Category Archives: Libertarianism

I'm very much in favor of treating the conventional political wisdom with a healthy dose of skepticism, so I was eager to read a recent, short tweet thread from Nick Gillespie, an editor at large for the libertarian magazine Reason, asserting former President Donald Trump will not be the GOP nominee in 2024. That's a dissenting line I expect to hear with increasing frequency as we approach the next presidential election cycle.

A defeated one-term president doesn't often receive his party's nomination after his loss. But Trump isn't a standard presidential candidate. For one thing, he's managed to forge a powerful and seemingly lasting bond with a sizable faction of his party's voters. For another, he claims and seems to have convinced an awful lot of Republicans that he actually won the 2020 election. In that story, he's a winner out for revenge rather than a loser who rather pathetically refuses to accept his own defeat.

Yet Gillespie isn't buying it. In his view, Trump never came close to winning a majority of the popular vote; he's damaged his brand further with his lies about election fraud in 2020; and his hold over the Republican base is waning.

As evidence of that last point, Gillespie points to some boos Trump recently received from a staunchly anti-vax crowd when he announced he'd received his booster shot and bragged about his administration's role in bringing the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines swiftly and safely to market. Add in "rising stars in the GOP," like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who will give Trump voters "95 percent of what they want," and it makes sense to conclude "Trump is as overcooked as one of his steaks."

The only problem with this analysis is ... there's no data to support it. An aggregation of early GOP primary polls has Trump pulling 52.4 percent of the vote, with the second-place DeSantis coming in with less than a third of that (16.4 percent) and everyone else deep into single digits. That's not a close race, andmuch stronger than Trump's polling through the entirety of the GOP primaries in 2016.

Moreover,when the polls are re-run without Trump included, the results show no similar consolidation around any alternative to Trump. DeSantis pulls in around 28 percent, followed by former Vice President Mike Pence at 16 percent, Donald Trump Jr. at 12 percent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 9.5 percent, and everyone else at 5 percent or lower.

That's not a picture of a party rallying around a substitute standard-bearer.

But the least convincing thing of all about Gillespie's thread is his opening contention that after the 2022 midterms, GOP "leaders will cut [Trump] loose." If the past six years have taught us anything, it's that there is no safer bet in Washington than wagering against Republican leadership taking Trump down. That's because the party's leadership responds to the voters, and the voters want Trump.

Until that changes, Trump will be on an easy track to win the Republican nomination if he wants it.

More here:
Could Trump lose the 2024 GOP nomination? - The Week Magazine

Lee Feinstein| Guest columnist

This piece may be disturbing to some readers. It offers limited hope, optimism, and earnest language, with brief scenes of unity.

I found myself on the phone recently with a former senior official, whose political background, personal and generational history could not be more different from mine. We, nonetheless, found ourselves invigorous agreement as the former official said, For the first time in my life I am worried about the future of our democracy. It is the well-meaning sentiment that has brought conservatives and liberals together in a series of open letters on the need to join together to defend liberal democracy.

Glad as I am to take part in such private expressions of solidarity and to see published statements signed by people representing different political views, none of this gives me much optimism. The global democratic recession has evolved into a global anti-democratic wave.

Fact check roundup: Debunking false narratives about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot

For hope, I look elsewhere: to a suburban high school in central Indiana, as one of several dozen amateur judges at one of the first in-person debate tournaments since lockdown.

The student debaters are instructed to adhere to a judicious mask mandate: Wear them when youre not eating. Take them off, if you want, when its your turn to debate. The students and their parents react without a shrug. No complaining. No studied outrage. Just agreement to follow a reasonable request to keep everyone safe.

The debaters arrive at 8 a.m.from large and medium cities, and from suburbs, and small towns, from across the state. The teachers and coaches are a casually diverse and interactive bunch: white, black, and brown, as are their students. Some of the debaters have been in the Midwest for many years. Others are more recent arrivals to the United States. The state calls itself the countrys crossroads. Dare to think of it not as flyover country, but as Americas third coast.

In the debate rooms, young people face off against each other. To the students and the debate judges, the racial and gender differences are unremarked, and unremarkable.

Its not that the students dont have different points of view. If you listen carefully, you can detect political leans to conservativism, left activism, libertarianism, and mainstream politics. But there are no bubbles or algorithms in the debate room. Students are assigned to a side and are prepared to argue both for and against the stipulated resolution; in this case: Resolved: A just society ought to recognize an unconditional right to strike.

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Students slice the syntactical salami thin. One debater defends his assigned position, saying reckless actions by strikers would not be enabled in the affirmative. `Unconditional is not the same as `unlawful, he says.

Another debater for the Aff defends her chosen value criterion of utilitarianism. Moves toward equalizing power, she says, would provide the most benefit to the most people. Another says corporate gigantism makes recognition of a fundamental right to strike imperative now.

The debaters support their arguments in one direction or the other with historical cases. The U.S. postal strike in 1970 during the Nixon Administration, for example, yielded to postal workers the right to collective bargaining for the first time, but not the right to strike. COVID-19 was used as an argument for and against recognizing the right of health care workers to organize.

Some of the students injected global perspectives into the debate: an unconditional recognition of the right to strike is necessary to protect workers in countries with minimum wages even lower than in the United States, says one debater. She points to Egypt and Iran as examples maybe with some direct knowledge from discussions around the dinner table. Her opponent says granting an unconditional right to strike disincentivizes work and is impractical for the worlds poor.

The students adopt contending values and value criteria. Their values are justice or personal security. Their value criteria range from Lockes social contract to Kants ideas about human dignity, to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

At the end of the debate, the students set aside whatever emotion may have built up during cross examinations and rebuttals, with: Good debate, or Nice job, shaking off the enforced certainties of their debate roles, and the world around them.

Resolved: The future of democracy in this country is being decided at places like this central Indiana high school, which defies stereotypes of the Midwest in its ethnic and gender diversity, in the rejection of political polarization, and in the common striving of its students and teachers to navigate the world as best they can at this precarious time.

