Category Archives: Libertarianism

The value and future of the liberal public square has come under intense debate. Ours is a time in which the ACLU wrings its hands over the risks of free speech; self-described small-government conservatives seek to sic the state on Big Tech; and everyone is increasingly unsure if those people should really be allowed to say that. Our national discourse is all mucked up with fear, fury, malicious irony, piously feigned ignorance, and a steady, all-directional flow of bad faith.

I have long been honored to write at TheWeek.com because it is an exception to that rule. We have tried not perfectly, but sincerely and consistently to wade out of that muck. We have deliberately cultivated real ideological difference and collegiality, increasingly rare qualities in American media aiming at general, national consumption.

Where other sites have an open political alignment or de facto third rails, The Week has intentionally sought to publish voices with real disagreement about grave matters. We have prized sharp and conscientious argument. We have clung to the ideal of the liberal public square while it gathered ever more enemies. We have maintained an internal culture that errs on the side of respect and treating serious matters seriously.

"The Weekpublished paleocons likeMichael Brendan Doughertyand leftists likeRyan Cooper, libertarians likeShikha Dalmiaand centrists likeDamon Linker, all distinctive writers and thinkers who tended to avoid being siloed within the political dispensations with which they identified and who prided themselves on refusing to 'think with the church' as it were," as longtime columnist Noah Millman recently wrote. "You can find people like them at other opinion pages, but they'd be the exception to a rule where most opinion columns cluster around the predilections of the publication's core readership. It was genuinely special to be part of an enterprise that strove for something different."

Indeed it was. I came to The Week in 2014 as a freelance news writer. Particularly with a Democratic administration, the editors wanted a balance of viewpoints on the news team. They were searching for someone who would hit left as well as right, and, as a libertarian, I was happy to hit at anyone in government. I joined giddy at my good luck in being selected to write for a site that published so many people I respected.

From there I went on to become weekend editor, contributing editor, deputy editor, and acting editor-in-chief. I've done work I've enjoyed in each of those roles, but it's the opinion writing of which I'm proudest, aided by generous editors who let me pursue my interests galas, medieval analogies, not going to space, destroying the suburbs however odd they might be.

Here at The Week, I researched twin pregnancies and postpartum injuries, tracked the making of a misinformation meme, reported a discrepancy in CDC data, chronicled the evolution of the American right, jumped on the QAnon beat early, explored the reality of martial law, parsed libertinism and libertarianism, refused to endorse a presidential candidate, tallied "day one" promises, pondered yard signs in states blue and purple, meditated on violence, interrogated my own history of quoting the Founding Fathers, committed to the necessity of good character, and began writing on topics around media, mind, and epistemology that would later form the basis of my second book (out this fall please pre-order!).

But now that era has come to an end. TheWeek.com is moving in a new direction in how it handles in-depth analysis and opinion look for a note with more details on the occasion of our official launch of that approach June 1 and it's time for me to move on.

Readers, thanks for hearing me out this once more, and do keep in touch. Cheers to The Week that was.

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A new era at TheWeek.com and a goodbye - The Week

From left, Democratic candidate Destiny Wells and Libertarian candidates James Sceniak and Jeff Maurer participated in the launch of the town hall series in Greenfield.

Indiana Democratic and Libertarian candidates are working together to hold a series of town halls across the state.

The events, organized by the state Democratic Party, invite Hoosiers to ask questions of the candidates ahead of this falls elections.

Democratic Secretary of State candidate Destiny Wells said the town halls are a response to what she calls the divisiveness in politics over the last few years.

We need to be responsible and show Hoosiers that politicians and candidates can work together and play together in the sandbox, Wells said.

Join the conversation and sign up for the Indiana Two-Way. Text "Indiana" to 73224. Your comments and questions in response to our weekly text help us find the answers you need on statewide issues.

Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate James Sceniak said the town halls are vital to hear directly from voters.

I believe that any office we hold is a public servant office," Sceniak. "And if were not hearing from the public, were not doing our job.

And Libertarian Secretary of State candidate Jeff Maurer said the town halls are about the fundamentals of the democratic process.

And so, no matter what party, what brand, what philosophy, what ideology you have, we have to work together as Hoosiers and as neighbors to figure out what we want for our communities, Maurer said.

Indiana Republicans were invited to participate but chose not to.

Contact reporter Brandon atbsmith@ipbs.orgor follow him on Twitter at@brandonjsmith5.

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Indiana Democrats, Libertarians join together for town hall series ahead of November election - WFYI

As the world throughsocial media and otherwiserapidly loses its decency while rejecting the idea of the other, Lamar is forcing you to face your own hypocrisy that masquerades as different versions of libertarianism today.

Kendrick Lamar performs during the Pepsi Halftime Show during the NFL Super Bowl 56 football game, Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022, in Inglewood, California | Cooper Neill/AP

In #TheMusicThatMadeUs, senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri chronicles the impact that musicians and their art have on our lives, how they mould the industry by rewriting its rules and how they shape us into the people we become: their greatest legacies

The whole point of this column has been to document artists or bands whose contributions to music have been so significant that theyve created genres, or subgenres, and even altered the course of music history. There are few who create a mould that inspired generations to find their voice. There are fewer who take that mould and use it as the basis for something truly extraordinary. Dr Dres protg and the only Pulitzer-winning popular artist in the worldKendrick Lamar is one of them.

