The EU remains an enemy of democracy

The EU remains an enemy of democracy - spiked

Péter Magyar’s victory in Hungary has been greeted among Europe’s media and political elites with the kind of theatrical glee usually reserved for the fall of a tyrant. At last, they claim, democracy has returned to Hungary. At last, Hungary is ready to return to the embrace of the EU. At last, the long nationalist nightmare is over.

They desperately need a reality check. Outgoing prime minister Viktor Orbán’s 16-year-long reign did not rest on tanks, forged ballots or a palace coup. It rested on repeated free and fair democratic electoral victories. You may loathe Orbán. You may despise Fidesz. But to speak as if democracy has only now reappeared in Hungary is deeply mendacious. 

It’s pretty clear that the EU and its media cheerleaders only like democracy when the voters deliver the ‘correct’ outcome. Had Orbán won again, Ursula von der Leyen and friends would not have been hailing democracy in action. They would have reverted to type, instantly attacking the result, blaming fake news, disinformation and foreign interference, while talking up the supposed threats to European values and the risks to the rule of law.

Indeed, everything in the pre-election atmosphere pointed in precisely that direction. EU elites didn’t just oppose a possible Orbán victory. They attempted to pre-emptively delegitimise it, too. If Orbán had won, it would have been held up as proof that Hungarian democracy was malfunctioning. This, then, was the pretext for the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, to intervene in the election.

Under the Digital Services Act, Brussels has arrogated to itself the ability to monitor and manage any online ‘information space’ during elections. It calls this its new ‘Democracy Shield’. During the Hungarian election, the Commission activated a part of this ‘shield’, called the Rapid Response System, which allowed it to force media platforms to remove ‘flagged’ content without due process.

Of course, we have no idea what content was targeted or what effect it had. In all likelihood, it had little impact on the outcome of the election. But what’s important here is the fact that this process of monitoring and regulating the online information space took place at all, with little to no transparency or accountability.

The European Fact-Checking Standards Network, which forms part of Brussels’s censorship system, has openly boasted of its apparent success in the Hungarian elections. In a newsletter sent earlier this week, it announced that its members’ ‘pre- and real-time debunking’ of everything, from AI-generated images to manipulated videos, was ‘pivotal’. But pivotal how exactly? Which images and videos did it ‘debunk’ and why? It did not say.

The media silence over all this has been deafening. An unelected supranational bureaucracy has policed the conditions of democratic speech within a member state and no mainstream journalist has batted an eyelid.

‘The Managed Ballot’, a new report from MCC Brussels, sets out how the Romanian presidential election of 2024 and its re-run in 2025 set the precedent for what happened in Hungary. The first ballot in 2024, won by TikTokking right-wing populist Călin Georgescu, was annulled amid allegations of Russian meddling and suspicious social-media activity. The Commission used that first ballot to intensify its scrutiny of TikTok in particular and to build a broader election-monitoring framework under the Digital Services Act.

Whatever one thinks of the Romanian case itself, it established a political template for the EU – a model for influencing an election by creating a fog of suspicion, through claims of technological interference, long before any transparent public accounting has taken place. By the time the Hungarian election came around, the fact that the Commission had assumed the right to police social media no longer seemed shocking: it had become normalised.

It’s in response to this that MCC Brussels established the Democracy Interference Observatory (DIO). Its aim is to document and expose this new managerial interventionism for what it is. Too many among Europe’s political and media classes have opted for euphemism and evasion. They have called these acts of censorship ‘resilience’ and portrayed bureaucratic intrusion into elections as a means to ‘defend’ democracy. Our task in the DIO is to call things by their proper names. And in the Hungarian election, we did so to real effect, exposing Brussels’s attempts to police the boundaries of political contest, while mouthing pieties about freedom and pluralism.

The danger posed by the EU’s ‘democratic defence’ operation is only likely to intensify in the coming months and years, especially with major elections approaching in Spain, France and Italy in 2027. Brussels now has the machinery in place for future interventions.

The Russian-interference narrative has been crucial to the EU’s efforts. In both Romania and Hungary, it framed certain actors and electoral currents as the products of Russian influence. It deployed guilt-by-association tactics and relied on unnamed sources and unverified claims to sow suspicion. The point was not to be alert to possible threats – it was to delegitimise nationalist or populist opponents and taint any possible victory in advance. If enough moralising smog is pumped into the atmosphere before polling day, any unwanted result can later be met not with respect, but with procedural aggression. After what happened in Romania, when the result of the first ballot was annulled on grounds of Russian interference, who can say that fear is fanciful?

And yet here comes the most delicious irony of all. The man endlessly caricatured as Europe’s would-be authoritarian strongman behaved with more democratic dignity in defeat than many of his self-styled liberal critics have shown in victory. Viktor Orbán conceded quickly, and made no effort to cling to office. He accepted the verdict of the electorate, congratulated his opponent and moved on.

So much for the feverish insinuations that he would resist a Magyar victory by any means necessary. So much for the fantasy that only Brussels and its allied guardians stand between Europe and Orbánist barbarism. Orbán’s concession showed that democratic habits have become embedded in Hungarian political life – including among those the EU has spent years demonising and treating as politically semi-legitimate.

That is why the true victors here are not the Eurocrats, or the pompous establishment commentators celebrating the ‘restoration of decency’. The true victors are the Hungarian people, who turned out in huge numbers and delivered a clear verdict. That is what democracy looks like: citizens making a choice and political actors accepting it. The EU did not teach Hungary democracy. If anything, Hungary has much to teach Brussels.

After all, the EU’s governing philosophy remains profoundly suspicious of the demos. It still sees ordinary citizens as low-information, emotionally combustible and permanently vulnerable to ‘misinformation’. It still treats free speech less as the lifeblood of democratic life than as a dangerous channel through which the wrong passions and opinions might circulate. It still prefers managed politics to messy politics, supervised elections to free elections, approved narratives to open contestation. That worldview did not disappear because Brussels liked the Hungarian result.

The EU may be hailing democracy in the wake of Orbán’s defeat, but underneath the celebrations, there remains the same old technocratic arrogance, the same old fear of uncontrolled speech, the same old inability to trust the people. Today, Eurocrats are cheering voters in Hungary because they delivered the approved answer. But they could turn on voters in Spain or France or Italy tomorrow if they deliver the ‘wrong’ answer.

This is why the Democracy Interference Observatory is not closing shop. It is preparing for the next round. Because if Hungary has proved anything, it is that the battle in Europe is no longer simply between left and right, or liberal and conservative. It is between two visions of democracy – between those who support, and those who fear, the self-government of a free people. 

Links - 30th April 2026 (2 - Donald Trump [including Greenland])

Barclay Mullins | Facebook - "People mocking the idea of the U.S. buying Greenland don’t know history.
1867 – Andrew Johnson: explored buying Greenland & Iceland (right after Alaska).
WWII – FDR: U.S. took over Greenland’s defense while Denmark was occupied.
1946 – Truman: offered $100M in gold to buy it.
Cold War – Eisenhower → Kennedy: nonstop negotiations for bases, radar, missiles.
Post–Cold War – Clinton/Bush/Obama: expanded Arctic security & missile defense.
2019 – Trump: said publicly what presidents discussed privately for 150+ years.
The U.S. didn’t “suddenly” want Greenland. It’s been defending it, negotiating it, and embedding there since the 1800s. Greenland = Arctic power, shipping lanes, missiles, minerals. Trump didn’t invent it. He said the quiet part out loud."

Josh Wolfe on X: "The Arctic Smokescreen " / X - "The most dangerous mistake about "Greenland is believing it is about Greenland. We are told this is a diplomatic spat, a real estate obsession, a chaotic throwback to 19th-century imperialism. The press treats it as spectacle. Commentators debate whether the administration is serious or simply trolling. Europeans express outrage at the affront to sovereignty. The whole affair is framed as noise: eccentric, embarrassing, ultimately inconsequential. This framing is comfortable. And almost surely wrong. The conventional reading of the Greenland saga is diplomatic incompetence in real time. The administration threatens force, gets rebuffed, escalates, gets rebuffed again, then retreats to the language of a purchase. Commentators shake their heads. Europeans express bewilderment. What looks like flailing is a classic Trump-style negotiation sequence. You open with an outrageous demand precisely so your real demand seems reasonable by comparison... The math is not absurd. The deal probably pays for itself within a generation. The minerals alone are worth multiples of the purchase price. Greenland's 57,000 residents become millionaires on paper. Denmark sheds a fiscal dependent and erases its debt. The United States secures the rare earth supply chain for the military of the 2030s. What is actually underway is a supply chain annexation dressed in the costume of territorial ambition. The target is not an island; it is two geological formations in Southern Greenland—Kvanefjeld and Tanbreez—that contain the heavy rare earth elements without which no advanced weapons system can be built... The average observer sees three separate news stories: a trade dispute with Europe, a strange fixation on Greenland, and some localized internet outages in the Baltic. These are not separate stories. They are three fronts of a single conflict.
The Resource Front: The administration is securing the mineral inputs for the military of the 2030s...
The Economic Front: The tariffs announced against Denmark, France, Germany, the UK, and four other European nations are not protectionist measures. They are precision-guided economic strikes against political dissenters. The £31 billion US-UK Tech Prosperity Deal—Microsoft's data centers, Google's R&D investment—has been suspended indefinitely. The message is unambiguous: alignment with American geopolitical objectives is the price of American capital.
The Kinetic Front: While diplomats argue over tariffs, Russian vessels drag anchors across Baltic telecommunications cables. The cargo ship Fitburg, seized by Finnish and Estonian authorities, is part of the "Shadow Fleet"—vessels with opaque ownership that operate below the threshold of open war. These are not accidents. They are shaping operations, mapping vulnerabilities, demonstrating the capacity to sever the digital infrastructure that binds the Western alliance together...
The European response to all of this has been to invoke international law, sovereignty, and the rules-based order. These invocations are emotionally satisfying. They are also strategically meaningless. International law functions only among actors who agree to be constrained by it. It assumes a mutual understanding of legitimacy, a shared framework of rules, and an enforcement mechanism capable of compelling compliance. None of these conditions hold. There is no global sovereign. There is no monopoly on force. Agreements endure only until interests diverge... European leaders can invoke norms. They cannot enforce them. And actors who openly reject the framework—whether by dragging anchors across undersea cables or by demanding territorial concessions under economic duress—gain advantage over those who internalize constraints the other side does not recognize."

