Quotulatiousness

February 19, 2026

Too many “conservatives” today are just slower-speed liberals

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

Most self-described conservatives in politics are not particularly inclined to “conserve” anything, as Spaceman Spiff points out, they’re pretty much onboard with the liberal vision they just want it to be fractionally slower or infinitesimally not-quite-as-liberal as the liberals. They are the ineffectual, neutered, tame opposition:

Modern conservatism is not conserving our world. Mainstream conservatives seem to have no interest in the real issues affecting us.

At best they merely wish to slow down our decline. At worst, they are fully on board with the destruction.

When they do act or speak they often pick a safe version of a sensitive issue.

In Britain there is lots of talk of illegal immigration and how the state mishandles it. None about ruinous volumes of legal immigration, almost one million per year, and what it is doing to the country.

Pushback against climate policy falters on the speed of changes, not the underlying fraud of climate science itself.

No conservative will honestly discuss the plummeting happiness of women recorded across the West and yet there it is, writ large in antidepressant prescriptions and social media videos. It may have multiple causes, but feminism cannot be challenged so they say nothing lest they are reprimanded by the sisterhood.

Everything real is forbidden. It is all an act.

Like the left, those on the right are increasingly unable to face reality which means they can never course correct. They are trapped within a self-referencing culdesac designed to maintain their position in someone else’s hierarchy. That is why they have become so ineffective and appear to do very little except moan about the pace of change while they say nothing about the changes themselves.

We sense the conservatives do wish to conserve things but they are inexplicably mesmerized by the opinion of their enemies. They seek reassurance and applause from people who view them as evil.

This makes no sense to ordinary people.

Thinking like the enemy

The problem with modern conservatives is they are animated by underlying drives that cannot create a conservative or traditional society. They have adopted the thinking patterns associated with the progressive left while still using the language of conservatism.

The left is traditionally defined by a series of interrelated traits that manifest in much of what they agitate for.

  1. A desire for centralization;
  2. A notable external locus of control;
  3. Seeking approval from the group.

Central control systems feature prominently in all left-wing schemes. From local councils to national governments, those who gravitate to the left often want to create centralized decision-making bodies to manage society. Institutions, government departments, NGOs and even charities all feature, but only when they act as the controlling authority in some field of interest.

Related to this is a clear external locus of control visible in individuals and their decisions. There is a relief others make the key decisions, so people actively seek out direction from an established authority. This ensures minimal resistance to the many centralized schemes we see emerge.

Acting solo creates discomfort. An older formulation understood this as the rejection of responsibility. Today it often manifests as an obsession with experts making key decisions for us all, partly to mask individual cowardice. People making their own decisions in life are derided as naive or dangerous.

During Covid decision makers became hysterical at the very idea we would reject the advice of experts and perform our own research despite the issue being medical and therefore dangerous.

A related phenomenon characteristic of many leftists is the need for approval, often from a group. Not just others making decisions but a dependency on confirmation and endorsement to ensure thinking and behaviour follows an established norm. This is the antithesis of original thinking or bold action; it is how adolescents often behave.

In today’s world this deep urge is reflected most in the social media landscape of harvesting attention and likes. Every fledgling narcissistic applause-seeking trait is given full expression in the endless search for approval from strangers. Whole sections of society seem lost to impulses we once understood as immature and dysfunctional.

Update: Not long after I queued this item for publication, a Canadian example popped up in the news, as yet another rock-ribbed “conservative” suddenly realized that electing a Liberal was what his constituents actually wanted when they inexplicably voted for him as a Conservative candidate in the last federal election.

Edmonton Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux has crossed the floor to the governing Liberals.

“I am honoured to welcome Matt Jeneroux to our caucus as the newest member of Canada’s new government,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney, in a post on X.

“I am grateful to Matt and his family that he will continue his service as a strong voice for Edmonton Riverbend in Parliament.”

Carney said Jeneroux, who has represented the riding of Edmonton Riverbend since 2015, will take on a new role as special advisor on economic and security partnership for the Liberals.

Jeneroux is the third Conservative to join the Liberals, after colleagues Michael Ma and Chris d’Entremont crossed the floor late last year.

A Liberal source says Jeneroux first met Carney back in November, which was the first of at least two conversations, with talks between Carney’s office and Jeneroux continuing since. That source added that it has been a “long journey” to Wednesday’s announcement.

d’Entremont crossed the floor to join the Liberals in November, which unleashed a wave of speculation as to who might be next, with Jeneroux’s name heavily floated. Jeneroux then announced his plans to resign from the Conservative caucus, citing family reasons. Since then, he has not voted with the Conservatives and did not attend the party’s recent convention in Calgary in late January.

After Carney’s announcement, the prime minister updated his daily itinerary, adding a stop in Edmonton to meet with Jeneroux before attending events in British Columbia.

“Matt brings a wealth of experience in Parliament, despite his young demeanor,” said Carney, while sitting next to Jeneroux.

The MP from Edmonton welcomed the prime minister and laid out the reasons for why he had reversed his decision to resign.