With his latest album around the corner Mr Morale and the Big Steppers, nows as good a time as any to look at the legacy that Lamar inherited from the pantheon that includes Notorious BIG, Tupac Shakur, Eminem, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg et al, and how he has given it his inimitable stamp of originality; thus, creating a space for himself with the masters of the craft within just 11 years of his debut album.

While it may seem an overkill to talk about a widely written-about prolific album, Lamars importance in the Indian soundscape rests in the raw timelessness of his ground-breaking album To Pimp a Butterfly. Given that the focus of the album was beyond the wokeness one associates with millennials and instead hammers home points on discrimination, race, Black culture and the value of human life, it is all too relatable in our sociocultural contexts of casteism and anti-secularism, where dignity is a word that finds place in our Constitution but not in our everyday lives.

Kendrick Lamar has reveals the cover artwork for his new album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.

Lamars album was considered rather politically-charged when it came out in 2015, wherein the piece of work is said to have rewritten the idea of existentialism within the world of hip-hop. It isnt just the haunting nature of the lyrics that rankles; its the fact that the lyrics represent a microcosm of trauma which plays out in so many marginalised communities around the world. Politically sidelined or hunted for the votebank, you can replace Americas Black community with the Muslims in India and the essence of To Pimp a Butterfly really shakes you to the core.

Lamar has championed in various albumsspecifically this onethe magnitude of mental health issues by highlighting the struggles of anxiety, isolation, depression, and the spirit of survival in the face of it all.

While he may not be a rare musician to touch upon such topics in his songs, Lamar stands out in his ability to blend in jazz, soul, and even rock, into the mainstream hip-hop sound, thus creating music that not just provokes social disquietude but also pushes the limits of seemingly disparate genres. In essence, Lamar widened his audience not by changing the music but changing their expectation of him.

To Pimp a Butterfly is in many ways a most comprehensive, yet concise (only 1 hour 20 minutes-long) anthology of Black culture that balances the systemic racism and the daunting idea of simply being Black with the traditional richness that lords over jazz, soul and the blues. If it comforted the community by way of relating to their daily sufferings, then it also brought out the beauty of their artistic lineage because pain always finds its way to the arts.

Lamar has built up to this moment by taking his greatest influences from Tupac, Notorious BIG, Eminen, Jay-Z and more, emulating their best components while finding a truly unique voice, sound and personality in the midst of it all. He is the perfect amalgamation of hip-hop ancestry and the best catalyst to take it to a newer generation of musicians and listeners. He sings about ideas that resonate with all of us around the world and even when we risk a hagiography of his genius, we know that even the exaggeration is sometimes warranted.

That said, he has been known to publicly back dubious characters like R Kelly and XXXtentacion against Spotifys new policy to police music of convicted abusers, and his unabashed love for Michael Jackson includes a ludicrous denial of the Prince of Pops sexual abuse accusations. So for all that we laud Lamar, there is a part of him that begs careful consideration for we the listeners need not necessarily suffer from the kind of idol worship that he does.

Despite all that, Lamar is extensively praised for the genius that his music is and what it represents; a sociocultural alchemy that urges you to be true to your most humane side. As the world throughsocial media and otherwiserapidly loses its decency while rejecting the idea of the other, Lamar is forcing you to face your own hypocrisy that masquerades as different versions of libertarianism today.

Senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri has spent a good part of two decades chronicling the arts, culture and lifestyles.

Read all theLatest News,Trending News,Cricket News,Bollywood News,India NewsandEntertainment Newshere. Follow us onFacebook,TwitterandInstagram.

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As Kendrick Lamar releases new album Mr Morale, revisiting the reflections of social disquietude in rapper's music-Opinion News - Firstpost

The primary way pro-choicers argue for abortion is through emotional sloganeering because their side of the debate cannot stand up to rigorous analysis or logic. But, simplistic and manipulative though it may be, it has worked well enough for the past 50 years and as a result, I guess they can take perverse pride in the deaths of 60 million unborn babies over that time.

One of the typical lines you hear from them is this: If you dont like abortion, dont have one. This appeals to peoples inherent libertarianism and the live and let live ethos that is an important notion in our national makeup.

But, I doubt the average pro-choicer would be as liberal (in the true sense of that word) when it comes to guns. An average gun owner may also say, If you dont like guns, dont get one. But, the average pro-choicer tends to be anti-gun as well and would say in response, But your right to have a gun can result in an innocent person getting shot.

Fair enough. Our constitutional right to bear arms does come with some risk, but we as a society have been willing to bear that risk in return for the liberties and protections we enjoy through gun ownership. Plus, as mentioned above, gun ownership is a right explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.

As was clear even in Roe v. Wade, no such right was explicit in our founding document, so the justices used very lazy, weak legal argumentation to claim that it was somehow implicit in the also non-enumerated right to privacy. A house of cards built on sand, if there ever was one.

And this is why Roe must go. Not because it made abortion legal in all 50 states, which I think a bad thing, but because it set a precedent for the Supreme Court to use bad law to achieve certain cultural ends. That is not the job of the court and fundamentally undermines its legitimacy and authority.

