When the numbers don’t come out as you would like, the first resort is to change the way you count; the second is to stop counting.
Jan 042021
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?
Dec 302020
The distinguished Soviet geneticist Vavilov was unpersoned for refusing to reject heredity in favor of the neo-Lamarckism championed by Lysenko and Stalin, and I feel fortunate to live in a country where nothing like that could ever happen.
Dec 212020
Petty laws embolden volunteer policemen.
Dec 032020
The omnipotent state regards not the individual, but the family, as its most dangerous enemy. The individual it can use; the family it can do nothing with.
Nov 202020
Every new law represents a new opportunity to report our neighbors anonymously to the authorities.
Nov 132020
Censorship, under more competent rule, would indicate something worth reading.
Nov 112020
Americans are ruled by a government that intrudes in every conceivable matter yet cannot count its population, its votes, or its dead.
Nov 092020
The great trick of governance, as yet imperfectly mastered, is to loot without having to fight.
Nov 062020
The lower your class, the more time and humiliation it costs you to collect your dole.
Oct 212020
There are people who understand the power of speech, and people who oppose restrictions on speech, but rarely the same people.