Over the past few weeks, it has surprised me how seldom the name Andrew Johnson has come up. Sure, every time it has been mentioned that Donald Trump is the third (or fourth — or third and a halfth) President to be impeached, Johnson, the first, is given a brief mention, but very few details are offered of a story almost as stupid, insane, villainous, and corrupt as what’s going on now.
Almost.
I am greatly obliged to my old friend revisionist historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, who encouraged me to look into the Johnson impeachment. Johnson was the 17th President of the United States, rising to that office when his predecessor, Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated. Johnson had been a southern Democrat Senator, unjustly reviled by both sides, but remained in the Senate throughout the War Between the States and was chosen by Lincoln to help spread the appeal of a crypto-Republican “National Union” party dedicated to the peaceful and humane reintegration of those states that had seceded and been militarily crushed.
Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, however, held a somewhat different view. He thought he should be running the government. For various unsavory reasons — that would fill a book or two by themselves (hint: look up Grenville M. Dodge) — Stanton wanted to grind the South down even further under the Northern boot-heel, establishing, for example, extra-constitutional military zones to supervise the phony replacement “carpet-bag” state governments that the North had imposed on Southern states.
Once Johnson became President, he fired Stanton — whom more than one historian believes actually engineered Lincoln’s assassination — immediately running afoul of a little ditty called the 1867 Tenure of Office Act, which it appears was specifically cobbled together to keep Johnson from operating his own Presidency, leaving the nascent Stantonian Police State intact. Stanton and his cohorts impeached Johnson; his conviction failed by one vote in the U.S. Senate. Stanton resigned and skulked off to the garbage-heap of history.
L. Neil Smith, “Andrew and Donald”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2019-12-22.
August 4, 2025
QotD: The impeachment of Andrew Johnson
August 2, 2025
Canada’s PM “… has a job which, like that of most politicians, requires low intelligence and moral vacuousness”
At Essays in Idleness, David Warren explains why Canadian political leadership is so desperately uninspiring … except to our enemies and ill-wishers:
The Canadian prime minister — currently Mr Mark Carney — has a job which, like that of most politicians, requires low intelligence and moral vacuousness. At his cleverest he may exhibit a species of rat cunning. His views on Israel and the Middle East are quite uninteresting, for no rat cunning is required. He simply observes that an anti-Semitic policy is necessary, now that Muslim immigration exceeds the Jewish vote.
Not one good thing has come out of the Liberal Party since Louis St-Laurent was defeated in 1957. He, at least, achieved mediocrity. But what can we do? Canada’s population is one with the Liberals.
What happened on October 7th, 2023 — the slaughter of huge numbers of mostly unarmed Jews when Palestinians got outside the Gaza perimeter — can happen again and again. It will happen as long as Palestinians are, from childhood, taught or brainwashed to kill Jews throughout their education and social systems. I also protest against the disproportionate Israeli response. I think the Israelis have been much too restrained.
My model for “Palestine” would be Germany, or Japan. These formerly vicious nations became harmlessly bourgeois after they unconditionally surrendered to the United States and allies. It is ludicrous to think we should have offered them a peace deal, instead.
Damian Penny points out the sad truth that we get more obstinate even in support of a terrible idea when someone tries to bully us out of it:
… I find myself torn between being frustrated with my own government and simultaneously outraged by another government trying to bully us out of a policy decision with which I disagree.
I don’t expect most other Canadians to feel so conflicted, however. Trump may not realize it (nor care one bit even if he does understand it) but he just made it more likely that Canadian voters will rally around the flag.
This flag, specifically.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, has the motivational power of your opponent pushing back against you. That social media has given us a new and effective way to yell at and insult each other across partisan lines is part of the reason partisanship has become so much more entrenched in recent years.
And that includes me. During the last election campaign it was when I argued with Liberals on Facebook that I found myself feeling less like a Conservative voter and more like a Conservative militant, and my sparring partners likely felt the same way, only in the opposite direction.
Now, replace political partisanship with nationalism, and the effect becomes that much stronger.
Of course, hardcore supporters of either side won’t be moved. (That Carney is placing any conditions at all on Palestinian statehood, and saying a two-state solution remains the ultimate goal, makes him a filthy Zionist genocidaire as far as that crowd is concerned.) But sometimes it’s easy to forget that most people simply don’t pay as much attention to, and aren’t nearly as emotionally invested in, this conflict as much as we very online types are.
August 1, 2025
Australia saw Britain’s awful Online Safety Act and said “hold my beer”
In The Freeman, Nicole James discusses how Australia’s attempt to protect young, innocent eyes from the terrors of the internet seems to be having all kinds of unforeseen impacts on adults:
Commonwealth Coat of Arms of Australia (1912).
Quarterly of six, the first quarter Argent a Cross Gules charged with a Lion passant guardant between on each limb a Mullet of eight points Or; the second Azure five Mullets, one of eight, two of seven, one of six and one of five points of the first (representing the Constellation of the Southern Cross) ensigned with an Imperial Crown proper; the third of the first a Maltese Cross of the fourth, surmounted by a like Imperial Crown; the fourth of the third, on a Perch wreathed Vert and Gules an Australian Piping Shrike displayed also proper; the fifth also Or a Swan naiant to the sinister Sable; the last of the first, a Lion passant of the second, the whole within a Bordure Ermine; for the Crest on a Wreath Or and Azure A Seven-pointed Star Or, and for Supporters dexter a Kangaroo, sinister an Emu, both proper.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, children roamed freely through the pixelated wilderness of the Internet, posting dog memes, finding kindred spirits in weird little corners of Tumblr, and learning how to contour like Kylie Jenner. It was all chaotic, noisy, and entirely normal.