But getting back to my imaginary friend who claims the problem of abortion just goes away if I, as a pro-lifer, avoid having one or paying for one.

Well, just as that pro-choicer no doubt agonizes over the plight of various marginalized groups in our country who are supposedly harmed by systemic racism or unjust laws, I too am concerned about the most marginalized of all humans, the unborn. I feel an obligation to defend the weakest and most vulnerable of people not only from persecution or unfair treatment, but from the denial of the most basic right of all, the right to life.

We as a nation decided we could not abide a similarly unjust situation when it came to slavery. Slave owners and those who supported that evil institution would and did say, If you dont like slavery, dont have a slave. But the better lights in our nation rightly pointed out the terrible injustice of that condition and would not stand by idly as their fellow human beings were treated like property, beaten and even killed at the whim of their owners.

Just the same, we who are against abortion are not motivated by controlling womens bodies or denying people reproductive healthcare. No. We are FOR protecting the very life of the human being in a mothers womb, for protecting his/her rights and well-being.

Yes, the woman who is pregnant unintentionally will face a difficult path forward, but no amount of difficulty could ever justify killing the baby as a moral, valid solution to the problem.

So, no, I cannot just avoid the problem of abortion by avoiding being involved in one. I must try and defend the most innocent lives as a human being, an American, a father, and a friend. To do any less would be to shirk my duty and allow the strong to dominate the weak in the most terrible way possible. That is not the kind of world or country I want to live in.

Trey Hoffman

Peachtree City, Ga.

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Abortion: Let's look at the arguments pro and con - The Citizen.com

Its voting season in the District. Heres what you need to know.

This years city-wide general election will be November 8. Contests will be for the mayors office, six D.C. Council seats, and for the first time a chance to pick a new D.C. Attorney General, as Karl A. Racine (D) the citys first elected AG is not running for a third term. The D.C. Council Chair position will also be on the ballot in addition to the D.C. Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives and the citys shadow representative to the U.S. Senate.

The District will hold a party primary on June 21 to determine finalists on the November general election ballots. Given how heavily Democratic the nations capital is, the results of the Democratic Party primary tend to be decisive in the November elections.

According to the D.C. Board of Elections (DCBOE), primaries are held only for partisan offices (such as Delegate to the House, Mayor, Councilmember, and Senator and Representative). Therefore, only the following recognized parties will be holding primaries on June 21: Democratic, Republican, D.C. Statehood Green, and Libertarian. In the District only voters registered with one of these parties may vote in their partys [primary] election.

DELEGATE TO THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FROM THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Democratic Party: Wendy Hope Dealer Hamilton, Eleanor H. Norton and Kelly Mikel Williams

Republican Party: Nelson F. Rimensnyder

MAYOR OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Democratic Party: James Butler, Muriel E. Bowser, Trayon Washington DC White and Robert White

Republican Party: Stacia R. Hall

CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Democratic Party: Erin Palmer and Phil Mendelson

Republican Party: Nate Derenge

AT-LARGE MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Democratic Party: Lisa Gore, Nate Fleming, Anita Bonds and Dexter Williams

Republican Party: Giuseppe Niosi

ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Democratic Party: Brian Schwalb, Ryan L. Jones and Bruce V. Spiva

LOCAL PARTY OFFICES DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEMOCRATIC STATE COMMITTEE

NATIONAL COMMITTEEMAN: Kevin B. Chavous

NATIONAL COMMITTEEWOMAN: Denise L. Reed

AT-LARGE COMMITTEEMAN: Charles E. Wilson, James S. Bubar, Dave Donaldson, Keith Hasan-Towery, James J. Sydnor, Matt LaFortune and John Green

AT-LARGE COMMITTEEWOMAN: Monica L. Roach, Linda L. Gray, Dionna Maria Lewis, Patricia Pat Elwood, Andria Thomas, Maria Patricia Corrales and Chioma J. Iwuoha

WARD TWO COMMITTEEMAN: John Fanning and Brian Romanowski

WARD TWO COMMITTEEWOMAN: Janice Ferebee and Meg Roggensack

All other positions on Republican Party ballots are write-ins. There are only write-ins on ballots for the DC Statehood Green Party and the Libertarian Party.

Beginning on May 16, voter ballots will be sent to all registered D.C. voters giving citizens a chance to vote by mail. Ballot drop boxes may be used beginning May 27. Early voting in D.C. runs from June 10 through June 19. On June 21 Primary Election Day polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.

Registration is required to vote in the District. However, the DCBOE must receive your Voter Registration at least 21 days prior to Election Day. So, the deadline to register for this years party primaries is: Tuesday, May 31. However, if you miss the deadline, the DCBOE website says, Same-Day Registration is available at Vote Centers during the Early Voting period [June 10 through 19] and on Election Day.

According to the Washington Post, a voter registration application swearing or affirming voting qualifications and a valid proof of residence is required. D.C. residents who are U.S. citizens ages 16 and older can register to vote online, or in person at the DCBOE office (1015 Half St. SE, Suite 750, Washington, D.C. 20003) or any voter registration agency, by mail, email or fax. Residents can call (202) 347-2648 for more information.

