Quotulatiousness

February 19, 2026

An American anarchist

Filed under: Books, Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’ve never met Christopher Schwarz, but I’ve read a lot of his writing in books, magazine articles, and blog posts. He’s forgotten more about hand tool woodworking than I’ll ever know, and he’s amazingly generous in sharing his knowledge with others. He calls himself an anarchist, which often puzzles people who only know of anarchism from media-presented bomb-throwing nihilists and conspiratorial Russian stories. Here he explains what he means when he uses the term:

“Chris Schwarz and Meredith Schwarz” by jessamyn west is marked with CC0 1.0 .

I get asked a lot about what I mean by the word “anarchism”, and if I could please explain what I mean when I use that word.

My answer is always unsatisfying. Here’s why.

For the love of creamed corn, why would I publicly discuss ideas that are – for now – a crime in our country? Why would I say – for example – that I think that copyrights and patents on things that use public money are bullshit? That wars are founded on lies? And that the state – in general – seems to be a menace to peaceable living?

That would be stupid. Dumb nuts.

Also, I am a practitioner of anarchism, not a philosopher.

If you want to know more about American anarchism (and aesthetic anarchism, specifically), you need to ask a philosopher, not a front-of-house worker. Read Native American Anarchism (Hachette Books, 1983) by Eunice Minette Schuster for an easy on ramp. Or Josiah Warren’s Equitable Commerce (1852) for the full banana.

The Anarchist’s Tool Chest: Revised Edition by Christopher Schwarz – Link.

Or follow the trail of breadcrumbs left in The Anarchist’s Tool Chest to figure it out yourself. The book describes how to disrupt the furniture industry by building things that never need to be replaced. It’s also about how to jailbreak yourself from a tool industry that offers up aluminum jigs as a substitute for skill.

That book is not the only path. There are other ways to throw a bunch of ball bearings into the guts of the IKEA robots.

Buy antiques or used furniture. The other week I was in Savannah, Georgia, and visited one of my favorite antique stores. The price of handmade antiques has hit bottom. So-called “brown furniture” can be bought for less that the cost of the materials used to make it.

Even though I make furniture for a living, I sometimes save time and money by purchasing vintage industrial furniture for our warehouse, fulfillment center and workshop. Megan’s giant oak desk from the 1960s cost us zero dollars (we just had to move it from an insurance office). Our printer and scanning station? An old workbench from Pennsylvania. Our associate editors’ shared desk? A giant vintage drafting table from Sweden.

And if you think for a moment, there are other industries and organizations that can be farted upon by your actions. The clothing industry is even worse than the furniture industry when it comes to making flimsy crap and abusing workers.

Yes, you can buy ethically made jeans, shirts and socks. Yes, you will pay a premium for these items. And if you can afford that path, great. If you can’t, then buy secondhand clothing.

I’ve always wanted a pair of R.M. Williams boots but could never afford them on a writer’s salary. Last year I found a used pair for about $100 where the owner had ragged out the elastic part of the slip-on boots. It was a stupid easy fix. And now I have boots I shall wear at my funeral.

The other side of the equation is that I’m denying the new-boot-goofin’ industry my dollars. Forever. I don’t have to buy a pair of shoddily made boots that can’t be re-soled and will have to be replaced in a couple years. All my future “boot money” will go to our local cobbler so she can re-sole them every few years.

February 7, 2026

The Probability Broach: L. Neil Smith’s libertarian fever-dream

Filed under: Books, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Feral Historian
Published 6 Feb 2026

Equal parts political manifesto and wacky adventure story, The Probability Broach is usually not the first title people think of when they hear “libertarian sci-fi” but it almost always makes the list after further reflection. While ideologically-motivated fiction tends to preach more than entertain, L. Neil Smith makes his world so bonkers and whimsical that we almost can’t help seeing our own in a similar light, and in so doing reminds us that things are as they are ultimately because we chose to make it this way.

There’s some jumpcuts in this due to lack of good b-roll, but I suspect that most people who make it past the half-way point on this one are just listening anyway.

The artwork is from the graphic novel adaptation from Big Head Press https://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn
I ordered a copy but the government-run postal system didn’t get it to me in time to use its illustrations of later chapters.

00:00 Intro
01:05 The Setup
03:15 Whiskey Rebellion
05:36 Confederacy
07:50 Property, Culture, and Capitalism
15:01 Cultural Assumptions
19:20 Interventionism
21:04 Choices, not Systems
(more…)

February 4, 2026

Amelia, created by woke propagandists, is now the figurehead for the anti-woke

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, John Michael Greer provides a quick thumbnail sketch of the Amelia story for folks who need to get caught up:

I’ve been watching the saga of Amelia from the far side of the Atlantic in a state of utter bemusement.

For those who don’t know the first act of the saga, the British government had some collection of flacks create a video game for British kids, which was designed to elicit “racist” (that is, patriotic and un-woke) statements from them — at which point the kids who fell for it would be reported to the police for, erm, reeducation. (I wish I was making this up.)

Amelia was a cartoon figure who was supposed to mouth allegedly racist slogans, and they gave her violet hair because they thought that would annoy right-wingers, who make jokes about women with dyed hair.

Ponder the immeasurable stupidity of the flacks who put nationalist and patriotic slogans in the mouth of the kind of cute female figure who would have most teenage boys reaching into their trousers on the spot. Of course these same teenage boys instantly hijacked her and turned her into a mascot, just as they did with Kek back in the day. Of course these same teenage boys, being far more computer-skilled than government flacks, started doing LLM-generated videos of Amelia speaking out in favor of nationalist and patriotic ideas.