Now? Well, welcome to Australia in 2025, where the new Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill has galloped through Parliament like a runaway Shetland pony, banning under-16s from social media. This is a full-blown digital eviction. And the ban isn’t limited just to TikTok and Snapchat. It also extends to YouTube (yes, YouTube), where apparently autoplay is now considered a gateway drug.
And how will they enforce this sweeping national grounding? Age verification, of course. Potentially through facial recognition. Not for the kids, mind you; they’ll simply be locked out. It’s everyone else who’ll need to prove they’re not children. Because nothing says “welcome to adulthood” like having to scan your actual face just to post a birthday shoutout or watch a slow-cooker recipe reel. All to reassure a tech platform that you’re not a rogue 14-year-old with strong opinions and a ring light.
The bill’s spiritual mother, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who, fun fact, once interviewed for a job at the CIA to analyze serial killers, gave a passionate speech at the National Press Club called “Swimming Between the Digital Flags”. It sounded very beachy and breezy until you realized she meant regulatory flags, and not the ones you’d use at Bondi. Her point was clear: the online world is full of rips and sharks and emotional jellyfish, and children must be protected from being dragged under.
Which is noble. Obviously. But somewhere between “protect the kids” and “build a biometric panopticon”, the line got a little smeared.
And where, you might ask, were parents in all this? Sitting quietly in the back, apparently, while Canberra (Australia’s Washington, DC) appointed itself Mum, Dad, the school principal, and possibly even the family dog. Because this isn’t just about safety; it’s about who decides what kids can see, say, share, and, in the case of a few bold young TikTokers, lip-sync while delivering motivational speeches to two mildly traumatized budgies.
The idea behind the project is that children are being harmed online, and honestly, yes, some are. The Internet is not all kittens and cake recipes. But rather than investing in education or digital literacy, the government has opted for a full blackout. It’s like banning scissors because one kid snipped their fringe into a reverse mullet.
And here’s the kicker. The bill had a consultation period of just 24 hours. That’s less time than it takes to read the terms and conditions you just agreed to without reading. (Don’t lie, we’ve all done it.)
In that tight little window, more than 15,000 submissions were made, and while some were supportive, the vast majority sounded the alarm. LGBTQIA+ organizations warned of disconnected teens losing safe spaces. Indigenous advocates pointed out the risks of further digital exclusion. Psychologists, educators, digital rights groups, and even a Community Soccer Club raised concerns.
The sad saga of the CH-148 Cyclone helicopters in Canadian service
In the National Post, Tom Lawson and Gaëlle Rivard Piché argue for the Canadian government to learn from long and bitter past experiences while they “reconsider” the F-35 purchase for the RCAF … specifically the mind-numbing and depressing saga of obtaining helicopters for the Canadian Armed Forces. First, a quick recap of the helicopter story from a post back in 2012:
Pre-delivery Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone helicopter, 4 April, 2012.
Photo by Gerry Metzler via Wikimedia Commons.
- In 1963, the CH-124 Sea King helicopter (a variant of the US Navy S-61 model) entered service with the Royal Canadian Navy.
- In 1983, the [Pierre] Trudeau government started a process to replace the Sea Kings. That process never got far enough for a replacement helicopter to be ordered.
- In 1985, the Mulroney government started a new process to find a replacement for the Sea Kings.
- In 1992, the Mulroney government placed an order for 50 EH-101 Cormorant helicopters (for both naval and search-and-rescue operations).
- In 1993, the Campbell government reduced the order from 50 to 43, theoretically saving $1.4B.
- In 1993, the new Chrétien government cancelled the “Cadillac” helicopters as being far too expensive and started a new process to identify the right helicopters to buy. The government had to pay nearly $500 million in cancellation penalties.
- In 1998, having split the plan into separate orders for naval and SAR helicopters, the government ended up buying 15 Cormorant SAR helicopters anyway — and the per-unit prices had risen in the intervening time.
- In 2004, the Martin government placed an order with Sikorsky for 28 CH-148 Cyclone helicopters to be delivered starting in 2008 (after very carefully arranging the specifications to exclude the Cormorant from the competition).
- Now, in 2012, we may still have another five years to wait for the delivery of the Cyclones.
A few data points in addition to that list:
- In 2009, the government granted Sikorsky two more years to begin deliveries … and waived the penalty fees for late delivery.
- In 2011, the government announced it would impose late delivery fines on Sikorsky.
- In 2012, Sikorsky announced the delay of the first batch of “interim” helicopters until 2013.
- In 2015, the first six helicopters were delivered so RCAF crews could begin training, with two more later in the year.
- In 2018, the first operational deployment of a Cyclone had the helicopter embarked on HMCS Ville de Quebec as part of Operation Reassurance.
- In 2021, 19 of the 23 helicopters delivered were taken out of service for cracks in the tail assemblies.
- In January 2025, the 27th helicopter was delivered to the RCAF.
Based on this lengthy and expensive process, Lawson and Piché write:
In 1992, the Progressive Conservative government signed a $4.8-billion contract with a European consortium to replace the aging Sea King helicopters deployed aboard Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) ships. For purely political reasons, when the Liberals came to power the following year, they cancelled the deal — incurring $500 million in termination penalties — and set out to find a more politically acceptable solution. That search dragged on for over a decade, culminating in a 2004 contract with Sikorsky to procure 28 CH-148 Cyclone helicopters.
What the government failed to realize — or chose to overlook — was that Sikorsky was not offering a ready-made military platform. Instead, it proposed to adapt its civilian S-92 model into a maritime helicopter fit for military use, with the hope of replicating the global success of its venerable Sea King.