“I had announced my resignation back in November, largely due to family reasons, but quite simply, couldn’t sit on the sidelines after seeing what the prime minister’s ambitious agenda he was undertaking across the country and across the world,” he said.

“Quite honestly, it was the speech in Davos where you took everything head on,” he added.

Jeneroux said it felt disingenuous and “quite simply wrong” to sit on the sidelines.

December 30, 2025

“This is where Canada is now”

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

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, L. Wayne Mathison handily sums up the state of the nation:

I’ve reached the point most people hit right before systems fail.

The point where facts stop working.

Charts don’t matter. Reports don’t matter. Evidence doesn’t matter. You can post receipts until your fingers cramp and political partisans will still clap, chant, and rationalize while the house fills with smoke. They are not misinformed. They are committed. And commitment beats reality every time.

That’s where Canada is now.

The Liberals and the NDP no longer govern with outcomes in mind. They govern with narratives. If the story sounds compassionate, the damage underneath is waved away as acceptable collateral. Housing explodes. Healthcare buckles. Food banks flood. Productivity sinks. And if you point to any of it, you’re told to be kinder, quieter, or more patient.

Patience is a luxury people without power can’t afford.

What scares me isn’t just the policies. It’s the psychology. We are watching a ruling class that confuses control with competence and optics with success. Every failure is met with more management, more spending, more moral language, and less accountability. When reality resists, they don’t change course. They tighten.

That’s where Mark Carney enters the picture, and why he should worry anyone paying attention.

Carney doesn’t speak like a democratic leader. He speaks like a risk officer explaining why losses are necessary. “Sacrifice.” “Stability.” “Confidence.” These are not solutions. They are words used when the model is failing but the managers refuse to admit it. In his world, the problem is never the plan. It’s public resistance to the plan.

That mindset is poison in a democracy.

The Liberals broke affordability and papered it over with subsidies. The NDP cheered and demanded more of the same. Now Carney offers to professionalize the decline. Smoother language. Tighter controls. Bigger levers. Less dissent. He doesn’t promise prosperity. He promises management.

Here’s the part people don’t want to hear.

You can’t fix a country by overruling its citizens.
You can’t tax, regulate, borrow, and moralize your way out of shortages.
You can’t feed kids, house families, or staff hospitals with press releases.

And when governments start treating criticism as a threat rather than a warning, history tells us what comes next. Not reform. Hardening. Surveillance language. Emergency logic. Ever broader definitions of “harm”. Ever fewer off ramps.

This is how civilizations don’t collapse in a bang. They collapse in meetings.

I don’t expect to convince partisans anymore. That window is gone. This is a warning, not an argument.

If you are still cheering while food banks replace paycheques, while hospitals ration care, while housing becomes a privilege, while leaders talk about sacrifice without ever naming their own, understand this: they are not fiddling while Rome burns. They are insisting the fire is necessary.

And once that belief sets in, facts won’t save us. Only consequences will.

By then, our children are already in the smoke.

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 17, 2025

“The ‘liberal international order’ – a technocratic oligarchy sustained by tightly interlocked institutions”

Filed under: Europe, Government, Media, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Last week, Len D. Pozeram wrote about how the real (but mostly unacknowledged) American empire is facing unprecedented challenges and may indeed be in serious decline:

“The Empire’s Mask is Slipping”, The Libertarian Alliance

For generations, Americans were sold a saccharine myth: that our nation’s vast global presence — its military bases on every continent, its endless wars, its economic interventions — was all done in the name of “freedom” and “human rights”. This was the sales pitch. Washington, we were told, was the benevolent policeman of a dangerous world, upholding a Pax Americana designed to uplift humanity.

But for those willing to look beyond the rhetoric, the truth was never hidden — only ignored. This narrative was never more than a sophisticated marketing campaign, engineered to pacify a domestic public and legitimize imperial conquest abroad. From the very beginning, the post-WWII global order was not about freedom, but about power — and who would control it after the collapse of the old European empires.

With the fall of the British Empire, America did not merely “step up” to defend the West — it seized control of the imperial machinery and rebranded it. The British financial aristocracy gave way to a new though related American elite, its nucleus formed around Wall Street banks, the military-industrial complex, Big Oil cartels, and, increasingly, a rising Zionist lobby with ambitions stretching far beyond Tel Aviv.

Under the guise of “containing communism” or “defending democracy”, this new managerial class waged a quiet war against genuine national independence movements across the globe. Countries seeking to control their own resources, chart their own destinies, or resist Western financial domination were systematically targeted for destabilization or outright annihilation.

Guatemala in 1954. Iran in 1953. Indonesia in 1965. The Congo. Chile. Nicaragua. Greece. Even Australia, whose 1975 constitutional crisis remains a textbook case of covert Anglo-American regime change. The public, of course, was kept in the dark. History books were rewritten. Journalists who strayed from the script were destroyed or silenced. CIA fingerprints are now visible in dozens of these cases — operations sanctioned not to spread freedom, but to preserve a system of elite extraction and control.

