A Little Temporary Safety…

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin

I’m not the type of person to get a tattoo. But if I was, I’d put this on my body. It’s the most American thing ever. It captures the spirit of our country; our ethos and mythos…

For my fifth essay on the coronavirus crisis that man-made, I wanted to use this quote as a parti to talk about how, with draconian measures such as lockdowns, and compensatory bailouts, we’ve unceremoniously abandoned the governing principle of liberty, and replaced it with a new governing principle: utilitarian technocratic cost-benefit analysis.

Although I am very confident that the costs of lockdowns and other policy responses massively outweigh the benefits, that isn’t the most important debate.

The problem with accepting the utilitarian frame is that, merely by accepting the frame, you cede power to technocrats, whose interests will rarely be aligned with the people’s, and whose abilities will rarely be a match for a crisis.

To champion liberty in today’s world, it is important to win three games…

First, to contend that liberty outperforms utilitarianism in utilitarian terms.

Second, and more importantly, that it transcends those terms, and would be worth preserving as a governing principle even if, for the sake of argument, it underperformed, although we, of course, believe it does not, especially over long time scales.

In other words, the culture is against us, so we must win both the material and the spiritual debates, both the home and away games, to carry the day. But there is still one more game…

Third, the final game is the culture game, and it must be won. It is not enough to win the intellectual games. Technocrats understand this. Technocrats masquerade as utilitarians but they are first and foremost politicians, and they pander to an audience of consumers, manipulated by industrial-complexes.

We see this every day in the news. A utilitarian would react to new data. Objectively, the cost-benefit equation on lockdowns has shifted dramatically against their utility in the last month, and yet technocrats cannot politically accept an immediate reopening because the cognitive dissonance would be too strong, and they need to maintain confirmation bias, both for themselves and for their followers.

They’re also in a bind. They’ve set up a philosophical and rhetorical frame in which there are zero acceptable incremental coronavirus deaths for any policy decision, which is a political standard not applied to any other disease, and perhaps the ultimate violation of Franklin’s Principle of valuing Security over Liberty.

Ironically, it also most certainly does not maximize for overall social utility either, in the classic formulation of “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Politicized ‘utilitarian’ technocracy has a strange way of producing unseen suffering for the many to alleviate the seen suffering of the few…

For the same reason — the cost-benefit equation has shifted dramatically in the last month — an apolitical utilitarian technocrat might also just “reopen” the economy, now that the risk of both death and hospital system collapse has lowered. “Reopen,” as in, literally, tell everyone that they can come outside, resume their liberties, go about their business, and do their best to go back to normal. After all, the fatality rate is extremely low (~0.1%), especially for children and young people without prior conditions. But instead there is this “phased reopening” concept, which is itself a product of politicized-utilitarian-technocratic groupthink, through which (surprise!) technocrats get to decide exactly when and exactly how everything happens. An economy is a natural and networked phenomenon. The conceit that it can just be “turned on” in a “phased reopening” is even greater than the conceit that it can be “paused” for two months in an unprecedented holy-quarantine-of-the-healthy.

A perfect utilitarian technocrat would be apolitical, but they never are. And as a result, this disease, and our response to it, has been utterly politicized from start to finish. Therefore, a sane reading of current events requires less of an epidemiology degree, and more of a mind for grand strategy, complex systems, players & incentives, narratives and industrial complexes…

Let the games begin!

The First Game: My Very Brief Utilitarian Argument Against Lockdowns & Bailouts

But, for good form, I’ll briefly make the utilitarian argument.

