Category Archives: libertarianism

NEW COLUMN: Self-Ownership & The Right To Reject The Pharma-State’s Hemlock

Conservatism, COVID-19, Critique, Democracy, Democrats, Government, Healthcare, Individual Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Private Property, Republicans

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NEW COLUMN is “Self-Ownership & The Right To Reject The Pharma-State’s Hemlock.” It’s currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Townhall.com, The New American and American Greatness.

Excerpt:

It matters not that the few “Republican governors crusading against vaccine mandates are [allegedly] facing significantly lower approval ratings on their handling of the coronavirus pandemic than their counterparts,” as Politico purports. (Don’t believe Politico!)

What matters is that governors like Texas’ Greg Abbott, who “flat-out banned vaccine requirements, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, followed up by vowing to sue the Biden administration.”

These two governors are unique in upholding natural, inalienable, individual rights—the right of self ownership, bodily dominion; the stuff mocked by President Joe Biden, wearing a ghoulish grin.

The Biden reference is to a recent, highly contrived CNN townhall, during which “moderator Anderson Cooper noted that as many as one in three emergency responders in some major cities are refusing to comply with city vaccine mandates.”

“I’m wondering where you stand on that,” inquired Cooper. “Should police officers, first responders be mandated to get vaccines? And if not, should they be mandated to stay at home, let go?”

“Yes, and yes,” replied the president.

Disinterred for the day, Biden went on to mock the quaint notion of bodily autonomy with a demented quip, “I have the freedom to kill you with my COVID. I mean, come on, freedom.”

Bodily autonomy, self-determination and self-ownership: Were our representatives to frame the vexation of vaccine mandates in the correct language of natural rights—we’d get the right answers, more likely to be followed by rights-upholding legislation.

But are Republican representatives doing so? Are our representatives who art in D.C. doing anything but wait in Tucker Carlson’s green room?

When it comes to Covid-19, only the following arguments are permissible as an objection to the Covid vaccine mandate. “Exemptions from employer-mandated coronavirus vaccines [are] in [these] three general areas“:

* natural immunity
* religious objection
* medical objection …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Self-Ownership & The Right To Reject The Pharma-State’s Hemlock.” It’s currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Townhall.com, The New American and American Greatness.

UPDATE II (12/21/021): NEW COLUMN: Centralize Liberty: The Solution To Wicked, Woke Tech (Part 3)

Free Speech, Individual Rights, Justice, Labor, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Republicans, Technology, The Courts, THE ELITES

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NEW COLUMN: “Centralize Liberty: The Solution To Wicked, Woke Tech,” is now on WND.COM, The Unz Review, CNSNews, and The New American.

This column is Part 3 of a 3-part series. Read Part 1, “Big Tech’s Financial Terrorism And Social Excommunication” and Part 2, “Justice Thomas’ Solution to Big Tech’s Social And Financial Excommunication.”

An excerpt:

It is inarguable that by financially crippling and socially segregating, and banishing politically irksome people and enterprises—the Big Tech cartel is flouting the spirit, if not the strict letter, of the Civil Rights Act.

For how do you make a living if your banking options are increasingly curtailed and constantly threatened, and your ability to electronically communicate with clients is likewise circumscribed?

Do you go back to a barter economy (a book for some bread)? Do you go underground? Cultivate home-based industries? Do you keep afloat by word of mouth? Go door-to-door? Return to stamping envelopes? How can you, when your client base is purely electronic?

Telling an individual he can’t open a bank account on account of the beliefs and opinions swirling in his head teeters on informing your innocent victim he might not be able to make a living, as do other, politically more polite Americans, and despite his innocence: Our only “offenses” as dissidents are thought crimes, namely, speaking, or typing or wafting into the air unpopular, impolite words.

“[I]n assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power,” Justice Clarence Thomas has argued, “what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable. For many of today’s digital platforms, nothing is.”

To paraphrase this Supreme Court jurist: Sure, there are alternatives to The Big Tech, but these make a mockery of the outcast. It would hardly be hyperbole, in driving home Justice Thomas’s point about comparability, to put it thus:

With respect to financial de-platforming, barring someone from PayPal is like prohibiting a passenger from crossing the English Channel by high-speed train, via ferry and by means of 90 percent of airplanes. “Have at it sucker.”

By Deep Tech decree, some Americans are worth more than others, based not on their actions, but on the voiced thoughts in their heads. This cannot stand.

The letter of the law needs changing. Do it.

Civil Rights Act

Thus, the preferred remedy to Deep Tech depredations would build upon existing Civil Rights Act jurisprudence.

As a reality-oriented conservative libertarian, I inhabit and theorize in the real world. From the conservative-libertarian’s perspective, Barry Goldwater got it right. Civil Rights law is an ass, for it infringes on property rights. But the onus is on flaccid Republican lawmakers to ensure that that ass can be ridden by all equally (with apologies to adorable, much-abused donkeys for the cruel metaphor).

