“What is really frightening today is not the challenge of this new meaning, but the Kafkaesque rejection of all meaning. What is frightening is the conjunction of massive technical power and the spiritual surrender of nihilism. A panic-stricken refusal to glance, even furtively, in the only direction where meaning could still be found dominates our intellectual life.” — René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

“We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may ‘conquer’ them. We are always conquering Nature, because ‘Nature’ is the name for what we have, to some extent, conquered.” — C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“It was impossible for the Western movement to understand Communism as merely a new version of that eternal reactionism against which it had been fighting for centuries. It had to admit that the Western project which had provided in its way against all earlier forms of evil could not provide against the new form in speech or in deed. For some time it seemed sufficient to say that while the Western movement agrees with Communism regarding the goal—the universal prosperous society of free and equal men and women—it disagrees with it regarding the means: for Communism, the end, the common good of the whole human race, being the most sacred thing, justifies any means; whatever contributes to the achievement of the most sacred end partakes of its sacredness and is therefore itself sacred, whatever hinders the achievement of that end is devilish. The murder of Lumumba was described by a Communist as a reprehensible murder by which he implied that there can be irreprehensible murders, like the murder of Nagy. It came to be seen then that there is not only a difference of degree but of kind between the Western movement and Communism, and this difference was seen to concern morality, the choice of means. In other words, it became clearer than it had been for some time that no bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there cannot be a society which does not have to employ coercive restraint. For the same reason it could no longer be denied that Communism will remain, as long as it lasts in fact and not merely in name, the iron rule of a tyrant which is mitigated or aggravated by his fear of palace revolutions. The only restraint in which the West can put some confidence is the tyrant's fear of the West's immense military power.” — Leo Strauss, The City and Man

“The fear of losing wealth arouses the same emotions in men as the desire to gain it, since men do not feel secure in what they already have except by acquiring still more. Moreover, these new acquisitions are themselves means of strength and power for abuse; and, worse still, the arrogant behavior and contempt of the nobles and the rich arouses not only the desire for wealth and position among those who have none, but also the hunger to avenge themselves by stripping the wealthy of those riches and honors which they see them employ so badly.” — Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy

You have to have a blue check for the site to work. Ngmi.

Come and take it, Tim Apple

In the wake of the DAME tax proposal, a lot of bitcoiners have pointed out that the Council of Economic Advisers doesn’t understand bitcoin. It’s worse than that. They don’t seem to understand economics. They get the basic economic theory wrong. And, by their own logic, some types of bitcoin mining should be subsidized. New from me:

CEA Deserves an F on Bitcoin Mining Tax Analysis | AIER

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Andrew M. Bailey (@resistancemoney) on X

In a vast sea of crypto, bitcoin is special because bitcoin is neutral. This is a theme from the recent Bitcoin Policy Summit, including this panel...