Of course everybody in Britain who’s sick and tired of the Starmer government and its woke doctrines embraced Amelia as their latest heroine, not least because the Guardian‘s foam-flecked fury when she’s mentioned is so entertaining to watch …

And then, as with Kek, things got weird. We’re still in the early stages of the weirdening but it would not surprise me a bit to find that just as a cartoon frog ten years ago became the vessel through which an archaic Native American deity manifested and sent the US spinning down an uncharted path, a purple-haired waifu may just become another such vehicle.

Britain used to have quite a collection of war goddesses, back in Celtic times. I’m curious, not to mention apprehensive, to see just who’s taking this opportunity to stream back into manifestation.

January 31, 2026

QotD: Liberal principles according to Karl Popper

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

As usual when Popper addressed a meeting, his aim was to challenge and provoke thought, rather than simply endorsing the assumptions that he shared with his audience. […] It may help to start with a summary of the liberal principles that Popper spelled out in section 3. This will be helpful for a general readership (unlike the Mont Pelerin meeting) where there are likely to be many people who do not hold non-socialist liberal principles and some who are not be clear about what these principles are.

(1) The state is a necessary evil and its powers should be kept to the minimum that is necessary.

(2) A democracy is a state where the government can be changed without bloodshed.

(3) Democracy cannot confer benefits on people. “Democracy provides no more than a framework within which the citizens may act in a more or less organised and coherent way.”

(4) Democracy does not mean that the majority is right.

(5) Institutions need to be tempered and supported by traditions.

(6) There is no Liberal Utopia. There are always problems, conflicts of interests, choices to be made between the lesser of evils.

(7) Liberalism is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It is about modifying or changing institutions and traditions rather than wholesale replacement of the existing order. The exception to this is when a tyranny is in place, that is a government that can only be changed by violence and bloodshed.

(8) The importance of the moral framework.

“Among the traditions that we must count as the most important is what we may call the ‘moral framework’ (corresponding to the institutional ‘legal framework’) of a society. This incorporates the society’s traditional sense of justice or fairness, or the degree of moral sensitivity that it has reached … Nothing is more dangerous than the destruction of this traditional framework. (Its destruction was consciously aimed at by Nazism.)”

Rafe Champion, “Summary and commentary on a paper on public opinion and liberal principles delivered by Popper to the Mont Pelerin Society”.

January 29, 2026

“The meme works because Amelia has perfectly normal, mainstream opinions”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Humour, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, The Little Platoon responds to a lamestream media report on the Amelia phenomenon:

This story was quite funny enough before it got noticed by the rickety old goblin creatures of the mainstream media.

Amelia is not a “purple-haired AI goth girl”, she is a government-created videogame character designed to teach kids that “liking the national flag” and “attending protests where that flag might be seen” makes you a potential terrorist.

That really was the extent of it. The game she comes from is extremely non-specific about the content you’ve been radicalised by. At no point do you think, “yes, I can see why this was terrorist behaviour”.

The actual storyline is not a million miles away from Winston Smith and Julia in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

So the effect is: you have this totally normal opinion that most people have? You’ve been seduced by Amelia and now the Hijabi Hero (IRONY) at Prevent is going to send you to jail.

Amelia hasn’t been “hijacked by the far-right”, she’s just a textbook example of Death of the Author.

The government wanted to have her demonstrate the dangers of online radicalisation. But because this is the British government, they made it seem cool, justified, and you’ll probably get a hot goth girlfriend out of it.

The meme works because Amelia has perfectly normal, mainstream opinions.

She can say “I like pork sausages and dogs”, like roughly 98% of British people, and this will send a certain sort of person — the government, the Anti-Extremism Lead at Generic NGO — into a full-on panic attack.

It’s about the disconnect between the values of the government and those of the people they govern. The joke is that Amelia could ever be considered “Far Right”.

(Ironically, the interviewee in this clip is just as AI-coded as the actual AI clip they play. He’d probably require fewer tokens to generate.)

Meme coins remain extremely cringe, however.

At The Hungarian Conservative, Joakim Scheffer discusses the reaction of the caught-flat-footed mainstream media as their attempts to downplay Amelia’s impact serve to increase interest and attention:

British outlets The Guardian and LBC published strikingly similar articles about Amelia in recent days, both concluding that the purple-haired goth girl, who stands against mass migration and in favour of traditional British values and culture, is, in fact, racist and fuels hatred.

The Guardian introduces Amelia as a girl “who proudly carries a mini Union flag and appears to have a penchant for racism“, before lamenting the “plethora of increasingly sophisticated AI-generated iterations” of her, including “real-life” encounters between Amelia and movie characters, “accompanied by racist language and far-right messaging”.

Since her “birth”, Amelia has indeed become increasingly popular. From an average of around 500 posts a day when she was first introduced, the figure rose to roughly 10,000 daily posts starting on 15 January, when the meme broke through to international audiences. Amelia has since reached the highest levels of the right-wing internet ecosystem, even being reposted by Elon Musk himself.

January 27, 2026

Amelia was not created by the “extreme right”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, A View From Yorkshire points out that the media coverage of the Amelia phenomenon often leaves the audience with the impression that Amelia was created by some far right extremists, which clearly isn’t true:

Let’s nuke the myth properly.

Amelia was not “created by the far-right”.
She was created by the British state, funded by taxpayers, in a government-approved anti-extremism game for teenagers.

Her crime?
Questioning mass migration.
Talking about British values.
Suggesting borders, culture and continuity might matter.

In other words: centre-right, mainstream opinions held by millions of normal people.

The media response?
SCREAMING, CRYING, THROWING UP:
“FAR-RIGHT!”
“RACISM!”
“DISINFORMATION!”

Even the game’s own creators admit the game does not say questioning mass migration is wrong — yet journalists still foam at the mouth like Pavlov’s interns because the spell didn’t work.

Here’s the truth they hate:

Amelia didn’t get radicalised.
She got recognised.