But developmental issues plagued the project from the outset. The original delivery schedule of 2009 slipped repeatedly, prompting then-minister of national defence Peter MacKay to call the procurement “the worst in the history of Canada”. By 2014, the program was on the brink of cancellation. Only a tense meeting between senior ministers and Sikorsky’s president salvaged the deal, leading to a revised agreement that saw the Cyclone finally enter operational service in 2018.
Yet the challenges did not end there. The Cyclone has consistently posted poor serviceability rates. A crash that cost the lives of six Canadian Armed Forces members in early 2020 was linked to inadequate documentation and flawed software. More recently, the fleet has again been largely grounded — this time due to a shortage of spare parts. The Commander of the RCN has voiced public frustration over the shortage of deployable helicopters, even threatening to replace them with drones if necessary.
To be fair, Sikorsky is not solely to blame. It offered an attractive idea: a modern fly-by-wire maritime helicopter based on a successful civilian platform. The government accepted, underestimating the complexity of the transformation. The key lesson here — one that directly applies to the current fighter jet debate — is that there is enormous risk in buying aircraft, like the Cyclone, that exist in limited numbers worldwide.
The best path forward with the Cyclone may now be to phase out the fleet and absorb the sunk costs. A more reliable option could be the MH-60 Seahawk, also made by Sikorsky. Unlike the Cyclone, the Seahawk is a proven design, with nearly 1,000 units in active service with the U.S., Australian and some NATO navies. While it would be politically awkward to cancel a Sikorsky platform only to purchase another from the same manufacturer, pragmatism must prevail. Perhaps a deal could be struck to return the Cyclones for parts, recouping some value through the civilian S-92 supply chain.
QotD: The self-serving mythology of Britain’s NHS
The interesting question of why the NHS should continue to hold the affection of the British people, when it is at best mediocre in its performance and frequently unpleasant to deal with, is one that should be of interest to all political scientists. The answer is not pleasing to those who believe in human rationality.
The affection represents the triumph of rhetoric over reality. This rhetoric contains an implicit historiography, in which the pre-NHS era is akin to that of jahiliyya, the era of ignorance before the advent of Muhammad, in Islamic historiography: in short, that there was no healthcare for most of the population before the NHS. This historiography has for decades been continuously and successfully insinuated into the minds of the population. It has been Britain’s pale imitation of totalitarian propaganda. Intentionally or not, Boris Johnson recently reinforced the mythological status of the NHS. And when, in the present crisis, retired doctors such as I were asked to return to work if they were able, it was to help the NHS. This was like asking a soldier to lay down his life for the sake of the Ministry of Defence. It says something about the credulity of the public that the response to slogans like “protect the NHS” was dull compliance, rather than outraged demands as to why it wasn’t protecting us.
I suspect also that the sheer unpleasantness of the NHS is reassuring to the British population. It evokes the Dunkirk spirit: we are all stranded on the beach of illness together. And if we cannot all live in luxury, we can at least all die in squalor. Justice is served.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Empire of conformists”, The Critic, 2020-04-29.
July 31, 2025
“You can see what a monster this very dangerous person is”
Chris Bray looks north to the Dysfunctional Dominion and our governments’ inability to deal with the narrative of the Residential Schools and the lack of actual evidence to support that narrative:
Kamloops Indian Residential School, 1930.
Photo from Archives Deschâtelets-NDC, Richelieu via Wikimedia Commons.
Frances Widdowson is a cantankerous career academic, an evidence-first Canadian scholar who doesn’t suffer fools. Her personal disregard for sanctimonious performativity has gotten her in some trouble, and now she’s a former professor, though her termination was found to be improper. A few months ago, the CBC interviewed her for a story about how mean she is, because Widdowson has questioned the much-chanted sacred story about the dead children at Kamloops.
If you don’t know the Kamloops story, an anthropologist used ground-penetrating radar to supposedly identify the location of a secret burial ground for 215 dead children near the site of the long-defunct Kamloops Indian Residential School, uncovering evidence of what has been constantly called a hidden genocide. But no human remains have ever been recovered at the site, and the radar evidence of disturbed earth aligns well with the path of an old septic trench. More detailed background here.
Widdowson recorded the entire interview, so we can hear the inner workings of the sausage factory.
Throughout the discussion, CBC reporter Jordan Tucker, speaking with the obligatory vocal fry and upspeak, keeps warning Widdowson to stop shouting at her, which Widdowson obviously isn’t doing, and to watch her tone. She’s presumptively pre-outraged by the existence of a Very Bad Person, conducting an outrage-performance in the form of asking questions.
But then Widdowson flips the script. You can hear this excerpted two-minute high point here. Tucker argues that government officials say there are bodies buried in the apple orchard at Kamloops, so is Widdowson somehow making the outrageous claim that government officials might be wrong? “Are all those different governments lying? Are all those different people just not telling the truth, or they’re going along with these stories imagined by people, by indigenous people?”
Government says, but still Widdowson doesn’t concede. You can see what a monster this very dangerous person is. “How is it that all these government officials have been so connived?” Tucker asks, obviously flabbergasted.
Widdowson responds with an argument about evidence, and about the standards of evidence for the claim. What do we know? What have we seen? What would we need to see to prove a claim of this type? Who has the burden of proof?
And then: “As a journalist, are you satisfied with the evidence?”
The response to this question — just past the 1:30 mark in the excerpted video linked above — is remarkably telling. It produces, first, a short silence, and then a long burst of stammering and high-pitched incredulity: “I am. Of course I am.”
Widdowson, sharpening the direct question: “You think there’s 215 children buried in the apple orchard at Kamloops?”
Listen to Tucker’s shaking voice. This question is a threat. It makes her extremely nervous. “I think that, at this point, there has been enough documentation, there have been enough — there’s enough social and archaeological consensus to say that, to say that, we can just believe indigenous people, and move on with trying to do our best by them as a society.”