A list of answers to Frequently Asked Questions from the D.C. Board of Elections can be found here. Voting sites and locations can be found here.

Stay tuned for Election 2022 campaign profiles, updates and news in upcoming newsletters and our June print issue. For our recent exclusive interview with D.C. mayoral candidate Robert C. White, Jr. (D), see here.

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Election 2022: Who's on the Ballot? - Georgetowner

A madman who describes himself as an ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist went on a racist shooting spree in Buffalo over the weekend. He cited radical views and conspiracies he absorbed from the internet to explain his turn to mass murder.

My question: Why are so many in the legacy media and the Democratic Party intent on watering down the insane things this shooter believed?

The most likely answer is that the media want to blur any distinction between the shooters evil and insane views on one hand versus the typical Republican views that the media and Democrats dislike on the other.

I wish all JEWS to HELL! the shooter wrote. Go back to hell where you came from DEMON!

He went further and laid out the case that white people are being replaced. The White race is dying out, that blacks are disproportionately killing Whites, that the average black takes $700,000 from tax-payers in their lifetime, and that the jews and elite were behind this.

Writing about white people, he commented, We are doomed by low birth rates and high rates of immigration. He attacked libertarianism as largely pioneered by Jews.

Later, he offered a different, more pedestrian critique of mass immigration, attacking conservatives for supporting anything to decrease the labor cost of production and line their pockets with the profits.

His political vision, Green nationalism, calls for population curbs: "There is no Green future with never ending population growth, he wrote, adding that the ideal green world cannot exist in a world of 100 billion, 50 billion, or even 10 billion people.

The dominant media narrative does not focus on the shooters atheism, isolationism, environmentalism, population-control demands, or hatred of Fox News. For most of the media, it is too much mental labor to tie those beliefs to his obvious white supremacist and antisemitic views.

So instead, they settle on an easy, lazy story: The shooter was motivated by the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. This isnt false it's just that it's a tiny part of the shooters foul melange of radical and bigoted views.

Its a tidy story because the killer's choice of targets was pretty directly attributable to the whole idea of white people being "replaced." In this, he was much like the antisemitic shooter at Pittsburghs Tree of Life synagogue who was very explicit about his insane beliefs. Attacking a Jewish charity called HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), that gunman had posted online that HIAS likes to bring invaders that kill our people. I cant sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. He believed that Jews were importing foreigners who would wipe out his people.

Does this conspiracy theory trickle into the GOP mainstream? Yes. For example, while President Donald Trump in 2018 fanned flames about the migrant caravan heading from Central America to the U.S. border, Trump backer Matt Schlapp went on CNN, mocked the idea that the caravan was spontaneous, and then asked, Who's paying for the caravan? before referring to George Soros as a possible culprit.

This sort of conspiracy-theorizing is common in politics. People assume something they dislike or oppose is part of a grand plan with a mastermind behind it. Both the Left and the Right do it. When it has a racial element, and the Great Replacement theory has a doubly racial element, it becomes more pernicious and lethal. Trump may have brought this foul line of thinking closer to the heart of the GOP, which is one reason the party would have been better off had he lost the general election in 2016.

But the media and the Democrats are going far beyond saying Trump brought the Great Replacement theory closer to the GOP mainstream. They are deliberately watering down what the Buffalo shooter believed in order to make it sound more like regular old right-of-center politics: The manifesto, as the Reporter Times describes it, focuses on the great replacement theory. The theory claims that Democrats favor migrants from the other countries for votes while deliberately outnumbering whites in the U.S.

That Democrats favor greater numbers of immigrants and see an electoral advantage in it is not in any published quotation from the Buffalo shooter nor is it a racist statement or a conspiracy theory. It may be an unfair implication of Democrats motives, but thats typical politics.

Why would the news media try to water down the crazed shooters racist conspiracy theory in order to make it sound kind of normal? Because they want to broaden the definition of the Great Replacement to include as many Republican views as they can. They are explicit about this:

What is GOP Rep. Elise Stefaniks supposed venture into the Great Replacement theory?

Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION. Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington, her ads say.

Thats laughably over-the-top political rhetoric, which makes it no different in tone from stuff the average liberal columnist puts out every day. But theres no white genocide talk here no culpable Jews and nothing explicitly racial or ethnic. Theres immigration and electoral politics. Those topics touch on race and ethnicity, but if were going to brand every restrictionist immigration policy as racist, were basically declaring immigration debates off limits, and that just won't work.

Trying to blur the lines between a crazed racists crazed, racist views and a partisan Republicans partisan, restrictionist immigration views is not something you would do if you really cared about battling racism. Lumping mainstream Republican politicking with racist extremism might convince a few lazy journalists to treat all Republicans as racist, but it will also convince a lot of centrists that the "racist" label is meaningless because everyone gets called "racist."

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Why are liberals trying to water down the racist views of the Buffalo gunman? - Washington Examiner

The New York man who shot up a Buffalo supermarket Saturday kept no secrets about how and why he planned to murder "as many blacks as possible." From his racist radicalization on the internet due to the coronavirus lockdowns to his specific choice of a black neighborhood with few guns "NY has cucked gun laws," wrote the shooter, who made clear he intended to survive the massacre the Buffalo shooter is no enigma.