People saw a perfect accidental parody of how the establishment treats ordinary dissent:
If you question orthodoxy, you’re not wrong — you’re dangerous.
If you wave a Union Jack, you’re not patriotic — you’re extreme.
If you ask questions, you need monitoring.

So people did what the internet always does when power looks stupid:
They laughed.
They memed.
They stripped the moral panic naked.

Now we’re told there’s a “highly coordinated hate network” behind it all.
Sure. Or maybe — stay with me —
people are done being lectured by institutions that despise them.

A cartoon goth girl didn’t expose extremism.
She exposed how fragile the narrative really is.

If a meme breaks your ideology,
your ideology was already on life support.

The Amelia memes do seem to be getting under the skin of certain members of the government:

Amelia is a girl of many talents:

Epochalypse
Published 24 Jan 2026

An absolutely beautiful song covered by Amelia ❤️

A UK anti-extremism educational game called Pathways, faced significant public and media backlash.

The game, developed by SOUK in coordination with the Hull City Council and East Riding of Yorkshire Council, was designed to educate students about the dangers of online radicalization.

How the Game Backfired

Antagonist’s Popularity: The game’s primary antagonist, a teenage girl with purple hair named Amelia who held nationalist views, was intended as a cautionary figure. However, she was ironically embraced by some online communities and became a viral meme, with users finding her “goth baddie” design and character more interesting and relatable than the non-binary protagonist, Charlie.

Criticism of Content: The game was widely criticized by media outlets, including The Telegraph and The Spectator, as “clumsy” and “overtly manipulative”. Critics argued that the game effectively suppressed free speech by suggesting characters who questioned immigration policies should be reported under the UK government’s “Prevent” counter-terrorism strategy.

Portrayal of “Research”: The game’s narrative structure suggested that “researching” information online could be harmful, as it might lead to “intaking a lot of harmful, ideological messages”, which also drew criticism.

Ultimately, the attempt to create an effective anti-extremism tool had the opposite effect in many online circles, with its intended villain becoming an ironic symbol for anti-illegal immigration sentiment.

#amelia #pathways #memes #patriotism

Kimberly Steele disgrees with the characterization of Amelia as a “tulpa” (which I think I first saw advanced by John Carter at Postcards From Barsoom) and argues that she’s actually an “egregore” instead:

Amelia crossing paths with Harry Potter and the gang, very appropriate for this essay

In rides fantasy Amelia to the rescue, a digital Joan of Arc to galvanize the lumpen male proletariat into action against leftist groupthink oppression. Her flame burns hotter than the tradwife because she is not a deferential, docile, opinionless mirage waiting for her man to do all the the heavy lifting. Instead of modeling crusty tropes from the 1950s in a housedress, she mouths off to Mohammed in a miniskirt. She champions sensible norms that middle aged people like me took for granted back in the day. She is an advocate of schoolgirls being able to walk down the streets of Liverpool without being acid attacked or drug into fenced areas to be assaulted. She suggests Britain is for the British and that it should not be handed over to the same hordes that have been trying to overrun it since before the Middle Ages. She suggests that men on all sides rise up and outgrow Puer Aeternis — to the invaders, she insists that they cease their infantile dependence routines and go back and fight for their own country on their own soil. To the white native islanders, she suggests they grow a set and defend their nation while it still stands. Nothing that Amelia wants or espouses is extreme. She is a middle-of-the-road pundit who could run for office on a moderate platform (or what used to be considered moderate in my day before everything in the middle was categorized as far-right) and win. She’s not exactly Hitler, no matter what the leftie pearl clutchers claim.

If only she was real. Amelia has been called a tulpa, which is a Buddhist term for a thoughtform that is forced into existence and made to do tasks, much like a Jewish golem without the clay and awkwardness. I don’t think Amelia is a tulpa. She is nobody’s bitch and she was not created on purpose. Instead, Amelia is an egregore. Imagine your old school mascot was a giant, anthropomorphized tiger. Perhaps there was a person who dressed up as a big, striped cat for games every now and then. Now imagine that your mascot became extremely popular across the world and every sports team adopted him as their mascot too. Now imagine that your big tiger began appearing randomly in the nightly dreams of people who were very into sports, and then after a few years, non-sports fans. Tiger fan fiction was inspired by the egregore. Tons of giant tiger merch was sold both at games and in regular stores. Imagine if chick lit writers wrote ghastly bestiality porn about the giant tiger, and entire genres of tiger man erotica bubbled up online. You would begin to think perhaps there was consciousness behind the tiger man image, and if you did think such odd things, traditional occultists would take your side of the conspiracy theory.

An egregore is a shared image that gains its own consciousness. Any given novel’s character is essentially alive, gaining his/her/it’s own consciousness, ego, and world. […]

Amelia says what men cannot say, and it is good because she does it in a way that is unsquelchable and eternal. She is bad because she is yet another symptom of provisional living. On the plus side, she makes toxic liberal women super mad because unlike a real girl, they cannot tear her down or cast her out of the longhouse/take her ability to make a living away in order to force her compliance. She highlights all of their shortcomings without having to try, and that is why she will have much hate projected upon her. Their evil eyes gaze into the digital mirror. This force may be enough for them to completely self-destruct, given enough time and distance.

