Only problem is that there is no evidence he ever said or wrote that sentence – or anything like it.
Not only is this an actual Orwell quote, but it's from a fairly well known Orwell essay, one in which he discusses one of his major influences for the ideas in 1984, James Burnham, a man who was a frequent contributor to the National Review, and an influence on American neoconservatism, though like Orwell, the early neoconservatives disagreed with him on many points, and Burnham was himself openly critical of neoconservatives, as was pretty much required back in the day to publish in National Review.
A couple people I've worked with over the last few years got laid off at the Department of Ed. Only one of them was probationary. Trump has said he wants to eliminate that agency, so I assume the handful of other people I know who work there will suffer the same fate soon.
One can't merely "leave." "Leave" is an abstract verb that can refer to many possible actions. Leaving takes a form, and some forms are better than others. For another, simpler example, leaving a 5th story apartment by going out the apartment door, down the stairs or elevator, and then out the main door, is one way of doing it, and diving out the window is another. Before we evaluate whether leaving is good, we should make sure we're doing it by the door, and not the window.
While it is true that this person at the very least plays fast and loose with some of the statistics, I think their broader message is correct. That is, viewed with traditional metrics, the economy looked pretty good last year. Viewed with expanded metrics, such as under employed, people who've stopped looking at work, prices of everyday goods relative to what they were a few years earlier, etc., last year's economy looked pretty bad, at least if you were not already wealthy.
The liberal/Democratic narrative both in the lead up to and with extra vehemence after the election, was that people were being deceived into believing that the economy was bad, and they were worse off financially than they were in 2020. In addition to being ridiculously condescending (as though people can't look at their bank accounts and credit card statements, or the price of a new car or a home, or home repairs, or groceries, etc.), this narrative was also just wrong, and it's good that people are trying to point this out with numbers, but it'd be better if they were using the numbers correctly.
I'm saying that I think this cure is worse than the disease. Generally, curing the person by killing them is considered bad medicine. And I think killing the patient is the ultimate goal here. Hell, Musk has basically said so in the past.
I will say that the tiny accelerationist voice in the back of my head keeps saying, "Yeeeeees," though.
It's true that in literally all aspects of life we have two choices at the most abstract level, change or not change, but I can't think of a single domain in which merely asking, "Should we change or not change?" is particularly useful, nor can I think of many, if any, in which "Change for change's sake" is useful.
Since you are fond of analogies (e.g., the forest one above), I'll offer one: imagine if a person is in an abusive marriage. They have two choices: stay in the marriage or leave. If we only ask this question at this level, pretty much everyone will say, "Leaving, obviously." But what if "leaving" means being homeless? What if it means getting into a relationship with an even more abusive person? What if it means jumping out of an airplane without a parachute? Without specifying what leaving entails, we haven't really addressed the question of whether leaving is better.
Do I think halting all cancer research is better than doing research as we've always done it? No. Do I think it would make sense to evaluate the way we do cancer research funding to make sure we're not wasting money where that money could be better spent on curing friggin' cancer? Sure, that makes sense.
The only way to fight Islamic terrorism is to ignore its causes while spending trillions on wars of choice that destabilize an entire region, radicalizing many thousands of young people in the process (and battle-hardening them), and in the end, at least in some cases, result in us leaving with our tail between our legs.
Meanwhile, cancer research is an area ripe for fraud, and we should halt it completely.
Jason still considers himself a libertarian, at least philosophically, but has abandoned the label because it has come to mean, at least in his view, something like the opposite of what it used to. I would not be surprised to learn he's voted against Trump in each of the last 3 elections, though. He was the one who warned about him on these pages in 2012 or thereabouts.
Hanley is more difficult to pin down. He's gone pretty fervently anti-woke, remains (from what I can tell) anti-authoritarian, and the only time I've stumbled upon his Twitter account in the last few years, he was arguing with Marxists about the labor theory of value, which is of course very Hanley of him, but tells us little about his relationship with libertarianism generally. I don't think he's gone Democratic, though.
I wonder to what extent the libertarians who were once frequent commenters or front page authors at this site think they've won. Looking through a few of their social media feeds, I'm thinking the answer is no. In fact, I think they some of them feel so defeated that they believe libertarianism itself to have been fatally compromised.
One of them joked more than a decade ago that the problem with unchecked executive power is that you might end up with Donald Trump as president. Here we are, with Donald Trump as president, and exercising completely unchecked, and seemingly uncheckable (given Congress' fecklessness and the court's impotence) executive power. I can't imagine how any libertarian would feel like that was a victory, even if Musk is, at least ostensibly, using that power to dismantle the federal government piece by piece.