Given the antibody testing data we have so far, coronavirus has a 0.1% estimated fatality rate and seems less dangerous than the flu, because the young are basically immune — most deaths come from the elderly and/or people with prior conditions. So, obviously, there is no reason to shut down the world because of this, and yet we persist. Suppose we rewind to March, when models projected a 2–4% fatality rate, and the collapse of the hospital system. Lockdowns don’t help. They force families together into crowded quarters. They weaken the geopolitical immune-system, empowering dictators everywhere. They prevent the economic immune-system from functioning, which weakens the hospital system, forces bailouts, creates massive unemployment and a culture of dependence. They prevent the social immune-system from functioning, marked by increasing rates of suicide and abuse. They prevent herd immunity and add to the collateral damage caused by hysteria. Instead, focus everyone on solving the supply-chain, testing and vaccine bottlenecks…

There. That’s a sketch of my utilitarian argument. Like I said, I’m very confident I could win a utilitarian debate, against all comers. Even a month ago, I was confident, but now that I have a month of reading, writing, data and global experience to back up my argument, I’m very confident.

But I’m less interested in winning the utilitarian policy debate, than winning the debate on governance, that is, on the frame of debate itself: on Liberty vs. Utilitarianism.

The Second Game: In Defense Of Liberty Over Utilitarianism As A Governing Principle — The Most Important Coronavirus Debate We’re Not Having Has Nothing To Do With Coronavirus

On Liberty vs. Utilitarianism. That is: on decentralizing decision-making sovereignty to the people vs. centralizing decision-making sovereignty for experts with Masters of Business Administration and Masters of Public Policy degrees from Harvard.

I want to make the argument that we should not abandon liberty.

I will put my argument in the baldest terms possible. Let us begin with a thought experiment. Let’s assume that liberty is inferior to utilitarianism from the point of view of efficiency and effectiveness for any assigned policy metric.

For example… If We, The Technocrats, Of The United States Of America, decide that the most important Metric Of All Metrics in our society is limiting coronavirus deaths, I grant you, for the momentary sake of argument, let us assume that utilitarianism is superior at achieving that stated goal, that assigned policy metric.

Also, for the sake of argument, let’s take the old estimated fatality rate of 2–4% and a broad risk to all of society, not just the old and those with prior conditions, which was the argument used to justify the lockdowns in March.

Let us ignore, for the sake of argument, the extremely tenuous evidence and argumentation that went into that estimate. Let us also ignore the evidence and argumentation that already existed against it at the time of the lockdowns, which rapidly grew shortly thereafter and has continued to grow to this day, such that there is now overwhelming evidence for a low fatality rate, concentration among the elderly and those with prior conditions; indeed, such that only the most extreme confirmation bias is propping up the argument in defense of keeping the economy closed — let us ignore all of this.

Let us not assume any utilitarian advantages to Liberty whatsoever, such as the economic advantage of preventing the loss of 22 million jobs…

Lastly, let us assume that all the projections say that With Utilitarianism and its lockdowns, only 68K Americans die, but With Liberty and no lockdowns, 2-4% of Americans, 6 to 12 million people, die.

Given all of this, ask me, would I still support Liberty over Utilitarianism as a governing principle, both in general, and in this instance? Would I still argue against lockdowns, bailouts, and the like?

Yes. Yes, I would. Yes, I would.

First of all, I don’t trust projections in the strategic realm. Individuals and companies react, and they react much faster than governments do. The assumption in most models is that the system is non-dynamic. I said this at the start of the crisis, in public, as loudly as possible, and was run over by a veritable stampede of hysteria. Yet I have been vindicated by events. As I have continued to share in so many articles and posts on social media since, nobody should blindly trust loudly proclaimed “authoritative” rapidly constructed models and predictions based on guesses for data inputs with multi-trillion dollar decisions ever again. I demonstrated the courage that I wish Boris Johnson and Donald Trump had demonstrated to stand up for intuition and reason in the face of overwhelming and successful attempt by the technocracy to hijack Leviathan through the manipulation of public sentiment. Yes, I am being self-congratulatory. But mostly I am sad. Both leaders have historically had the courage to stand up to the establishment. And they failed this test. I wonder if they realize that they failed. I wonder if the people realize it. I wonder if history will realize it. I hope confirmation bias does not write fiction.