There are some men who see Amelia as some kind of savior. If you are one of them, let me assure you she is not going to save anyone any more than Pepe the Frog. If you want to save and be saved, please go outside. Be with the sky and the trees, and don’t feel you have to pick up a fishing pole, soccer ball, or a toolbox to be out there. When you do come back inside, instead of turning on the dopamine drip and immersing yourself in the antics of fantasy girlfriends or dreaming about invading Haiti, please use the internet to learn manly skills. My husband, whose father was largely absent before he divorced my husband’s mother when my husband was 12, taught himself nearly all of his considerable skills via books and the internet. If you are a visual learner, the internet holds a treasure trove of knowledge. For those would be warriors who are not currently serving or who will never serve in the armed forces, please go out and defend real girls on the streets from the monsters, creeps, and traffickers who make it impossible to feel safe as a female. Where are the men willing to watch the streets and to at least threaten various immigrant scum with retribution for their terrible behavior? Where are the volunteer neighborhood patrols that ensure women and children can walk to and from school without being harassed? In the stranger danger/Satanic Panic 80s, we had a thing called Neighborhood Watch where you would put a blue star in your window so any little kid who felt threatened could knock on the door and find a safe house. Where are the blue stars? Where are the boys with baseball bats? Go out there and defend your country. Do it for Amelia.

Update, 28 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

January 18, 2026

“Voluntary”. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The federal government, rather than abandoning its ridiculous and ineffective “voluntary” firearm buyback program, is determined to carry on:

🇨🇦 The “Voluntary” Trap: Ottawa’s Buyback Is Coercion, Not Consent 🇨🇦
by GoC Admins

The federal government unveiled the next phase of its firearms confiscation program on Saturday, insisting, yet again, that the process is “voluntary”. But as the details emerge, that claim collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.

What the government is offering Canadians is not a choice. It is a trap designed to force compliance through financial coercion and the threat of criminal prosecution.

Beginning January 19, licensed firearm owners will be contacted by the National Firearms Centre and invited to voluntarily declare their property. The declaration period runs until March 31, 2026. Those who comply may receive compensation. Those who do not will be required to surrender, deactivate, or export their legally acquired property before the amnesty expires on October 30, 2026, or face criminal charges for illegal possession.

That is not voluntary. That is coercion dressed in bureaucratic language.

The “Voluntary” Deadline Is a Financial Squeeze
The most manipulative aspect of this program is its timeline.

The government has set the amnesty to expire on October 30, 2026, but the window to declare firearms for compensation closes seven months earlier, on March 31, 2026. Owners who wait to see whether a future election, court ruling, or policy reversal intervene are punished for doing so.

This gap is not accidental. It predictably pressures owners to act early, before political uncertainty can resolve itself.

If you wait until the summer or fall of 2026 to see whether the law changes, you will have missed the compensation window entirely. At that point, your only options will be to surrender your property for free or face criminal liability.

Yes, owners can technically wait until October 30, 2026, but only if they are willing to receive nothing in return.

That is not a voluntary choice. It is a financial ultimatum.

🇨🇦 Surrender First, Get Paid … Maybe 🇨🇦

Perhaps the most astonishing revelation from the government’s announcement is that declaring your firearms does not guarantee compensation.

Payment will be issued on a “first-come, first-served” basis, subject to available funding.

In any other context, forcing people to surrender lawfully acquired property without guaranteed compensation would violate basic principles of fairness and due process. Under this program, owners are asked to declare thousands, or tens of thousands, of dollars’ worth of property with no legal assurance that the money to compensate them actually exists.

If the budget runs dry, you are still left holding a prohibited firearm you must destroy or surrender. The cheque may never come.

Compliance is mandatory. Compensation is optional.

🇨🇦 A Pilot Project That Already Failed 🇨🇦

Ottawa insists this national rollout will succeed, despite the fact that the pilot version of this program was an embarrassment.

Public reporting indicates that when the government tested the scheme in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, it resulted in the collection of approximately 25 firearms from just 16 individuals. After millions spent on administration, IT systems, and police coordination, only a handful of people participated.

If this were a private-sector initiative, it would have been cancelled outright. Instead, the government is expanding it nationwide without addressing the structural failures that doomed the pilot from the start.

🇨🇦 It’s Not About Safety; It’s About Control 🇨🇦

The government inadvertently revealed its true motivation when officials remarked that they do not want owners using compensation money to “buy an SKS”.

This statement exposes the emptiness of the public-safety argument.

The SKS is already licensed, regulated, and subject to existing Canadian firearms law. By acknowledging that owners might simply replace prohibited firearms with other legal ones that function similarly, the government is admitting that the bans are arbitrary.

The objective is not to remove a particular mechanical risk from society. It is to financially exhaust and discourage lawful firearm ownership altogether.

This program is not designed to stop criminals. Criminals do not declare firearms. Criminals do not comply with amnesty deadlines. Criminals do not interact with government portals.

Only compliant, vetted, RCMP-checked Canadians do.

🇨🇦 The Deadlines Are Real. The Logic Is Not 🇨🇦

Government officials closed their announcement by warning Canadians that “the deadlines are real”.
They are right about that.

The government is fully prepared to criminalize people who followed every rule it imposed. People who acquired their property legally, stored it safely, and harmed no one. It is prepared to spend billions enforcing a program that criminals will ignore entirely.

This is not a buyback. It is not voluntary. It is a forced surrender program aimed at the easiest possible target: responsible firearm owners.

While those driving Canada’s violent crime problem continue entirely outside the scope of this policy, law-abiding citizens are left facing a stark reality: Comply now, or be punished later.

History will judge this program not by its press releases, but by its results. And all available evidence suggests it will deliver exactly what it already has: massive cost, deepened division, and no measurable improvement in public safety.

January 16, 2026

Rapidly declining democracy in the home of the “Mother of Parliaments”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Europe, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

As I’ve mentioned before, it sometimes seems that Australia, Britain, and Canada are in a three-way race to de-democratize themselves as fast as they possibly can. Here’s the free-to-cheapskates portion of Ed West‘s essay on the return of liberal authoritarianism:

“Palace of Westminster” by michaelhenley is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

It’s around this time of year that various NGOs give their assessment on the state of democracy and freedom of the world. The Fraser Institute’s Human Freedom Index was published earlier in December and Freedom House’s next report will arrive in February. It was at the start of last year that Romania was downgraded to a “hybrid democracy” by another body, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), while France is now merely a flawed democracy. Sacré bleu!

