Justification is a kind of subsidy, and produces, like all subsidies, more of what is being subsidized.
Jan 082021
Jan 072021
It doesn’t matter much which books you burn.
Jan 062021
Sympathizers and apologists are first to be sent to the camps. Intransigent opponents are left at large for a while, as a sign of the liberality of the regime and a reminder that stricter measures will be required.
Jan 052021
Stupidity is the only subject that one understands less with more personal experience.
Jan 042021
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 012021
Compared with virtue, all vice is harmless.
Dec 312020
Madness is a pandemic which spreads without physical contact, to which all ages are susceptible, and for which the threshold of herd immunity is 100%.
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 292020
To treat such doctrines as pacifism and communism as errors is itself an error. One does not argue with pipe dreams, or refute impossibilities.
Dec 282020
Competitions in oppression produce, by definition, sore winners.