Winston Marshall on X - "The Greenland issue has exposed two fundamental misconceptions widely held by Europeans elites
1. That the rules based world order ever existed. No. It was only ever a mirage, American might and money kept Europe afloat
2. It is America causing the “turbulence” and threatening world stability. No. America is in a Thucydides Trap. The threat to the world is China. U.S. are acting in response."

Meme - "DEMOCRATS: "Trump is Putin's puppet!"
ALSO DEMOCRATS: "How dare Trump defy Putin by wanting Greenland!""

Meme - EU: "GREENLAND Is For GREENLANDERS ONLY!"
Woman: "AND europe Is for Europeans only!'"
EU: "arRest HeR For HaTE SPeecH"

Exclusive | Greenlanders speak out against Danish rule: 'They stole our future’ - "Native Greenlander Amarok Petersen was 27 years old when she learned the gut-wrenching truth about why she couldn’t have children — and that Denmark was to blame. Suffering from severe uterine problems, a medical doctor discovered an IUD birth control device in her body that she didn’t know she had. Danish doctors had implanted it when she was just 13 as part of a population control program for thousands of native Greenlandic girls and women. “I will never have children,” Petersen told The Post, with tears of anger and sorrow welling in her eyes. “That choice was taken from me.” While the government of Denmark officially apologized last year for decades of forced sterilization of Indigenous women and girls, the horrific mistreatment has cast a long shadow on the island that has become the center of an international ownership fight. This week, the Danes hosted European troops for military exercises on Greenland, asserting they are protecting the island from outside powers — particularly the United States. But for many Inuit, Denmark itself has long been the real threat. “The Danes don’t see us as humans,” Petersen said at a local Inuit restaurant overlooking Nuuk’s famous fjords. “They think we’re too expensive, too small a population. But they take our land, our children, our lives and expect thanks.” Even in adulthood, medical decisions were made without Petersen’s consent. Plagued with problems after the IUD, she had repeated surgeries for unexplained pain. It wasn’t until years later that doctors informed her that her fallopian tubes had been removed in one of the operations in the early 2000s. Her family also suffered under Denmark’s so-called “Little Danes experiment,” in which Greenlandic children were forcibly sent to Denmark for adoption or institutional care — often permanently separated from their families, she said. The program, which ran from the 1950s through the 1970s, was part of Denmark’s broader effort to assimilate Greenlandic children, often without parental consent... “They think we are worth pennies,” she said. “They destroyed generations, and now they say, ‘Here — be quiet.’”... “People say ‘Greenland is for Greenlanders,’” Petersen said. “But that’s not reality. Denmark speaks for us. Denmark decides. They don’t let us speak.” That imbalance was visible recently in Washington, where the Danish foreign minister dominated nearly the entire press conference following talks with US officials on purchasing the island, while the Greenlandic foreign minister was largely sidelined... For many Greenlanders, US interest has been uncomfortable — but also clarifying. Not because they want annexation, but because it exposes how little autonomy Greenland actually has. “It was colonial,” Petersen said of Rasmussen’s assertions. “You could see it in his body language. He didn’t want her to speak. “If Denmark really believed Greenland belongs to Greenlanders,” Petersen said, “they would let us decide our own future.” That lack of control extends into everyday economic life. Karen Hammeken Jensen, a Nuussuaq resident who moved from South Greenland seeking better opportunities for her children, said basic living conditions remain poor... The imbalance is especially stark in fishing — Greenland’s most important industry. Elias Lunge, a fisherman who has worked the waters for 40 years, said Greenlanders do the labor while Denmark and large corporations capture the value... “They talk about our land,” she said. “They just never talk to us.”"

Invasion of Iceland - Wikipedia - "On 10 May 1940, during World War II, the United Kingdom landed Royal Navy and Royal Marines forces at Reykjavík and occupied Iceland without resistance. The operation, codenamed Operation Fork, was launched after Germany's rapid conquest of Denmark, to which Iceland was linked by a personal union, and amid British fears that Germany might establish bases on the strategically important island. Iceland had declared neutrality at the start of the war and rejected British requests for cooperation, but the UK proceeded with an unannounced landing to pre-empt any German move."
Damn fascism!

Meme - UK (Dr Strange): "The US are sending 14,000,605 troops to Greenland."
Iron Man: "How many are you sending ?"
UK (Dr Strange): "One."

ALX 🇺🇸 on X - "Greenland has a population of 56,000. America should send 100,000 “undocumented immigrants” to “culturally enrich” the island. They should then be given full rights as citizens. Finally, they can hold a referendum on leaving Denmark for America. There’s nothing wrong with this because replacing populations to change the voting demographics is a myth."

Trump is right: Greenland belongs in the United States - "It appears that some of the European reaction has been over-hasty: Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, is reported to have told members of Congress on Monday that Mr Trump’s goal was to purchase the island, not to invade it. But his interest in the territory is undeniable: “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security”, Mr Trump told reporters at the weekend. And a dispassionate analysis of the question would conclude that the case for American possession is overwhelming. Greenland looms large in strategic thinking. Its remote Arctic location and small population belie its commanding position over Atlantic shipping routes, its vast mineral wealth, and, sadly, modern Denmark’s inability to defend it... In the Cold War, Greenland formed an essential part of the radar warning networks against Soviet missile attack, which was anticipated over shorter polar routes. Today, as China has preposterously declared itself a “near-Arctic state” and pursues an ambitious “polar silk road” across Russia’s underdeveloped Arctic ports, its inroads and investments could give it control absent American action... Can Denmark not defend Greenland on its own, or within Nato? Fat chance. Even the country’s recently augmented defence budget languishes at under $10bn (£7.4bn) per annum, compared to the $1trn (£744bn) US military budget Mr Trump has requested for 2026. The Danish armed forces have fewer personnel than New York City’s police department. Copenhagen’s investment in its island possession is impecunious, building on a long and unfortunate colonial legacy of neglect. When Trump returned to office in 2025, Denmark’s defensive force for Greenland consisted of one observation plane, four customs inspection vessels, and several dogsled teams. After Trump first mentioned acquiring Greenland, the Danes pledged an additional inspection vessel and more dogs. Left to Denmark, Greenland’s security is doubtful. With America in charge, it is assured... Perhaps the best solution, which I have previously advocated for, would be uniquely American – a Compact of Free Association, the diplomatic arrangement that governs US relations with the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau. Under its terms, those Pacific island nations retain independence and self-government while the US enjoys unlimited military access in exchange for free trade. Under a similar agreement, Greenland’s democracy and prosperity would be assured while US and global security concerns would be answered."

Jonatan Pallesen on X - "What Trump is addressing is the risk that if Greenland becomes independent (which many of our left-wing politicians want), then Greenland's politicians may make a deal with Russia or China. They have previously been in talks with China about building airports there. Their politicians make statements saying they want strengthened ties with China. An issue is that Greenland is a country that has way too small a population and economy for its global military importance. We can't have these Greenlandic politicians, who are similar to small-city mayors, have such enormous power over international security. And this is why Greenland cannot be independent. And why, if Greenland is on a path to independence, the USA should make moves to take over Greenland instead. I don't like Trump's talk about military action against Denmark obviously. But we Danes also have to realize our own failures in the matter. Our first failure was to put Greenland on a path for independence in 2009, with the Self-Government Act of 2009. This was naive and a mistake. As explained, Greenland cannot become independent. But many of our politicians are naive and woke. Our second failure was that of our Prime Minister who harshly rejected Trump when they first discussed Greenland in 2019. Instead, she should have been more open to dialogue. She flatly rejected him with "people are not bought and sold", and called his idea "absurd". But if there is a deal that Greenlanders are happy with, "selling" them is not the correct frame. It could be a mutually beneficial deal for all involved. Also especially when you yourself have made mistakes like the first failure, you should be more open to dialogue in general. And you should not publicly call the ideas of our most important ally "absurd". Our third failure is happening right now. What we should do is offer a price for Greenland. There are serious estimates putting the value in the range of $400 billion to $1 trillion. So an offer in that range. If we did this, then the USA could have their needs for military security fulfilled for a fair market price. This would make talk about the idea of a military conquest look (even more) unacceptable. And a sale could benefit all. It could bring wealth and opportunity to the people of Greenland, and greater military security to the U.S. and the world."