Secondly, let us make one more terrible assumption… let us assume that the models were right, and because the government did not enforce lockdowns, and individuals failed to modify their behavior fast enough, not due to lack of popular intelligence, competence or goodwill, but because experts knew the truth faster than they could communicate it to the people…

This point I would concede. But it presumes that lockdowns are the fastest form of communication. Which they are not. In the real world, it is always faster to communicate a warning than to enforce a warning.

Let us continue on with the false assumption, however. Then, yes, I would admit to having been wrong. However, if a parallel universe computer existed, and I could run the simulation again, I would experiment with the shortest possible lockdown. Say, the initial two weeks, to put the nation on high-alert and to gather data. But even then, I would favor simulations in which responses are as localized as possible. It does not make sense to quarantine Wyoming just because New York City is having an outbreak…

Furthermore, as I’ve written in previous essays, this is a near universal institutional failure, because the time to prepare for this crisis isn’t now but in the many years and decades that have no passed with large WHO, FDA, FEMA, CDC, and NIH budgets wasted, with little to no preparation results to show for it.

With the governing principle of liberty, what government spending does occur is ROI-accountable, and with a leaner government, all actors in the system know that they won’t get bailed out, so Darwinian events train the system correctly.

Furthermore, the governing principle of liberty may fail in a simulation that begins in March 2020, but may succeed in a simulation that begins in 2018, 2016, 2008, or earlier; obviously, my expectation is that the earlier the principle is implemented, the better the results.

A governing principle is not a mechanistic Sovereign. A great Libertarian Sovereign will outperform a poor Libertarian Sovereign, just as a great Utilitarian Sovereign will outperform a poor Utilitarian Sovereign. The question we are investigating is whether Utilitarian and Libertarian sovereigns of equal rankings would outperform, both overall, in any given situation, and in this situation in particular.

Thirdly, let us make a final assumption to take it one step further. Let us assume that those who died merely chose to ignore the warning. Can we accept those deaths, when coercion would have saved their lives?

If people choose to ignore a warning, then yes, I am comfortable with individuals facing the consequences of their own decisions. People do that every day. I take risks when I get on the subway, when I drive a car, all the time... Life is risky and dangerous.

If we had hyper-efficient contract tracing, then the argument that the unique externalities of a virus justify enforcing a quarantine on one person, or a relatively small group of people, or even on an entire city, seems reasonable to me.

But what has been done is unprecedented in history: quarantining of the healthy, not just the sick. Anyone exercising their freedom to leave home and risk catching the virus is not taking away the freedom of anyone who is afraid of catching the virus and chooses to stay home. Therefore, I don’t see an exceptional externalities argument that could justify the suspension of liberty on such a massive scale as these lockdowns have.

What of the externality of the hospital systems? What if the “experts” felt (they would use words like “had evidence to suggest”) that those choosing to exercise their liberty to leave their homes were likely putting the entire hospital system at risk. What if hospital systems collapsed and millions died, and there was only me to blame. Would I be willing to accept that?

Like quarantining, I accept the specific argument, but not the general argument. If a particular hospital system was at plausible risk, for a plausibly limited length of time, like 2–4 weeks, as New York City’s was, then, given the string of additional unreasonable assumptions made so far, yes, it makes sense to suspend liberties for that city. But all states in the entire country? No. Indeed, it has done far more damage to the American hospital system and to our public health to shut them down under the pretext of retaining surge capacity, for weeks after the peak has been passed.

There is also a Darwinian argument here. Hospital systems do have surge capacity, do have procurement capacity, are capable of responding. And if some aren’t, maybe they should fail, so that they system at every level can learn and respond from the crisis. But with the government intervening directly in the supply chain, there is an argument that they are ironically hindering the ability of the supply chain to both react to the immediate crisis and evolve its anti-fragility so that this can never happen again.