So two people are arguing about truth. What is true? How can we know what is true? One person keeps asking what is the evidence. The other person keeps deflecting to identity, authority, and social status. The government says so, there is social consensus, “believe indigenous people”. No human remains have been found, but there are human remains, because government officials and indigenous people say so, and other people with the status to matter say that they agree. Truth is consensus. Defaulting to evidence is cruel. Why would you do such a horrible thing?
- What’s the evidence?
- Are you refusing to submit to the narrative consensus?
- Yes, what’s the evidence?
- (shocked gasping and trembling voice)
This is the mechanism of woke narrative control: It has been said that this is true. The people who say it possess authority — they are officials — or they possess privileged identities. It is now disinformation to say that government plus indigenous people might not be correct, and an act of dangerous extremism to mention questions of evidence.
The intent of Britain’s Online Safety Act … and the actual implementation
In The Conservative Woman, Dr. Frederick Attenborough discusses the gap between what the Online Safety Act was intended to do and how it’s actually being enforced now that it’s the law of the land:
X posts like this may not be visible to uses in the UK under the age verification rules of the Online Safety Act.
At the heart of the regime is a requirement to implement “highly effective” age checks. If a platform cannot establish with high confidence that a user is over 18, it must restrict access to a wide category of “sensitive” content, even when that content is entirely lawful. This has major implications for platforms where news footage and political commentary appear in real time.
Ofcom’s guidance makes clear that simple box-ticking exercises, such as declaring your age or agreeing to terms of service, will no longer suffice. Instead, platforms are expected to use tools such as facial age estimation, ID scans, open banking credentials and digital identity wallets.
The Act also pushes companies to filter harmful material before it appears in users’ feeds. Ofcom’s broader regulatory guidance warns that recommender systems can steer young users toward material they didn’t ask for. In response, platforms may now be expected to reconfigure their algorithms to filter out entire categories of lawful expression before it reaches underage or unverified users.
One platform already moving in this direction is X. Its approach offers a revealing – and potentially sobering – glimpse of where things may be heading. The company uses internal signals, including when an account was created, any prior verification, and behavioural data, to estimate a user’s age. If that process fails to confirm the user is over 18, he or she is automatically placed into a sensitive content filtering mode. As the platform’s Help Center explains: “Until we are able to determine if a user is 18 or over, they may be defaulted into sensitive media settings, and may not be able to access sensitive media”.
This system runs without user opt-in and applies at scale. Depending on how X classifies it, filtered material may include adult humour, graphic imagery, political commentary or footage of violence. Already there are signs that lawful content is quietly being screened out.
One example came on July 25, the day the Act’s age-verification duties took effect, during a protest outside the Britannia Hotel in Seacroft, Leeds, where asylum seekers are being housed. A video showing police officers restraining and arresting a protester was posted on X, but quickly became inaccessible to many UK-based users. Instead, viewers saw the message: “Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X estimates your age”.
West Yorkshire Police denied any involvement in blocking the footage. X declined to comment, but its AI chatbot, Grok, indicated that the clip had been restricted under the Online Safety Act due to violent content. Though lawful and clearly newsworthy, the footage was likely flagged by automated systems intended to shield children from real-world violence.
In The Critic, Christopher Snowdon explains the breakdown of trust between the British public and their government that the implementation of the Online Safety Act only exacerbates:
People are right to be concerned about this slippery slope and yet it cannot be denied that it is pornography enthusiasts who have been hardest hit by the Online Safety Act in the short term. They must now verify themselves in one of three ways, each less appealing than the last. They can submit their credit card details, they can scan in proof of ID, such as a passport, or they can take a photo of their face and allow AI to judge how old they are. If they want to maximise their chances of being the victim of blackmail and identity theft, they could do all three.
While we might not think twice about submitting our credit card details to Amazon or posting our photos on Instagram, there is an understandable reluctance to hand over private data in order to access dubious websites for the purposes of sordid acts of self-pollution. The government assures us that the data will be kept confidential but it is only two weeks since we learned about a data breach that led to the names of 19,000 Afghans who wanted to flee the Taliban being given to the Taliban and it is less than two months since the names and addresses of 6.5 million Co-op customers were stolen in a cyber-attack. Rightly or wrongly, millions of British plank-spankers and rug-tuggers do not wish to identify themselves to anybody.
The result is a surge in interest in Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which allow internet users to access websites as if they were in a less censorious country. Half of the top ten free apps in Apple’s app download charts yesterday were for VPNs. Google Trends data show that searches for “VPN” have gone through the roof since Friday. Readers can draw their own conclusions from the fact that these searches have been peaking between midnight and 2am.
Downloading random VPNs comes with risks of its own and opens up a whole new world of illicit online activity from free Premier League football to the Dark Web. But there is a deeper reason to feel uneasy about this unintended, albeit predictable, consequence of paternalistic regulation. By driving another wedge between the state and the individual, it further normalises rule-breaking in a country where casual lawlessness is becoming part of daily life. A law-abiding society cannot long endure if the median citizen thinks that the law is an ass.
The breakdown of trust can be seen most clearly when the ordinary man or woman does not share the moral certainties of the governing class. Among smokers, a collapse in tax morale — the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes — has led to a huge rise in the consumption of illegal tobacco in recent years. Smokers no longer feel any obligation to pay taxes that are designed to impoverish them to a government that vilifies them. Cannabis smokers learn from an early age to be suspicious of a police force that they might otherwise respect. Motorists who are faced with 20mph speed limits that were introduced by people who hate private transport have no scruples about flouting the law.