There’s method to Trump’s Greenland madness - "For decades, Denmark has quietly underwritten Greenland’s welfare, autonomy, security and gradual path towards greater self-government – while living with a basic truth: Greenlanders may have an affinity for Denmark, but they are also a distinct people with their own culture, shaped by distance, history and Arctic reality. Managing those contradictions has required a tactful Copenhagen balancing act. Then Trump arrived and dispensed with balance entirely, announcing – without nuance, without tact – that Greenland should be acquired... After the White House meeting with vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio, a video of Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenland’s foreign minister Vivian Motzfeldt lighting up cigarettes outside the White House went viral... Surreal, yes. But it also captured the current situation: lots of Trumpian theatre, plenty of pressure, and (so far) no change in the fact that matters most. Greenland remains Greenland, and annexation-by-headline is still just that. Suddenly Greenland looks enviably placed – especially at the negotiating table. If Denmark and the United States start competing to stay in Greenlanders’ good graces, it is Greenlanders who hold the trump card: any major change in status would, in the end, be hard to imagine without a referendum. For decades, Greenland has been subsidised by Denmark and sheltered by Nato’s security umbrella. Now more money is likely to flow in – both from Copenhagen, keen to demonstrate commitment, and from Washington, eager to secure access and influence. Expect investment not only in runways and ports, but in minerals, research, hearts and minds. Few places on Earth sit at that sweet spot where cash, protection and strategic attention converge. And unlike most courted territories, Greenland can plausibly play suitors off against each other. Not bad for an island everyone once forgot. Even bribes can be useful if you are the one receiving them. Trump’s intervention, chaotic as it has been, has forced everyone to acknowledge, at record pace, what had long been politely ignored: Greenland matters. Not symbolically, but materially. This is no longer only a place at the edge of a map. There is also the small matter of soldiers. Not just American ones, but Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Canadian and other Nato personnel now rotating through the Arctic. This matters because it exposes the most implausible element of Trump’s rhetoric: the idea that the US would ever forcibly “take” Greenland. It is difficult to imagine American troops attacking fellow Nato soldiers – some of whom would almost certainly be sharing mess halls, exercises, and perhaps even jokes about dog sleds. The whole scenario collapses under its own absurdity. Which raises an interesting question: did Trump ever seriously plan to take Greenland at all? Or was this, as so many Trump episodes are, a deliberate act of disruption, throwing something outrageous into the room to see whether it meets resistance? It is increasingly clear that Trump tends to learn where the boundary is by stepping over it first... Seen through that lens, the episode looks less like imperial ambition and more like Trumpian performance art: shake the snow globe, make allies run, force everyone to reassess priorities, flush out taboos – and put money on the table. Congress, in turn, has played its institutional role, pushing back just hard enough to reassert constitutional limits without fully defusing the spectacle."

Meme - GuilloTeen Vogue @leftistbeard: "They are rehabilitating one of history's worst monsters because he has decorum"
nicole @BadBunnyTwitch: "liberals hate bad manners more than war crimes"
John A. Daly @JohnDalyBooks: "I'm friendly with a number of people at The Bulwark, but I must say that this fixation on trashing George W. Bush (a fundamentally decent man who chose to retire from politics) for not fulfilling some fantasy of rising from the political ashes to take on Trump, is gross to me."
I'm old enough to remember when left wingers claimed George W Bush was a Nazi

Eric Levitz on X - "Since Trump took office, Americans' real wages and 401ks have risen, inflation has fallen, productivity has surged -- and voters' ratings of the economy have fallen off a cliff. Today, consumer sentiment is lower than it was during the Great Recession. What explains the public's economic discontent? In a good post on the broader "vibecession," @mtkonczal offered one explanation: The prices of essentials -- groceries, transportation, healthcare, and housing -- have risen faster than overall inflation. Maybe flat-screen TVs have been getting more affordable. But the things people truly *need* haven't. This has been true for much of the past four years. But since Trump's inauguration, wages have been rising faster than most essentials."

NYT Accidentally Admits There's A Judicial Coup Against Trump - "The admission comes in the piece’s opening paragraphs, in which Toobin discusses the American Constitution Society and its new president, Phil Brest. The ACS has often been described as the less successful and left-wing alternative to the conservative Federalist Society, which has become an influential force in getting originalists appointed to the Supreme Court and other federal judgeships. Toobin notes how Brest — who worked in the Biden White House’s counsel office — “helped the president nominate and win confirmation of 235 federal judges, which is more than Mr. Trump’s total in his first term.” In the very next sentence, however, the CNN legal analyst let it slip that these judicial appointments have become the left’s primary tool in grinding Trump and his voters’ agenda to a halt. “Those [Biden] judges — and others appointed by Democratic presidents — have proved that the most effective resistance to Mr. Trump has come not from Democratic politicians but rather from federal judges,” wrote Toobin, who subsequently listed off a series of overreaching orders issued by “these judges, many of them Biden appointees,” against the 47th president... In response to leftist-backed lawsuits, these judges have spent the past year issuing overreaching injunctions and temporary restraining orders blocking every aspect of the president’s agenda — with some even going as far as attempting to unilaterally halt enactment of policies passed by Congress... The Times and Toobin may think the latter’s article is shining a light on a new and exciting counter to the successful originalist movement. In reality, it’s just further affirmation of the left’s willingness to wreck America’s constitutional system in their quest for unfettered power."

Apple Lamps on X - "Never forget that Democrats abused their power to convict a former president on 34 felonies for how his lawyer recorded payments & invoices to/from his lawyer (same lawyer) while he was sitting president. The prosecution never claimed that Trump physically recorded the payments himself. Instead, he was convicted under the legal principle of "causing" a false entry to be made. The statute of limitations for the misdemeanor charge of falsifying business records (two years in New York) had long expired. The only way the DA could bring the charges in 2023 was by "stepping them up" to felonies, effectively bringing a dead, time-barred misdemeanor back to life The DA never actually had to formally charge Trump with the underlying campaign finance crime required to elevate the charges to felonies. The judge ruled that the jury did not even have to unanimously agree on which specific underlying crime Trump was trying to commit, just that they generally agree that he committed a crime. How can someone properly defend themselves against a crime they were never charged with? Democrats used an activist District Attorney and Judge to stretch and abuse the law to target a political figure, using a legal theory that had never been tested before. Democrats destroyed our justice system. They proved to everyone that they can jail you for any reason they want."

Glenn Greenwald on X - "I have a question.✋ How is it possible that Trump "dashed" Putin's hopes given that -- as the FBI, CIA, the Dem Party, the NeverTrump faction and US corporate media insisted -- Putin holds personal, sexual and financial blackmail over Trump that forces Trump to obey Putin?"

Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings - "I’ve been thinking about the intractability of American politics and whether the rift can ever truly be healed. I began to wonder if I wasn’t seeing something because I was looking at it from the wrong perspective. For years, I assumed the division was primarily ideological—policy disputes about taxes, regulation, foreign policy, culture. That would at least be manageable, but the more I’ve watched the past decade unfold, the more I’ve come to suspect that what divides us is not policy at all—it is all about “feeling.” More specifically, it is feeling about Donald Trump. Strip away the daily outrage cycles and the social-media hysteria, and you see something striking: opposition to Trump has rarely been framed in terms of executive and legislative substance. It is not primarily about tariffs versus free trade, border enforcement levels, NATO funding formulas, or regulatory rollbacks. It is about loathing. It is aesthetic revulsion elevated to moral emergency. The man must be opposed, not because of policy detail, but because he exists and the hollow, performative screams of authoritarianism, dictator, Nazi, and racist, absent of actual proof, prove once politics becomes emotional absolutism, reconciliation becomes unlikely and nearly impossible... The Never Trump contingent—Democrats who for years masqueraded as Republicans—have fared no better. They appear like actors who missed their cue in a play that has already closed. Picking at the bones of a long-dead grift, they surface periodically to assure us that they still matter, that if only a Jeb Bush, a John Kasich, a Paul Ryan were in charge, normalcy would return. What they really want is a restoration of the polite managerial class—a GOPe technocracy that governs by consensus dinners and donor conference calls. Lovable losers. If such a figure were president, one assumes many of today’s fiercest critics would rediscover their appreciation for “norms.” Their outrage would subside into professional disagreement, and the temperature would drop not because policy changed, but because the “vibes” did. Which brings me to a different question: What if the paradigm has already shifted? What if America—quietly, imperfectly—has accepted that MAGA is not a passing tantrum but a realignment? What if a substantial portion of the country has decided that “America First” is not isolationism but self-respect? What if the country has already begun a turn toward something more assertive, more self-conscious about sovereignty, more comfortable with strength—yes, even more consciously masculine in tone?... The reactions to America winning gold medals at the recently completed MilanCortina Olympics, especially the patriotism of the hockey team winning the gold on the 46th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, outed the America haters and illustrated that when your echo chamber becomes indistinguishable from parody, something has shifted. The economy, too, tells a story. Despite relentless messaging that any recovery is insufficient, fragile, or falsely attributed, the underlying indicators have stabilized. The narrative insists that nothing counts unless perfection is instantaneous. “Why hasn’t he fixed everything yet?” becomes the refrain even though five years of market and supply chain disruption takes time to heal. The same with illegal immigration. Emotional imagery dominates headlines and enforcement is framed as cruelty—but deportations continue. Border crossings decline. Policy, imperfect and incremental, proceeds beneath the noise. This suggests something uncomfortable for the opposition: governance is happening—and if governance continues while hysteria escalates, the hysteria begins to look performative. Voters may disagree with tone, style, or rhetoric—but they can see results. Over time, results dull outrage."