If millions of Americans, duly warned, took risks and died as a result, I can not only live with that outcome, but defend that decision as the correct decision, even if the utilitarian alternative would have saved the vast majority of those lives. Because what is at stake with the preservation of liberty affects not just the decisions of the three hundred million over the decisions-to-be-overruled of the six to twelve million to-be-saved-by-utilitarian-coercion, but, more importantly, of the billions of Americans to come in the future, to set a Libertarian and Darwinian precedent: that in this land, we value Liberty, and that means Consequences — make your own decisions, we will warn you of new risks as fast as we can.

So much for the thought experiment. As you can see, to convince me that the sustained coercion of 300 million Americans for two months is necessary for their survival is a high bar, as it should be. The exercise of Emergency Powers to temporarily suspend Liberty should be a grave exercise submitted to intense scrutiny both at the time and afterwards…

I will now turn the tables…

Thankfully, Liberty can beat utilitarianism on its own ground. Although, as a crisis-response plan, “liberty” may feel like doing nothing, like having no plan — it is almost always the best solution, because it empowers millions of sovereign individuals and organizations to respond in millions of different ways. “Almost” is a dangerous word, because it creates an opening for anyone to argue that this or that crisis is the exception to the rule, and that centralized action is necessary. But this experiment has been run many times, and usually intervention can be seen to have made matters worse, although confirmation bias and path dependence tends to obscure that insight. A careful study of history reveals the principles by which valid exceptions may be made, and they are very few indeed: unavoidable regulation, domestic law & order, military defense, geopolitical supply-chain and trade security, and ‘necessary’ research and infrastructure projects that are un-financeable and/or un-executable by the private sector (why?!).

But the reverse is not the case: utilitarianism is a poor substitute for liberty. Utilitarian logic assumes that all thinking is problem-solving, and that reason can solve all problems with objective analysis. But this is not a premise I accept! Liberty has a more sophisticated epistemology, or theory of truth. Philosophically, you might say that Liberty is Existentialist.

It all dates back to the Protestant Reformation. For the same reason that we decided that there should be no Official State Religion, but that everyone should be free to worship as they choose… Liberty extends this principle to all non-violent decision-making.

Liberty asserts that there is no final earthly authority which may presume to dictate to the individual answers to the fundamental questions, like the meaning of life (that is, the meaning of all human knowledge and wisdom, of philosophy, history, art, science, etc.) and how best to live (that is, every detail of applied decision-making, using that knowledge, everything from ‘what should I make for breakfast,’ to ‘should I smoke cigarettes?’). Therefore, neither the government nor society should dictate to the individual.

In a free society, individuals will make decisions that they themselves will come to regret, and certainly, that others will judge as wrong, and each of these decisions will be used as an argument against liberty, by a utilitarian.

But the reverse is also true: in a free society, individuals will make bold decisions, even if they are judged, and some of those decisions may turn out to benefit society. These acts of genius could not have been planned in advance, and should be used as an argument in favor of liberty, by a fair-minded utilitarian.

The Fatal Conceit of Utilitarianism is that it is deterministic. It assumes that all questions have answers, and that all answers are knowable. And, in its applied form, Technocracy, the utilitarian conceit extends further. Technocrats presume that not only all questions have answers, and that these answers are knowable, but that they, indeed, can apply this knowledge: that they have the ability to rapidly generate and implement any solution needed to solve any problem. In a word, Utilitarianism is teleological: for any given goal, it concerns itself with the most efficient path.

The Humble Wisdom of Liberty is that it is non-deterministic, or existentialist. It does not assume that all questions have answers, that all answers may be known, or known in advance, or applied in all situations by a centralized omni-competent technocracy. Instead, to the extent to which progress towards knowledge and its application is possible, it empowers every free and private individuals and organization to seek and apply as it may.

Although this results in superior utilitarian performance, that is not why it is better. It is better because it leaves the question of “better” up to you. It is only worse if you would presume to impose your answer to the question of “better” upon others. That is, if you value liberty as a way of life, then liberty is still better than utilitarianism, even if utilitarianism outperforms in certain situations.

In a word, Liberty is ethical. It sets no system-level goal, instead, it sets a system-level approach: it empowers individuals to set and achieve goals as they see fit.