Lee Feinstein, a former State Department official and ambassador,is founding dean of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, and proud dad of a high school debater.

Original post:
Column: At this high school debate, the differences that matter are points of view - The Herald-Times

Coronavirus cases are once again exploding in the United Kingdom. Yet Prime Minister Boris Johnsons Conservative government, dominated by extremist ideologues who value their notion of individual freedom above the public good, is again unwilling to impose necessary measures a reluctance that has already cost innumerable lives in previous COVID-19 waves.

Last month, about a hundred Tory Members of Parliament voted against a very modest government plan that mandates the wearing of masks and vaccine certificates in some places. As hospitals fill up again with COVID-19 patients, they talk about an ancient British tradition of liberty. Were not a papers please society, Tory MP Marcus Fysh claimed, This is not Nazi Germany.

Given such anti-government rhetoric, you might not guess that Johnson, who has been dogged by reports he was partying at his official residence during a general lockdown last year, and has often appeared maskless in public spaces, matches Donald Trump in his disdain for public health regulations.

Or that the British media, overwhelmingly right wing, provides the background chorus for freedom from COVID-19 restrictions. In fact, it led the Tory celebrations of Freedom Day in July this year.

The celebrations were as foolish as they were premature. These days, the world watches again in appalled fascination as omicron spreads fast, and rowdy invocations of personal responsibility and individual choice delay preventive moves in the United Kingdom and, by extension, everywhere else.

Public-spiritedness is by no means alien to Britain; its present-day embodiment, the National Health Service, was widely applauded during the early weeks of the pandemic. Tory fanboys of Winston Churchill like to invoke his lonely defiance of Nazi Germany as they insist on their right to remain maskless. But there is no record of Tory freedom-lovers keeping their lights on at night during the blackout enforced by Churchills government in 1940.

Contemporary Tory libertarianism derives from the American ideologue Ayn Rand more than any ancient British tradition of liberty. And the present-day contempt for collective welfare is largely a legacy of the revolution launched by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Thatcher notoriously doubted the existence of society; Reagan claimed that the nine most terrifying words are Im from the government, and Im here to help.

The strange thing is that the battles launched by Reaganites and Thatcherites against tax rates, protectionist industry and labor union privilege were won a long time ago. Libertarians in the United States even managed to discredit major government involvement in health care.

So, what makes Anglo-American individualists so dangerously inflexible, even self-destructively fanatical, today?

Two recent events have spoiled the show for them. First, the rise of China, which proved again after the previous successes of Japan and the East Asian countries that government intervention is crucial to national success in education and health care as well as industrial growth and technological innovation.

The other, arguably more unnerving event, which has occurred right at home, is the increasing assertiveness of historically silent, often disenfranchised peoples: women, non-white immigrant populations, and sexual minorities.

During two centuries of Western expansion and hegemony, a minority of white men enjoyed a relative freedom to do and say whatever they wanted without much regard for the rights and sensitivities of others. Unsurprisingly, many of them loathe the demand from previously voiceless peoples that old attitudes ranging from the narcissistic to the selfish and cruel be re-examined and, preferably, abandoned. The demand is frequently and unfairly derided as woke.

Those still clinging to political power and cultural capital would rather stoke conflict and polarization than admit that their societies are irrevocably diverse, and ought to acknowledge the dignity of people who were once systematically degraded by the gender and racial hierarchies erected by white men.

They naturally fear and loathe scholarship that underlines long-established facts: that the unique wealth and power of a male minority in the West was built on slavery and imperialism rather than any innate superiority, and that the white mans burden was actually carried by black, brown and yellow men.

Instead, faced with the smallest challenges to their moral and intellectual authority, many historically advantaged males have chosen to double down, accusing activists and intellectuals of promoting cancel culture and historical revisionism.

Johnsons government has prosecuted its war on woke with remarkable zeal and clinical efficiency throughout the pandemic. Indeed, rightwingers talking of freedom are shriller than ever before in Europe and America. Their battle against COVID-19 restrictions has become part of their larger, and very desperate, war against political correctness an existential struggle, no less, something as urgent as the existential struggle of many today against severe illness and premature death caused by COVID-19.

The consequences for the rest of us are incalculable. While freedom-loving Tories make their last stand, the mounting evidence from elsewhere is that coordinated action by governments and solidarity among citizens are what will contain the pandemic.

Indeed, the lesson from the U.K. epicenter of delta and now omicron, and home to a dysfunctional government and failed ideology is profoundly ominous: That in societies deliberately divided by culture wars, trust and confidence in an unscrupulous ruling class will inevitably run low, and the pandemic is what will enjoy true freedom.

Pankaj Mishra is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. His books include Age of Anger: A History of the Present, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, and Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond.

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Boris Johnson and the woeful and costly Tory war on woke - The Japan Times

Breadcrumb Trail Links

Michael Kennedy, a gay libertarian, is suing the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms for breeching its own stated vision and values.

Author of the article:

Michael Kennedy was a 22, an idealistic, gay libertarian when he went to work for the nascent Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

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Now, hes suing the centre in a novel case, arguing that when an employer does something contrary to an organizations mission and values, it breaks its contract with employees and amounts to constructive dismissal.

The Justice Centre denies Kennedys claims in the lawsuit he filed in Albertas Court of Queens Bench in September.

Its a case without precedent in Canada, according to his lawyer Kathryn Marshall. Thats largely because unlike in the United States there are few think tanks, advocacy groups and other organizations with an ideological mission.

In fact, it was that scarcity that attracted Kennedy to the Justice Centre in 2011 as it was being formed.

He had just completed an internship in the Koch Associates program and a part-time contract at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education Washington, D.C. protecting free speech on university campuses.

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I fell in love with that work and wanted the Justice Centre to be doing that same work, he said. Thats what my vision was and, in the early days (at the Calgary-based Justice Centre), it was our pet issue.