RM Hare and The Conscientious Nazi

"If the ideals of the Nazis and the liberals had been such that they could be pursued without interfering with each other, argument might have been impossible and war unnecessary...

Let us, as briefly as possible, consider what might be said in such an argument between a liberal and a Nazi. The liberal might try, first, drawing the Nazi's attention to the consequences of his actions for large numbers of people (Jews for example) who did not share his ideals, and asking him whether he was prepared to assent to a universal principle that people (or even people having the characteristics of Jews) should be caused to suffer thus. Now if only interests were being considered, the liberal would have a strong argument; for, if so, the Nazi would not assent to the judgement that, were he himself to be a Jew, or have the characteristics of Jews, he should be treated in this way. If ideals are left out of consideration, there is absolutely no reason why he should assent to such a judgement, and every reason why he should dissent from it; he will certainly agree that it is against the interests of Jews and of everybody else to be so treated. And thus, by applying the arguments of Chapter 6, the liberal might lead the Nazi to reject the moral judgement that it is right to treat Jews (or anybody else) in this manner. But the Nazi has a universal principle of his own which gets in the way of the liberal's argument. He accepts the principle that the characteristics which Jews have are incompatible with being an ideal or pre-eminently good (or even a tolerably good) man ; and that the ideal, or even a tolerably good, society cannot be realized unless people having these characteristics are eliminated. It might therefore seem prima facie that it is no use asking him to imagine himself having the characteristics of Jews and to consider what his interests would then be; for he thinks that, even if the other interests of people (including his own) are sacrificed, the ideal state of society ought to be pursued by producing ideal men and eliminating those that fall short of the ideal.

A person who was moved by considerations of self-interest, and was prepared to universalize the judgements based on it, but had no ideals of this fanatical kind, could not think this ; and it might plausibly be said that a man who professes to think this is usually either insincere or lacking in imagination -for on the whole such fanaticism is rare. But it exists. The person who has ideals of the sort described is not necessarily defective in either of these ways. His ideals have, on the face of it, nothing to do with self-interest or with a morality which can be generated by universalizing self-interest; they seem much more akin to the aesthetic evaluations discussed in the last chapter. The enormity of Nazism is that it extends an aesthetic style of evaluation into a field where the bulk of mankind think that such evaluations should be subordinated to the interests of other people. The Nazis were like the emperor Heliogabalus, who, I have been told, had people slaughtered because he thought that red blood on green grass looked beautiful.

There is another way of indicating the superior strength of the idealist's position. We saw in 6.6 that there was a way of escaping from the golden-rule argument that was open to anybody, viz. by abstaining from making any moral judgements at all. This way of escape, however, involves a resignation from the argument, considered as a moral one; and it does not seem in any way a defeat for the moralist that he cannot get the better in argument of someone who is not competing in that game, any more than a mathematician need feel worsted if he cannot prove that six eggs and five more make eleven to a man who will not make any mathematical judgements at all. But our Nazi is able to perform what is essentially a very similar manoeuvre, while still claiming to play the moral game; for he is still making prescriptive universal judgements, and the only difference between him self and his opponent is that the Nazi sticks to his judgements even when they conflict with his own interest in hypothetical cases (for example the case where he himself is imagined as having the characteristics of Jews). In this respect he might even claim to be morally superior to his opponent, in that the latter abandons his principles when they conflict with his own hypothetical interests ; the Nazi might say that one should stick to one's principles regardless of questions of interest...

The Nazi is desiring that the Jews should be exterminated; and, because the desire is a universal one corresponding to an ideal, he desires that anyone having the characteristics which make him want to exterminate Jews should likewise be exterminated. And from this it follows that, if he is sincere and clear-headed, he desires that he him self should be exterminated if he were to come to have the characteristics of Jews...

In order to bring out the extraordinary nature of the really fanatical Nazi's desires, let us imagine that we are able to perform on him the following trick, comparable to another which we shall devise later for a different sort of racialist ( 1 1.7). We say to him 'You may not know it, but we have discovered that you are not the son of your supposed parents, but of two pure Jews; and the same is true of your wife'; and we produce apparently cast-iron evidence to support this allegation. Is he at all likely to say-as he logically can say 'All right then, send me and all my family to Buchenwald !' ? And then let us imagine saying to him 'That was only a deception ; the evidence we produced was forged. But now, having really faced this possibility, do you still think as you used to about the extermination of Jews ?...

He would not be contradicting himself if he said 'Jews are such an abomination that I and my whole family, if we were Jews, should be sent to the gas-chamber'."

--- Toleration and Fanaticism in Freedom and Reason / R. M. Hare

Links - 30th April 2026 (1 - Left Wing Economics)

Meme - "CEOs don't add any value! I'm going to start my own firm without a CEO!"
"Okay then! That was always allowed!"
Svyatoslav Pidgorny @Slav636: "Starbucks doesn't need a CEO. It should become an association of employee-owned cafes, creating sustainable, community-centric non-profit business."

Meme - "Anarchists when the one optometrist in their village won't trade them a pair of glasses in exchange for poetry about being gay *clutches heart*"

Meme - "DEMOCRATS FOR DECADES HAVE BEEN A BUNCH OF RICH PEOPLE CONVINCING POOR PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR RICH PEOPLE BY TELLING THE POOR PEOPLE THAT OTHER RICH PEOPLE ARE THE REASON THEY'RE POOR"

Guillermo Carone on X - "In Spain I was audited because my brand new startup was unprofitable, and apparently that was suspicious. So not only was I loosing money, I also had to waste time and some more money with my accountant to go through that process"

Guillermo Carone on X - "One more "funny" story about the Spanish administration. This one is very recent.  I purchased a small shop with squatters inside. I started the legal process to kick them out (BTW, you need a lawyer to do that, you can't file the paperwork without one). Six months later, the judge ruled in my favor.  But here comes the "funny" part.  The squatters needed to be legally notified of the judge's ruling, and they had 20 days after receiving the notification to appeal. But officially notifying someone in Spain is not like in the movies. You can’t just say, "Hey, are you John Smith? You’ve been served." The person receiving the notification needs to be legally identified, signature, ID, etc.  The squatters in my shop were undocumented immigrants, no papers, so technically the police could not identify them and therefore couldn't officially notify them.  The judge said it was the police's responsibility to notify the squatters. The police said there was no way to formally notify them without documentation. And this went on for months. MONTHS AFTER THE JUDGE HAD RULED IN MY FAVOR!  Eventually, the police were able to kick them out because they managed to collect proof that they were using the shop to sell drugs. It was part of a widespread mafia operation.   So I got my shop back, not because it was my property and it was illegally occupied, but because I was "lucky" that the dummies in there were selling drugs.  The entire thing lasted 18 months and cost 5K€ in legal fees, plus the cost of restoring the space after it was returned to me in a deplorable state (see the photos), plus all the months I was not able to use or rent the place.  I think cases like these are particularly delicate because they put the concept of private property on the line. And without the concept of private property, well, everything falls apart."

Guillermo Carone on X - "A "funny" side story to the squatters story I shared yesterday.  When I bought the shop, the first thing I did was hire one of those “desokupa” type companies to remove them. It was a very disappointing experience. In the end, the most they could do was negotiate with the squatters.  The deal they proposed was this: if I paid them to leave, AND on top of that found them another place to go squat, they would leave my property.  Now here’s the part that blew my mind.  The company I hired told me there is an organized network around this in Barcelona. If you go to certain "locutorios" and ask the right way, they will show you what is basically a catalogue of empty apartments that belong to banks. Because they have contacts inside, they know which properties the bank is not planning to move on anytime soon and are likely to remain empty for a while.  You choose the one you like, almost as if you were at a real estate agency. Prices vary depending on size and location, and for a fee, they will open the property for you, deactivate the alarm if there is one, and set you up to occupy it.  I find this EXTREMELY disturbing. These people have built a business model around properties that are not theirs.  You can agree or disagree with banks keeping properties empty. That’s a separate debate. But building a business around using property that does not belong to you... is simply not right."