And his videos combined have views in the billions. The three biggest singles from DAMN, his most commercially ambitious album, have over 1.5 billion views (HUMBLE. is over a billion by itself). He has 7 music videos with over 200 million views and 15 total with over 100 (2 more in the 90s, some someday it'll be at least 17). I dunno that Theater Kid Rap gets a billion views for one song, or 200 million for that matter.
I have seen a ton of racism on Facebook and elsewhere in the last ~24 hours, so I have a hard time blaming the people who are like, "White people, right?" If it's not in reference to you -- and I've never seen you say anything racist, so it probably isn't -- no reason to take it personally.
Metallica's time has past, but I could totally have seen them doing a halftime show during the height of their popularity after the Black Album. Probably not any other metal band, though.
The cultural barrier is definitely non-hip hop fans. I was at a Super Bowl party last night that was mostly white, all Xers and geriatric Millennials, save one Boomer (and the children), but almost everyone wanted to watch the game specifically to see the halftime show.
DAMN is at about 4.2 million now; Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City at like 3.8, and was still one of the most 50 or so most consumed albums in the U.S. for over a decade. In the age of streaming, those are pretty much Hootie numbers, especially for hip hop albums. To Pimp a Butterlfy, which I'll say again I consider one of the best albums of the century, was clearly not meant to have wide popular appeal, but still sold 1.5 million or so.
(As the person who wrote those Kendrick posts 12 years ago, basically declaring him the best thing in hop hop since Nas, I may get a little defensive of him, but also, dude is wildly, and widely popular.)
I'm interested in what you think his performance said about the failings of anyone other than Drake (and maybe his own, with the narrative of walking the line of having a message and making the sort of music that gets you a gig at the Super Bowl halftime show).
He definitely had a political message (I don't think it was revolutionary, or in 2025, all that radical, but whatever), but if you came away thinking that message was about people's personal failings, I suspect we interpreted it very differently.
I dunno what to make of the label Theater Kid Rap in reference to one of the most popular and influential rappers on the planet, one whom everyone in hip hop and outside of it (even WAY outside of it, like Taylor Swift) has had do a guest verse, one pretty much recognized by all hip hop fans as the best of his generation, one who wins Grammys (which are effectively awards for popularity) every time he releases music, one whose albums are routinely labeled "Best Album of the Year" by genre and general publications alike, nor am I sure how any of this makes his music "niche."
Try DAMN. It's effectively a pop rap album. Or the big hit from what I consider to be one of the top few albums of the century to date:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY
This is, at least on one level, a classic West Coast hip hop jam.
Lamar has always vacillated, sometimes in the same album, sometimes even in the same song (seriously, watch the linked video) between, er, art and pop (I don't think these are two mutually exclusive categories, mind you, but he's often trying to say something very obliquely, through metaphor, allegory, and other forms of symbolism (the halftime show was full of visual symbolism on top of, or perhaps underneath, the in your face "Uncle Sam vs Kendrick" theme), while also trying to have a broad appeal, with hooks ("I'm gonna be alright!") that will make the songs more broadly listenable.
Think of him like the artists at the forefront of jazz in the post-bop era, who felt limited by the audiences to whom they had to appeal to make a living. This comparison won't feel so far fetched if you listen tracks from his more jazzy phase, like this (which was a live performance on Colbert Report, though it's hard to find the visuals online anymore):
I only skimmed the Freddie piece, so I don't know if that part is fair, but with the rest, I agree, and what's strange about it is that the economic arguments for immigration never work politically, and are even less likely than usual to work in this moment of populism and nationalism.
I sometimes wonder why people don't use historical arguments, which can be pretty easily couched in the sorts of language that populists and nationalists love. Basically, why not just point out that for much of this country's history, the borders were effectively open, and immigrants, who make up most of our ancestors, came in droves, and helped to build this country into an economic and military powerhouse. Ethical arguments generally have little political force, at least in this country, so it would make little sense to make pro-immigration arguments on those grounds, but one could argue in today's political parlance that immigrants helped to make America great, and in a world of increasing global competition, if we want to make America great again, we are going to need as many people as we can get.
On “Beware: Promises Being Kept”
Only problem is that there is no evidence he ever said or wrote that sentence – or anything like it.
Not only is this an actual Orwell quote, but it's from a fairly well known Orwell essay, one in which he discusses one of his major influences for the ideas in 1984, James Burnham, a man who was a frequent contributor to the National Review, and an influence on American neoconservatism, though like Orwell, the early neoconservatives disagreed with him on many points, and Burnham was himself openly critical of neoconservatives, as was pretty much required back in the day to publish in National Review.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
A couple people I've worked with over the last few years got laid off at the Department of Ed. Only one of them was probationary. Trump has said he wants to eliminate that agency, so I assume the handful of other people I know who work there will suffer the same fate soon.