Kennedys sexual orientation was not a secret.

The JCCF founder and president, John Carpay, asked him about it before he hired him.

I was offended to be asked. I had had a taste of conservative movements homophobia but I was disappointed that it came up in the context of a job application, said Kennedy. But I was fresh out of college and desperate to get a job.

Even though by 2011, the Justice Centre had already taken on a case widely seen as anti-LGBTQ, Kennedy said his philosophy aligned with its vision of individual rights taking precedence over collective rights.

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It intervened that year at the Supreme Court of Canada, defending Bill Whatcotts right to distribute anti-gay pamphlets. The court disagreed, upheld the tribunals ban and called it hate speech.

Four years later, it lost again at the Supreme Court when it argued that Trinity Western University should not be denied a law school even though students are required to pledge to abstain from sex outside of heterosexual marriages.

Speaking at a Rebel Media event in November 2018, Carpay said the way to defeat totalitarianism was to think about the common characteristics:It doesnt matter whether its a hammer and sickle for communism or whether its the swastika for Nazi Germany or whether its a rainbow flag. The underlying thing is a hostility to individual freedoms.

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It was a PR disaster. Kennedy said that, as communications director, hed had nothing to do with it. Still, Carpay asked him to resign.

By September 2019, Kennedy had had enough. He resigned after the JCCF decided to represent the Buffone family at the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, who believe their daughter was discriminated against on the basis of sex, gender and gender identity. While explaining gender fluidity in class, a teacher is alleged to have said that there are no such things as boys and girls.

According to Kennedys statement of claim, it wasnt just that it was getting directly involved in the kind of tribunal that Carpay had previously called kangaroo courts.

It was also the JCCFs argument.

Kennedys claim says that when he expressed his concern about it feeding into a growing public perception that the Justice Centres Charter-oriented mission is a faade to justify attacking the LGBTQ community, Carpay justified taking the case saying it is a (perhaps the) majorissue of our time.

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Kennedy told me, The day I found out about it (JCCF taking the case), I was sick to my stomach. I realized I cant work here any more. I dont believe in the mission.

JCCFs statement of defence offers a different view. When told that it was taking the Buffone case, Kennedy responded: Understood. Ill stand by.

Its defence statement acknowledges Kennedy had expressed his opinion that getting involved in the human rights complaint process was contrary to its mandate.

But it said that at no time did he suggest that if JCCF continued its involvement in human rights processes that Kennedy would consider it constructive dismissal.

This case isnt only potentially precedent-setting in terms of employment law. At the heart of it is the schism within the conservative/libertarian movement between those who believe LGBTQ people are protected by freedom of expression, association and equality and those who believe those rights must protect religious groups, organizations and others to freely express, say and act on what they believe.

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Kennedy put it more pointedly when we spoke.

Do libertarians and conservatives oppose gender identity affirmation because nobody should be compelled to say things they dont believe or because they dont like transgender people?

And, do they believe in free speech as fundamental to protecting liberal democracy or because they want to protect homophobes, racists and bigots?

Since COVID-19, the Justice Centre has focused less on LGBTQ fights in favour of raising interesting constitutional questions while defending individuals right to not wear masks or to not get vaccinated.

But Carpay dealt his organization a substantial blow last summer.

He admitted in July that hed hired a private detective to spy on Manitobas chief justice and health officials to see whether they were breaching the provinces COVID restrictions. He took a leave of absence.

Carpay was back by September trying to rebuild trust in the brand when Kennedy filed his lawsuit and claim for $470,800.

This case wont make the renewal any easier.

dbramham@postmedia.com

Twitter: @bramham_daphne

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Daphne Bramham: A fight within the conservative family over which rights trump others - Vancouver Sun

Determinism

Often considered the most dogmatic of the three, determinism asserts that man may have circumstantial freedom, but he does not have metaphysical freedom. In other words, we may have the freedom to stand up and sit down, but we don't really have the freedom to choose a path in life. For this, we're at the mercy of our physical bodies and circumstance.

Using its name as its definition, determinism asserts that man's path is predetermined. In other words, freedom is an illusion. When we think we're making choices, we're really just at the mercy of physical impulses or events which have already occurred.

To use a rather oversimplified example, a determinist might tell me I didn't really choose to get an education. Instead, I was simply born into a family of people who were educated. Therefore, what I thought was a choice was really just me falling in line with events which had already occurred. In the same manner, I will always choose salty foods over sweet. To me, this is a choice. However, a determinist might tell me I simply reach for salt because my physical makeup requires more sodium than most.

Of course, this type of hard determinism causes some serious ethical dilemmas. Most pointedly, if we're all just puppets on the path of existence, how can anyone ever be held responsible for their actions? How can we punish the criminal and elevate the saint? Under hard determinism, man can't be held responsible. You can see the dogma there, can't you?

Building on this question, many philosophers hold to the opposite of determinism, libertarianism. Also called indeterminism, libertarianism asserts that man has both circumstantial and metaphysical freedom.

We aren't just puppets dangling from a string, nor are we subject to some predetermined path. We've got the capacity and intellect to choose between options. On my own, I made the conscious choice to get an education, and I'm making a conscious choice each time I grab for potato chips. In other words, free will is alive and kicking! For this reason, the criminal deserves punishment, and the saint deserves adulation.

Filling the gap between determinism and libertarianism is compatibilism. Also called soft determinism, compatibilism is rather easy to remember. It proclaims that determinism and libertarianism can be compatible.

Bridging the two, compatibilism sides with determinism in that it agrees actions can be predetermined in the metaphysical realm. However, it also gives a nod to libertarianism. On this side of the coin, compatibilism asserts we are all still responsible for the actions we perform through our circumstantial freedom. Coming full circle with our criminal, he may not have the metaphysical freedom to choose an upright life, but he can use his circumstantial freedom to keep himself away from the scene of a crime!