Guillermo Carone on X - "Since my last tweet sparked so much interest, here is another “funny” story about the Spanish administration.  One day I checked my bank account and saw a €590 charge I did not recognize. After 20 min on the phone whit my bank, I learned Hacienda had seized the money. They gave me a case number.  I started calling to understand why. No one would explain it over the phone. They could not verify my identity remotely. I had to go in person. The next appointment was in three weeks.  At the appointment, they told me a commercial space I owned was being used as a home. Illegal.  I told them I had sold it a year earlier, and that when I owned it, it was rented as storage. 20 sqm. One open room.  They said THEY HAD PROOF and showed me photos. The photos were not my shop.  The building has three street level shops: 1, 2, 3. The inspector mixed them up. He took photos of shop 1 but wrote shop 3 in some forms.  The infraction happened three years earlier. Shop 1 was notified repeatedly and did nothing about it. When it was time to collect, they charged shop 3. That was me.  The photos showed a kitchen and a bedroom. My shop was a single 20 sqm space. They could verify that in public property records.  They said they needed an inspection. Next available slot: two months.  I repeated that I no longer owned the property. I could not give access to something that was not mine.  They escalated the case. Over the next year, I received three calls. Each time I had to explain everything again. Each time they asked if I could get the new owner to give access. I did not know the new owner. They said they would call back.  Finally, someone senior called. He said this would be the last time they called if I was not willing to cooperate. I said I couldn’t do what they asked, no matter how much I wanted to. He said there was nothing they could do.  AND THAT IS HOW I LOST €590, spent 10 to 12 hours on calls and visits, and carried this issue in my head for over a year."

Guillermo Carone on X - "Want to hear an even more surreal story?  I was a freelancer in Spain, making 4-5K€ per month. Then my son was born, and I was forced to take at least 6 weeks of paternity leave. During this time I would be paid around 900€/month (regardless of how much I made).  A good portion of my income came from ongoing monthly contracts that didn't require daily involvement on my part, and I arranged with my clients to do more work upfront and then catch up when I came back to make up for my time away.  HOWEVER, to my surprise, my accountant told me the Spanish system did not allow me to create invoices during my paternity leave.  I asked if I could give up my paternity leave "benefits" altogether. The answer was NO.  So for a while there, I was forced by the government to stop generating 4-5K€ for my family and instead take the 900€ they so kindly were giving me."

Relationship Between the Welfare State and Crime - "the Maryland NAACP released a report concluding that “the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today.”(1) Their conclusion appears to be confirmed by academic research. For example, research by Dr. June O’Neill’s and Anne Hill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of combined AFDC and food stamp benefits led to a 117 percent increase in the crime rate among young black men.(2)   Welfare contributes to crime in several ways. First, children from single-parent families are more likely to become involved in criminal activity. According to one study, children raised in single-parent families are one-third more likely to exhibit anti-social behavior.(3) Moreover, O’Neill found that, holding other variables constant, black children from single- parent households are twice as likely to commit crimes as black children from a family where the father is present. Nearly 70 percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes, as do 43 percent of prison inmates.(4) Research indicates a direct correlation between crime rates and the number of single-parent families in a neighborhood.(5)... the evidence of a link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is overwhelming. There have been 13 major studies of the relationship between the availability of welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock birth. Of these, 11 found a statistically significant correlation. Among the best of these studies is the work done by June O’Neill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Holding constant a wide range of variables, including income, education, and urban vs. suburban setting, the study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.(7) Likewise, research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert Plotnick of the University of Washington showed that an increase in welfare benefits of $200 per month per family increased the rate of out-of-wedlock births among teenagers by 150 percent.(8)  The same results can be seen from welfare systems in other countries. For example, a recent study of the impact of Canada’s social-welfare system on family structure concluded that “providing additional benefits to single parents encourages births of children to unwed women.”(9)...   Current welfare policies seem to be designed with an appallingly lack of concern for their impact on out-of-wedlock births. Indeed, Medicaid programs in 11 states actually provide infertility treatments to single women on welfare.(12)  I should also point out that, once the child is born, welfare also appears to discourage the mother from marrying in the future. Research by Robert Hutchins of Cornell University shows that a 10 percent increase in AFDC benefits leads to an eight percent decrease in the marriage rate of single mothers.(13)  As welfare contributes to the rise in out-of-wedlock births and single-parent families, it concomitantly contributes to the associated increase in criminal activity. Secondly, welfare leads to increased crime by contributing to the marginalization of young black men in society... The welfare culture tells the man he is not a necessary part of the family. They are in effect cuckolded by the state. Their role of father and breadwinner is supplanted by the welfare check.   The role of marriage and family as a civilizing influence on young men has long been discussed. Whether or not strict causation can be proven, it is certainly true that unwed fathers are more likely to use drugs and become involved in criminal behavior.(14) Indeed, single men are five times more likely to commit violent crimes than married men.(15)  Finally, in areas where there is a high concentration of welfare, there may be an almost total lack of male role models. This can lead to crime in two ways. First, as the Maryland NAACP puts it, “A child whose parents draw a welfare check without going to work does not understand that in this society at least one parent is expected to rise five days of each week to go to some type of job.”(16)   Second, boys growing up in mother only families naturally seek male influences. Unfortunately, in many inner city neighborhoods, those male role models may not exist. As George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty, has noted, the typical inner-city today is “almost a matriarchy. The women receive all the income, dominate the social-worker classes, and most of the schools.” Thus, the boy in search of male guidance and companionship may end up in the company of gangs or other undesirable influences.(17)"
Weird. Left wingers keep claiming that increasing welfare will reduce crime

Meme - Charlie Smirkley @charliesmirkley: "The inequality causes crime narrative is activist science. 43 studies. 1,341 estimates. Half the data never published.  Corrected effect: near zero.  Inequality doesn’t drive crime."
"Publication Bias in the Inequality-Crime Literature 341 estimates - 43 studies - funnel plot of standardised mean differences
Pazzona, M. (2024). Revisiting the income inequality-crime puzzle. World Development, 176"
Clear proof not just that poverty causes crime, but that inequality causes crime

Meme - Flo Crivello @Altimor: "Can't wait for the "science is real" people to change their views on taxation and economic freedom now that the science is settled"
"Correlation between Economic Freedom and GDP Change 1990 to 2000 *positive*"

Handre on X - "What poeople think regulations do:
- Protect consumers from greedy corporations
- Ensure product safety and quality
- Level the playing field for small business
- Prevent market failures and exploitation
What regulations actually do:
- Create massive compliance costs that only big corporations can afford
- Establish regulatory capture where industries write their own rules
- Strangle innovation and entrepreneurship in red tape
- Build permanent bureaucratic empires that expand regardless of results
You're not getting consumer protection. You're getting a cartelization mechanism that happens to sound compassionate."

Meme - "I would rather have a thousand lazy bums live off my tax dollars than let a single poverty-stricken family go without food or shelter."
"Then donate your own fucking money instead of stealing mine at gunpoint. Here you go, put your money where your mouth is. *gifts to government*"

Meme - Employer: "Hey, I Have an offer for you: Do this and I'Il give you money"
Employee: "Sound great to me"
Upset Commie: "STOP OPPRESSING THE WORKING CLASS"

Meme - *Clown putting on makeip*
"We need a high minimum wage that big business can afford but small businesses can't."
"We need expensive regulations that small competitors can't afford."
"We need government to close small businesses during the Pandemic but leave big ones open."
"Amazon is too big. Capitalism has failed."

MC Squared on X - "Capitalism invariably produces a small parasitic class of people who live securely and affluently from the collective labor of others, while contributing little or nothing to society themselves."
Rock Chartrand🤑 on X - "Communists and socialists deliberately invert the meaning of parasite because the real definition points straight at them.   A parasite is someone who survives by extracting value from others without voluntary exchange or productive contribution.   That description fits people who demand subsidies, entitlements, bailouts, and protection from competition, not people who build companies and persuade others to trade with them.  So they flip the script. They call producers “parasites” to evade the obvious fact that production requires competence, risk, and value creation, while dependency requires none of it.   The inversion isn’t economic. It’s psychological. It’s a way to turn failure into moral superiority.  Once you accept that earning is exploitation and need is a moral claim, every personal shortcoming can be rebranded as victimhood, and every success can be framed as theft.   That's how losers avoid accountability while demanding power over the people who outperform them.  If they were right, the people they hate most would be unnecessary. In reality, those are the only people making their lifestyle possible."

Meme - "Extreme poverty fell sharply worldwide - even excluding China. Extreme poverty is defined as living below the International Poverty Line of $3 per day. This data is adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs between countries. Global extreme poverty fell from 43% to 10%. If we exclude China, it still fell from 33% to 12% *1990 to 2025*
Data source: World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (2025)"
So much for the left wing cope that if you exclude China (whether because it's supposedly communist or whatever), extreme poverty didn't fall.