Hence, a seemingly concerted effort from the corporate media accusing the Buffalo barbarian of being some sort of Tucker Carlson acolyte would be baffling if it weren't so transparently malicious. In the 180-page document purported to be authored by the shooter, he does not mention Carlson once. The sole explicit mention of Fox News is an infographic demarcating top Fox hosts such as Maria Bartiromo and Greg Gutfeld as Jewish. (Rupert Murdoch is decried as a "Christian Zionist" who may have Jewish ancestry, "although it's never publicly admitted.) Ben Shapiro is mentioned multiple times, including as an example as the "rat" phenotype of Jewish people.

Moreover, the Buffalo shooter is a self-described "ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist" who loathes libertarianism and conservatism in particular.

"Ask yourself, truly, what has modern conservatism managed to conserve?" the shooter wrote. "Not a thing has been conserved other than corporate profits and the ever increasing wealth of the 1% that exploit the people for their own benefit. Conservatism is dead. Thank god. Now let us bury it and move on to something of worth."

Hell, the shooter admits that he's a socialist, "depending on the definition."

"Worker ownership of the means of production?" he writes. "It depends on who those workers are, their intentions, who currently owns the means of production, their intentions and who currently owns the state, and their intentions."

The diatribe implies "those workers" better be white gentiles who worship Mother Earth. Here, crucially, is the shooter on his homicidal obsession with environmentalism.

"Green nationalism is the only true nationalism," he wrote. "There is no conservatism without nature, there is no nationalism without environmentalism, the natural environment of our lands shaped us just as we shaped it. We were born from our lands and our own culture was molded by these same lands. The protection and preservation of these lands is of the same importance as the protection and preservation of our own ideals and beliefs. For too long we have allowed the left to co-opt the environmentalist movement to serve their own needs. The left has controlled all discussion regarding environmental preservation whilst simultaneously presiding over the continued destruction of the natural environment itself through mass immigration and uncontrolled urbanization, whilst offering no true solution to either issue. There is no Green future with never ending population growth, the ideal green world cannot exist in a world of 100 billion, 50 billion, or even 10 billion people. Continued immigration into Europe is environmental warfare and ultimately destructive to nature itself. The Europe of the future is not one of concrete and steel, smog and wires but a place of forests, lakes, mountains and meadows. Not a place where English is the de facto language but a place where every European language, belief and tradition is valued. Each nation and each ethnicity was molded by their own environment and if they are to be protected so must their own environments. THERE IS NO TRADITIONALISM WITHOUT ENVIRONMENTALISM."

The shooter's eco-fascism is as inextricable with his white supremacy and antisemitism as it was in Nazi Germany. Contrary to Carlson or any mainstream conservative thought leader, the shooter is functionally anti-natalist, viewing humanity in general as secondary in importance to the planet, and even his choice to murder blacks over Jews is "because [Jews] can be dealt with in time, but the high fertility replacers will destroy us now."

Most importantly, the shooter wasn't radicalized by watching Fox News with family after dinner or listening to Shapiro podcasts in the car to work. The dregs of the internet enraptured him during a government-mandated shutdown of normal social life. By every available statistic, the population at large ran rampant with vices during the isolation of 2020. A few succumbed to outright suicide. Even many of the more disciplined among us descended into drug and alcohol abuse. But for an already broken person like the shooter, his lockdown poison proved just as addictive as any opioid and, for Sunday's victims, far more dangerous.

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The Buffalo shooter was an eco-socialist racist who hated Fox News and Ben Shapiro - Washington Examiner

A July 2020 protest in front of the Ohio statehouse in Columbus. (Jeff Dean / AFP via Getty Images)

EDITORS NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.

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Last month, not long after Florida federal judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the transportation mask mandate was illegal, I flew from New York City to Miami. Videos of airplane passengers in midflight ripping off their masks and cheering with joy had already gone viral following the judges ruling.

Ive traveled domestically and internationally many times since the start of the pandemic and I hate the mask as much as anyone. It makes me sneeze and it tickles. After 10 hours on long hauls, I can indeed feel like Im suffocating. It can be almost unbearable. But after two years of obediently masking up to enter airports and planes around the world, I found my first unmasked travel experience jarring indeed, even though I kept mine on. I was not the only masked person on that American Airlines flight, but I was definitely in the minority.

Writing a book, Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hijacking of Americas Response to the Pandemic, about the politics and science of our Covid-19 experience, I came to know and trust public health policy experts and vaccine scientists. I learned enough about the mRNA vaccines so many (but not enough) of us have received that I regard them as a major medical milestone well worth celebrating. I also accept that scientific understanding is based on uncertainty and the advice of our health authorities is only as good as the latest peer-reviewed article.

So Ive maintained faith in science, even while understanding its limits. And I also understand the frustration of so many Americans. Who among us didnt chafe at the pandemic restrictions? Who wasnt going mad trying to work from a home or apartment reverberating with restless children locked out of their schools?

In March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, I thought the crisis might provoke wider support for a more universal health care system. Nothing of the sort materialized, of course, although the rapid, government-financed development and delivery of free and effective vaccinesto those who wanted themwas indeed a success story.