These are existing laws that are already enforced. I see no reason to reject the application of civil rights solutions to wicked, woke bullies because existing laws that’ll never be repealed go against my core beliefs. What is libertarianism? The art of losing in life because of a slavish devotion to theoretical purity? …

… NEW COLUMN, “Centralize Liberty: The Solution To Wicked, Woke Tech,” can be read now on WND.COM, The Unz Review, CNSNews, and The New American.

UPDATED (10/26/021) I:

UPDATE II (12/21/021) II: “Berenson v. Twitter“:

Twitter is indisputably a messenger service. A longstanding California law regulates messenger services as “common carriers.” This means that they must accept all messages they receive. Twitter thus must accept all tweets it receives. It has no First Amendment rights to refuse them on the basis that it does not agree with them.
A federal law commonly called Section 230 “preempts” the California law, giving Twitter the right to reject tweets or ban users. (Whether that right is universal or whether Twitter must act in “good faith” in restricting service is a separate question; whether Twitter acted in “good faith” in this case is still another question. But put those issues aside for the moment.)
Section 230 is what enables Twitter to claim a First Amendment privilege that supersedes the California law and restrict my own First Amendment right to speak; thus federal courts have the right to review 230 on First Amendment grounds.

MORE.

WATCH: UPDATED (8/1): Humor Alert: When Democrats And Pelosi’s Republican Poodles Weep; There Is Mirth In the Vance-Mercer Studio

Comedy & Humor, Conservatism, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Culture, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Republicans

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WATCH: David and I discuss the ins-and-outs of the Jan. 6 Committee, also the Democrats’ September 11: Menstrual America Vs. MAGA America.

When Democrats and Pelosi’s Republican Poodles Weep; There is Mirth in the Vance-Mercer Studio:

The harder the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi’s Republican poodles wept—the greater was the mirth in the David Vance and ilana Mercer studio. Our superstar of a producer was in stitches, too. Good times.

UPDATE (8/1/021): Humor Alert: I never watch my own videos. So did I REALLY ask David, of https://HardTruthWithDavidVanceAndilanaMercer.podbean.com/, if Speaker Pelosi has a drinking problem? A viewer insist I did. David agrees.

https://rumble.com/embed/vhxj2z/?pub=fyb9t

Must something manifestly hilarious be marked with a “Humor Alert” before people allow laughter? Maybe Brits and their South African former subjects have a different sense of humor? This appended comment is way funny, too. Learn Brit humor:

Mercer Memorial-Day Message Same Since 2009

America, Homeland Security, Israel, Just War, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, War

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“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can.”—ilana mercer

I have published this message every Memorial day, since 2009, softened slightly for taste.

Robert Glisson, a veteran and a longtime reader—where are you, Robert?—was once asked to write an op-ed for Barely A Blog about the “Patriot Guard Riders.” The op-ed, entitled “For The Love of A Brother-In-Arms, And ‘Big Brother’ Be Damned,” was prefaced with this comment:

“I do not identify with the military mission, but who can fault the humanity of the effort?”

It is the habit on the Memorial Day weekend to thank uniformed men for their sacrifice. And it is the annual custom on Barely A Blog to extend sympathies to the Americans who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations. I’m sorry they’ve been snookered into living, dying and killing for a lie. But I cannot honor that lie. I mourn for them, as I have from day one.

I am sorry for those who’ve enlisted thinking they’d fight for their countrymen and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars and assorted informal attacks. My heart hurts for you, but my worshiping at Moloch’s feet will not make you feel better, deep down.

I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which actually fought a just war. I grew up in Israel, so I honor those men who stopped Arab armies from overrunning our homes. In 1973, we came especially close to annihilation.

I can legitimately claim to know of flesh-and-blood heroes who fought so that I could emerge from the bomb shelter (in the wars of 67 and 73) and proceed with my kid life. I always stood in their honor and wept when the sirens wailed once a year. Wherever he is, every Israeli stops on that day and stands still in remembrance. We would have been physically overrun by Arabs if not for those brave men who defended the homeland—and not some far-away imperial project—with their bodies.

But can we Americans, in 2021, make such a claim? Can we truly claim that someone killed an Iraqi, Afghani, Yemeni, Libyan or Syrian so that we may … do what? Remind me?

“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can.”

How fast the so-called small-government types forget that the military is government. As explained in “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program“:

“When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small. Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.”

“Classical Liberalism And State Schemes“ further suggests how the military, as an arm of the state, can become antithetical to the liberty of its own citizens and the world’s citizens:

We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because (supposedly) upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.
“philanthropic” wars are transfer programs—the quintessential big-government projects, if you will. The warfare state, like the welfare state, is thus inimical to the classical liberal creed. Therefore, government’s duties in the classical liberal tradition are negative, not positive; to protect freedoms, not to plan projects. As I’ve written, “In a free society, the ‘vision thing’ is left to private individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people understand that a ‘visionary’ bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander the government (‘great purposes’ in Bush Babble), the poorer and less free the people.”