What about our own beloved island, the mother of Parliaments? It will be interesting to see where Britain features in this year’s reports, and whether recent developments will impact on our rating.

Just recently, for instance, the British government postponed four mayoral elections until 2028, elections they are certain to lose. The Electoral Commission warned that it risked undermining “the legitimacy of local decision making and damaging public confidence”, while the chairwoman of the Labour Party even refused to rule out delaying the next General Election, leading Nigel Farage to accuse her of having “total contempt for democracy”.

Keir Starmer has also taken effective control of the House of Lords and will almost entirely eliminate opposition among peers by 2027, which he is able to do to the second chamber thanks to Tony Blair’s constitutional reforms. While the government extends the franchise to children, and even plans to place voting booths in schools, a clear violation of rules about politicising the education system, they’re also keen to restrict who can stand in elections.

As the i reported, Emily Darlington, Labour MP for Milton Keynes Central, “is seeking to make the Electoral Commission recommend enhanced DBS checks for candidates and then publish whether or not parties have agreed to the vetting. The aim is to ensure political parties justify whether their candidates are fit for office and name and shame those who refuse to participate.”

This is troubling when one considers that DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checks include not just criminal history but “non-crime hate incidents“, which may even appear on the records of people who haven’t been contacted by police. These highly-political charges are far more likely to be directed at those with Right-wing opinions.

When western European countries do things like this, I try to gauge whether this is normal by asking the question: what if Hungary did this? In most of these cases, I imagine the assessment would be that it was an assault on liberalism and democratic norms. In which case, what if Britain is undergoing the sort of “democratic backsliding” usually levelled at central European countries with conservative governments? What if Keir Starmer is actually one of these illiberal “strongmen” we read about, just not a very effective one.

There are a number of accepted symptoms of democratic backsliding, among the most commonly listed being rejection of democratic rules, a disregard for constitutional norms, attempts to use legal mechanism to sidestep democracy, which is described as “stealth authoritarianism”, denial of opponents’ legitimacy, and the tendency to characterise them as outsiders or a threat to national security; on top of this, one might consider a willingness to curtail civil liberties, restricting the power of the media, and violating freedom of speech and association. Finally, and worst of all, is the toleration or encouragement of violence against opponents.

Credit: the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago

By these broad definitions, Britain arguably meets many of these criteria (but not, most importantly, the last). There is certainly censorship, which has increased with the Online Safety Act, designed to combat “hate” as well as “misinformation”. Misinformation, of course, is everywhere, but its existence certainly provides a convenient excuse for governments to clamp down on the sort of information they dislike. The Government has also pondered banning Twitter, and while I feel that the widespread disgust at the Grok “deepfake” feature is reasonable, such a ban would completely cripple opposition, returning control of the discourse to the old media.

As for the British state’s definition of “hate”, there is a widespread belief that people motivated by hostility to mass immigration are extreme and dangerous, so the full force of the law must be used to stop them gaining support among a public who are totally guileless when it comes to absorbing information. This belief has grown more entrenched with the rise of populism, and makes western European governments increasingly sceptical of democracy itself.

It’s obvious that many people are concerned about the prospect of Nigel Farage becoming prime minister, and as the election date comes closer, and if he’s still in a position to win, the tone will become more shrill. Starmer admitted to this terror when he said, tellingly, that “If there is a Conservative government I can sleep at night. If there was a right-wing government in the United Kingdom, that would be a different proposition.”

Update, 17 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

December 28, 2025

It may seem petty to deny entry to EUrocrats, but it’s all they will understand

Filed under: Europe, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At first, I thought it was just another bout of Trump being deliberately petty over trivial stuff, but on reflection, it’s actually a neat way to bring home the message to the EU bureaucrats personally that they will be held responsible for their actions:

RE: Free Speech & Denying Visas to Euro Autocrats

The very most Orwellian mind game happening in the world today is the way authoritarian globalists are attempting to redefine the concept of “free speech”.

In America, “free speech” has long meant that we are free to say or write virtually anything without fear of government intervention or suppression. It is this ability to express whatever we want that makes it “free”.

The authoritarian globalists, however, have stood this on its head. They have decided that in order for their citizens to be “free”, they must be free of ever hearing or reading any speech that might offend someone or sow doubt as to government policies. To these fascists, “free speech” means GOVERNMENT MODERATED speech which somehow — through its moderation — sets people “free” from ever hearing conflicting views. As I said — straight out of Orwell.

Europe is, of course, the hotbed of this fascist redefinition of what free speech means, but we in America have only narrowly escaped this plague by electing Trump. Remember, Biden and his team were reliant on institutionally stamping out so-called “disinformation” as a means of control over the populace. We must be ever vigilant here in the USA that such thuggish government criminality never again be allowed to prosper.

I think it is very important that every citizen of the USA and the world understand the depths of depravity these people will sink to in order to control ordinary people. This is about mind control, and nothing else.

Ultimately, the value of true free speech is that it embraces the idea that we all have agency over ourselves; that we are free individuals who can and should hear conflicting views, and decide for ourselves what is true and just, and what is untrue and unjust. This is sovereignty over the self, and unfortunately Europe has never let go of the concept of serfdom, so self-sovereignty is a threat that must be stamped out.

The Trump Administration has been prescient, bold and effective in denying visas to the Eurotrash autocrats who would see free speech reduced to whatever speech unelected bureaucrats deem acceptable. I cannot commend Trump enough for the thoughtfulness and importance of that action.