Now, in the pandemics third year, people are ripping off their masks everywhere as Greek-letter Covid mutations continue to waft through the air.

The viral joy of that unmasking, the giving of the proverbial finger to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), raises the question: Did the pandemic make average Americans more anti-government? Did it bring us closer to what decades of rightwing propaganda had not quite succeeded in doinggenerating widespread public support for the deconstruction of the administrative state (a phrase favored by Trump crony Steve Bannon)? Current Issue

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Government activity during the first two pandemic years was certainly intense. Trillions of dollars in business loans and unemployment money washed through the economy. At different points, the government even activated the military and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). States also instituted widespread lockdowns and closed schools. The panic, the isolation, and the quotidian inconveniences made some people barking mad.

Of course, a lot of us listened to Dr. Anthony Fauci. We trusted our public health authorities and their recommendations. To many of us, their intentions seemed good, their asks reasonable.

Federal judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, however, thought otherwise. Just 35 when Donald Trump appointed her a district judge, she had never actually tried a case. The American Bar Association had rejected her confirmation due to her inexperience, but like many Trump judges, she was a Federalist Society-approved ideologue and the Republican Senate confirmed her anyway to a district that, by design, has become a nest of extreme antigovernment judges.

The anti-maskers could have brought their case in any jurisdiction. Choosing Tampa was a clear case of legal venue shopping. Other judges in the district had consistently ruled against government Covid restrictions on cruise ships and against mandatory vaccinations. The plaintiffs couldnt actually select Judge Mizelle, but their chances of getting an antigovernment ruling in Tampa were high indeed.

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As it happened, the plaintiffs got her and she relied on definitions of sanitation in mid-twentieth century English dictionaries to overturn the statute that allowed the mask mandate. None of them explicitly included the word mask in their definitions. So, she revoked it.

The ruling horrified public-health policy experts, although the Biden administrationprobably with the coming midterm elections and those viral videos of mask-free joy in minddecided not to challenge the decision directly. The continuing concern throughout the pandemic has been the politicization of these public-health measures, Dr. Bruce Lee, a public-health policy expert at the City University of New York, told me. We know that throughout history during public-health crises there has been a need to enact regulations. The big concern with this mask decision is you basically have a scientific or public-health decision made by a single judge.

It took that judge just 18 days after argumentsa nanosecond in judicial timeto side with two women who said airplane masks gave them panic attacks and anxiety and so unlawfully prevented them from traveling. They were joined by an organization called the Health Freedom Defense Fund.

The Fund, based in Sandpoint, Idaho, is run by Leslie Manookian, a wellness blogger and antivaccine activist who, after having a child in 2003, left a career in international finance with Goldman Sachs to become, as she describes herself, a qualified homeopath, nutrition and wellbeing junky and a health freedom advocate.

Manookian has declined to provide information about the sources of funding for her organization, to which the Internal Revenue Service granted nonprofit status in 2021. Its likely, however, to be just another green swath on the great field of right-wing Astroturf. While social democrats like me imagined that the pandemic might provoke a more equitable health care system, the crew on the right had other plans for how to manipulate the crisis.

Politicians, strategists, and chaos agents ranging from Donald Trump to Sean Hannity and Alex Jones, sometimes backed by dark money, have used the public-health restrictions to fuel their demands for more freedom from government. The definition of freedom among this crowd is primarily understood to be low or no taxes, with access to guns thrown in for good measure. In the spring of 2020, for instance, the billionaire Koch Brothers, who once funded the Tea Party largely to crush Obamacare, were among the conservative megadonors who helped activate the network behind the lockdown drive-bys of state capitols. Those initial lockdown protests would later devolve into Yall-Qaeda-style pro-Trump pickup convoys. In Lansing, Mich., a protest even ended with armed men entering the State Capitol. Among the intruders were members of a clan of gun-loving militiamen who would eventually plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan for restricting their freedom.

The pandemic seeded new Astroturf for the right. Americas Frontline Doctors (AFLDS), for example, was formed during the early months of the pandemic to challenge public-health policy in favor of keeping the economy rolling. Besides promoting antivaccine misinformation, AFLDS referred more than 255,000 people to a website created by Jerome Corsi, an author and longtime political agitator, called SpeakwithanMD.com. The site charged for consultations with AFLDS-approved physicians about the Covid cures ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine that President Trump and his fans so loved.

The messages of such groups (eventually including just about the whole Republican Party) were, of course, amplified by the usual right-wing media outletsOne America News Network, Newsmax, and above all Fox Newsthat started out by calling the pandemic virus a hoax. When Covid-19 was undeniably killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, the messaging shifted to equating lockdowns, vaccines, and mask mandates with totalitarianism.

Globally, theres no doubt that the pandemic did indeed release the worst instincts of authoritarian governments. Real autocracies unleashed real abuses of power on vulnerable people in the name of Covid-19. Some of these were catalogued early in the pandemic by the democracy and human-rights organization Freedom House. In October 2020, it found that, in 59 of 192 countries, violence or abuses of power took place in the name of pandemic safety. It reported, for example, that the government of Zimbabwe was using Covid-19 restrictions as an excuse for a widespread campaign of threats, harassment, and physical assault on the political opposition there.

