License is not liberty
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dmrobinson.bsky.social
License is not liberty
@dmrobinson.bsky.social
310 followers 420 following 76 posts
collective self-determination absolutist
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dmrobinson.bsky.social
Instead, dig into the foundations of the argument until you find the place where you can say "I do not accept that we have to sacrifice other human beings in order to achieve the good things you say you want to achieve. In fact, I believe that it is precisely the impulse to sacrifice human beings that ultimately prevents us from achieving those good things. I perceive that your entire moral architecture contains an unsupportable flaw, and it is precisely because I find it unsupportable that I will not support it."
August 28, 2025 at 12:51 AM
dmrobinson.bsky.social
This looks suspiciously like a "purity test." Funny how that works!
From the article, a list of demands ensuring fealty to the party, often referred to elsewhere as a purity test: "Everyone who abstained in a presidential election—or even sympathized with or made excuses for those who did—should publicly apologize. Those who refuse to do so should no longer be welcome in the movement."
June 15, 2025 at 3:57 PM
dmrobinson.bsky.social
Best line in the piece:

"The activist class has been proven largely correct in its critique of the past five decades of the neoliberal economic consensus. The liberal Democratic establishment that continues to refuse to listen to them does not deserve to lead them."

Amen!
Oh wait. Here's the actual quote from the article: "Liberal core Democratic voters have been largely right about Trump. An activist class that does not listen to them does not deserve to lead them." Ignoring the past five decades as well as the ongoing failure of leadership happening right now...is a choice.
June 11, 2025 at 5:10 PM
dmrobinson.bsky.social
A century of pervasive, industry-funded, libertarian propaganda has destroyed us.
The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market Naomi Oreskes (Author) , Erik M. Conway (Author)
January 5, 2025 at 8:18 AM
dmrobinson.bsky.social
Whittaker Chambers admitted as much, privately, to William F. Buckley:
Whittaker Chambers quote: "Conservatism is alien to the very nature of capitalism whose love of life and growth is perpetual change. We are living in one of its periods of breathless acceleration. The Church did well to distrust Roger Bacon. Science has been, from the beginning, the ideological weapon of capitalism, and is now asserting (even though it may not be interested in doing so) an exclusive dominance. I am saying that conservatism and capitalism are mutually exclusive manifestations, and antipathetic at root. Capitalism, whenever it seeks to become conservative in any quarter, at once settles into mere reaction -- that is, a mere brake on the wheel, a brake that does not hold because the logic of the wheel is to turn. Hence the sense of unreality and pessimism on the Right, running off into all manner of crackpotism. Hence, on the other side, the singular manifestation (or so it seems) of prime capitalists...turning, as we say, Left. In fact, whatever political forms their turn cloaks itself in, they are chiefly seeking to pace, in order to continue to dominate, the new developments to which the logic of capitalism itself is giving rise, now at tremendous rates of speed."
December 9, 2024 at 11:58 AM
dmrobinson.bsky.social
Gluesenkamp Perez's actual law seems harmless, since all it does is prohibit any regulations that would interfere with the serving of fresh fruit. But the problem here is that narratives about Bureaucracy Gone Mad have an effect. They make people think that government is incompetent and out of touch. But this narrative is often unfair. Often, the staff of state agencies are good, thoughtful people doing their best to enact and enforce regulations that do make sense.
November 22, 2024 at 3:14 PM