On “From Politico: Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong.”
This, which is something Smith and Stensil and the like simply can't comprehend.
On “Deficits, Debt, and DOGE”
Should we let Musk and his epigones do this work? Who knows?
https://x.com/AaronBlake/status/1890071364239061279?t=Yh5itGc_1-WONKOwBLT9CA&s=19
If only we had voted for Romney, amirite?
"
One can't merely "leave." "Leave" is an abstract verb that can refer to many possible actions. Leaving takes a form, and some forms are better than others. For another, simpler example, leaving a 5th story apartment by going out the apartment door, down the stairs or elevator, and then out the main door, is one way of doing it, and diving out the window is another. Before we evaluate whether leaving is good, we should make sure we're doing it by the door, and not the window.
On “From Politico: Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong.”
While it is true that this person at the very least plays fast and loose with some of the statistics, I think their broader message is correct. That is, viewed with traditional metrics, the economy looked pretty good last year. Viewed with expanded metrics, such as under employed, people who've stopped looking at work, prices of everyday goods relative to what they were a few years earlier, etc., last year's economy looked pretty bad, at least if you were not already wealthy.
The liberal/Democratic narrative both in the lead up to and with extra vehemence after the election, was that people were being deceived into believing that the economy was bad, and they were worse off financially than they were in 2020. In addition to being ridiculously condescending (as though people can't look at their bank accounts and credit card statements, or the price of a new car or a home, or home repairs, or groceries, etc.), this narrative was also just wrong, and it's good that people are trying to point this out with numbers, but it'd be better if they were using the numbers correctly.
On “Deficits, Debt, and DOGE”
I'm saying that I think this cure is worse than the disease. Generally, curing the person by killing them is considered bad medicine. And I think killing the patient is the ultimate goal here. Hell, Musk has basically said so in the past.
I will say that the tiny accelerationist voice in the back of my head keeps saying, "Yeeeeees," though.
"
It's true that in literally all aspects of life we have two choices at the most abstract level, change or not change, but I can't think of a single domain in which merely asking, "Should we change or not change?" is particularly useful, nor can I think of many, if any, in which "Change for change's sake" is useful.
Since you are fond of analogies (e.g., the forest one above), I'll offer one: imagine if a person is in an abusive marriage. They have two choices: stay in the marriage or leave. If we only ask this question at this level, pretty much everyone will say, "Leaving, obviously." But what if "leaving" means being homeless? What if it means getting into a relationship with an even more abusive person? What if it means jumping out of an airplane without a parachute? Without specifying what leaving entails, we haven't really addressed the question of whether leaving is better.
Do I think halting all cancer research is better than doing research as we've always done it? No. Do I think it would make sense to evaluate the way we do cancer research funding to make sure we're not wasting money where that money could be better spent on curing friggin' cancer? Sure, that makes sense.
"
This is probably your weakest attempt at avoiding a question.
"
Who gets to decide what's good and what's not good? Elon Musk and his coding epigones? I promise you, risible is not how this strikes me.
"
The only way to fight Islamic terrorism is to ignore its causes while spending trillions on wars of choice that destabilize an entire region, radicalizing many thousands of young people in the process (and battle-hardening them), and in the end, at least in some cases, result in us leaving with our tail between our legs.
Meanwhile, cancer research is an area ripe for fraud, and we should halt it completely.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
Jason still considers himself a libertarian, at least philosophically, but has abandoned the label because it has come to mean, at least in his view, something like the opposite of what it used to. I would not be surprised to learn he's voted against Trump in each of the last 3 elections, though. He was the one who warned about him on these pages in 2012 or thereabouts.
Hanley is more difficult to pin down. He's gone pretty fervently anti-woke, remains (from what I can tell) anti-authoritarian, and the only time I've stumbled upon his Twitter account in the last few years, he was arguing with Marxists about the labor theory of value, which is of course very Hanley of him, but tells us little about his relationship with libertarianism generally. I don't think he's gone Democratic, though.
"
I wonder to what extent the libertarians who were once frequent commenters or front page authors at this site think they've won. Looking through a few of their social media feeds, I'm thinking the answer is no. In fact, I think they some of them feel so defeated that they believe libertarianism itself to have been fatally compromised.
One of them joked more than a decade ago that the problem with unchecked executive power is that you might end up with Donald Trump as president. Here we are, with Donald Trump as president, and exercising completely unchecked, and seemingly uncheckable (given Congress' fecklessness and the court's impotence) executive power. I can't imagine how any libertarian would feel like that was a victory, even if Musk is, at least ostensibly, using that power to dismantle the federal government piece by piece.