This system — often referred to in polite company as the “liberal international order” — is, in fact, a technocratic oligarchy. It is sustained by tightly interlocked institutions: the Federal Reserve, the IMF, the World Bank, NATO, and a sprawling Intelligence Community whose true loyalties lie not with the American public, but with transnational networks of finance, energy, and geopolitical strategy. To the extent that ideology plays a role, it is the convergence of evangelical apocalypticism and messianic Zionism — two religious currents that have dangerously informed U.S. foreign policy since the Reagan era.

Yet today, this system is beginning to eat itself. The ideology of endless war, and top-down control has run up against hard limits: financial, and political. The de-dollarization trend in the Global South, the rise of multipolar alliances like BRICS, and the exposure of elite criminality — from Epstein to the endless intelligence scandals — are all symptoms of imperial overstretch and rot.

We are watching the slow collapse of an empire built not on democratic values but on lies, coercion, and institutionalized greed.

From a slightly different viewpoint, Spaceman Spiff maintains that the narratives that have been used to direct and control political thought in the west are in the process of collapsing:

Image from Postcards from the Abyss

As reality intrudes the naivety behind many sacred cows is exposed. The emperor is naked and his supporters look equally naked. The narratives driving their fantasies are failing.

The big three issues common in the West illustrate why people are noticing.

Diversity and immigration

The promotion of diversity as a strength is a consequence of blank slate thinking, a belief disparate populations are substantially the same with most observable differences due to environment only.

This is at odds with what we observe, the significant range in ability and proficiency between distinct groups that becomes apparent when we interact. So artificial variety is sold as a positive in an attempt to downplay the homogeneity that gets better results.

The consequence of this is quotas, where arbitrary rules are enforced to ensure a diverse outcome.

This destroys competency even if we ignore the potential for conflict when foreigners are imported in large numbers.

The main effect of pushing this absurd policy seems to be the rise of ethnic awareness among those who must step aside to accommodate it. How could it not? When people are excluded because of their ethnicity it becomes important to them.

This is not what advocates of diversity intended but is already happening.

Climate

Climate and energy policy is based on anti-scientific magical thinking. With the current emphasis on carbon dioxide we are told a tiny portion of our atmosphere is responsible for most of the future changes that will cause widespread harm. There is no evidence for such claims.

The reality of climate is different from the narrative. It is resilient, as many things are. Our obsession is arrogance. A belief we matter more than we do.

Intellectuals are prone to get lost in their theories of how the world ought to work. Activists then latch on to their utopian ideas to gain some sense of meaning in their lives.

Society also has people lacking conscience who will profit from anything no matter how much damage it causes. Combining these two, dreamers with schemers, is often lethal. Seemingly opposing forces, left-wing activists and capitalist profiteers, can cooperate even if they embrace distinct beliefs.

As many memes remind us, if you have corporate sponsorship you are not the resistance. This is precisely what we see.

Narratives begin to collapse as we witness ruthless corporations promote feelgood nonsense about climate while fleecing taxpayers in the background. Many are noticing.

And the effects of suicidal climate goals are difficult to hide. Every closed factory or power station kills another element of credibility.

Socialism

Socialism is based on the idea an educated elite can make decisions for us all while simultaneously conditioning us to be better versions of ourselves. It ignores all of history and everything we have learned of human psychology to embrace a literal fantasy utopia that no one has even come close to realizing.

Nothing sums up the bankruptcy of our intellectuals more than their inability to reject this failed ideology.

But it also shows us the Anglo-Saxon instinct to restrict others’ control over us is the only way to counter it.

It teaches us of the wisdom of documents like Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights, designed to constrain the powerful regardless of their motives, ambitions or mental state. Rare moments of historical sanity that remind us what effective countermeasures can look like.

It would seem this lesson must be relearned every few generations. But we are learning it. Real life is reminding us why we must limit government and its agents no matter how inconvenient.

Bad ideas are inevitable. It is the ability of activists and the powerful to enact them many are now waking up to as narratives visibly fail.

December 8, 2025

If Britain’s political leadership were trying to destroy the country, what would they have done differently?

Filed under: Britain, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

My Canadian readers — and possibly the occasional Aussie or Kiwi — can read Spaceman Spiff‘s essay and feel it applies almost 100% to our respective nations as well:

Image from Postcards from the Abyss

Britain is a disaster. The country seems to be in terminal decline.

Not only do we see a lack of ability to turn things around we witness leaders and prominent decision makers evidently clueless about normal life and the hardships many now face.

The political and media classes best reflect this phenomenon. Their views are insular, fictional and at odds with reality. They promote unorthodox ideas that are widely derided yet their enthusiasm is evident as are their hostile responses to being challenged.

Minor comments about immigration are treated as precursors to genocide. Criticism of a biased media unwilling to report events is dismissed as conspiracy. No discussion of climate policy and its unaffordable costs is tolerated. Deviation from the establishment view means excommunication and social exile.

Those in leadership positions drive Britain’s descent into authoritarian governance. Attempts to discuss changes to society leads to extreme overreactions, including jailing noticers, something they now boast about.