Virginia Democrats propose new taxes on dog walking, gym memberships, deliveries - "Virginia Democrats have introduced a host of new tax proposals that would tax a range of services, including dog walking and gym memberships despite running on a campaign to increase affordability.   More than 50 proposals and new rules were introduced for the new legislative session, including additional local sales tax in all Virginia counties and cities"
Virginia Democrats vote themselves 178% pay raise amid affordability push - "The development comes as Spanberger has centered her campaign on "affordability," with Richmond Democrats echoing that they are working to improve their constituents’ personal finances."

Austin Berg on X - "NEW: Two ratings agencies hit Chicago with credit downgrades today.  Why?   One major reason: The $11B in pension sweeteners signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker following token opposition from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration last year.  I predicted this would trigger a downgrade when Pritzker signed the bill.  Yet the Chicago Teachers Union and others are in Springfield right now lobbying for further pension sweeteners.  Our political leaders are selling out the city’s future in exchange for political support from government unions.  This has to stop."
Austin Berg on X - "UPDATE: The Chicago Tribune editorial board has learned Mayor Brandon Johnson is floating a secret $500M+ bond deal that makes *no payments on that debt* for the next three years.  Not interest-only payments.   Literally no payments at all.  This would be the second major bond deal structured by Johnson to avoid any payments during his term and dump the liabilities on his successor.  Johnson’s CFO Jill Jaworski presented entirely different numbers to the Council when seeking approval for the borrowing.  Have to believe that Fitch witnessing this bait and switch from the mayor’s office contributed to the credit downgrade this week."

Meme - Chris Freiman @cafreiman: "Even if you think military spending is too high, it's important to recognize that far more of your tax dollars go to entitlement programs:
Federal Spending by Category, 1947-2021, as a Percentage of GDP
National Defense (5% in 2021)
Major Entitlements (over 20% in 2021)
All other
Source: US Budgets, Congressional Budget Office"
rust bett roadtrip @gmoutt: "we're always told there's no money for libraries, for healthcare, for universities, for high speed rail, for sewer upgrades, and yet there's always infinite money for war"
One cope is that it doesn't matter if a lot more money is already spent on their social spending. It's still better to spend money there than on defence

Thread by @sfliberty on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - ""Sweden is proof socialism works!"  Your professor loves this story. Politicians too. But there's one problem: Sweden got rich BEFORE it tried socialism.  And when they actually tried it, everything fell apart. 🧵
Every campus economics debate ends the same way.  Someone drops the Sweden card: "High taxes, big welfare—and they're rich and happy!"  This myth has become the ultimate trump card against free market arguments. But what if the entire foundation of this story is backwards?
150 years ago, Sweden was dirt poor—poorer than Congo at the time.  Life expectancy was half the average of developing countries. Families mixed tree bark into bread to survive famine.  In Stockholm, 1,400 people crammed into buildings with only 200 one-room flats.  As Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg wrote: "Of all the wondrous adventures of the Swedish people, none is more remarkable than this: that it survived all of them." Sweden's escape from poverty was led by the progressives of their time—but not the kind you'd expect.  Anders Chydenius and Lars Johan Hierta were radical reformers fighting the conservative establishment.  These liberal revolutionaries were the campus activists of 1800s Sweden—except they fought FOR free markets, not against them. They abolished guild restrictions, slashed tariffs, expanded property rights, and deregulated banking.
The results were astonishing.
— Between 1850 and 1950, Sweden's income per capita increased eightfold. Life expectancy rose 28 years.
— Infant mortality plunged from 15% to 2%.
— By 1950, Sweden was the 4th richest country in the world.
— All while government spending stayed at just 6% of national income in 1900.
Sweden only turned toward big government in the 1970s. And it nearly wrecked the economy.
— Public spending soared from 31% to 60% of GDP.
— Growth rates halved. By 1990, private enterprise had created no net new jobs since 1950.
— Sweden fell from 4th richest country in the OECD to 14th between 1970 and 2000.
Even beloved authors fled the system. Astrid Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking, calculated: "If I make 1 million kronor in profit, the government takes 102%. I'd owe more than I earned."  Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, fled to Switzerland. Ingmar Bergman was arrested for tax evasion and left the country.  This is what happens when you implement the policies progressives call "fair share."
Sweden saved itself in the 1990s by returning to free markets:
— slashed top tax rates;
— abolished wealth taxes;
— introduced school vouchers;
— allowed private healthcare options.
Result: Sweden started outperforming Europe again. Free markets worked—again.
When your professor uses Sweden as proof socialism works, they're either ignorant of basic economic history or deliberately misleading you.  The policies that made Sweden decline in the 1970s are exactly what progressives want today: massive spending, high taxes, wealth taxes, government control of healthcare.  Sweden tried this playbook. It failed. They reversed course. We're about to repeat their mistakes."

Team Talarico on X - ".@JamesTalarico : The reason poverty exists in the wealthiest country on Earth is not because we can't feed the poor. It's because we can't satisfy the rich.   Elon Musk is about to become the first trillionaire. He's about to make more money than every elementary school teacher in America combined. Do we really believe one man is worth more than every elementary school teacher?  Why do we have a trillionaire when there are kids without enough to eat, cancer patients going bankrupt, and veterans sleeping on the street?  I'm all for success, but this is not success. This is hoarding. What leads a person to accumulate more money than they could possibly spend in 100 lifetimes when there are people starving in this one?  What we can do is tax trillionaires out of existence and use that money to guarantee food, healthcare, and housing for every single American."
Chris Freiman on X - "Milton Friedman: “Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”"
Of course, left wingers pretend that "trillionaires" are an unlimited resource and that taxing them one time (since they will be taxed out of existence) will pay for unlimited social spending until the end of time

Mike Netter on X - "Seattle’s socialist Mayor Katie Wilson has officially declared war on grocery chains. She claims she will unilaterally BAN grocery stores from closing down in her city, arguing that food access is a human right that overrides business decisions. She said : "We cannot allow big grocery chains to close stores at will!"
The Plan: If a private business tries to leave due to theft, taxes, or safety concerns... the government will step in. Her allies in the state legislature have even introduced a bill (HB-2313) allowing the city to use Eminent Domain to SEIZE grocery store properties and turn them into government-run shops.
Mayor Katie Wilson calls it "protecting the community." Critics call it "holding businesses hostage."
Thoughts?"
FischerKing on X - "The grocery chains are closing stores because the City refuses to control crime, which leads to extensive shoplifting that makes the stores unprofitable. They also become unsafe, and so customers don't want to go there and so the stores have fewer shoppers."
I got some amazing cope about this. This left winger claimed she never said that and I quoted what she said and this left winger quoted a longer version of the line and claimed that that proved she never said it

Wealth taxes are the best way to destroy a country short of bombing it - "In 1990, 12 OECD members still had wealth taxes. By 2017, that number had dropped to four, with researchers noting that “the revenues collected… have also, with a few exceptions, been very low”.  That the political conversation in the West should have wrapped all the way back around to wealth taxes – or taxes on unrealised gains – all over again is a sign of just how tired our politics has become. We’ve managed to forget our old mistakes in time to make them all over again."

Links - 29th April 2026 (3 - General Wokeness)

Meme - Kayla Elizabeth @VixenRogue: "How you know you're about to read some next level garbage"
"Justice Jackson was the sole dissenter."

Thread by @JonathanTurley on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has issued another sole stinging dissent. In a 7-2 decision (with liberal justice Elena Kagan joining the majority), the Court upheld the authority of police to make a stop based on the totality of the circumstances Jackson wrote that "I cannot fathom" how the seven justices could second-guess the lower court in rejecting the police claims. She accused her colleagues of mere "wordsmithing." Just for the record, it would be useful to review those words. The stop that Jackson (and the DC Circuit) found to be unjustified occurred after a call over a suspicious vehicle at 2am. When they arrived, two people ran from the car and the remaining passenger slowly began backing out of the parking lot with a door still open. Justice Jackson (and Justice Sotomayor, who notably declined to join her dissent) felt that those facts were not sufficient for the requisite suspicion needed for the stop. That seems a tad more than "wordsmithing."... There is a signature jurisprudence emerging in these dissents."

Ian Miller on X - "It really is remarkable how Ketanji Brown Jackson votes exclusively based on her political ideology with zero concern whatsoever for interpreting the laws and ruling on that basis. There’s no difference between having her or a random left wing influencer on the Supreme Court."
Thatch on X - "This is how the left always wins. Every single leftwinger who has even a sliver of power uses it to advance the cause no matter what laws, rules, norms, or customs they have to violate to do so. This is true from juries up to the Supreme Court and the presidency when they hold it. There is no system of government which can survive half the population not feeling bound by it. The only things which still work are run by the right and they run less and less due to the left rigging everything."