That is, Liberty is a commitment to ethos over telos. To the way as opposed to the destination. To unknown destinations to be pursued by unknown individuals in unknown ways for unknown reasons.

The wisdom of not knowing is that you may be surprised. The twin follies of determining in advance are that, first, the world is impossibly complex. And, second, a value once set cannot be changed, and who can be certain of all values, for all situations, for all time?

The first question, of complexity, utilitarians have the fatal conceit to solve with increasing computational power, better and better tools, administered by better and better ‘experts’.

But the second question, of values, is more fundamental. Even if utilitarians could construct a super computer capable of technocratically administering a solution to this crisis, any crisis, every crisis, and all crises, forever, the world-system would still be missing something. It would be missing individuals deciding what is valuable, what goals should be pursued, and why we should pursue them. It would be missing imagination and desire. Without individuals, we would have no vision and no way of valuing problems or solutions. Ultimately, without individuals, we wouldn’t even have prices, because even in something as casual as setting a price, an individual is engaging in a philosophical value-judgement exercise that no computer can replicate.

Utilitarians lack vision. They can’t imagine something higher than Sweden (which is ironic, given Sweden’s libertarian response to coronavirus). The utilitarian repartee is that individual vision isn’t necessary, for the same reason that individual values and morals aren’t necessary: we can broadly agree on consensus. Across time and societies, so they say, ‘humans have agreed that murder is bad, and universal housing and healthcare are good, so… why do we need to agonize over these questions any longer?’ ‘We are wasting time with these stupid philosophical debates! Look here. This is a straightforward problem. I have a proposal that would solve this within eight years with $2 trillion dollars, a small percentage of U.S. annual GDP. This is a no-brainer win for our society. Just vote for me!’

Utilitarianism is materialistic. It cannot think in the philosophical sense. “Wissenschaft denkt nicht,” to use Heidegger’s phrase: “Science does not think.” Science, here, is a stand-in for utilitarian technocracy. It is materialistic. It concerns itself with ends and means. And in so doing, it becomes reductionist, as well. It reduces the world to the problem set.

Liberty, in contrast, is a spiritual principle for governance. It decentralizes both spiritual and material questions and answers, leaving them up to Sovereign Individuals. ‘Liberty does not think’, either. But that’s the whole point: it does not presume to think for you; does not fool itself that government is capable of making decisions for individuals, or ‘thinking’ at all.

Rather, ‘thinking’ is understood to be an activity that can only occur within a individual. Thinking: A wild, meditative, associative, n-dimensional, dynamic, unpredictable, ineffable, chaotic, strategic, sovereign, spiritual, sacred activity that occurs in the individual mind, but that cannot be replicated by a computer, or by a technocracy, because thinking is not processing. Computers do not think. Organizations, technocracies, do not think, they groupthink. They process problems given to them by Sovereign Individuals. It is the Sovereign Individuals who think, who intuit, who pray, who comprehend the world, who judge, who assign values, who imagine, who create, who envision, who strive, and who persuade.

For all their pretension to objective reason, utilitarians are irrational humans, just like you and me. They may (or may not) be effective as management consultants, operating within private organizations, tasked with achieving set objectives. But operating with the Power of Leviathan, they tend to wreak havoc with their logic, because their format is wrong: The State is a blunt instrument and Society is a dynamic canvas.

By the paradoxical logic of strategy, utilitarian approaches tend to backfire in multi-party systems like Society, because they fail to correctly anticipate the moves of the other players when their “optimal model” is pursued. Meanwhile, working within an organization at the scale of The State, no super computer and managerial efficiency is capable of keeping up with a dynamically changing multi-party landscape which is constantly breaking models, and even if it were capable of rapid re-modeling, no human organization is capable of tactical re-adjustments at that iteration speed.

QED. I rest my case. Once again, we should not abandon liberty in favor of utilitarianism as a governing principle. But even if we do become utilitarians, this should not happen without a debate, without a huge, intense, national debate, before we abandon the wisdom of the Founding Fathers...