Britain has become a madhouse. Our leaders are unable to think like normal people. None of them are facing reality. They seem crazy.

Or, rather, they seem neurotic.

Neurosis is everywhere

Britain has degenerated into a technocratic regime that views the public as its enemy. Normal people disgust the country’s leaders and it shows. They no longer hide their contempt.

But there is a palpable sense of fear emanating from the powerful. Their reactions to normal events paint a troubling picture of who is leading the country, particularly the political and media classes.

If the British establishment were a person we would think them mentally unstable. The qualities we see most are those of a neurotic individual, a type that is well understood.

Here are some features visible in Britain’s ruling class.

Chronic anxiety and worry

A key attribute of neurosis is persistent fear or worry. Rumination is commonplace, circling around and around the same problems. There is also a tendency to overreact, with the response disproportionate to the issue at hand.

The current British regime is wracked with anxiety and worry. This defines them. They are vocal about their concerns.

We are reminded of an endless series of horrors we must attend to; systemic racism, lack of diversity, an imperial past and our cultural dominance along with our impact on the world.

One simple example illustrates the degree to which minds can become distorted by excessive worry.

James Watt perfected the steam engine in 1769 which kickstarted in the industrial revolution, changing the world forever. This would ultimately elevate most nations on earth and led eventually to the establishment of cheap abundant energy for almost everyone.

Until recently these events were viewed as an epoch-defining moment of engineering brilliance. Now this has been recast as a dark stain on Britain’s place in the world, with climate zealots keen to blame the British for all pollution caused by industrialization.

Instead of pride we now see embarrassment and even anxiety about the “damage” Britain has done to the world because it ushered in an era of cheap widespread energy for everyone.

Any rational person would understand this extreme view to be a distortion of reality and excessively negative, yet it permeates everything. Those who rule Britain are ashamed of our past. They worry about it. Only they do this, normal people are proud of our history.

[…]

Welcome to the madhouse

A system of governance driven by neurotics takes on their characteristics. Britain has become a neurotic bureaucracy; a neurocracy.

Neurotics overthink and live inside their heads. They lack the calm, detached strength needed to govern sensibly. Power structures inevitably take on these qualities.

The British government has become paranoid. Digital IDs, internet regulation, censorship. They jail normal people for social media posts. Dissenting views are increasingly punished with custodial sentences.

These are not the actions of the mentally strong. This is an embattled minority fighting reality and becoming desperate.

A gulf is opening between the rulers and the ruled. Increasingly no common ground is even conceivable as the fictions needed to maintain narratives grow. They become overtly false but are needed to feed the neurosis.

One of the things I like about the social media site formerly known as Twitter is how quickly authoritarian bullshit like this can get called out:

Update, 9 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 28, 2025

QotD: Life is not a race to some arbitrary “finish line”

Filed under: Books, Britain, Government, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

On a friend’s Facebook page I left the following comment about the claim of the writer Abi Wilkinson (in the Guardian!) that inheritance should be confiscated by government to fund the UK’s welfare state. What could possibly go wrong?

I wrote:

    The hostility to inheritance also comes from a mistaken sense of fairness. As Robert Nozick argued in Anarchy, State and Utopia (I quote from memory), people wrongly think life resembles an athletics race, where the racers compete to hit the finishing line. As a result, those “lucky” athletes endowed by nature/god whatever with stronger muscles etc must be handicapped by having weights in their shoes, for example. Just as a child of rich parents must be deliberately held back to give poor kids a more “fair” chance of winning. But as Nozick said, life isn’t like that. It is about people exchanging goods, services and ideas with one another. There’s no fixed end-point to which we are all racing.

    Also, the idea that there is some “prize” that humans compete for implies that someone or some entity has created that “prize” in the first place. But that’s smuggling in a sort of communitarian assumption into the actions of individuals. In an open society, the prizes on offer are varied and multiply constantly.

I should add that the second section of Nozick’s renowned book dissects and ultimately rejects forced redistribution for egalitarian or other forms of “patterned” notions of justice, and he robustly defends what he calls an “entitlement” concept of justice.

One of the approaches that the late Prof. Nozick used was the thought experiment, such as the example referenced above about a fictitious athletics race in which the entrants are hampered/favoured to make the race more “even”, and then assuming that society in general should be like this. A race, held by people who know the rules and seek to abide by them, is not like an open society. “Open” is the key word here: there is no single end to which persons are heading, such as winning the race.

And yet a lot of the metaphors one comes across around discussions around equality, including equality of opportunity as well as outcome, seem to borrow, perhaps unwittingly, from this “race competition” worldview. To give another example, I remember reading some months ago about a university professor (Warwick) who suggested that when parents read stories to their children, this is a form of privilege. This also plays to the idea that life has a fixed end-measure of success, so that anyone giving a value to someone else is giving the latter an unfair “head start” on someone else. It would require a State to exercise totalitarian control of our actions from the moment we wake up to go to sleep lest our actions unfairly advantage/hamper someone in the “race” they are considered, by this worldview, to be on. (It also, by the way, shows that today’s Higher Ed. is full of certifiable fools and worse.)