In a world where almost all humans are linked by essentially the same communications platform, only one world leader is truly standing for free speech: Donald Trump. And I thank him for it. We all should — even the TDS sufferers.

For a relevant example, Dries Van Langenhove:

Update, 29 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

December 24, 2025

The real agenda

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Karl Harrison makes a case for fighting against the key element of the federal government’s all-encompassing drive to control the lives of Canadians because it’s the one that will enable all the other controls to operate:

All Canadians should read this carefully:

“They are flooding Parliament with distraction bills so the public is overwhelmed and cannot see the one bill that makes the entire system possible. More than a dozen federal bills are advancing simultaneously — each attacking a different pillar of Canadian freedom but S206 is the key. They fall into clear clusters:

Bills attacking due process and court rights.
Bill S-206 — Administrative Monetary Penalties (the central pillar) enables penalties without hearings, judges, trials, or common-law protections.
Bill C-63 — Online Harms Act. Undefined “harm”, digital speech penalties, CRTC enforcement authority.
Bill C-27 — Digital Charter Act. Creates federal AI regulators empowered to issue compliance orders without court oversight.
Bill C-52 — Beneficial Ownership Transparency. Expands federal surveillance and administrative enforcement.

Bills attacking parliamentary supremacy (power shift to agencies).
Bill C-26 — Critical Cyber Systems Act. Sweeping regulation by order-in-council, bypassing Parliament.
Bill C-11 — Online Streaming Act. Gives the CRTC unprecedented control over content curation and digital reach.
Bill C-18 — Online News Act. Allows federal regulators to determine access to, and compensation for, digital journalism.

Bills attacking property rights.
Bill C-234 — Agricultural Fuel Restrictions. Expands federal control over farm operations and production.
Bill S-241 — Jane Goodall Act. Sweeping biosafety authority over wildlife, land, and private property.
Bill C-49 — Atlantic Accord Amendments. Expands federal control over offshore land, climate restrictions, and energy development.

Bills attacking freedom of speech and assembly
Bill C-63 — Online Harms Act. Criminalizes undefined “harm”, empowers bureaucrats to judge speech.
Bill C-261 — Misleading Communications Act. Penalties for “misleading” speech — undefined and discretionary.
Bill C-70 — Foreign Interference Act. Mass surveillance powers with vague thresholds.

Bill attacking religion freedom.
Bill C-9 — “Harmful Conduct” Redefinition. Allows the state to regulate spiritual beliefs and pastoral work under “harm”.

The critical pattern. Different bills, different sectors and different rights being attacked. But here is the truth: Every single one of these bills depends on ONE central enforcement pillar, and that pillar is:
Bill S-206 — The Administrative Penalty Switch

Bill S-206, the hub of the entire system, gives federal departments the power to issue penalties without:
▪︎ a hearing
▪︎ a judge
▪︎ a trial
▪︎ due process
▪︎ common-law protections
▪︎ judicial review in practice

It turns federal agencies into their own courts — investigator, prosecutor, judge, and enforcer. No democracy on Earth should tolerate this.

This is the enforcement engine behind:
▪︎ Digital ID
▪︎ CBDCs
▪︎ Carbon allowances
▪︎ Biosafety / One Health rules
▪︎ Smart-meter penalties
▪︎ Travel scoring
▪︎ Online speech controls
▪︎ Zoning & land-use mandates

Data alone cannot control a population. They need the power to punish. S-206 provides it. Remove the keystone → the arch collapses.

Why scatter us with other bills? Because if Canadians focus on S-206, the agenda dies The distraction bills serve one purpose:
▪︎ to scatter attention and exhaust the public.
▪︎ to keep citizens debating side issues
▪︎ to hide the enforcement bill under noise
▪︎ to make resistance impossible to organize
▪︎ to create outrage fatigue
This is how large control systems are built — through distraction around the edges while the core is slipped into place.

What are they building – and why S-206 is the core. Here is the architecture of the planned digital-governance system:
▪︎ Digital ID → who you are
▪︎ CBDCs → what you buy
▪︎ Carbon scoring → how you move & heat your home

December 18, 2025

“You can still hunt”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Canadian federal government is working diligently (well, “diligently” by civil service standards) to disarm Canadians, and have been doing so for decades now. Rather than cracking down on criminal use of firearms, which would be difficult, they concentrate their efforts on literally the most law-abiding group of Canadian citizens — legal gun owners … because it’s easy, safe, and gets them lots and lots of friendly media coverage from the equally anti-gun Canadian media (few of whom even know any gun owners personally).

One of the constant replies when legal gun owners protest against yet another gun grab or tightened legal restriction is along the lines of “this doesn’t affect you: you can still hunt” … but hunting is only a part of Canadian gun ownership, and not the largest part. On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Gun Owners of Canada explains why “you can still hunt” is neither helpful nor constructive in the larger conversation:

We keep hearing the same tired line:

“You can still hunt.”

But that’s not what this is about.

That phrase exists because it’s simple, relatable, and politically convenient for people who don’t understand Canada’s firearm laws or their history. If you do understand them, you’re in the minority.

For most Canadian firearm owners, shooting has never been just about hunting. Yes, we hunt — but the bulk of our time is spent at the range, participating in recreational and competitive target shooting. That’s where families gather, skills are learned, friendships are built, and the next generation is introduced to safe, responsible firearm ownership.

Sport shooters are the backbone of the firearms community and the industry that supports it. We shoot year-round, we buy ammunition regularly, and we keep ranges and retailers alive. Many hunters will bring the same box of ammo to camp year after year. Both matter — but they are not the same.

Over the past six years, lawful firearms have been prohibited, replaced, and then prohibited again. Models that once brought families together at the range can no longer be used. That experience — one many of us grew up with — is increasingly out of reach for our kids.

