then he will realise that he can't and so become more libertarian himself.
I can totally hear Herzog asking that fucking question in his trademark voice.
German humanist and anti-fascist makes a documentary about the beauty of nature in Antarctica.
Scene of a suicidal penguin goes viral over a decade ago because it's so odd.
Over a decade later, the international online far right latches onto this suicidal penguin as their new symbol.
Far right candidates outside the US tweet AI images of themselves with this penguin since that don't get the context.
The American president copies foreign rightists to say we shouldn't embrace foreigners.
This is all so stupid.
Mmm- re Sparta, they restricted citizenship not to the **wealthy** but to the **hereditary military aristocracy** - not at all the same thing and in fact pretty much worse way to do things. A wealthy merchant was never welcome.
Really the Roman genuis of integrationism is vastly under-appreciated - the Roman attitude that so long as one integrated, you're Roman worked brillianty (along with the creation of one big fat common Med. Market) - a Libyan heritage Emporer (Severus) is something you'd have never seen in Greek states tradition.
BUT it does require assimilation and integration (all the while being famously integrationist of bits and pieces of the Empires component cultures, Syrian mystery cult? Cool brand yourself with a bit of Romaness and all good).
There are partial lessons for America.