Johnathan Pearce, “The assault on inheritance and the assumptions that drive it”, Samizdata, 2025-08-21.

November 12, 2025

Bike lanes are only the start

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Spaceman Spiff explains how aspirational schemes proposed by our technocratic governments at all levels seem to quickly and effortlessly shift from a nice non-intrusive improvement in life to an overbearing imposition of ever tighter controls on our lives:

Bike lanes on Yonge Street north of Bloor Street in downtown Toronto.
Image from Google Street View

The adoption of cultural novelties follows a predictable path. Some bright idea is proposed and there is nominal support or at least not widespread opposition.

Soon after implementation begins its opposite is condemned. This is the first warning the lunatics have taken over the asylum. We move from a positive, optimistic drive to condemning a perceived negative. By then the intolerant are amassing, attracted to a secular pulpit with which to lecture the rest of us.

More time passes and condemnation of the opposite is not enough. We are commanded to behave in ways more pleasing to our public servants. We learn a key aspect of our future has been decided by a shadowy committee we have never heard of. A well-meaning experiment has become an imperative used to control us.

This absurd sequence is more common than it should be.

A common example in Britain is the creation of bike lanes.

The idea sounds benign. Let’s build cycle lanes to encourage exercise. It is broadly popular, a kind of inoffensive fad to encourage better health despite the weather being an impediment for most.

Few people actively object which is taken to mean they endorse these projects.

It is not long before support for helping cyclists degenerates into discouraging cars since people should be cycling more anyway. The initiative lends moral weight to an otherwise fringe view. The construction of the bike lanes accelerates these ideas as roads are narrowed and traffic slows, frustrating many. There are too many vehicles on the road we are told, all the more reason to get on your bike.

Soon suggestions are made to ban cars completely. The new idea proposed is to shut down the congested roads and replace them with even more bike lanes and pedestrian zones.

Some even openly discuss intentionally making driving awkward and expensive as an explicit goal. The technocratic mind often forgets its charges are people not slaves.

Before long everything shifts, then we wonder how we got to the point our own paid employees can openly gloat we will soon be banned from travelling in ways they dislike as if they are our controllers.

An idea appealing to a minority is imposed on all. Acquiescence to novelties becomes weaponized and subsumed into the ambitions of others. No one ever votes for these things. They seem to just appear.

The end result is often the destruction of goodwill as popular initiatives are rammed down our throats and used to berate us for failing to live up to the standards our public servants impose upon us.

We then tire of the lectures. We wonder where these lunatics come from.

A moment of complacency means unwanted bike lanes but before long it is banned cars, government-controlled IDs and digital currencies. Those who pay attention to the activist world often sense they’d build concentration camps if they could get away with it and all thanks to some benign-sounding scheme we didn’t object to.

November 2, 2025

QotD: The “Blob”, aka the Deep State

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

The parasitic unholy alliance of Big Corporations, Big Government, Big Bankers and their entire fan club and cheer squad of supporters. Dangerously, this also includes the watchdogs: the Spy Agencies and large parts of the media. The Blob takes money from citizens, pays other parts of the Blob (eg USAID, The UN, The BIS, The World Bank etc), pretends to “help” some token victim group or environmental cause, or even to monitor or audit The Blob, but the outcome benefits The Blob more than the victims. They line their own pockets and increase their own privileges.

The Blob also includes a special category of “useful idiots” who naively assist them in looting Western Civilization. These people are paid in status or an illusory sense of purpose rather than money. They may not realize they are part of the self-serving Blob, and in the long run are not only harming the trees, birds and whales they say they want to save, but are harming their own health, wealth, national security, and worse, that of their children.

Jo Nova, “The Secret Ruling Class – Why the anonymous Blob needs to be invisible”, JoNova, 2025-07-18.

October 19, 2025

Reframing the loss of elite legitimacy as a “loss of faith in democracy”

Filed under: Europe, France, Germany, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

On his Substack, Frank Furedi illustrates how the public’s declining trust in political elites across the western world is being reframed in the legacy media as declining faith in democracy itself:

No doubt you have come across commentators and legacy politicians whining about the public’s loss of trust in democracy and in the key institutions of society.

“France is not alone in its crisis of political faith – belief in a democratic world is vanishing” commented Simon Tisdall last week in The Guardian.1 He noted that “belief that democracy is the form of governance best suited to the modern world is dwindling, especially among younger people“.

The tendentious claim that the current era of political malaise is an outcome of a loss of commitment to democracy is regularly echoed by mainstream commentators. This was the message of a recent Politico headline that stated that “Europe’s democracies are in danger, warn Merz and Macron”.2 It cited the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stating that these “threats dwarf anything seen since the Cold War”. He noted that “the radiance of what we in the West call liberal democracy is noticeably diminishing”, adding: “it is no longer a given that the world will orient itself towards us, that it will follow our values of liberal democracy”.