This admin grew up at the range with parents and grandparents deeply involved in Canadian shooting sports. That’s where lifelong relationships were formed. Many of those people don’t hunt at all — but they are responsible, licensed, community-minded Canadians.

So when restrictions strip away lawful, safe activities while violent criminals face little consequence, don’t expect silence — or gratitude.

This isn’t about hunting.

It’s about what’s been taken, who it’s been taken from, and who’s expected to quietly accept it.

Don’t accept it. Get involved. It’s not like there aren’t enough advocacy groups to join and political avenues to get involved in.

For my own part, I no longer have the resources to do any shooting, but I was always interested in target shooting, not hunting. It was fun, and isn’t that what your hobbies should be for? Back when I sometimes travelled on business, I used to envy my American co-workers who had legal access to a plethora of shooting ranges and a much-less restrictive licensing regime. Every chance I got to go out to the range and try new-to-me rifles and pistols was like an adult version of a trip to the candy store. The one time I was nearly shot, ironically, was on a military target range when I was in the army reserves … an idiot (who out-ranked me) had a misfire with his submachine gun and turned away from the target towards me as the round fired. Fortunately, the bullet went in a safe-ish direction and nobody was hurt.

Update, 19 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

December 5, 2025

Censorship and “cancel culture” are symptoms of a cultural sickness

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

A guest post at Woke Watch Canada by C.C. Harvey lays out the evidence that our culture — and most of the western world — is struggling with a spiritual sickness and that arbitrary cancellations and formal censorship of dissenting views are symptoms of that ailment:

When a society begins to suppress intellectual and spiritual searching and dreaming — by punishing speech, regulating thought, discouraging questions, denying the existence of spiritual reality — it is not only a political decline, but a sign of deep unwellness.

Where populations lose respect for liberty of conscience, inquiry, and discourse, society becomes nasty and brutish. Truth-seeking, spiritual health, and peace are inexorably linked. Across formerly open, stable, safe western societies, censorship and repression have been rising as safety, cohesion, and quality of civic life decline.

We must resist cancel culture and speech codes for the following reasons:

  1. Suppressing Truth-Seeking Violates a Fundamental Human Impulse

    2. Across religious and knowledge traditions, truth-seeking is expressed as a moral duty. When authorities obstruct honest questioning, they interfere with something built into the human spirit.

  2. Fear Becomes the Organizing Principle

    3. Where dissent is forbidden, fear takes the place of reason. Fear diminishes moral clarity, discourages integrity, and pushes people toward silence rather than responsibility. A fearful society cannot become a virtuous society.

  3. Conscience Is Treated as a Threat Instead of a Gift

    4. In every major tradition — religious or philosophical — conscience is seen as a source of moral insight. When institutions punish people for following their conscience, they reveal a belief that the individual soul has no intrinsic worth, only value as a compliant unit.

  4. Dialogue Is Replaced With Dogma

    5. Healthy societies debate, persuade, and refine ideas through open conversation. Unhealthy ones replace discussion with mandatory narratives and speech codes. Leaders who fear questions fear the truth those questions might uncover. Dogma can be secular or religious. It is ideologically rigid, generally not truth-seeking.

  5. Collective Identity Replaces Individual Worth

    6. Authoritarian systems elevate the group above the person: the party, the ideology, the movement, the “community”. When people are valued only as members of a group rather than as individuals, conscience becomes irrelevant and conformity becomes the main civic expectation. This is materialism, and denial of spiritual reality.

  6. Repentance and Correction Become Impossible

    7. A culture that silences criticism cannot correct its own errors. Without the freedom to point out problems, there can be no course correction, no growth, and no accountability. Mistakes multiply because they are protected by enforced silence.

  7. The Vulnerable Are Punished First

    8. Censorship and ideological enforcement nearly always fall hardest on those with the least power — dissidents, researchers, students, teachers, and ordinary citizens. When moral pressure is used to intimidate rather than uplift, society reveals a deeply inverted understanding of justice.

  8. Curiosity and Creativity Decline

    9. When questions become dangerous, people stop asking. When our human body, spirit, and intellect work in tandem without fear, we are capable of incredible scientific, artistic, and intellectual discovery and achievement. A society that punishes inquiry slowly starves itself of spirit in the form of innovation and insight.

  9. Tribal Narratives Replace Shared Reality

    10. When open debate disappears, competing ideological factions manufacture their own “truths”. Without a shared standard for evidence or meaning, society fragments into groups that can no longer communicate across boundaries. This is a recipe for distrust, polarization, and alienation … in dogmatically religious societies: a recipe for holy war and violent oppression.

  10. A Culture That Punishes Dissent Is Living by Avoidance, Not Truth

    11. Suppressing dissent is always a sign that an ideology cannot withstand scrutiny. Societies that silence critics pretend confidence but are insecure. The greater the fear of open conversation, diverse thought, and public debate, the greater the underlying instability and spiritual decay.

  11. Each Soul’s Journey Is Sacred — And Faith Must Be Chosen, Not Forced

    12. Across traditions, genuine belief is understood as something voluntary:

    • Love and faith cannot be coerced.
    • Insight cannot be mandated.
    • Moral understanding cannot be imposed through fear.

A society that tries to control belief tries to destroy the inner space where thought, reflection, and integrity develop. Coerced belief is not belief; it is compliance. An individual’s free relationship with God is sacred. No human rightfully owns another’s body, mind, or soul.

Update, 7 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

November 29, 2025

QotD: Are there no prisons? Are there no asylums?

Filed under: Government, Health, Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

When the Trump administration proposed imprisoning homeless people who don’t voluntarily go to shelters, and the predictable howls of outrage arose, I remembered the most interesting fact I’ve ever learned about imprisonment rates.