July 30, 2025
QotD: Meetings of the Roman Republican Senate
We may begin with place: the Senate had no single fixed meeting spot, though the curia in the Forum was the most common location, however the place the Senate met had to be religiously prepared via inauguration (the taking of the auspices by the augurs) and by sacrifices in order to make sure the gods approved of the proceedings and its results. Consequently, the Senate always met in a templum in the sense of a consecrated space, but also it tended to meet literally in temples, with meetings in the temples of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the temple of Fides, the temple of Concord, and so on. Notably, two locations, the temple of Bellona and the temple of Apollo were also used and these sat outside the pomerium, enabling the Senate to meet with magistrates who, because of their active command of an army, could not cross the pomerium; they were also sometimes used to meet with foreign dignitaries the Senate did not wish to let into the city. Later added to this number of sites outside the pomerium was Pompey’s theater, which included a temple of Venus Victrix and a curia as part of the overall complex.
In order to meet, the Senate had to be called or more correctly “driven together” (cogere, often translated adequately as “summoned”, but as Lintott notes, it has an element of compulsion to it) by a magistrate. There were a few standard dates on which this would effectively always happen, particularly the first day of the consular year, but beyond that it was expected that magistrates in Rome could call the Senate at any time to discuss any issue on relatively short notice. There was initially no requirement that Senators live in the city of Rome, but it was clearly assumed. Early on in the second century, we get regulations requiring Senators to stay close to Rome unless they had an official reason to be elsewhere, though Senators might be permitted to leave if they needed to fulfill a vow. In the Late Republic it seems to have been common also for Senators to leave the city during the spring res prolatae, a sort of recess from public business (literally “the deferring of business”), but these informal breaks did not mean the Senate was truly “out of session” and it could still be summoned by a magistrate.
Generally, meetings of the Senate began at dawn, though they could begin later, and they proceeded either until the business was concluded or to dusk. Because of the ritual preparations required, no meeting of the Senate could last more than a day, much like the assemblies, so if the business was not finished, a new meeting would need to be called and the process begun from scratch. While it seems that magistrates generally tried to avoid calling the Senate during festival days, dies nefandi (days unsuited for public business) and meetings of the popular assemblies, there was no requirement to do so and the Senate might be called for any day for most of the Republic, with laws restricting the Senate’s meeting days only coming midway through the first century.
Beyond this, Senators were expected to show up and we hear of threats of fines or other censure for failure to show up, but it also seems like no meeting of the senate was ever very close to the full body and quorums for the Senate were fairly low, 100 or 150. For the Sullan Senate, notionally of 600 members, the highest attendances we know of, as noted by Lintott, are 415, 417 and 392. Of course some significant number of Senators will, at any time, have been active magistrates overseas, or serving as military tribunes, or as senatorial legati, but it seems clear that even beyond this attendance was not universal even if it was in theory supposed to be.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: How to Roman Republic 101, Part IV: The Senate”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2023-09-22.
July 29, 2025
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen triumphantly announces EU capitulation to Trump’s demands
The EU and the United States are finalizing negotiations on bilateral trade issues that basically give Trump everything he wanted with very little in return for the EU’s concessions. It’s almost as if Trump has some kind of experience in negotiating lopsided agreements, isn’t it? I guess von der Leyen didn’t get Mark Carney’s memo on the importance of keeping your eLbOwS uP:
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “[learning] in real time that weakness and submission do not in fact invite conciliation”
Donald Trump has shown up the European Union. He’s revealed that the world’s largest single market is a paper tiger to be kicked around, with basically no leverage or strength to resist American demands.
All of these supposedly fierce backroom tariff negotiations have yielded an incredibly one-sided deal – really an unparalleled embarrassment. As announced yesterday, the EU promises to invest $600 billion in the U.S. economy and to make $750 billion worth of “strategic purchases” of oil, gas and the like over the next three years. We also promise to buy a bunch of American military equipment. In return for giving the Americans $1.35 trillion, we earn the privilege of a 15% baseline tariff on all of our exports to America and we drop our own tariffs to zero. At least we don’t have to pay the 30% tariffs Trump threatened!
[…]
While von der Leyen was trying weakly to put a happy face on her total failure, Trump gave her what we might call a softer Zelensky treatment. He twisted the knife in the wound, calling out the idiocy of EU wind energy in an extended soliloquy that will surely keep the fact-checkers and the regime deboonkers up late for weeks to come. I transcribe his remarks in full, because the whole moment was wonderful:
And the other thing I say to Europe, we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful plains. And I’m not talking about airplanes. I’m talking about beautiful plains, the beautiful areas in the United States. And you look up and you see windmills all over the place. It’s a horrible thing. It’s the most expensive form of energy. It’s no good.
They’re made in China, almost all of them. When they start to rust and rot in eight years, you can’t really turn them off. You can’t bury them. They won’t let you bury the propellers, you know, the props, because they’re a certain type of fiber that doesn’t go well with the land. That’s what they say. The environmentalists say you can’t bury them because the fiber doesn’t go well with the land. In other words, if you bury it, it will harm our soil.
The whole thing is a con job. It’s very expensive. And in all fairness, Germany tried it and, wind doesn’t work. You need subsidy for wind and energy should not need subsidy. With energy, you make money. You don’t lose money.
But more important than that is it ruins the landscape. It kills the birds. They’re noisy. You know, you have a certain place in the Massachusetts area that over the last 20 years had one or two whales wash ashore and over the last short period of time they had 18, okay, because it’s driving them loco, it’s driving them crazy. Now, windmills will not come, it’s not going to happen in the United States, and it’s a very expensive …
I would love to see, I mean, today I’m playing the best course I think in the world, Turnberry, even though I own it, it’s probably the best course in the world, right? And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills. It’s like right at the end of the 18. I said, “Isn’t that a shame? What a shame.” You have the same thing all over, all over Europe in particular. You have windmills all over the place.