If anything, the French President Macron was even more pessimistic than Merz. He warns that Europe is undergoing a “degeneration of democracy due to attacks from without and from within”. He was particularly concerned about the loss of faith in democracy within France. “On the inside we are turning on ourselves; we doubt our own democracy”, he noted, before adding, “we see everywhere that something is happening to our democratic fabric. Democratic debate is turning into a debate of hatred.” This statement coming from a man, whose presidency lacks a genuine mandate and relies on bureaucratic maneuvering exposes the cynicism of his concern for the “degeneration of democracy”.

[…]

Loss of elite authority

In reality the crisis of democracy narrative serves to mystify the real issues at stake. This narrative offers a misdiagnosis of the very real loss of legitimacy of the ruling elites as a loss of belief in democracy. As far as this dominant narrative is concerned every time people vote against the representatives of the legacy political establishment democracy is in trouble. So long as they win elections and populists aspirations are confined to the margins of society democracy is represented as a big success. But the very minute people vote the “wrong way” the mainstream commentators craft alarmist accounts about democratic backsliding. That is why the Remainer lobby often represents the outcome of the Brexit Referendum as an expression of “democratic backsliding”.

In theory, the term democratic backsliding refers to the declining integrity of democratic values. In practice it means the estrangement of significant sections of the public from their political institutions. The term democratic backsliding serves to mystify a very significant development, which is the legitimacy crisis of the legacy political establishment. Once understood from this perspective it becomes evident that it is not democracy that people no longer trust but the people and the institutions that rule over society.

As it happens the narrative of “democracy is in trouble” smacks of pure hypocrisy. Those who communicate this narrative are not so much interested in the integrity of democracy but in ensuring that people vote the right way. From their perspective if people vote the wrong way than democracy becomes dispensable. That is why more and more we hear the refrain that there is “too much democracy”. “Democracy Works Better when there is less of it” warned Financial Times commentator, Janan Ganesh.3 As far he is concerned, “no global trend is better documented than the crisis of democracy”, by which he means that too often people vote against the advice of the elites.

  1. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/12/france-crisis-political-faith-belief-democratic-world-vanishing
  2. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-democracies-danger-warn-friedrich-merz-emmanuel-macron/
  3. https://www.ft.com/content/f68c13a4-1130-49d5-b3c6-2270711d819e

October 13, 2025

Communism, Socialism, and Star Trek

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Feral Historian
Published 23 May 2025

There’s a long history of Star Trek being equated with communism, both in praise and condemnation. But is it really mappable to modern politics, given that it assumes a different set of socioeconomic conditions? More to the point, is socialism (in the Marxist transitional sense) just a dead-end?

00:00 Intro
00:51 What’s Capitalism?
04:00 Communist, not Socialist
07:14 Theory and Practice
08:51 Goals and Process

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October 10, 2025

A POSWID analysis of the contention that “Canada is broken”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

It’s my strong opinion that Canada is indeed “broken”, and much but not all the blame for that goes to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and increasingly to current PM Mark Carney. It hasn’t all been the direct action or deliberate inaction of the Liberal party and their bureaucratic minions in the civil service, but their fingerprints are on a lot of the damage. Eberhard Englebrecht analyzes Canada using POSWID framing and concludes that “the Purpose Of Canada is What It Does”:

Now, one of the core criticisms made of POSWID by its opponents is that it leans heavily on a consequentialist interpretation of events, completely discarding the roles human intention, error, and agency play in how things transpire.

However, these critiques only hold validity if you take POSWID and make it your singular mode of analysis — something that I don’t encourage, nor intend on doing myself. Rather, POSWID should be understood and used as a specific tool with a specific purpose — that is, to peel back the noxious platitudes, gaslighting, and wishful thinking that envelop our politics, and hinder our ability to view our present situation with clarity and honesty.

And, unfortunately for the citizenry of Canada, Canadian politics is — and has been for some time — a domain chock full of the misguided idealism and obfuscation that POSWID seeks to erase.

It is why many Canadians — despite their country having experienced a precipitous decline in both general prosperity and the integrity of the common social fabric — remain willfully blind to such an absurd degree.

POSWID, as I will be applying it, can tackle many of the polite pleasantries and mindless incantations that have become embedded in Canada’s “consensus” of acceptable political discourse, exposing them as misaligned with reality. This will take one of two forms: the first is to demonstrate that a common belief in the trope in question has led to results contrary to the intentions of those who originally pushed the trope; the second is that the trope was always purely abstract and aspirational, never described reality, and any attempts to align reality with said trope have failed miserably.

Many of these tropes are sacred cows of Canada’s political establishment — ideas that they would insist define “what it means to be Canadian” or are things that “we all believe”. Going against them, or merely questioning their validity or suitability, would be considered “UnCanadian”. These tropes have, in many cases, dictated the direction of Canadian society since the 1960s and created the foundations for the paradigms that currently define Canadian politics. Therefore, the deconstruction of these tropes constitutes the deconstruction of these paradigms — something that would have cascading ramifications for our country.

It is worth noting, however, that my intention in writing this piece is not to make granular policy prescriptions. My job is merely to provide a clear-eyed account of how three of the values and policy programmes of Canada’s chattering class (you could substitute “chattering class” with “professional-managerial class” or “Laurentian Elite”) are out of step with how this country actually exists — a reality felt and experienced at an intuitive level by many, but rarely articulated in public.