When discussing freedom, philosophers often cite circumstantial and metaphysical freedom. Circumstantial freedom is the liberty to accomplish an action without interference from obstacles. Metaphysical freedom is the power to choose between opportunities. Determinism, compatibilism, and libertarianism all hold differing positions on freedom.

Determinism asserts that man may have circumstantial freedom, but he does not have metaphysical freedom. We may be able to choose physical actions, but our paths in life are predetermined. This school of thought makes it very difficult to hold man responsible for his predetermined actions.

Libertarianism asserts that man has both circumstantial and metaphysical freedom. Also called indeterminism, it holds that we have the capacity and intellect to choose between options. Man is responsible for his actions.

Standing in the gap between the two is compatibilism. Also called soft determinism, compatibilism asserts that determinism and libertarianism can be compatible. Yes, we may not have metaphysical freedom, but we are still responsible for the actions we exercise through our circumstantial freedom.

As you finish the lesson, you should be able to:

Read more:
Free Will: Determinism, Compatibilism & Libertarianism ...

Imagine the following scenario:

Donald Trump enters the 2024 presidential election, but announces hes replacing former Vice President Mike Pence as his running mate with a Latino. The former president argues its about time everyone acknowledge what was once thought impossible: Latinos want to go Republican en masse.

He picks someone younger, more charismatic, and even more conservative than him a child of an immigrant who grew up poor but pulled himself up by the proverbial bootstraps to succeed in the U.S. Its such an impeccable story that any accusations that Trumps choice is a vendido a sellout fall flatter and are cheesier than a quesadilla.

From East Los Angeles to South Texas, Little Havana to Washington Heights, just enough inspired Latinos become the swing vote that secures Trumps win maybe even the first time ever that a GOP presidential candidate wins a majority of the Latino electorate. The GOP thus finally fulfills the prophecy long attributed to Ronald Reagan that Latinos are Republicans who just dont know it yet.

Crazy scenario, right? Actually, no.

In an alternate universe, this couldve totally been a thing and recent polls and studies that show Latinos are more politically conservative than at any point in recent memory are proof of this.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Latinos its pollsters talked to support Republicans and Democrats in equal numbers, and that only one percentage point separates Joe Biden from Trump in a hypothetical 2024 rematch among the Latinos they surveyed. Two Democratic-friendly research groups found that Latinos are increasingly dissatisfied with the blue view. Another Democrat-aligned firm discovered that the use of Latinx by Democratic politicians offends enough Latinos to the point that 30% of the ones they talked to would be less likely to vote for a politician who used the term.

Even a Fairleigh Dickinson University study that found Americans believe theres a War on Christmas more than ever before revealed that Latinos buy that humbug more fervently than any other ethnic group.

All this news comes a year after Trump who, quick recap, dismissed Mexicans trying to come into the United States in the 2015 speech that announced his first presidential run as rapists and drug dealers, posed with a hideous-looking taco salad in a 2016 Cinco de Mayo tweet, and referred to El Salvador as a shithole country in 2018 built bigly on his 2016 Latino support to earn 38% percent of our vote. It was the highest such percentage since George W. Bush got 44% of the Latino vote in 2004.

The conservative political swing by Latinos has set off furious finger-pointing among Democratic operatives and glee among conservative ones, who now hope one of the gifts under their Christmas tree this year is the 2022 Latino vote (poor Democrats, meanwhile, are stuck with a giant lump of West Virginia coal in their stocking).

I wrote about this phenomenon in multiple columns leading up to and after the 2020 presidential elections. Im seeing it on the streets, in social media, and in the poll numbers its real, and its reaching a boil.

There are many immediate reasons why more Latinos are voting Republican right now: an attraction to Trumps bluster, an exhaustion with COVID-19 mandates, a repudiation of the social justice causes that Democrats have campaigned on for the past couple of years at the expense of the economy.

Democratic activists dismiss these points, and instead blame the very real disinformation campaigns on social media that paint President Biden as a communist at best and a child-eating reptilian at worst as swaying too many Latinos to leave their party. But the most important reason why theres always a chance for Latinos to flip conservative is because its inherently within us thanks to a political philosophy that I call rancho libertarianism.

Its the core beliefs of working-class Latinos, many influenced by their roots in the rural parts of their ancestral countries. Whether you live in Appalachia, the highlands of Jalisco, County Cork in Ireland, or Sicily, country folk often share common traits rugged individualism, distrust of government and elites, conservative moral beliefs, a love of community and a hatred of political correctness that are like catnip for Republicans.

It was the worldview of the millions of Catholic European immigrants of previous generations Irish, Poles, Italians, Germans who once reliably voted Democrat but whose descendants embraced Trump. Its the worldview of my dad, uncles, aunts, Mexican-born older cousins, and their millennial children with businesses and young families. Traces of rancho libertarianism are still in my political veins, much to the consternation of my leftist pals.

Every single GOP president going back to Richard Nixon has known about rancho libertarianism, even if they didnt call it by that name.

Its why Nixon was about to propose the first amnesty for undocumented immigrants before Watergate derailed those plans. Its why Reagan remains the only president to ever pass such an amnesty. Its why George W. Bush whose brother Jeb married a Mexican immigrant famously said that family values dont end at the Rio Grande, a perspective that helped him earn almost half of the Latino vote in 2004,

So if Latinos have always been potential Republicans, why hadnt party leaders capitalized on rancho libertarianism? The standard answer for a generation has been California Republicans.

Over the course of 12 years, from 1986 to 1998, they helped pass a series of xenophobic propositions 63, 187, 209, and 227, which respectively made English the official language of California, made life miserable for illegal immigrants, ended affirmative action, and stopped bilingual education in public schools. That turned off a significant portion of the Latino electorate and radicalized a generation of them. Those Latinos, of course, have turned California into a place bluer than Papa Smurf.