Phil Holloway ✈️ on X - "Ketanji Brown couldn’t even get Sototomayor to join her ridiculous dissent"
CHARLIE 🇺🇸 on X - "I’m beginning to think that Jackson doesn’t adjudicate the law. She adjudicates her feelings."
When the liberal justices break ranks, you know that it's a super clear cut case, since they almost always vote in lockstep

The Chilling Jurisprudence of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson - "The opinion seemed to fan the flames of “democracy is dying” claims of protesters, suggesting that basic limits on injunctive relief could result in the collapse of our core institutions. It was a hyperventilated opinion better suited to a cable program than a Court opinion. The response from Justice Amy Coney Barrett was a virtual pile driver of a rebuke. What was notable is that a majority of the justices signed off on the takedown. It could indicate a certain exasperation with histrionics coming from the left of the Court in recent years...
'The Court moved to free the Administration from an onslaught of orders from district judges seeking to block the President in areas ranging from the downsizing of government to immigration. However, it was the departure of the normally staid court analysis that attracted the most attention. The tenor of Jackson’s language shocked not just many court watchers, but her colleagues. It seemed ripped from the signs carried just a couple of weeks earlier in the “No Kings” protests. The Court often deals with issues that deeply divide the nation. Yet it tends to calm the waters by engaging in measured, reasoned analysis — showing the nation that these are matters upon which people can have good-faith disagreements. But that culture of civility and mutual respect has been under attack in recent years. Not long ago, the Court was rocked by the leaking of the draft of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. That was followed by furious protests against conservative justices at their homes and an attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.' There was also a change in the tenor of the exchanges in oral argument and opinions between the justices. Recently, during the argument over the use of national injunctions in May, Chief Justice John Roberts was clearly fed up with Justice Sotomayor interrupting government counsel with pointed questions and commentary, finally asking Sotomayor, “Will you please let us hear his answer?” This hyperbole seemed to border on hysteria in the Jackson dissent. The most junior justice effectively accused her colleagues of being toadies for tyranny. It proved too much for the majority, which pushed back on the overwrought rhetoric. While the language may seem understated in comparison to what we regularly hear in Congress, it was the equivalent of a virtual cage match for the Court... Liberals who claim “democracy is dying” seem to view democracy as getting what you want when you want it. It was, therefore, distressing to see Jackson picking up on the “No Kings” theme, warning about drifting toward “a rule-of-kings governing system” She said that limiting the power of individual judges to freeze the entire federal government was “enabling our collective demise. At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.” The “minutiae” dismissed by Jackson happen to be the statutory and constitutional authority of federal courts. It is the minutiae that distinguish the rule of law from mere judicial impulse. Justice Barrett clearly had had enough with the self-aggrandizing rhetoric. She delivered a haymaker in writing that “JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: “[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.” Ibid. That goes for judges too.” She added, “We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.” In other words, the danger to democracy is found in judges acting like kings. Barrett explained to her three liberal colleagues that “when a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.” The last term has laid bare some of the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Jackson, including a certain exasperation with having to closely follow the text of laws. (In an earlier dissent this term, Jackson lashed out against the limits of textualism and argued for courts to free themselves from the confines — or shall we say the “minutiae” — of statutory language). In this opinion, Barrett slams Jackson for pursuing other diversions “because analyzing the governing statute involves boring ‘legalese.'” Again, what Jackson refers to as “legalese” is the heart of the judicial function in constraining courts under Article III. Untethered by statutory or constitutional text, it allows the courts to float free from the limits of the Constitution. For many, that is not an escape into minutiae but madness without clear lines for judicial power."
Time to blame conservatives for raising the temperature by not aceding to everything on the left's wishlist

“I have a Wonderful Opportunity”: Justice Jackson’s Cathartic Jurisprudence - "I wrote recently about the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has drawn the ire of colleagues in opinions for her rhetoric and extreme positions. Many have expressed alarm over her adherence to what has been described by a colleague as an “imperial judiciary” model of jurisprudence. Now, it appears that Jackson’s increasingly controversial opinions are serving a certain cathartic purpose for the far-left Biden appointee. On ABC News, Jackson stated, “I just feel that I have a wonderful opportunity to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues, and that’s what I try to do.” Her colleagues have not entirely welcomed that sense of license. The histrionic and hyperbolic rhetoric has increased in Jackson’s opinions, which at times portray her colleagues as abandoning not just the Constitution but democracy itself. Her dissent in the recent ruling on universal injunctions drew the rebuke of Justice Amy Coney Barrett over what was described as “a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush.”... Jackson, however, clearly feels that opinions are a way for her to opine on issues of the day. She is not alone. Across the country, liberal judges have been adding their own commentary to decisions in condemning Trump, his supporters, and his policies. I previously wrote about this pattern of extrajudicial commentary. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, was criticized for failing to recuse herself from that case after she made highly controversial statements about Trump from the bench. Chutkan lashed out at “a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was still under investigation at the time, and when Trump was charged, Chutkan refused to let the case go. Later, Chutkan again added her own commentary when asked to dismiss a case due to Trump pardoning Jan. 6 defendants. She acknowledged that she could not block the pardons but proclaimed that the pardons could not change the “tragic truth” and “cannot whitewash the blood, feces and terror that the mob left in its wake. And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.” One of Chutkan’s colleagues, Judge Beryl Howell, also an Obama appointee, lashed out at Trump’s actions, writing, “[T]his Court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement.” Then there is Judge Amit Mehta, another Obama appointee, who has been criticized for conflicted rulings in Trump cases and his bizarre (and ultimately abandoned) effort to banish January 6th defendants from the Capitol. Last week, Mehta had a straightforward question of jurisdiction concerning a challenge to the denial of grants by the Trump Administration. While correctly dismissing the challenge, Mehta decided to add his own commentary on Trump’s priorities and policies... For Justice Jackson, her opinions have at times left her isolated on the Court. Weeks ago, Jackson and Sotomayor were alone in dissent over the defiance of a district court judge of the Court’s decision on universal injunctions. To her credit, Justice Elena Kagan (who voted with Sotomayor and Jackson in dissent in the earlier case) voted with her conservative colleagues in rebuking Judge Brian Murphy in Boston... This week, Jackson lost even Sotomayor and stood alone in her dissent in support of an injunction over plans to downsize the government. Sotomayor observed that the Trump order only ordered for agencies to plan for such downsizing and said that the courts could hardly enjoin such policy preparations in the Executive Branch. However, Jackson could and would. The controversial position of Jackson on the Court is not due to her liberal views. We have had many such liberal jurists. The difference is how Jackson views her role as a justice. The danger is not confined to opinions. For years, justices have yielded to the temptations of public speaking before supportive groups. I have long been a critic of what I called the era of “celebrity justices” where members seem to maintain political constituencies in public events. Such speeches can not only undermine the integrity of the Court by discussing matters that may come before it, but they can create a desire to maintain the adoration of supporters. The greatest danger is that justices will consciously or subconsciously pander to their bases with soundbites and inflammatory rhetoric. Judicial advocacy from the bench has been a concern since the founding. Article III can have a corrosive impact on certain jurists who come to view themselves as anointed rather than appointed. Most judges and justices are acutely aware of that danger and struggle to confine their rulings to the merits of disputes, avoiding political questions or commentary. The “opportunity to tell people how I feel” can become a slippery slope where opinions become more like judicial op-eds. The Court is not a cable show. The price of the ticket to being “one of nine” is that you should speak only through your opinions and only on the narrow legal matter before you. Opinions must remain “opportunities” to do simple justice, not a supreme editorial."

'Met Police facial recognition tech mistook me for wanted man' - "A man who is bringing a High Court challenge against the Metropolitan Police after live facial recognition technology wrongly identified him as a suspect has described it as "stop and search on steroids". Shaun Thompson, 39, was stopped by police in February last year outside London Bridge Tube station. Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch said the judicial review, due to be heard in January, was the first legal case of its kind against the "intrusive technology"."
Thread by @echetus on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Hey @sonjajessup, @silkiecarlo Do you think it was it good faith and fair reporting to run this story without mentioning the man Shaun Thompson was mistaken for... was Shaun Thompson's brother? Don't you think this sentence should read "One officer used a handheld device to compare my features to those in a photo [which was of my brother]. I assured them that I was not the person they were looking for [because I knew it was my brother]" ?
I'm no editor, but I've got a proposed revision: "he was held whilst they asked for identity documents, demanded fingerprint scans, inspected him for scars and tattoos, seeking to confirm he was the suspect [who, being his brother, looked a lot like him]"
do you think you were misleading parliament when you suggested it was racial bias, rather than a family resemblance, that caused the mix up?
This is the funniest possible ending to this story"

Thread by @gmhales on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - ""Two people have lost a High Court challenge against the Metropolitan Police over its use of live facial recognition technology (LFR) in London" #livefacialrecognition... Interesting further detail from the full judgment: "Although officers doubted whether the first claimant was the person on the watchlist, they nevertheless scrutinised him, asked questions and made him prove his identity." Para 137 seems significant: "There was no challenge to that description [of no statistically significant differences in matching rates] and no evidence to contradict it." "the claimants do not raise any issues in relation to the Public Sector Equality Duty under s.149 of the Equality Act 2010"... Ps, Mr Thompson's brother was "subject of an outstanding arrest warrant issued by a court for breach of bail following an allegation that he had caused grievous bodily harm to Mr Thompson.""