October 1, 2025

“Sean Fraser, the current minister of justice and attorney general, has made two major mistakes of late”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:45

If you’re at all interested in Canadian affairs, you should subscribe to The Line … even a free subscription will definitely provide you with some excellent non-propagandistic coverage of what is happening in the dysfunctional dominion. For instance, last weekend’s weekly post from the editors included this segment about Sean Fraser, who is perhaps the worst of Mark Carney’s cabinet (and that takes some doing):

Sean Fraser, as Minister of Immigration, Refugees & Citizenship, during day one of Collision 2023 at Enercare Centre in Toronto, Canada.
Photo by Vaughn Ridley via Wikimedia Commons

We at The Line contend that Sean Fraser, the current minister of justice and attorney general, has made two major mistakes of late.

The first was in deciding not to rescind his decision to spend more time with his friends and family when it became clear that Justin Trudeau was no longer an anchor on his electoral chances. After failing to fix Canada’s housing problem and proving himself integral to blowing apart a pan-partisan consensus on immigration that was once the envy of the world, the man had a real opportunity to leave office on a high note. But, no.

Instead, after hitching his bloated baggage to Mark Carney’s trunk, Fraser decided that Canada needed more of him.

And so, as justice minister, instead of addressing petty stuff like, oh, bail reform, or fixing prisons, or getting crime under control, he turned his attention to … Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The notwithstanding clause.

You may recall that Quebec’s contentious Bill 21 — which prohibits public-service employees in positions of authority, and teachers, from wearing religious symbols while on the job — is currently before the Supreme Court of Canada. Despite numerous mixed rulings on the law, Quebec moved forward with its stance on secularism by invoking Section 33, which allows parliaments to temporarily override judicial rulings.

Section 33 was placed in the Charter for precisely this kind of situation; one in which the courts and parliament disagree about governance. As we still live in a democracy, and are still nominally governed by representatives we elect, the clause was always a bit of a compromise gesture intended to preserve parliamentary supremacy after granting the courts broad powers to basically reinterpret law according to an expansive and ever-expanding understanding of both their jurisdiction, and of the concept of “rights” writ large.

Section 33, nonetheless, has maintained a heavy odour about it, which has generally limited its application, especially outside Quebec. Among the Sean Fraser set, and the largely Liberal collection of lawyers who will insist that the Supreme Court isn’t remotely political, and how dare we entertain the thought, Section 33 was only ever intended as a symbolic right.

But as the definitely-not-political Supreme Court has edged ever deeper into the territory of override and governance, so too have provincial parliaments responded with a very not-symbolic application of the clause.

We do think there’s some blame to be placed at everyone’s door, here. But we also never really took much issue with Section 33. That’s because, at heart, we at The Line believe in, well, democracy. We believe that the people we elect should be able to decide our laws; and we believe that while the Supreme Court of Canada serves as an important check on Parliamentary power, that power doesn’t and should never override the will of the people.

And that’s basically where we part ways with Fraser and many of his — dare we say it? — Laurentian Consensus ilk. Because the unstated critique of the use of Section 33 is basically always the same: these people dislike the application of the clause because they think politics is icky, and that politicians fundamentally cannot be trusted.

In other words, these people don’t actually want a democracy.

They want a technocracy. One in which the smartest and ablest individuals (as defined by them, of course) are the ones who actually get to set the rules and guardrails for society writ large. One in which parliament really is as theatrical, symbolic and pointless as it often regards itself.

There’s an obvious illogical inconsistency here — Fraser and his colleagues are politicians. We aren’t sure if this desire to go out and limit the ability of he and his fellow parliamentarians to do the best jobs they can for the citizens reflects mere self-loathing, or a particular brand of Liberal blindspot, one that leads them to believe that they alone among politicians are exempt from anything as crass political considerations and/or motivations. Those moral failures are apparently for the other guys. But in any case, we have an elected official making the case that unelected courts should have the ability to override legislators, and that the legislators should have no recourse. However Fraser rationalizes this to himself, it’s where we are.

We think the people who have issues with Section 33 are generally not being honest with themselves in that regard; we also think that their instinctual aversion to politics (or their exemption of themselves from it) tends to make them naive. If you vest all the real power of governance in a “non-partisan” Supreme Court, what you’ll get is not a dispassionate government, but rather a heavily politicized Supreme Court. We need only look at what has happened in the U.S. over the past 30 years to see how that pans out in the long run.

Look, we at The Line don’t like Bill 21. It’s a bad law. It needlessly tramples on minority rights. But there’s a very obvious way to get that law repealed that doesn’t involve flirting with a full-blown constitutional crisis in the midst of, you know, all of the other crises going on right now.

Elect a government that will repeal that law.

That’s what democracies do.