What happened in California to the GOP is frequently offered as a cautionary tale of the last gasps of a dying party. But that was a generation ago. Younger Latinos either dont know that history, or dont care because they got theirs already and have now followed in the footsteps of their fellow ethnic Catholics in assimilating and hating the new immigrants in town. Its why Trump could trash Central American migrant caravans trying to come into this country during his administration and not see his support among Latinos crater but actually increase.

It brings to mind Whats the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Franks brilliant 2004 book about why his fellow Jayhawkers voted against their political interests by consistently siding with the GOP. In a 2022 election thats already shaping up to be a ballot-box bloodbath for Democrats, seeing more Latinos go Republican could unleash an electoral earthquake that would change American politics forever.

I hope this doesnt happen, because Id rather not see Latinos side with a party thats anti-science and anti-reason. Anti-logic, anti-women and still, pretty darn often, beneath the giant taco salads and calls for personal responsibility, anti-Latino.

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Column: Latinos going GOP in 2024 isn't that farfetched - Los Angeles Times

Right-wing personality Candace Owens is urging her fans to consume a quack medical cure known for turning users skin blue.

In an Instagram video posted on Thursday, Owens praised the use of colloidal silver as a daily supplement, a treatment that comes with no valid medical use and plenty of health risks.

Yes, colloidal silver! Owens said in the video. I take colloidal silver every single day, I love colloidal silver. That is a great one. That is another one that people probably know nothing about.

While Owens and others have praised preventative use of colloidal silver as a way to stave off illness, colloidal silver has no valid medical purpose and plenty of potential dangers. In extreme cases, according to the Mayo Clinic, colloidal silver can cause seizure or organ problems.

Owens didnt respond to a request for comment.

But colloidal silvers most famous side effect is argyriaa condition that turns users skin a bluish-gray color, usually permanently. Despite those risks, colloidal silver has sometimes been embraced by political outsiders, including some libertarians seeking treatments for a variety of illnesses outside the medical system. Montana Libertarian politician Stan Jones, for example, turned his skin blue by consuming colloidal silver.

Owens laid out her colloidal silver regimen in a follow-up Instagram comment to a fan asking for more information about colloidal silver, claiming she takes a teaspoon a day and more when Im sick in a post first highlighted by liberal activist William LeGate.

As little as that one teaspoon of silver a day could be enough to cause argyria, depending on the concentration of the silver solution. According to medical research, a 56-year-old man who took a teaspoon every day for allergy and cold medication noticed that his fingernails were turning blue.

Owens isnt the only far-right figure to endorse silver as a fringe medical cure. In 2020, the FDA warned InfoWars chief Alex Jones to stop promising that silver toothpaste and other silver products sold on his website could prevent or treat the coronavirus.

Owenss pro-colloidal silver video came days after a disastrous interview where Owens, who works for conservative commentator Ben Shapiros The Daily Wire, interviewed former President Donald Trump. In a surprise move, Trump rebuffed Owens criticism of the coronavirus vaccines, praising the vaccines results as very good.

In the same video in which she praised colloidal silver, Owens downplayed Trumps support for the vaccines, claiming Trump is too old to read anti-vaccine information on the internet. She also attacked vaccinations more broadly, claiming, among other things, that theres real evil behind tetanus shots.

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Candace Owens Tells Fans to Take Quack Cure That Turns Skin Blue - The Daily Beast

We will all remember the lockdowns, Covid-19 tests and other disruptions to our lives in 2021, but the year was also full of extraordinary and sometimes inspirational images. One of the most memorable was also the most bizarre, the QAnon "shaman".

You will recall this tattooed and bearded Trump supporter wearing a buffalo head-dress, yowling at the heavens inside the home of American democracy, Washingtons Capitol building, as part of the violent protest against US President Joe Bidens election victory. I suspect buffalo-man and his friends may haunt our future, but well get to that in a moment.

First, the inspirational image of 2021 for me in Britain was also the saddest. Her Majesty the Queen sat alone in Windsor, socially distanced, wearing a mask, mourning the death of her life-companion Prince Philip. They spent 73 years together. The grief was obvious through the mask. So was the sense of duty and profound dignity of a monarch who has served the UK for seven decades and who spans the great generation of the Second World War through the end of the British empire and in to the 21st century information age.

At a time when some British politicians, including the prime minister, have often made the UK appear incapable of living up to the standards we expect from people in public life, the Queen has been faultless, a solid British rock in a sea of political foolishness.

Yet for many of us it was coronavirus itself which repeatedly supplied the most profound images of 2021.

We will remember the queues of those waiting to be vaccinated, or the faces of health care workers exhausted after long hours in hospital intensive care units.

And who can forget the lines on their cheeks as they took off their masks, images which more than words told us everything we need to know about the sacrifices nurses, doctors and other health workers make everyday on our behalf.

The Queen has been faultless, a solid British rock in a sea of political foolishness

There was a flip side to this, however. We also saw the images of irrational hatred from anti-vaccination protesters. Curiously those who most loudly trumpeted their so-called libertarian" views in 2021 and claimed the right to their personal choice not to accept coronavirus vaccines were often violently furious that millions of other citizens had a different personal choice and welcomed the protection of vaccines.

In 2021 the word libertarian increasingly sounded like a synonym for selfish or perhaps just dim. One British anti-vaxxer group tried to storm what they thought were BBC headquarters in west London. Sadly these anti-vaxxer luminaries failed to notice that the BBC had moved out of the Television Centre complex a decade ago, in 2012. The same inability to get a grip on facts and reality led to images of another group of anti-vaxxers protesting at the Apple store in central London.

In the anti-vaxxer world, Bill Gates is supposed to be a controlling figure in the great vaccination conspiracy. Unfortunately for this theory Bill Gates is not involved in the vaccination programme, nor is he involved with Apple. Apples founder was Steve Jobs, who died a decade ago. But facts really dont matter to conspiracy theorists, even if they do matter to the rest of us.

The stunning extreme weather images of 2021 surely proved even to the most recalcitrant climate change deniers that the threat to all human existence is real.