"
You can really tell that the libertarians have left the building, and all we're left with is the partisans bickering.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
It's cute, but someday they're gonna realize they can't do anything through the Democratic Party, and then they can actually build something.
On “Kansas City wants to Score the first Threepeat against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans”
And his videos combined have views in the billions. The three biggest singles from DAMN, his most commercially ambitious album, have over 1.5 billion views (HUMBLE. is over a billion by itself). He has 7 music videos with over 200 million views and 15 total with over 100 (2 more in the 90s, some someday it'll be at least 17). I dunno that Theater Kid Rap gets a billion views for one song, or 200 million for that matter.
"
I have seen a ton of racism on Facebook and elsewhere in the last ~24 hours, so I have a hard time blaming the people who are like, "White people, right?" If it's not in reference to you -- and I've never seen you say anything racist, so it probably isn't -- no reason to take it personally.
"
Metallica's time has past, but I could totally have seen them doing a halftime show during the height of their popularity after the Black Album. Probably not any other metal band, though.
The cultural barrier is definitely non-hip hop fans. I was at a Super Bowl party last night that was mostly white, all Xers and geriatric Millennials, save one Boomer (and the children), but almost everyone wanted to watch the game specifically to see the halftime show.
"
DAMN is at about 4.2 million now; Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City at like 3.8, and was still one of the most 50 or so most consumed albums in the U.S. for over a decade. In the age of streaming, those are pretty much Hootie numbers, especially for hip hop albums. To Pimp a Butterlfy, which I'll say again I consider one of the best albums of the century, was clearly not meant to have wide popular appeal, but still sold 1.5 million or so.
Comparing Kendrick to Hamilton is wild.
"
(As the person who wrote those Kendrick posts 12 years ago, basically declaring him the best thing in hop hop since Nas, I may get a little defensive of him, but also, dude is wildly, and widely popular.)
"
I'm interested in what you think his performance said about the failings of anyone other than Drake (and maybe his own, with the narrative of walking the line of having a message and making the sort of music that gets you a gig at the Super Bowl halftime show).
He definitely had a political message (I don't think it was revolutionary, or in 2025, all that radical, but whatever), but if you came away thinking that message was about people's personal failings, I suspect we interpreted it very differently.
"
I dunno what to make of the label Theater Kid Rap in reference to one of the most popular and influential rappers on the planet, one whom everyone in hip hop and outside of it (even WAY outside of it, like Taylor Swift) has had do a guest verse, one pretty much recognized by all hip hop fans as the best of his generation, one who wins Grammys (which are effectively awards for popularity) every time he releases music, one whose albums are routinely labeled "Best Album of the Year" by genre and general publications alike, nor am I sure how any of this makes his music "niche."
"
Try DAMN. It's effectively a pop rap album. Or the big hit from what I consider to be one of the top few albums of the century to date:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY
This is, at least on one level, a classic West Coast hip hop jam.
Lamar has always vacillated, sometimes in the same album, sometimes even in the same song (seriously, watch the linked video) between, er, art and pop (I don't think these are two mutually exclusive categories, mind you, but he's often trying to say something very obliquely, through metaphor, allegory, and other forms of symbolism (the halftime show was full of visual symbolism on top of, or perhaps underneath, the in your face "Uncle Sam vs Kendrick" theme), while also trying to have a broad appeal, with hooks ("I'm gonna be alright!") that will make the songs more broadly listenable.
Think of him like the artists at the forefront of jazz in the post-bop era, who felt limited by the audiences to whom they had to appeal to make a living. This comparison won't feel so far fetched if you listen tracks from his more jazzy phase, like this (which was a live performance on Colbert Report, though it's hard to find the visuals online anymore):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM6VCk3iadA
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
I only skimmed the Freddie piece, so I don't know if that part is fair, but with the rest, I agree, and what's strange about it is that the economic arguments for immigration never work politically, and are even less likely than usual to work in this moment of populism and nationalism.
I sometimes wonder why people don't use historical arguments, which can be pretty easily couched in the sorts of language that populists and nationalists love. Basically, why not just point out that for much of this country's history, the borders were effectively open, and immigrants, who make up most of our ancestors, came in droves, and helped to build this country into an economic and military powerhouse. Ethical arguments generally have little political force, at least in this country, so it would make little sense to make pro-immigration arguments on those grounds, but one could argue in today's political parlance that immigrants helped to make America great, and in a world of increasing global competition, if we want to make America great again, we are going to need as many people as we can get.
"
Weird to see conservatives embracing DEI.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.