George Carlin: You Don’t Need a Formal Conpiracy

Comment: "There is no national conspiracy to buy elections and control America."

George Carlin: "You don't need a formal conspiracy, right? When interests converge, these people went to the same universities and fraternities are the same directors. They're in the same country clubs. They have like interest. They don't need to call a meeting. They know what's good for them. They're getting it. And there used to be seven oil companies. There are now three. It will soon be two. The things that matter in this country have been reduced. In choice. There are two political parties, there are a handful of insurance companies. There are about six or seven information [companies] but if you want a bagel, there are 23 flavors, because you have the illusion. You have the illusion of choice."

https://x.com/LightOnLiberty/status/2005792249175822799

Continue ReadingGeorge Carlin: You Don’t Need a Formal Conpiracy

The Powerful Urge to Censor

Harvey Silvergate, co-founder of FIRE:

The sexual drive is the second most powerful human instinct. The urge to tell our fellow humans to "shut up" is first. As long as men and women hold positions of power, they will abuse that power. So the problems we face are eternal, which means we must always have a watchdog to keep that power in check. Thank goodness we have that in FIRE.

[From Mass-emailing Dec 23, 2025]

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Cancel Culture, Again

Today I felt compelled to post this on Facebook, where it will probably fly over the heads of the intended targets:

When I read something I disagree with, it has never occurred to me to engage in ad hominem attacks, in other words, to call the author names or to characterize them as morally repulsive or suspect. I don't comment on posts and articles that I haven't actually read. And when I read something I disagree with, I put some effort into giving the author his or her best foot forward. I work hard to avoid characterizing people as "good" or "bad." "Good" people often make errors or have lapses in judgment. "Bad" people often say things that are true, even wise.

If one disagrees with a post, there's always the option of disagreeing with the content (foregoing the ad hominem attacks). One can also ignore the post or even stop following that person. To the various people on this site who prefer ad hominem attacks to civil discourse (they might not realize who they are), I suggest "The Canceling of the American Mind," an excellent book by Greg Lukianoff. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Canceling-of-the-American-Mind/Greg-Lukianoff/9781668019153

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Lenin, Unvarnished

Greg Lukianoff is frustrated with the widespread white-washing of Lenin. Excerpt:

Lenin wasn’t “complicated.” He was evil. Full stop. We don’t say that enough in the United States because most people never actually learn what he did and others with “intellectual” mentors, parents or grandparents can’t let themselves admit they had a warm heart for the man who ushered in the new age of true totalitarianism quite intentionally. Instead we get at best a cartoon: czar bad, revolution messy, Stalin later goes too far. Lenin is treated like the grim (or for true elitists, heroic) but necessary prologue. That’s backwards.

This is a man who personally ordered people hanged in public “so that the people will see, tremble, and know.” Not generals on a battlefield—peasants labeled “kulaks,” defined as the wrong class of peasant, you know? Like my family. He didn’t reluctantly authorize force in a crisis. He theorized terror as a positive good. He wanted fear as a permanent feature of the system. If deliberately terrorizing civilians as a category isn’t evil, the word doesn’t mean anything.

And what he built was not run-of-the-mill authoritarianism. A normal dictator mostly wants you to shut up and not plot against him. Lenin’s party claimed a monopoly on TRUTH. Every independent center of life, churches, unions, rival socialist parties, the press, civil associations, had to be destroyed or absorbed. Violence wasn’t a last resort; it was a standing method; it was “cleansing”. Whole groups were pre-classified as enemies to be “liquidated” if necessary. He made the jump from dictatorship to totalitarianism.

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