Floods some deadly hit Germany, Belgium, Myanmar, the US and other countries. Out-of-control fires destroyed vast areas in Siberia, Australia, California, Canada and elsewhere. Climate activists picketed Cop-26 in Glasgow demanding that governments do more, and yet despite the scientific evidence and the images of destruction the result was a somewhat half-hearted and disappointing agreement about real solutions. And the problems of governments to act bring us back to the QAnon "shaman" and the Capitol Hill riot, because that assault on US democracy casts a shadow over all of us in the year ahead.

The "shaman" like the anti-vaxxers, is not a joke. Together these images are emblems of a world in which fantasy and nonsense shout so loudly they risk drowning out reason, science, and traditional norms of behaviour. Donald Trumps reaction to his defeat in November 2020s presidential election, and the subsequent assault on the US Capitol in January 2021 led the US World Values Survey to note:

Elections are the heart of liberal democracy. Losers voluntarily leave office. Winners assume rightful power. There is nothing in the US Constitution mandating that presidents concede graciously, but it is a centuries-old practice. When faith in these fundamental norms of democracy fades, when comity between opponents erodes, so does our civic culture.

Faith in fundamental norms of decent and reasonable behaviour did indeed fade in 2021. The images of 2021 capture this reality for our lives. But they also capture the bizarre unreality of the lives of those whose irrational and sometimes violent behaviour will, unfortunately, still be with us in 2022, and beyond.

Published: December 27th 2021, 2:00 PM

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Memorable images of 2021 capture a reality of our lives - The National

We live in capitalist economies that deliver great wealth, innovation and dynamism but lurch from systemic crisis to crisis, throw up gigantic inequalities and are careless about nature and the societies of which they are part. Its obvious that we want more of the former and less of the latter but how? Never easy, this question is now so bitterly dividing western politics that in the US there is even talk of a second civil war. Post-Brexit Britain is only fractionally less toxic.

There are two increasingly hostile camps living in their intellectual and political silos. On the one hand, there are the me firsts, the apostles of salvation through individualism. Capitalism propelled by individuals aggressively pursuing their own self-interest will deliver the goods. It is essentially self-organising, self-propelling and self-dynamic. Dont worry about booms, busts, monopoly and disastrous social side-effects; we have to put up with them as we do with the weather. They will sort themselves out in time. Any public intervention will bring errors and costs that outweigh the benefits. Allow the tall poppies to grow even taller and wealth will ultimately trickle down; inequality is the price paid for capitalist effectiveness. Capitalism harnesses the base metals of human greed and self-interest to deliver the alchemy of economic dynamism.

On the other hand, are the we firsts. They are equally passionate in their insistence that salvation lies in the group and society and convinced, whether on the climate emergency, hi-tech monopolies, crippling uncertainties about living standards or just the evident truth that we humans are altruists as much as individualists, that to follow the me firsts is the road to perdition. What is crucial to us as social beings is the group, society, the commonweal and belonging as equals. After all, it was associating in groups that was fundamental to our evolutionary capacity to hunt and to see off predators. That primeval urge to associate in the group is what underpins happiness and wellbeing. What people want is less the exercise of choice in markets, more to control their lives in the service of what they value and that is best done collectively and, as far as possible, equitably.

And so the Is and wes confront each other in intense enmity, crystallised in the debates about the proper reaction to the virus. The Is inhabit a world in which we must make our own choices, even over vaccination, and the state must be minimalist. The wes urge mandatory vaccination, early lockdowns and Covid passports. Yet the sustainable policy is to blend the two: to find ways of persuading individuals, by choice and shaming, to get vaccinated and to ensure that Covid passports are employed, but only when it is clear that public health demands it for NHS and care workers and for any large events. Too much we zeal and there is insupportable state intrusion into our lives; too much I libertarianism and you are free to infect and maybe kill me. Yes, we need the pluralism of different options and individual agency; equally, we need an agile public realm and collective action to serve the group.

The good society (and successful public policy) is one that cleverly uses its institutions to reconcile the we with the I. It is great institutions, in the private and public sectors, which bind society and mitigate the worst excesses of both group force and individual licence. The problem is that we have too few of them and those we do have are being undermined by the dominance of the me firsts who insist anything to do with the we is coercive and undermines liberty.

Thus, despite the me firsts, we witness the success of the NHS through this pandemic, plainly dedicated to serve the we but never in such a way as to be oppressive. Thus, too, the amazing vaccines incubated in Oxfords Jenner Institute, the university itself an example of combining the we of a shared academic vocation but with 37 individual, competing colleges. These were then rolled out with the impetus of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, an institution part tax-funded and part funded from its own commercial activities but one consecrated to promoting the public interest of a strong cell and gene ecology. And all further enabled by an enlightened capitalist enterprise, AstraZeneca, which institutionally recognised its social purpose of promoting health by selling a billion doses at cost.

Another institution that has proved its worth in the pandemic is the BBC, particularly its political and health teams. Laura Kuenssberg and Ros Atkins, for example, have shown the power of impartiality, while Fergus Walsh and Hugh Pym have been models of rock-solid, informed reporting. It has had a cascade effect on much of the media. In a deadly pandemic, beyond some on the Conservative backbenches and rightwing columnists, there can be no luxuriating in ideology. Everyone wants to get to the other side in the best and safest way they can.

Our democratic institutions have been less secure. The checks and balances vital to political integrity have been found wanting. It should never have been possible for the prime minister to use executive discretion, backed by a parliamentary majority, retrospectively to change the terms of the committee on standards in public life; it should be understood that these institutions, including the Electoral Commission, can be reformed only deliberatively and with cross-party support. They represent the we. Public procurement, too, has proved spectacularlyopen to abuse. Meanwhile, the Tory party has demonstrated its institutional weakness, becoming hostage to its ultra-libertarian wing and arriving at public health policies erratically and often too late.