Some of the countries prohibit it. But, people ought to know that these windmills are very destructive. They’re environmentally unsound. Just the exact opposite. Because the environmentalists, they’re not really environmentalists, they’re political hacks. These are people that, they almost want to harm the country. But you look at these beautiful landscapes all over all, over the the world. Many countries have gotten smart. They will not allow it. They will not. It’s the worst form of energy, the most expensive form of energy. But, windmills should not be allowed. Okay?
All the while von der Leyen had to sit there, absolutely frozen except for a curiously accelerated rate of blinking, as she learned in real time that weakness and submission do not in fact invite conciliation.
In Spiked, Jacob Reynolds agrees that the deal is a humiliation for the European Union:
So this is the famous “trade superpower”. After months of tough talk, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced a trade deal with Donald Trump this week which is nothing short of total capitulation. The Commission has accepted a 15 per cent baseline US tariff on most EU goods, agreed to purchase $750 billion worth of American gas and procure billions more of US military kit. What did Queen Ursula get in return? Nothing.
“VDL”, as she is known in the Brussels Bubble, tried desperately to spin this as a win. Sitting anxiously next to Trump in Scotland last weekend, she recited impressive-sounding numbers – such as the EU and US’s combined 800million consumers and the EU’s $1.7 trillion trade volume – like a nervous student. Trump cut through the spin by greeting the deal as fantastic for US cars and agriculture. He didn’t need to say much else – indeed, it was clear for all to see that there was only one winner in this deal.
For decades, even critics of the EU had to concede that whatever its many economic and democratic shortcomings, it still possessed enormous leverage when it came to trade. At the very least, it was more than capable of defending EU interests in trade deals. Evidently, this is no longer the case. When even the hapless government of Keir Starmer can negotiate a better trade deal with Trump, the problems with the EU should be clear to see. (Tariffs on most UK goods are just 10 per cent.)
Even the most ardent Europhiles have found it hard to put a positive spin on the deal. Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s Party (a coalition of Europe’s legacy centre-right parties) described it as “damage control” and better than not reaching a deal at all. Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium and usually the most maniacal of EU fanboys, slammed the deal as not only “badly negotiated”, but also “scandalous” and a “disaster”, with “not one concession from the American side”. Member states, from Ireland to France, have been similarly unenthusiastic. Yet the brutal truth is that the deal reflects how America views the EU – as strategically weak and politically empty.
Trump has taught the EU a harsh lesson in statecraft. The EU has long relied on its neighbours for energy production. It has long underinvested in defence. And now it throttles its biggest industries with green dogma. This left it with little leverage for the negotiations with the US.
Of course, after Mark Carney being elected on a highly dubious platform of being “the right person to deal with Trump”, this is almost inevitable at this stage:
“The free and open internet has now ceased to exist in the UK”
Britain, like Canada, has been moving toward a less free internet experience for ordinary users, the key bit of legislation in the UK being the Online Safety Act, which like Canada’s proposed Online Harms Act, provides tools to the government to clamp down on online activities they deem “unsafe”:
The free and open internet has now ceased to exist in the UK. Since Friday, anyone in Britain logging on to social media will have been presented with a censored, restricted version – a “safe” internet, to borrow the UK government’s language. Vast swathes of even anodyne posts are now blocked for the overwhelming majority of users.
The Online Safety Act was passed by the last Conservative government and backed enthusiastically by Labour. Both parties insisted it is necessary to protect children. Supposedly, its aim is to shield them from pornography, violence, terrorist material and content promoting self-harm. Age-verification checks, we were assured, would ensure that children would not be exposed to inappropriate content, but adults could continue using the internet as they please. Yet as we have seen over the past few days, on many major tech platforms, UK-based adults are being treated as children by default, with supposedly “sensitive” content filtered from everyone’s view.
Predictably, what is deemed “sensitive” and therefore censored goes well beyond pornography and obviously illegal or adult material. Already UK users of X have been blocked from viewing footage of an anti-asylum protest, a tweet calling for single-sex spaces and a video of a speech in parliament on the grooming-gangs scandal. Historical trivia, such as a thread on Richard the Lionheart, and classic artworks like Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son have been shielded by the tech censors. A thread on X of examples of what has been censored under the Online Safety Act, collated by Benjamin Jones of the Free Speech Union, has itself been partially censored due to the Online Safety Act. Open, political debate online is now a thing of the past.
When the Online Safety Act was first put before parliament, supporters from all parties insisted that fears about its impact on free speech were overblown. “The worst misrepresentation I’ve heard is that the [Online Safety Act] will force tech companies to censor legal social-media posts”, insisted Chris Philp, the then minister for tech and digital economy, now the shadow home secretary, back in 2022. Anyone who warned that this vast new architecture of online speech regulation was obviously going to curtail free speech was presented as a friend of paedophiles, terrorists or the far right. This gaslighting was kept up right until the point the age filters were implemented. “The UK’s online safety regime is here. Will anybody notice?”, asked Politico the day before much of the internet disappeared. The Guardian, on the same day, pondered whether the new rules would be censorious enough.
Despite my financial plight, I’d been considering getting a VPN subscription in advance of the Canadian government getting some version of the Online Harms Act onto the books. Clearly many Brits had already gone that route, and the British government reacts with the care and subtlety one would expect:
Crimes less serious than “Mischief” according to Canadian courts
In the National Post, Tristin Hopper notes that the sentences being sought for Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are more severe than prosecutors have asked for what appear to be far more serious crimes:
Chris Barber and Tamara Lich
Last week, Crown prosecutors announced they were seeking jail sentences of up to eight years for Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, two organizers of the Freedom Convoy protest.