Losing The Third Game: The Industrial-Complexes Have Taken Over

As I write, two months in to this crisis, the nation is still operating as if we have unceremoniously abandoned liberty as a governing principle, in favor of utilitarianism. Given that liberty is our sacred founding ideal, constitutionally enshrined, and has been defended with American blood and treasure over two and a half centuries, you would think that there should at least be a debate about this. Yet there has been no such debate. Why?

Even the outcry and the protests, against this lockdown, loud and large as they have been, have not, in my opinion, been loud and large enough. Why? Why have we so carelessly abdicated our liberty? Why don’t we seem to be worthy inheritors of American liberty?

Perhaps because the culture of Liberty has been eroded for nearly three generations now… Some of this erosion has been insidious…

When I looked up Franklin’s quote on Google, the first two search results were stories by National Public Radio — “Ben Franklin’s Famous ‘Liberty, Safety’ Quote Lost Its Context In 21st Century” — and TechCrunch — “How The World Butchered Benjamin Franklin’s Quote On Liberty Vs. Security” — which both reference a single source, Benjamin Wittes from The Brookings Institution, to make an authoritative claim that this statement by Benjamin Franklin somehow originally meant the opposite of what it seems to mean, on its face. Wittes claims it was an argument in favor of taxing the wealthy: that Franklin was arguing that the Penn family should pay for the common defense in the French and Indian War…

Although Franklin did first use this line in 1755 to petition the Deputy Governor of Pennsylvania to supplement military spending during the French and Indian War, his most famous use of the phrase was during the Revolutionary War, about twenty years later, in a very different historical context, which you can find here, the third result on Google, after NPR and TechCrunch. As a diplomat to Great Britain during the Revolutionary War, Franklin urgently writes home from London to inform the Colonies that negotiations had broken down, the Crown had rejected their peace terms, so this meant war: they should fight for independence.

Regardless, in both contexts, the quote is exactly what it seems to be: a full-throated defense of Liberty.

The complication around the first historical instance is that the Deputy Governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Morris, was not elected by the people of Pennsylvania, but rather appointed by Thomas Penn of the Penn family, Governor of Pennsylvania, who resided in England. The Colony of Pennsylvania was granted by royal charter to Thomas Penn’s father, William Penn, making him the sole land-owner of the entire state, provided that Quakers and other non-conformist religious sects, banished from England, could settle and worship there freely.

The militia on the Pennsylvania border that were being attacked by the French and the Indian alliance were largely self-organizing and self-financing a defense of their lands, without help from Great Britain or the State of Pennsylvania.

Therefore, far from being an argument in favor of a progressive tax on the wealthy, Franklin’s petition to the Governor was an argument in favor of defending the Liberty & Sovereignty of The People and State of Pennsylvania.

It is a classic example of the grievance of taxation without representation… which is really an argument against technocracy, or what Hayek, writing during and after World War II, would call The Fatal Conceit of central planning: that a bureaucratic government of faraway elites can efficiently administer day-to-day life for their subjects.

Morris, a technocrat, was a representative of Penn, a faraway ruler, who, in turn, reported to an even more distracted and out-of-touch King. Through the French and Indian War, the colonists of Pennsylvania learned three important lessons:

First, the incentives of faraway and elitist technocrats are not aligned with the incentives of the people.

Second, that even when their incentives are aligned, these technocrats are so far away from the rapidly evolving situation on the ground, and their bureaucratic machinery is so inefficient, that they are actually incompetent at defending their own interests.

Third, that given the first two lessons, people have to fend for themselves, and cannot wait for technocrats to save them. And ultimately, that’s what they did: it was their own self-organizing and self-financing militias that defended the colonists. Their own money, their own blood, their own guns, their own brains, their own effort... The technocrats never showed up when it counted, but they showed up at the end to claim the victory… So the colonists learned the hard way: do not trust technocrats with your lives and property, and do not waste your time convincing them — stand up for your own liberty and sovereignty: self-govern!