The wider lesson is clear. If we want the best of capitalism and less of the worst, we need to build institutions across our economy, society and democracy that covenant through their constitutions, from a company to a university, that they will respect values we hold dear: equality, fairness, universality, transparency, societal obligation and sustainability. Indeed, in the face of 21st-century challenges AI, the drive to net zero, levelling up great institutions are more important than ever. They will not emerge spontaneously from markets and the operation of capitalism. They have to be created and sustained, the progressive project of the decades ahead.

Will Hutton is an Observer columnist. His December lecture to the Academy of Social Sciences, Its institutions stupid the moralisation of capitalism, from which this column is drawn, is available here

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Which philosophy helps us confront the crises that beset us... we first or me first? - The Guardian

While the perceived Red Scare following World War II on the fear of the potential rise of communism, anarchism, and other leftist ideologies infiltrating and subverting U.S. society and the federal government led to hysteria; today the fear of the pandemic undermining freedom and liberties in the U.S. and western democracies is very real. The Omicron Scare has neatly become the variant of hysteria further leading from a narrative built on a dystopian society to that of a quasi-Marxist utopian civilization.

Due diligence to investigate the omicron variant is required instead of the unwarranted and erratic decisions to manifest further lockdowns, mandates, blame, and travel bans unless of course there is a eminent plan of oppression being advanced. Officials keep telling us to follow the science; and yet governments around the world decided to act beyond an abundance of caution. If we gave this some thought, omicron may be just what we need a variant that mutated from a more deadly Delta variant and produces very mild cold and flu symptoms where it simply becomes the dominate variant with little to no deaths or impact on humanity.

Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who informed the world of the new variant, was bewildered to see the world turned upside down over a virus where no one dying, mild symptoms, and those already vaccinated being infected. Coetzee said, I have been stunned at the response. No one has in South Africa has been hospitalized with the omicron variant, nor has anyone believed to have fallen seriously ill with it.

The initial reaction by the rich nations of the world was a travel ban on South Africa and five neighboring countries. One of the countries, Namibia, a country with 2.5 million inhabitants, had no omicron cases and only 400 total reported COVID cases, was blacklisted in the travel ban yet northern European countries with numerous omicron cases were still allowed to travel to countries that were banning African travelers.

I am far from woke in making everything racist, yet I might consider playing this card in this instance where it is not logical to isolate, punish, and inflict economic hardships on the part of the world that can least afford to be shut out. We know full well what the political left and the media would be saying if the former President, Donald Trump, executed this ban on mostly black nations. Biden criticized then-President Trumps travel bans in the early days of the pandemic as xenophobic.

Countries throughout the world; specifically, those with democratically elected governments, have what they needed to push through further on their agenda of retaining power and control under the guise of another round of fear with the omicron variant. It is no surprise that the target of their actions is to leverage this latest variant scare to go after the remaining unvaccinated population. China, unlike democracies, have no need to create a fear-driven narrative in forcing vaccinations on their population while Western nations are in catch up mode, and the lesser influential countries are really of no consequence in the overall ploy and simply fall in line with globalists.

During a Biden Dr. Anthony Fauci news conference on the omicron variant, they were both emphatic that the vaccine is the only way out of this new threat. Biden claimed the reason for the travel ban was to give people an opportunity to get vaccinated before it moves around the world to America and before it is too late. While Joes message was for the unvaccinated, Fauci stated that the boosters or third shots is likely to offer cross protection against the variants and we have every reason to believe that people will have some degree of protection. The words likely, believe, and some degree is not too assuring for a man that advocates the science.

Most reports coming in has seen the vaccinated being infected by the omicron variant. Perhaps it is the third shot or the new and improved version being developed and marketed for 2022 that will make the difference. Their tag-team presser did have some immediate impact with vaccinations hitting 2.2 million doses administered in America over a 24-hour period.

While the good cops had their say, the bad cops followed in behind with more draconian measures on the heels of omicron. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the CDC is working on expanding a surveillance program at the busiest airports where airlines will be required to provide lists of travelers for testing, tracking, and forcing quarantines. It is quite absurd to be going after vaccinated law-abiding people paying to enter the country; yet hundreds of thousands of people entering illegally across the southern border are not being tested. It is estimated that 20% of the illegals are entering with COVID infections as they spread the virus to all corners of America. This is a sham! If the government really cared, the resources would be diverted to the border; however, this would impugn the governments agenda.

Unbeknownst to most Americans, Congress passed the most egregious surveillance legislation known as H.R. 550 Immunization System Data Modernization and Expansion Act, a $400 million computerized data base that allows the CDC to record vaccine doses administered across America. While regimes around the world rolled out vaccine passport systems, America by privacy design had lacked the overreach by an overbearing central government.

This legislation would enable the federal government to share crucial information with local authorities and track unvaccinated Americans who will be targeted and forced to comply with global vaccination vision. The bills author said the system will notify people when they are due for their next vaccination and identify areas with low vaccination rates. The bill will also award funding to health departments and local government entities for agreeing to adopt and share the data collection set out by the CDC.

This bill is clearly a slippery slope where medicine has mixed with political ideologies. Government has weaponized the pandemic to infiltrate, control, and force their Orwellian rules onto those who do not comply. This concept to demonize those who are not vaccinated is fascist in declaring these people are causing all the problems and begin to persecute them to accentuate their political creeds.

Countries within the EU are taking advantage of the Omicron Scare by staying one-step of the U.S. with the most extreme measures by forcing vaccine mandates. Austria announced that they will be implementing forced vaccination early next year. Those refusing vaccination will face continuous lockdowns, hefty fines up to 7,200 eros, and potential jail time. Greece followed with announcing monthly fines after December. Germanys incoming chancellor, Olaf Scholz, voiced his support for mandatory vaccinations, blaming the unvaccinated for the problems in Germany.