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In terms of hubris and scale, though, the totalitarian dystopia to beat has been China. Exiled Chinese writer Liao Wiyu published a vivid book earlier this year describing how the authorities there disappeared doctors, silenced the citizenry; and in a harrowing fashion nailed the doors of homes and apartment buildings shut, marking them with red banners to identify contagious inhabitants. The images were straight out of Daniel Defoes novel about the bubonic plague in 17th-century London, A Journal of the Plague Year, updated with modern gadgetry like biosurveillance.

Chinas zero Covid response has included epic crackdowns on freedom of movement. Forty-six cities and 343 million residents have recently been under strict lockdown. Some residents of Shanghai, forbidden to leave their apartments, have been running short of food and medicine. Videos of dogs being lowered by ropes and pulleys from apartment windows for daily walks only added an element of macabre hilarity to the scene.

In the United States, rather than increasing trust in government, the relatively mild pandemic public-health measures instituted by the CDC and state governments only inflamed Americas freedom fetish. Claiming that mask and vaccine mandates were the slippery slope to Chinese totalitarianism was certainly a stretch, but one that many on the right have been all too eager to promote. For years, the right-wing echo chamber has been priming the info-siloed and mentally vulnerable with warnings about FEMA camps for Christians and conservatives (and, of course, while they were at it, the feds were always coming to get your guns, too).

As it happened, though, the pandemic also triggered anti-government sentiment outside the usual quarters. Take Jennifer Sey, a self-described Elizabeth Warren Democrat and San Francisco liberal, who was forced out of her job at Levi Strauss & Co., when she started advocating against restrictive school closings. The mother of four and the companys chief marketing officer, she found it increasingly hard to understand why her children couldnt go back to school after the first Covid surge in 2020. Irritation and frustration led to public outrage, which led (of course!) to a social-media following. She became an online leader of parents for reopening schools. Her employer didnt like it and soon banished her.

Public-health policy expert Dr. Lee finds it less than surprising that even Americans like Sey rebelled. He mostly blames the way science was miscommunicated and politicized in public debate in this increasingly Trumpified country. There needed to be consistency. Once you start straying from science and becoming inconsistent, people get confused. We saw people talking about school closures, and many of them were off in different directions. School closings were not a long-term solution. The increased politicization of science and public health policy is largely a result of certain political leaders and certain TV personalities and anonymous social media accounts. What it does is, it damagesit causes chaos. You hear people saying, oh, they dont know what to believe anymore.

The question is: Where are we now? Along with the ongoing pandemic, are we experiencing a full-blown anti-government infection and is that, too, a symptom of long Covid? Or is the resistance to government mandates and vaccines simply a response to the Astroturfing of the rightwing echo chamber?

Or, in fact, both?

Conservatives have been smacking their lips over what they regard as signs of a resurgence of the flinty libertarian. A funny thing happened on our way to democratic socialism: America pushed back, a Cato Institute commentary proclaimed earlier this year. Across the country, in all sorts of ways, Americans reacted to the states activism, overreach, incoherence, and incompetence and kinda, sorta, embraced libertarianism. (Of course, thats putting it in an all too kindly fashion. Substitute, say, fascism and that statement feels quite different.)

Conservative commentator Sam Goldman, writing in the Week, hit the same note: As the pandemic has continued, opposition to restrictions on personal conduct, suspicion of expert authority, and free speech for controversial opinions have become dominant themes in center-right argument and activism. The symbolic villain of the new libertarian moment is Anthony Fauci.

Its not clear that this represents a lasting trend. An October 2021 Gallup poll found that Americans attitudes reverted from a desire for more government intervention at the outset of the pandemic in 2020 to essentially where they had been when Donald Trump was elected in 2016. Since the 1990s, Gallup has been polling American preferences when it comes to the role of government in our lives. The long-term graph shows regular mood swings, although those between 2020 and 2021 were unusually steep.

Note as well that the American response to pandemic regulations differed strikingly from the European one. A study published earlier this year in the European Journal of Political Research explored attitudes in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, specifically the role of emotions in the way people responded to restricted civil liberties during the pandemic years (including restricted movement through Covid phone apps and army-patrolled curfews). Fear of contagion, not surprisingly, was the chief emotion and that fear led to a striking willingness to accept more government restrictions on civil liberties.

In Europe, safety won. In this country, it seems not. I havent seen similar research here (though there has been some suggesting that, in the Trump era, fear has been the driving emotion in individuals who lean right). It certainly seems as if the American response to the pandemic wasnt to accept more restrictions on civil liberties, not at least when it came to masks and vaccine mandates.

But look more closely and youll see something else, something far more deeply unnerving. In these last months, even as masks have come off and booster shots have gone in all too few arms, there has been an unprecedented assault on other civil liberties. Red-state lawmakers are attacking the civil rights of women, gays, and minorities with unprecedented ferocity. In its landmark upcoming ruling that will, it seems, overturn Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court driven rightward by three Trump appointees has now apparently agreed that there is no right to privacy either.

As political journalist Ron Brownstein pointed out recently, conservative statehouses in red states are remaking the American civil liberties landscape at breathtaking speedand with little national attention to their cumulative effect. In the process, they are setting back the civil liberties clock in America to the years before what legal scholars called the rights revolution of the 1960s.