Now, do you see how insidious this is? National Public Radio, which receives taxpayer funding, runs a three minute segment, listened to by millions of people, interviewing a left-wing technocrat, who dares to spin this quote, of all quotes, into an argument for taxing the rich. Prima facie, this interpretation is so absurd as to merit extreme skepticism. If NPR wasn’t so complicit with Wittes’ political views as to credulously accept his revisionist history, they would have fact-checked the claim, or polled historians, and either not run the piece at all, or altered the headline and the piece to reflect “shock claim by author,” instead of representing it as authoritative, to preserve their journalistic integrity. But instead, they ran it as is…

Which then reached a journalist at TechCrunch, who, with equal credulity, emboldened by the credibility of his NPR source, spun it into an argument against 21st century libertarian resistance to surveillance based on a ‘butchered’ 18th century quote…

NPR didn’t even link to the original text of the 1755 petition Wittes mentioned, although TechCrunch did, but neither mentioned nor linked to the 1775 diplomatic letter urging the colonists to fight.

I have not checked to see if other media organizations propagated this story, but these two alone reach millions of people, and their extended reach through social media is vast…

“Fake news” is real, and this is what it looks like. In this case, an “expert” at a notable institution makes a specious claim to advance a “tax the rich” narrative, a credulous journalist at a ‘credible’ media organization reports it, as fact, and then another credulous journalist at another ‘credible’ media organization picks it up, and spins it to advance a pro-surveillance narrative… Meanwhile, all of this ‘reporting’ is magnified on social media, and confirmation bias takes over.

Suppose I made a specious claim that, say, “Che Guevara actually wasn’t a communist freedom fighter, but a misunderstood anarcho-capitalist”… it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t be taken seriously, firstly, because I’m not an expert at a notable institution, and secondly, because it doesn’t advance a political narrative that is currently in the interests of the establishment.

But let’s assume, for a moment, that I was, and it did, and the story took off, like Benjamin Wittes’ specious interpretation of Benjamin Franklin’s quote did…

It’s like gaslighting. Everyone who thought that they knew who Che Guevara was, and what he stood for, hears this authoritative story from a credible media organization interviewing an ‘expert’ at a notable institution… and suddenly they are doubting their understanding of history… Suddenly, it’s plausible. Maybe I was wrong all along. The experts must be right. After all, otherwise they wouldn’t be running this story… It’s a good thing that I’m in the know on things like this, unlike ordinary people, who are just hopelessly backward, uncultured and can’t keep up with progress.

Except the brave soul that has the courage to say: “Wait! The Emperor has no clothes!” Until and unless that happens, and that voice of reason is magnified, The Emperor will continue to walk around naked, Che Guevara will be remembered not as a communist hero but as a capitalist villain, and Benjamin Franklin will be an early advocate of progressive taxation…

I have given you just one example of Fake News eroding our culture of liberty. But this example is as exceptional as it is non-unique. Every week on Twitter and on Facebook I highlight media bias. This particular example is exceptional not just for its insidiousness, but also for its casualness. By casualness, I don’t just mean brazenness. I attribute no malice, no planning or coordination, and no grand strategic intent to either NPR, TechCrunch, or Brookings Institution as institutions, or to the journalists and ‘expert’ in question… So… how did it… just… happen?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is not the work of an evil mastermind conspiracy. This… is the work… of an Industrial Complex. We see industrial complexes everywhere, not just in the media. Tik Tok memes emerge from industrial complexes. Pop music. Have you ever felt like you are becoming… a consumer algorithm?

Winning The Third Game: Restoring A Culture Of Sovereign Individualism

In a healthy democracy, culture is upstream from politics, economics, technology and media. Everything emerges from society. The people shape the world in their image…

In an unhealthy democracy, ripe for despotism, culture is downstream from these things. Society derives from industrial complexes. The world shapes the people in its image — they are trapped; they can’t escape; they are captured, enframed. Their will is precluded; outcomes, predetermined.