European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen then raised the stakes in calling for discussions on a common approach to implement forced vaccination throughout the entire EU. Responding to the EU chief, Hermann Kelly, the President of the Irish Freedom Party, said state coercion should be resisted. He continued that if we allow the state to dictate what chemical or biological agent you must take inside your body, it becomes questionable on what liberties remain. Kelly stated, We are witnessing the dangerous Chinafication of Europe with mandatory digital certificates.

Australia has taken the unnerving measures to build numerous quarantine camps strategically located throughout the country for the intended purpose of quarantining international travelers to ensure they are clear to move about. There are reports, however, of more sinister implications. A 26-year-old woman was removed from her home by masked police against her will for potentially being in close contact with a covid positive case even though she tested negative. The police surrounded her home and told her that she was being taken away and placed in detention for 14 days at the Howard Springs Center of National Resilience, the 2,000-capacity COVID camp outside of Darwin.

The female prisoner shared in a podcast following her release that you feel like a prisoner; it is inhumane what they are doing, they just overpower you and you are literally nothing. She said camp guards threatened her that they would extend her time in the camp next time. Masked police also set up roadblocks along a perimeter to catch three teens who escaped over the barbed wire at the same facility they had all tested negative for COVID too.

The chief minister of Australias Northern Territory, Michael Gunner, expressed his gratitude to Prime Minister Scott Morrison for the military personnel and army trucks to carry out the round ups in the territory where people can only leave their homes for medical treatment. Gunner angrily declared that anyone who opposes vaccine mandates, even if vaccinated, will be regarded by the government as an anti-vaxxer. He said, If you support, champion, give a green light, give comfort to, support anyone who argues against the vaccine, you are an anti-vaxxer. Your personal vaccination status is utterly irrelevant.

Canada, with no political resistance in the country, has acted without impunity to lockdown all unvaccinated citizens from travel or from entering restaurants and events; along with full mask mandates whether you are vaccinated or not; including young children all day at school. Instead of the Australian quarantine camps, the Canadian federal government has occupied hotel camps where citizens arriving at airports; whether they are elderly, fully vaccinated with three shots, and tested negative are escorted by police to be quarantined in squalid conditions with no heat or toiletries, very little food to sustain yourself, and restricted contact with the outside world.

After World War II, a series of trials were held in Nuremburg, Germany to hold members of the Nazi party responsible for war crimes. The trials were led by the U.S. in what became known as the Nuremburg Trials where German physicians responsible for conducting unethical medical procedures on humans in concentration camps during the war were tried. In 1947, the prosecution submitted a memorandum to the United States Counsel for War Crimes outlining ten points known as The Code that was reiterated by the judges delivering their guilty verdict.

The Codes permissible medical experiments explicitly states the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person should have the legal capacity to give consent (to the COVID vaccine); should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved to make an understanding and enlightened decision; including the duration of the methods, hazards, and long term effects upon ones health which may possibly come from the participation. The human subject should have the liberty to bring the experiment to an end if one has reached a physical or mental state where continuation cannot continue; and the medical action must be terminated if there is probable cause to believe continuation may result in injury, disability, or death to the subject.

The Code is the most important document in the history of clinical research ethics, which had a massive influence on human rights. In America, it formed the basis for the regulations issued by the United States Department of Health and Human Services for the ethical treatment of human subjects; and as of 2019, 173 countries have signed off on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that prohibits medical experimentation without the free consent of the subject. Sadly, and thankfully, the Nuremburg Code became the cornerstone to enlighten humanity on bioethics following the reverberation of ghastly Nazi atrocities.

To be clear, the COVID vaccines are still considered experimental medicine being administered and has not passed through the full regulatory process of clinical studies on the effectiveness and long-term impacts on ones health. This raises numerous unanswered questions, including whether the Omicron Scare has overridden the Nuremburg Code. Why are people who have been vaccinated three times required to wear a mask and are still being infected with COVID? Why are the ingredients of the vaccines not listed on the shipping documentation like other medicines? Why did a judge suppress the ingredients in the vaccines for 55 years? Are you sure the vaccine does not contain graphene oxide and are you aware this poisonous substance can be manipulated externally once it is in the human body? Why are people being forced under duress to inject the vaccine or lose their employment? Do you know how your red blood cells are reacting after taking the vaccine? Why are young children suddenly coming down with COVID after so many adults are vaccinated yet there were no issues for them prior to vaccinations? Why are there more deaths from COVID after the vaccine rollout than prior? Finally, where does this experiment lead and to what end, at what costs to society, and what are our limits for ongoing injections?

It was not long ago when people who had concerns over forced vaccinations and quarantine camps were labeled conspiracy theorists. Many vaccine supporters and politicians claimed such actions would be extreme and not legal; and yet today these mandates have become mainstream and those who object on the basis of the Nuremburg Code are being persecuted. Will forced vaccines lead to war crimes against humanity?

What of this injustice of the vaccine mandate and its mark on history? If we just take a moment to think through the confusion of the pandemic and understand the moral issues being undermined by the powers seeking to control society and usurp western democracy, then we may refuse to allow our sacrifices for freedom to be squandered. It lies with the people on whether your conscience becomes a trumpet call to like-minded people, together in steadfast perseverance with mutual purpose and support to go on to finish in a way worthy of our liberties and citizenship.

Some have asked if God cares in these days of national and global calamity. The significance of this answer is not discovered simply by human ingenuity scrutinizing the methods of divine judgement. Rather, natural laws of mankinds inept abilities and political actions of injustice work through periodic courses of tribalistic history set against a heavenly appointed destiny over millenniums. This we can not easily explain, but we can give this current calamity a profound and prayerful significance by recognizing in the moment of injustice an opportunity to intercede; knowing Gods love prevails and the instilled joy is not limited by death.

Out of the ashes and ruins, a nation will grow a worthier life of good citizenship; stirred by justice and freedom in realizing our blessing in this hour of distress. Leaders who simply follow their science as their god are obstinate in their actions and they no not acknowledge, and they do not see the real master over ones body and soul is God.

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The only way to deal effectively with a pandemic is socialistic - Modern Diplomacy