Feral Historian
Published Jan 9, 2026The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) is in some ways the most successful translation of the alien invasion story from 19th Century colonial assumptions to those of the post-WWII world. They no longer come to take our land and plunder our resources, but to keep us from threatening their “Rules Based Order” and turn us into a low-fidelity copy of themselves.
00:00 Intro
02:46 Nukes and Norms
06:48 Ultimatum
09:00 Farewell to the Master
11:08 Hello Remake
(more…)
May 28, 2026
The Day The Earth Stood Still: a Post-WWII War of the Worlds
QotD: Re-defining economic liberalism
The L-word is not taken to mean American “liberalism”, the distressingly anti-liberal, lawyer-driven politics of increasing governmental planning and regulation and physical coercion. It is instead the rest of the world’s “liberalism”, economist driven, “the liberal plan”, as old Adam Smith wrote in 1776, “of [social] equality, [economic] liberty and [legal] justice”, with a modest, restrained government giving real help to the poor. True modern liberalism.
A liberal “rhetoric” explains the good features of the modern world compared with earlier and later illiberal régimes — the economic success of the modern world, its arts and sciences, its kindness, its toleration, its inclusiveness, and especially its massive liberation of more and more people from violent hierarchies ancient and modern. Its enemies claim that it also explains alleged evils, such as the reduction of everything to money or the loss of community or the calamity of immigration by non-Christians. But they are mistaken.
Dierdre McCloskey, “The power of liberalism can combat oppression in all its forms”, The Economist, 2020-01-08.