Liz Collin on X - "🚨NEW: Osseo Schools has confirmed to @AlphaNews that its remodel project at Park Center Senior High includes a prayer room and that foot-washing stations are being added to Osseo Senior High School. The district, located in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis, says the foot-washing plans “were included in updated plans after hearing from user groups on student needs.” “This is undoubtedly for Muslim students only. I cannot understand how this can be happening in this era of no religion in schools,” the tipster said."
Time to ban Christian prayer in schools as a violation of separation of church and state

Terrence K Williams | Facebook - "Muslim students in New York are getting prayer rooms, prayer mats, daily prayer passes, Ramadan gym alternatives, and music class accommodations. Christian students don’t appear to be getting the same treatment. Muslim students in New York public schools asked for more religious accommodations — and the Syracuse City School District says schools are now making changes. At PSLA at Fowler, students now have a designated prayer room where they can request a daily pass and take time each day to pray, either alone or as a group. The school also purchased prayer mats after staff noticed some students were kneeling on jackets or sweatshirts to pray. The district says Muslim students may also request alternatives in certain classes — including wearing a headset in music class if they choose not to listen to music, or doing an alternative gym activity during Ramadan."

Clay Travis on X - [On Democrats being more mentally ill than Republicans] "My theory: Convincing young people they are powerless victims makes them more likely to have mental health issues. Conversely belief in your own agency and ability leads to much stronger mental health."
SL55 AMG on X - "Opposite take. People with a disposition towards mental health issues are naturally attracted to the Democratic Party, where there is “acceptance” and no accountability for personal behavior."

Thread by @charliesmirkley on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "What closes the ideology-mental health gap?🧵 Education actually doubles the gap. Thus the gap isn’t caused by uneducated conservatives refusing to seek help. The mental health gap is stronger among above-median earners. The ideology-mental health link barely moves within the marriage subgroup. Having kids slightly reduces the link, but increases the rate for each group. This is probably an age effect. Church attendance mostly eliminates the ideology-mental health gap. But few young liberals attend so that the sample is very small (n=13 liberal monthly+)."
The cope needs to be changed to richer and more educated conservatives somehow being even more in denial about mental illness than liberals

Teaching Slavery in the High School Latin Classroom - "By the third chapter of Ecce Romani, we have met Davus, an enslaved person whom Sextus and Marcus love to annoy. A few chapters later we learn that after Davus was purchased he was fearful about his future with his new master, but “he needn’t have worried. Old Titus proved the be the kindest of masters.” Because of rhetoric like this, many secondary students end up forming the impression that slavery in the ancient world was not that bad. Dr. Sarah Bond of the University of Iowa has witnessed this in her own classes, recounting, “In many students’ minds slavery in the ancient world wasn’t as bad because of the high rates of manumission and because it wasn’t predicated on race.” This sanitized view of slavery can inadvertently reinforce misguided beliefs that slavery was an acceptable part of life in other periods of history. Dr. Jeffries told me, “It is important to teach all slavery accurately and truthfully. Slavery is not just unfortunate, it is a crime against humanity.” Two years ago, troubled by the way slavery is portrayed in many resources I have typically used in my classroom, I changed my approach. My current goals are for students to recognize that all slavery is a crime against humanity, understand the role of race in transatlantic slavery, and contemplate the impact slavery on our country today. This new approach has sparked very productive classroom conversations and helped students broaden their perspectives on slavery, both ancient and American... I ask students to make connections between ancient Roman slavery and American slavery"
Left wing logic: the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was uniquely evil because chattel slavery was inherited and race-based, but Roman slavery was almost as bad and can be compared to American slavery. Of course, it's Islamophobic to talk about Muslim slavery

Kelvin MacKenzie on X - "Thanks to the Telegraph I learn landlords in London are advertising for Muslim-only tenants on Facebook and Gumtree. It’s illegal. The ads say things like “ for 2 Muslim boys” or “ 2 Muslim girls” or “ Muslims preferred”. The areas covered include Newham, Barking, East Ham, Dagenham, Walthamstow, Redbridge. When the Telegraph called up the landlords And asked if non-Muslims would be considered, one said “ go away” and another said no and put the phone down. Other ads say only Punjabi or Gujarati speaking tenants or people from Kerala. Why Facebook and Gumtree are taking such ads when they are clearly illegal under the 2010 Equality Act is beyond me. Imagine the outcry from Muslims if an ad had said Catholic, Jew or Methodist tenants only."

Keith Humphreys on X - "As someone affiliated with a law school, I always feel like we faculty are failing when law students scream/disrupt/shout down visiting speakers they don't like (e.g., conservative judges). In their careers, our graduates will sometimes have to argue cases in front of people they don't like or agree with, and if all they can do is chant and snap and hold up signs with disrespectful slogans on them, their clients will lose (and in criminal cases, this cost will fall heavily on members of the groups that these students most want to help). When I see law students doing this, I see people who are failing in their chosen profession and as one of the people who is supposed to help them succeed, that means I am failing too."
Gud Trouble on X - "Those particular students are unlikely to be working in the private sector where they would be "graded" in that way. They are more likely to be working for an NGO and being paid with our tax dollars regardless of their behavior. That is the business model of the activist class."

Meme - "Male characters and their models look the same, but female characters are altered to appease some ugly weirdos"
"Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West. Lanee Reddick
Cyberpunk 2077, Keanu Reeves
Cyberpunk 2077, Idris Alba
Quantum Break, Shawn Ashmore
Jedi: Survivor, Cameran Monaghan
Horizon Forbidden West, Hannah Hoekstra
Star Wars Outlaws, Humberly Gonzalez
Fable 4, Lily Nichol
Spider-Man 2, Stephanie Tyler
MassElfect Andromeda, Jayde Rossi"

Meme - Adam B. Coleman, Proud Father & Imperfect Man @wrong_speak: "Them: I'm a good person who cares about black people, @AlysonRenewed . Also Them: You black fool! Keep voting for the racist party! By the way, how's the watermelon?!"
LeeAnnWillMike: "So you try to insult with "woke". pfffft Go ahead & support the political party that elevates WASPs like me. I encourage you to keep on voting red & continue to give my kids that extra advantage over you & yours. Did your family have a Halloween party & carve watermelons?"
Cynthia Breheny @PTElephant: "A black woman once came to my defense arguing against forcing doctors to perform surgeries they didn't agree with The white liberal we were arguing with called her a c**n immediately It was the first time I'd seen it used as a slur in over 2 decades. It blew my mind 💀"
There's so much evidence out there that left wingers are more racist

Man found NCR for Toronto army recruiting centre attack can travel - "A man found not criminally responsible on three counts of attempted murder for a March 2016 knife attack at a Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre in Toronto has been granted a three-week travel pass for Saudi Arabia and Somalia, despite the fact that he “continues to pose a significant threat to public safety.” Article content Ayanle Hassan Ali, who is Muslim, plans to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca with his father and meet a potential bride his dad found for him in Somalia."

Wilfred Reilly on X - "Being ashamed of being white, male, Jewish, rich, or a member of any other powerful group makes sense only if you accept modern Prey Morality. I.e., if you believe that (1) the definition of moral behavior is having empathy toward others and never causing them risk/harm and (2) that moral analysis occurs at the group level, it to some extent makes sense to feel guilt about the conquests of Cortez or the historical oppression of women. But, if you believe in any form of "master" or Yeoman Morality - i.e., that (1) the definition of moral behavior is training in the things of the Good and improving the world OR is building the strength of your in-group and (2) that moral analysis occurs at the individual level - the very idea makes no sense. First, why would I ever feel guilty about the actions of strong people who...aren't me? But, second - since there are more ~good people than ~bad ones - isn't it far more relevant that my strong group does the most good than that we do the most bad? Some typical patent rate data appears below, as an illustration of what I mean by this. Positionality determines perspective."

Is Dress Code a Human Rights Issue? - "In Zanette v. Ottawa Chamber Music Society, 2024 HRTO 998, the applicant was a volunteer who sought to wear a rainbow flag sticker on his volunteer name badge but was prohibited from doing so by the respondent in accordance with their dress code policies. The applicant, who was a member of the 2SLGBTQ2 community, alleged that this prohibition was discriminatory on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. The tribunal applied the three part test to determine whether there was a prima facie case for discrimination: 1) Was the complaint a member of the protected group? 2) Did the complaint suffer a disadvantage or adverse impact? And 3) was the protected characteristic a factor in this adverse impact? The tribunal had no issue answering “yes” to the first two questions, but examined the third question in depth. They first found that the prohibition was not a direct discriminatory act against the complainant, since it was the enforcement of general policies. The tribunal then found that the prohibition also did not amount to indirect discrimination, because there was no evidence that the wearing of the rainbow flag sticker was an essential element of being a member of the 2SLGBTQ2 community."