The US is often pilloried for having a high level of imprisonment per capita relative to other countries. The US is also quite unusual in having shut down most of its insane asylums many decades ago.

My perspective on these facts changed a great deal when I learned that if you aggregate rates of imprisonment with rates of commitment to mental institutions, the US stops looking like an outlier.

The low-level mentally ill didn’t go away when we closed the asylums. Nor did they magically become more able to function in society when we pushed them out the doors. Instead, they now land in our prisons.

Another implication of all this is that it’s not “structural racism” or any other specific evil that gives the US high imprisonment rates. It’s an inevitable consequence of the social decision to make it very difficult to involuntarily commit people to asylums.

I’m not going to argue today about whether that decision should be reversed. I have an opinion about that, but this post is about facts and consequences, not value claims or what “should” be.

Let’s return to the homeless. It is now common knowledge that homeless people are almost never simply poor or down on their luck. Almost all have serious issues with mental illness or drug addiction, or both. Many refuse to go to shelters because they don’t want to — or are not capable of — complying with a homeless shelter’s behavioral restrictions.

While I don’t have firsthand knowledge or controlled studies to back me up, it seems obvious that the shelters are acting as a filter — the least damaged and most functional homeless go to them, leaving the crazies to inhabit the streets.

Thus, throwing homeless people who won’t go to shelters in prison is an exact functional equivalent of involuntary commitment to a mental asylum.

My question for people who object to imprisoning the mentally ill and drug-addicted homeless is: what do you propose we do instead? Are we prepared to reopen the asylums and lower the bar for involuntary commitment?

I don’t think there’s a third alternative anymore. Donald Trump, whatever his other failings might be, has an acute sense of the zeitgeist; popular tolerance for having the streets of our cities inhabited by crazy people is collapsing. It turns out we can only tolerate so many news stories about naked screaming nut-jobs on the subway.

I’m not going to propose an answer to the question I just raised, because I’m conflicted about it myself. My goal is to start people thinking about the right question, which is a very large one.

What is the humane way to treat people who are too damaged or broken to be functional members of society, and who inflict large costs on others if they’re not separated from society?

If it’s not prisons or asylums, what are we going to do? And given how ineffective psychiatric treatment is at anything beyond management of symptoms, is “prison” vs. “asylum” even a meaningful distinction?

ESR, The social media site formerly known as Twitter, 2025-08-13.

November 20, 2025

Our free-speech documentary has been cancelled! | A London cinema has banned Think Before You Post

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

spiked
Published 19 Nov 2025

Our new documentary, Think Before You Post, about the rise of the British speech police, was due to have its premiere in London next week. Last night, the venue got in contact to say it would be cancelling our booking, because the event does not align with its “values”.

Here, spiked‘s Tom Slater tells all.

We are working flat-out to find a new venue for the same night. So if you bought tickets, do bear with us. But if we can’t find somewhere else in time, we’ll refund everyone and postpone it for a later date. If you’d like a refund now anyway, get in touch and we’ll process it.

At least they’re proving our point …

About spiked:

Founded in 2000, spiked was a pioneer of 21st-century journalism – the first online-only political magazine in the UK.

Now edited by Tom Slater, spiked reaches millions around the world with hard-hitting articles, incisive essays and a growing roster of podcasts and videos.

November 17, 2025

The US Supreme Court considers whether Trump’s tariffs are legal

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Thanks to the staggering incompetence (and/or deliberate provocation for domestic political advantage) of the Carney government’s dealings with President Donald Trump, the current case before the Supreme Court is of significant interest to those of us on the north side of the US-Canadian border. On his Substack, David Friedman discusses the issues before the court:

There are three things wrong with Trump’s tariffs. The first is that they cannot be expected to provide the benefits claimed, can be expected to make both the US and its trading partners poorer; the arguments offered for them depend on not understanding the economics of trade. For an explanation of why that is true, see an earlier post.

The fact that the tariffs make us poorer may be the most important thing wrong with them but it is irrelevant to the Supreme Court; nothing in the Constitution requires the president to do his job well. The questions relevant to the Court are whether what Trump is doing was authorized by past Congressional legislation and whether it was constitutional for Congress to authorize it.

What Counts As An Emergency?

Tariffs are under the authority of Congress, not the president.1 Trump’s justification for setting them himself is congressional legislation, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

    (a) Any authority granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may be exercised to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.

    (b) The authorities granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may only be exercised to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for purposes of this chapter and may not be exercised for any other purpose. (IEEPA, 50 U.S. Code § 1701, emphasis mine)

Trump declared that his Worldwide Reciprocal Tariffs were intended to deal with the US trade deficit.2 Whether the deficit is a threat and whether tariffs are a good way to deal with it are questions for economists3 but whether it is unusual is relevant to judges, since if it is not the IEEPA does not apply.

[…]

The Court on Trial

Delegating to the president the power to impose tariffs, a power explicitly given to Congress in the Constitution, is a major question. Under doctrine proclaimed by this court that means that the legislation claimed to delegate that power must be read narrowly. On a narrow reading, on anything but a very broad reading, the legislation fails to apply to President Trump’s tariffs for two independent reasons:

    It only grants power in an emergency, which under the language of the Act neither the trade deficit nor the illegal drug problem is; the deficit has existed since 1970, the War on Drugs was proclaimed in 1971.

    The powers granted to the president in the Act do not include the power to impose tariffs.

If the six conservative justices believe in the principles they claim, the administration will lose the case 9-0.

  1. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises … To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations … (U.S Constitution, Article I, Section 8).
  2. “I found that conditions reflected in large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States that has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States. I declared a national emergency with respect to that threat, and to deal with that threat, I imposed additional ad valorem duties that I deemed necessary and appropriate.” (Executive Order July 31, 2025).
  3. The answers are no and no.
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