The speed and urgency with which right-wing judges and legislators are embracing a historic anti-liberty enterprise suggests panic and fear. This anti-freedom movement, ultimately, is not a response to the actions of the federal government or the CDC. It emanates from the frightened souls of the very people who have been shrieking about totalitarianism whenever they see a mask.

Now, excuse me for a moment, while I put my mask on and face an American world in which the dangers, both pandemic and political, are rising once again.

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The Pandemic Revealed Americas Deeper Sickness - The Nation

In Season 5 Episode 3, "How A Bill Becomes A Law," Diane Lewis (Lucy Lawless) is introduced to the cast of comic characters as a love interest for Ron, and the fans immediately fell in love with her. In the subreddit r/PandR, a picture was posted by u/deckhandpo with the caption, "These two don't get enough credit as a couple. I think they were great for each other IMO." Nearly all of the dozens of comments were in praise of the character, while those that spoke otherwise simply chose toinsult Tammys 1 and 2.

Diane is characterized by her kind bluntness and tender confidence. A single mother of two and a middle-school vice principal, she has no room for beating around the bush.In an interview with EW, Lucy Lawless said, "This is his first mature relationship she doesn't pervert his nature in any way. This is the sort of woman that you might want to see him with, and yet it's going to be damn near impossible for him to stay in it."

Fans, like u/video-kid, praised her for accepting Ron as he was while encouraging him to become better. Others, like u/TixHoineeng, loved her sense of humor. While not the highest rated comment, u/chrissilich summed it up perfectly by saying, "Of course the only woman who fulfills enough squares on the Ron Swanson Pyramid of Greatness is Xena Warrior Princess," which is a wonderful reference to Lawless' notable acting career.

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Ron Swanson's Best Significant Other On Parks And Recreation Is Obvious To Fans - Looper

Published May 11th, 2022 at 9:34 am

This years June Primary Election will be the first time New Mexico voters can register to vote on election day itselfand not just weeks in advance. It will also be the first time decline-to-state or minor party voters can vote in the partisan primariesbut only if they register as either a Democrat or a Republican prior to casting a ballot. Currently, only voters who are registered with a major party (Democrat, Republican or Libertarian) can vote for a candidate of their own party in the primary election.

Taken together, these two changes have the potential for increasing the number of people who vote dramatically, said Mario Jimenez, campaigns director for the non-partisan group Common Cause New Mexico.

There are more than 300,000 voters who decline to state their partisan preference, about 21% of the total electorate. They are commonly referred to as independents. About 14,000 are registered with minor parties.

We dont advocate for one party or another, but now these folks can vote, and we encourage them to look into the candidates in their area, especially when the primary actually determines the winner in many areas, Jimenez said. They can then pick either a Republican, Libertarian or Democratic ballot, whichever appeals to them.

For new voters, and those who become aware of the election late in the game, same-day registration allows them to both register and vote on election day if they have the proper identification. They can also do both at their County Clerks office or selected Early Voting Locations during the early voting period.(See below for details.)

Heres some handy information from the Secretary of State:

Same Day Voter Registration

Any eligible voter in New Mexico can register to vote or update their voter registration and then vote on the same day at their County Clerks office starting May 10. They can also register and vote at any polling location in their county on Election Day (June 7) and from May 21-June 4 at participating Early Voting Locations.Contact your County Clerk for participating locations. In Bernalillo County all Early Voting Locations are participating.

In order to use same day registration, voters need to bring:

(1) a New Mexico drivers license or New Mexico identification card issued through the

Motor Vehicle Division of the Taxation and Revenue Department;

(2) any document that contains an address in the county together with a photo identificationcard; OR

(3) a current valid student photo identification card from a post-secondary educational

institution in New Mexico accompanied by a current student fee statement that contains the students address in the county.

How Decline-to-State and minor party voters can register and vote in the Primary Election

Decline-to-state voters in New Mexico are registered voters who have chosen not to affiliate with a major political party. Minor party voters are registered with political parties that do not have major party status (currently, only Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians are recognized as major parties in New Mexico).

While the general election is open to all registered voters, only voters who are registered with a major party can vote in primary elections in New Mexico. Now, if you are registered as DTS or with a minor party in New Mexico you can vote in the Primary Election. You simply update your registration to one of the major parties, a process that will take from 5-10 minutes. You can then vote in the primary election for whichever party youve chosen.

You can do this at any polling place in your county on Election Day or by going to your County Clerks office starting May 10 or any participating polling place in your county during early voting from May 21- June 4.

Voters who utilize this option and who then wish to revert back to being DTS or registered with a minor party can update their registration online atNMVOTE.ORGafter theyve voted in the Primary Election.

Same day registration for decline-to-state voters carries the same ID requirements listed above for all newly registered voters and is available during the same time frame.

Important Exception

Voters who are already registered with a major party cant switch affiliations on Election Day or during the early voting period; those changes must be made by May 10.

For more information go to:

https://www.sos.state.nm.us/voting-and-elections/voting-faqs/same-day-voter-registration-faq/

Common Cause is a nonpartisan grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard as equals in the political process.

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Letter to the Editor:Important Information for Voters from Common Cause - The Paper