Both were convicted of mischief, but the Crown is seeking a minimum sentence of seven years in jail for Lich, and eight for Barber, who was also found guilty of counselling others to disobey a court order.
The Crown has argued that the disruptiveness of the Freedom Convoy blockades warrants the harsh sentence, but in a statement this week, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said courts are throwing the book at Barber and Lich while simultaneously giving free reign to “rampant violent offenders” and “antisemitic rioters”.
It’s certainly the case that you can do an awful lot of heinous things in Canada before a prosecutor would ever think of asking for seven years. Below, a not-at-all comprehensive list of things you can do in Canada, and have the Crown seek a lighter sentence than the one they’re seeking for the organizers of the Freedom Convoy.
- Sexually assaulting a baby [5 to 6 years]
- Using a car filled with guns to ram into Justin Trudeau’s house [6 years]
- Killing multiple innocent people via drunk driving [5 years]
- Stabbing a man to death because he told you to stop abusing your girlfriend [5 years]
- Being a police officer who stalks and sexually harasses crime victims [6 months]
- Amassing enough child pornography to fill a video store [3 and a half years]
- Torturing a toddler to death [7 to 8 years]
- Intentionally ramming a car loaded with children and pregnant women [8 years]
- Beating a fellow homeless shelter resident to death [5 and a half years]
- Raping a minor and bragging about it online [4 to 5 years]
July 28, 2025
“According to elite theory our world is controlled by a ruling class”
Spaceman Spiff explores the notions of “elite theory”, which in one variant or another seems to be a bedrock belief of most dissidents in the west:
Elite theory is based on an important observation; small groups can more easily organize than large groups.
A modest number of wealthy individuals with common goals will easily run rings around a whole town, region or country because the masses cannot easily organize.
This infers enormous advantages, not the least of which is a small group can discuss and agree a strategy and then stick to it. Because of this some imagine elites as more able than they really are.
But power is tricky. All the money and all the clout in the world means nothing if you can’t project it far.
And our powerful, wealthy elites have one great weakness, they must work through others.
A hierarchy therefore exists which we occasionally glimpse adding to our confusion when we use words like “elites.”
Global rulers are ostensibly at the top. They sit above nation-states. They are truly post-national, controlling central banks and international finance. They are the closest thing we have to world controllers. Some seem to hold power over huge swathes of the globe, like gigantic economic zones.
In addition, all nations have visibly important people; kings, dictators, presidents and others. National elites are those whose power is largely confined to a territory. They lack the international reach of global elites.
The media represent power too. They are there to shape the narratives that govern our perceptions. Most traditional media outlets serve elite goals although some of their members wield tremendous power themselves.
The political class are the obvious lackeys of the powerful. Voters seem constantly amazed politicians never really improve anything once in power, but that is because they don’t serve those below them, only those above. Once you see this their behaviour makes much more sense. They dance to the tune of their paymasters. Their primary job is to pretend democracy works.
The corporate leaders are a less visible example of the same thing. They manage the commercial wing of elite interests while pretending to be businessmen.
Blackrock and others have almost completely abandoned anything resembling capitalism. They are gamers of systems, not the innovators of yesteryear. Just one reason our economies are struggling.
It is the major corporations who have helped establish diversity and climate goals, for instance, so they matter for furthering elite ambitions.
Local and regional elites exist too. Everything is replicated at ever smaller scales, including public sector employees and corporate managers.
These are the foot soldiers often oblivious to any elite goals. They just respond to the incentives and disincentives they are aware of at their level.
There is more, including academia and the major institutions. But the key idea is this is the hierarchy the powerful must work with to get anything done.
Projecting power downwards
At each stage there are numerous problems conveying information and taking action. Running the world is a demanding hobby. Power means nothing unless you can implement your schemes.
Communication is an ever-present issue. Things are misinterpreted. People misunderstand goals and aspirations.
There are probably no written plans. A lot of influence is achieved via think tanks and talking shops like the World Economic Forum, so is open to misinterpretation. It must be like herding cats as these grand ideas cascade down the hierarchy and are misunderstood or overlooked.
This process is further retarded by quotas and ideological capture. Woke brings many distortions; just ask the declining universities. Hiring for alignment does not select for the best. Elite need for control therefore leaves them with reduced options.
We’ve all seen some new appointee take over a position of authority and promptly run it into the ground. Imagine having to rely on that process to get anything done?
The lower down the totem pole we go the less able the people as a general rule. Specifically, in these benthic depths far from the centres of power, the minor lackeys run the grave risk of actually believing the claptrap used to control the masses which can be a real impediment to progress.
Those near the bottom generally lack the intellectual vigour to question anything which makes for obedient slaves, albeit dangerously detached from strategic awareness or understanding of the purpose of the narratives they uncritically embrace.
Such devotion is handy at first, it can provide real energy to make changes. Covid policies were established quickly thanks to this phenomenon. The implementation units were clearly unable to assess evidence or think for themselves; man on TV said wear mask and sit in back garden, so they did.
The price for such mindlessness is confusion and this is where control can be lost.
Anti-white animus gestated on university campuses was useful for the powerful to keep the most dangerous demographic down, and therefore less likely to form a counter-elite, but has now morphed into anti-Israel and pro-Palestine sentiment. It is evident many in academia, oblivious to the purpose of “decolonization,” have now misapplied this ethnic weapon to Israelis and Jews more generally to the horror of the powerful with plans of their own.
We see similar effects with climate zealots in positions of authority, especially in politics and media circles. It can be galling to realize some prominent person you once thought was capable actually thinks we only have twelve years to save the planet or wants to end cheeseburgers to help the coral reefs. Can they really be that impressionable?