In the same way, a healthy individual is not defined by the world, is not the sum of his influences, is not determined by events, is not a bi-product of society. A healthy individual is recursive, shapes himself, absorbs and integrates outside influences, transforms them within… From that transformation, an identity emerges, and from that identity is born a will, and from that will, the individual not only reacts to the world, but becomes something unique, a new force, acting upon the world, shaping it in turn, remaking it in his image, according to his vision.

Is this originating force limitless? No. No individual has absolute power. Some individuals have more, and others have less, but all Wills strive…

But is the originality potentially limitless? Yes. An individual is an individual insofar as he is different. Has a Will of his own: to perceive, to understand, to form an opinion, to decide... Is not determined exclusively by others or by the world. Has the ability to Imagine and Create something New.

On the outside, The World is bigger than The Individual, by virtue of being The World. But within, The Individual may be bigger than The World; may contain Worlds. The Individual is materially inferior but may be spiritually superior than The World.

The natural form of government for a society of only one Sovereign Individual and many followers is dictatorship. The natural form of government for a society of many Sovereign Individuals is a democracy. Sovereign Individuals resent tyranny; jealous of their liberties, yielding them sparingly to Leviathan…

Between these extremes, there are transitionary phases… Where Individuals are in the ascendance, there are greater concessions of Power to them… Where Individualism is on the decline… power is transferred from Society to Leviathan… These transfers of power may be formal or informal.

History is not deterministic. Even a society that has risen to never before seen heights may fall. But even a society in decline, may rise again.

Individuals strive to affect their will, in the world, in history, such as they encounter it. Even if an individual tries to alter the course of events, tries to change history, and fails, that is no dishonor. No matter how powerless and futile the striving may prove to be, if it is striving in earnest, a Stand has been taken, and a Name has been written. Perhaps this is the Fatal Conceit of Liberty… that it places its trust in the historical agency of Individuals, small as we are.

Ask yourself…

Which society do you seem to be living in: one dedicated to the principle of liberty, jealously guarded by Sovereign Individuals, or one dedicated to the principle of utilitarian technocracy, that has ceded power to the Sovereign State?

And. Does it suit you?

And. If it does not…

What. are you. going to do. about it!?

Echoes Of ‘The Remnant’

I leave you with three more quotes. Two from Nietzsche, one from Tolkien. Take from them what you will…

The Church and morality say: ‘A race, a people perishes through vice and luxury.’ My restored reason says: when a people is perishing, degenerating physiologically, vice and luxury (that is to say the necessity for stronger and stronger and more and more frequent stimulants, such as every exhausted nature is acquainted with) follow therefrom.

A young man grows prematurely pale and faded. His friends say: this and that illness is to blame. I say: that he became ill, that he failed to resist the illness, was already the consequence of an impoverished life, an hereditary exhaustion.

The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished — it is no longer secure in its interests.

Every error, of whatever kind, is a consequence of degeneration of instinct, disgregation of will: one has thereby virtually defined the bad.

Everything good is instinct — and consequently easy, necessary, free. Effort is an objection, the god is typically distinguished from the hero (in my language: light feet are the first attribute of divinity.

The Hammer Speaks

‘Why so hard?’ the charcoal once said to the diamond; ‘for are we not close relations?’

Why so soft? O my brothers, thus I ask you: for are you not — my brothers?

Why so soft, unresisting and yielding? Why is there so much denial and abnegation in your hearts? So little fate in your glances?

And if you will not be fates, if you will not be inexorable: how can you — conquer with me?

And if your hardness will not flash and cut and cut to pieces: how can you one day — create with me?

For all creators are hard. And it must seem bliss to you to press your hand upon millennia as upon wax,
bliss to write upon the will of millennia as upon metal — harder than metal, nobler than metal. Only the noblest is perfectly hard.

This new law-table do I put over you, O my brothers:
Become hard!

I do not know what strength is in my blood, but I swear to you I will not let the White City fall, nor our people fail.