It is always important, in evaluating a policy, to consider how many people you will have to kill to implement it.
Feb 042020
Ruling
In ’37 Stalin made a hash
Of party loyalists and army brass.
Decimation: One in ten are shot.
What’s the word when one in ten are not?
Jan 312020
Government, though it never depends on the consent of the governed, often depends on large numbers of the governed believing that it does.
Jan 272020
For every hundred ringing declarations in favor of freedom of speech or the press there are none in favor of freedom of association.
Jan 102020
Civilization depends on exclusion — what and whom to get rid of, what and whom not to let in in the first place.
Jan 012020
Where censorship does not exist, complaints about it are loud and frequent; where it is mild, they diminish; and where it is severe, they end.
Dec 252019
There are no noble lies, but useful myths abound.
Dec 092019
The discovery that only bad people do bad things has tidied the administration of justice, making it a simple matter of determining who the bad people are.
Dec 052019
Meritocracy replaces aristocracy with bureaucracy.
Nov 292019
Many modern ills trace to the fateful decision to teach stupid people how to read.
Nov 262019
When you destroy a large tribe you produce a lot of smaller ones.