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3 Whisky Happy Hour

Drink Up for Constitution Day!

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Today is Constitution Day, so naturally conversation at the 3WHH bar turned directly to the question of whether the state-mandated observances of Constitution Day in public colleges and universities are unconstitutional! Naturally there is division on this issue that maps with our ongoing division over the perspicacity of peated whisky.

John (left) appears less than convinced here.

From there we delve into the lively subject of the "National Conservatives," who met again this week in Miami. John was present for part of the program, and his disposition is well expressed in the photo nearby. We devote a lot of time to looking over the NatCons' "Statement of Principles," observing some difficulties, while also expressing cautious support. The NatCon movement is where the action is right now, and deserves attention going forward. Steve expresses his longer thoughts here and here.

From there the bartenders ask—what the hell is Lindsay Graham up to? John thinks Graham's bill to impose federal restrictions on abortion after 15 weeks is unconstitutional, while Lucretia thinks it is perfectly within the four corners of the 14th Amendment to extend the protections of the law to unborn persons. Steve ponders the timing, political prudence, and intent of Graham's gambit.

Finally, we discuss briefly the increasing signal-to-noise ratio of the pre-election polls, which are now producing highly volatile and contradictory findings.

Hosted by Steve Hayward, with guests JYJohn Yoo and "Lucretia"

Discussion (16)

  • mildlyo@mildlyo

    I was very disappointed that no one mentioned that the people used in the Martha's Vineyard "stunt" were all criminals. Every last one of them. Not even mentioned in passing.

    The greatest mystery in all this is why they weren't immediately hired as domestics for all those mansions. Is there a "no brown people need apply" rule for domestic help on the island?

  • RufusRJones@RufusRJones

    I'm not the final word on this, but I've heard some pretty convincing conversations that the EU is a survival thing. They are going to get their ass kicked if they don't try to turn into some form of the United States. I realize this isn't going very constructively and it enables a lot of bad people, but that is my new view.

    Maybe this is a good venue for an interview of King Banaian. His way into all of that stuff including being the guy that set up the Ukraine central bank. He personally knows that guy that Putin poisoned.

  • RufusRJones@RufusRJones

    The reason people are against free markets is because we have not been practicing free markets for decades. Whining about socialism and populism is stupid. Those political manifestations are an intelligent reaction given how bad the leadership has been for decades.

  • RufusRJones@RufusRJones

    Meet my new favorite article.

    The gold peg of the US dollar collapsed in 1971 due to a state that wanted to satisfy ever more welfare demands internally without creating wealth (Johnson’s “Great Society”) and that enforced claims to power externally also by military means (the Vietnam War). Faced with the choice of adapting these claims to reality or creating the illusion of reality in order to promote these claims, the US and subsequently all other states opted for the latter. Finally, Switzerland too abandoned any form of pegging its currency to gold in 1999.

    This is actually existing postmodernism, because it breaks with the constitutional state: the mission of the latter is the protection of defence rights against unsolicited external interference in the freedom to determine oneself how to conduct one’s life. The welfare state, by contrast, is held together by granting entitlement rights to all sorts of benefits; that is, rights to benefits that don’t originate in private law contracts among individuals for the exchange of goods and services.

    Consequently, these entitlement rights are enforced by the state power. Their fulfilment eventually becomes dependent on the unlimited creation of fiat money. However, as long as this is limited to panem et circensis – the welfare state and its orchestration in the media – the interference with the private sphere of people and their ways of conducting their lives is limited. There is no collective, common good conceived here that is imposed on all.

    Postmodern Totalitarianism

    With the corona regime, actually existing postmodernism enters its second, totalitarian phase: it now encompasses all aspects of life. There is no privacy left: the lockdowns regulate social contacts even within the core family. Not even one’s body is one’s property anymore: it is at the disposal of the state as seen with the vaccination campaign, culminating in vaccine mandates. Totalitarianism is not necessarily a regime of brutal force. Force only comes in when the population no longer believes the narrative on which the regime is based.

    Totalitarianism is characterized by unlimited regulation of the life of people by a political authority with coercive power in the name of an alleged common good (see also Mattias Desmet, “The psychology of totalitarianism.”

    A first aspect that marks the present regime as specifically postmodern is its construction of a postfactual reality that is imposed on all. The coronavirus waves are a fact. But there are no facts that establish that this virus outbreak is more dangerous than past virus outbreaks such as the Hong Kong flu 1968-70 or the Asian flu 1957-58 that were dealt with by medical means only.

    brownstone.org

    Open link

  • RufusRJones@RufusRJones

    Comparative advantage absolutely is unfair when the Fed is constantly creating CPI or asset inflation. The second the Soviet Union fell, we should have switched to a libertarian economy and an almost deflationary Fed policy. Better living through purchasing power. Progress is mostly defined byy more purchasing power.

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