Some elements of the right-wing are spreading the fear that Democrats are engineering a take-over of America by replacing white voters with nonwhites through liberal immigration policies. It's come to be known as "the great replacement," and in its ugliest form, it is said to be a Jewish conspiracy. Remember the sickening chant at the 2017 right-wing Charlottesville rally: "Jews will not replace us"? I wish this fear-mongering could be ignored, but since a few fanatics have committed violence apparently to prevent the "great replacement," it needs to be discussed. Why would anyone lose...
immigration
Whose Libertarian Party?
This last weekend, the Mises Caucus, a coalition within the Libertarian Party, was elected to all national positions within the party. For some, Mises control caused consternation: Aaron Ross Powell is a research fellow at the Cato Institute, a premier libertarian think tank. For others, jubilation: Clint Russell is a podcaster that grew his audience to 3.5 times Powell’s in a little over a year, primarily via anti-lockdown/COVID content. This article will explore the underlying dynamics of why this has happened and where the Libertarian Party can go from here. The Two Types of...
TGIF: Glenn Loury’s Collectivist Immigration Policy
Glenn Loury, the economist at Brown University, often has interesting things to say. His YouTube Glenn Show episodes with linguist and social commentator John McWhorter feature valuable insights and eye-opening data about race, woke "anti-racism," and related matters. Loury is a neoclassical economist who is generally pro-market. He harbors some doubt about government solutions to social problems. But judging by what he says about immigration, his political theory is appallingly collectivist. This is alarmingly clear from his most recent video with McWhorter. (The transcript is here.)...
FBI Claims It Foiled ISIS Plot Against George W. Bush
The FBI claims to have foiled an assassination attempt against former President George W. Bush, alleging the infamous Islamic State terrorist group hatched a globe-spanning plot to kill the ex-commander in chief. Since Forbes first reported the story on Tuesday, the suspect has been identified as 52-year old Iraqi national Shihab Ahmed Shihab. He is said to have arrived in the United States in 2020 on a visitor visa pending an asylum application. Investigators claim to have caught the would-be assassination organizer in the act as a result of his interactions, beginning last year, with...
New Report Reveals ICE Spent Billions Spying on Americans
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent $2.8 billion to surveil Americans from 2008 to 2021. The report titled “American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century” from the Georgetown Law Center for Privacy and Technology details how ICE used warrantless, mass spying tactics to deport people believed to be in the US illegally. The report found the agency could run images against a facial recognition database that includes a third of Americans and was quickly able to learn where hundreds of millions of people lived, all without any judicial oversight. “In fact, ICE has used...
TGIF: Anti-Woke Isn’t Necessarily Pro-Liberty
I had a reminder this week that those who oppose fashionable postmodernist-style attacks on reason and objectivity, such as "critical" race and gender theories, are not necessarily consistent friends of liberty and the free society. That reminder came in a recent video commentary by Dave Rubin on a year-old speech by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas before the U.S. Conference of Mayors. What upset Rubin so much that he had to play the video clip several times was this statement from Mayorkas: "Unlawful presence in the United States will alone not be a basis for an...
Israel’s Founding Father Called for Villages to Be ‘Wiped Out,’ Confirming Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Archival institutions are not known to be pioneers of technological innovation. They are preoccupied with the past, after all. That is why censors still often black out classified information physically, with a marker, a piece of paper or whatnot. The Israeli State Archives, on the other hand, have apparently been experimenting with virtual censorship tools. In the minutes of a cabinet meeting of Israel’s provisional government during its "War of Independence," released following requests of the Akevot Institute, digital blackouts were included to cover the more problematic statements...
Novak Djokovic Is All of Our Future
When I’ve talked in the past about the patchwork tyranny post COVID-9/11, I had more mundane things in mind than the fate of a major tennis star. Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia on Sunday after his appeal to reinstate his visa failed. And it failed not for health reasons but for political ones. To me, the kinds of terrible rules put in place for ‘public safety’ always conjure up images of casual oppression. Endless videos of pathetic public servants intimidating priests in churches or police arresting pub owners for serving willing patrons. But it goes far deeper than that....
TGIF: National or Enlightenment Liberal Identity?
I find much to admire about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch-American scholar, author, and one-time politician who has drawn international attention to the violence against women and girls not only in Muslim-majority countries but also in the West at the hands of Muslim immigrants. Hirsi Ali escaped from a marriage arrangement and then became a pariah among Muslims, including her own family, and even the target of a murder conspiracy because of her public statements and writings, her break with Islam, and her collaboration with director Theo van Gough on the film Submission. As a...
News Roundup 12/8/2021
Covid A federal judge temporarily blocks Biden’s covid mandate for federal contractors. [Link] The CDC says 60% of Americans, 72% of adults, are fully vaccinated against covid. 23% of adults have received a booster shot. [Link] The US surgeon general reported a massive rise in childhood mental health issues under covid restrictions. Childhood suicide attempts for young girls were up 51% in early 2021, compared to 2019. Childhood depression is up 25% and anxiety is up 20%. [Link] Pandemic restrictions caused Americans to engage in more reckless driving causing a 7% increase in traffic...