What is frustrating for us must be maddening to the powerful as they watch brainwashed clowns misunderstand their goals. When your tools include the gullible things can get out of hand quickly.
That’s why many of the doom and gloom predictions based on some omniscient Illuminati are so off the mark despite their elevated position in society.
Projecting power is akin to shooting people in swimming pools. You can see them under the water, often very clearly, but it doesn’t necessarily help.
You fire off your rounds, but they quickly lose force as they enter some new medium of which you know very little, plus they can whizz away in unexpected directions, entirely missing their mark.
All that money and influence but you have to rely on dancing monkeys to get anything done. What use are trillions when Glenda in HR actually thinks her purpose in life is to root out systemic racism or heal the planet? Her initial zeal can quickly become a liability as ultimately happened during Covid when many began to wake up after the clownshow became too absurd to continue.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford – threat or menace?
In many ways, Ontario’s Doug Ford is a 21st century version of former Ontario Premier Bill Davis … a virtuoso performer of the “talk Conservative, govern Liberal” style that urban Ontario voters really seem to love. It works well for the Laurentian Elite to have a Liberal government in Ottawa and a “Conservative” government in Toronto, as they can argue in public about all sorts of marginal issues, but when it comes down to legislation and regulation, they’re almost indistinguishable from one another aside from party colours.
Last week, Ford announced a plan to hand out provincial work permits to a huge number of “asylum seekers” as the feds seem to be making motions to reduce their support of such irregular immigrants:
One step forward, two steps back? As a card-carrying, self-appointed board member of Team “Please stop making everything worse on purpose,” there are some hard-earned wins and faint movements back towards normal, and then there’s the ongoing screw-jobs that threaten any/all progress.
As we have bemoaned time, and time, and time again around these parts, Ontario has a premier problem. But now, all of Canada has a Doug Ford problem.
I’ve been part of an effort to drag urgent immigration reform into the spotlight, and even into a feature position in the waning days of that ‘first ministers’ meeting in Muskoka, but a certain conservative-in-name-only threatens to make historic problems of immigration and unemployment worse, rather than better.
Conservatives in Canada are about to find themselves in a tricky position with Ford, who has the unique potential to remain one of the last vestiges of the failed Trudeau years — even more so than Carney. And the latter may need defending.
Ford and his deeply conflicted and unethical inner circle may wish to grant provincial work permits to a supply of fake students turned fake asylum claimants, but ordinary folk, concerned parents, our proud immigrant communities who made the grade and never cut corners, and our abandoned workers have other ideas.
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, @HOCStaffer tries to provide some context:
Asylum seekers, refugees, illegals, whatever you want to call them.
They are filling up hotels, getting money, & doing basically nothing, all the while waiting upwards of 2 years for their application to be approved/denied.
I mean, it’s better than where they came from, which is why they are here.
There’s a massive financial burden to the govt & a huge pool of labour doing nothing which could be serving you your coffee instead of a Temp Foreign Worker.
So Ford’s argument — which I have had made to me in person by hotel, tourism, & restaurant lobbyists — is that why don’t we use these people to do the shit jobs?
***** Especially if we are reducing TFWs.
There is a pretty good logic to it.
“May as well have them do something while they are here waiting.” Right?
But I still disagree with the idea.
Most of these people aren’t refugees. They are economic migrants from terrible places. They came here illegally, often under false pretences, & most should be deported.
The longer they stay the more likely they are to have kids here, to potentially marry a Canadian, and to establish links to the country.
Giving them a job furthers that connection.
The last thing we need is the local Tims owner arguing to keep Abdul in the country because he is the only one who will sling shit coffee on the night shift for shit wages.
Giving illegals jobs just rewards the business owners who take advantage of TFWs with a new pool of labour to exploit.
I get that these are businesses and real people have money and time invested in them.
But if you cannot operate without indentured servants then perhaps we don’t really need your business?
A bunch of Tims will close. McD’s too. Maybe some hotels & other businesses too. It’s sad. No one wants to see that.
But we also can’t keep importing people — and thereby affecting much of the rest of society — in order to keep these businesses open.
So yeah, there’s a sound argument to what Ford is saying.
But what he should be saying is that we need a stronger border, faster processing, less appeals and quicker deportations.
That would save his govt real money.
July 27, 2025
I’m sure I would never have heard of Sean Feucht until they tried to silence him
It’s hard to believe how Canadian municipal and provincial authorities deal so gently with disruptive pro-Hamas protests that regularly threaten the lives and property of Canadian Jews compared with the positively authoritarian way they are reacting to “MAGA” Christian performer Sean Feucht‘s concerts:
July 26, 2025
QotD: The accumulated friction of bureaucratic growth
[…] In the early Republic, raising a legion was as simple as a patrician calling his clients to service, or the Senate issuing a conscription decree. One task: the summoning of free men, with their own equipment, and there you go — Legio I Hypothetica.
By the late Empire, though, all those freeholds had been turned into slave-worked Latifundia, so the effort of raising a legion increased enormously. Now the bureaucracy had to go out and hire freemen (if it could even find them), equip them at State expense, train them (again at State expense), and so on. In itself, the number of tasks isn’t that large — we’ve identified three — and they only increase at the rate of n+1.
But the effort each task requires increases to the power of n, such that if you could somehow express the effort expended in physical terms — joules or kilowatts or whatever — you’d see that the creation of Legio I Hypothetica under Scipio Africanus took 10 kilowatts, while raising the same legion under Diocletian took 10,000,000.
This isn’t (just) corruption. Sure, everyone at every level of the Imperial Bureaucracy was getting his beak wet, that goes without saying, but it’s the nature of bureaucracy itself that’s most to blame.
Severian, “Collapse II”, Founding Questions, 2021-12-09.