To me, one of the most puzzling things about the Carney government’s recent actions is the overall incoherence of them. They are going ahead with one of the worst policies inherited from the Trudeau years with the “gun buyback” program that the minister responsible has openly admitted is almost completely a sop to voters in Quebec. Okay, that makes cynical sense as the Liberal vote is about as “efficient” as it possibly can be so losing just a few seats in Quebec would make it impossible for the Liberals to get re-elected. Fine. Scummy as hell, but fine. Yet the challenge to Section 33 is guaranteed to piss off far more Quebec voters — and stir up controversy across the country to boot — and you’re going to stage a pitched battle against pretty much all the provinces before the Supreme Court? Are you sure about that?

September 24, 2025

Zardoz: A Technocratic Parody

Filed under: Britain, Environment, Media — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Feral Historian
Published 30 Jun 2023

After another viewing, I now think of Zardoz as an unintentional parody of the technocratic mindset that was congealing in the 1970s. It’s a strange film, a sometimes tedious film, but it’s worth a look if only because there’s nothing else quite like Zardoz.

I keep saying “Immortals” when I mean “Eternals” and I had to recut this one a bit due to some semi-random copyright issues so I apologize for any perceptible jank.

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September 21, 2025

“What do you remember of the summer when the English awoke?”

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

In The Critic, David Shipley says that the rapid, visible rise in English nationalism is a new and positive thing in Britain:

“Union Jacks and crosses of St George” by Ben Sutherland is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

What do you remember of the summer when the English awoke? The summer of arguments over what “English” means, hotel protests, and of “flagging”. Overnight the England flag was everywhere. On lampposts, on bridges over motorways, and even painted on roundabouts, the St George’s cross appeared, as a challenge to the old regime, and a threat, or promise, of something new.

For this is new, make no mistake. In my lifetime, England’s flag has only been seen in force during football tournaments and at the rugby. Political figures of the left have seized upon this novelty as they have tried to resist the challenge. The Green Party leadership candidate Ellie Chowns insisted that “it’s traditionally not part of British culture to hang flags”, while Zack Polanski, the party’s new leader, said he wouldn’t fly the flag outside of football tournaments because “of what it represents to people who worry about that problematic history”, before going on to say he’s “worried that we’re importing fascism”. Meanwhile John McTernan, former advisor to Tony Blair insisted that flag flying isn’t an expression of “national pride”, but rather “being used to other people” (my italics).

Notionally sensible centrists, The News Agents suggested that the flag should be redefined as representing “tolerance, liberalism, democracy and Shakespeare” and that would deter “right-wing thugs” from using it. The propagandists of the regime recognise that it is in danger, and seem to believe that “British Values” are enough to hold back the tide.

York Council went ever further, saying that flagging has “coincided with a rise in racist incidents” and have decided to remove hundreds of England and Union flags, to which York’s “Flag Force” responded by announcing they would promptly replace every flag which was removed.

England’s flag was everywhere at the hotel protests too — standing for resistance against a Westminster regime that continues to force migrants upon communities which do not want them.

At the end of the summer, as the Last Night of the Proms coincided with the “Unite the Kingdom” march, the flag divide could not have been wider. On the streets of London that Saturday a sea of Union and St George flags, while at the Albert Hall it seemed one could wave any nation’s flag but England’s.

A Times cartoon from July caught the year’s mood. It depicted a group of unthreatening families protesting, holding signs saying We’re not far right – we’re worried about our kids and Deport Foreign Criminals. Beneath them, buried in the earth lurks a bald, beefy man with H A T E tattooed on his knuckles, and Made in England alongside the red cross of St George tattooed on his shoulder. Here, in the favoured paper of the British establishment, we see their fear that a deeper, more dangerous Englishness threatens to rise up, and threaten, or even destroy their order.

September 20, 2025

QotD: Why modern dishwashers suck

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Economics, Government, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

    The current standards for dishwashers took effect in 2013. The standards, which were based on a consensus agreement between manufacturers and efficiency advocates, specify minimum energy and water efficiency levels. The standards require that standard-size dishwashers use no more than 307 kWh per year and 5.0 gallons of water per cycle.

    In 2024, DOE finalized amended standards for dishwashers based on a joint recommendation from manufacturers and efficiency advocates. The new standards for dishwashers will cost-effectively reduce energy consumption by 15% relative to the current standards while also cutting water waste. Dishwashers

It is a general problem, but what started me thinking about it was being told by my dishwasher that it would take three and a half hours to wash the dishes. That seems, judging by a quick search online, to be longer than average but still within the normal range. I have not been able to find figures online for how long dishwashers took twenty or thirty years ago but, by what I remember, it was substantially less — and the dishes ended up dry, which ours don’t.

The explanation is in the final word of the quote above, “waste”. The owners of dishwashers pay for water and power, so if making them more efficient in those dimensions was costless, did not require giving up something else, there would be no need for the Department of Energy to make the manufacturers do it. I conclude that it was not costless, that it either made dishwashers cost more or do their job less well — take longer, not dry the dishes as well, not clean them as well. Using more power or water to do a better job is not waste.

David Friedman, “Optimizing On A Single Variable”, David Friedman’s Substack, 2025-06-02.

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