A few months ago Lord Fauci announced that herd immunity from COVID-19(84) could be achieved if 60-70 percent of the population was vaccinated.  Now, he says that according to “science,” which he doesn’t bother to cite, it’s 90 percent.  He must have received an angry phone call from his puppetmaster, Bill Gates, a college dropout who has no credentials whatsoever in medicine, science, or anything else other than marketing computers.  The Lying Media Scum (LMS) still have no interest whatsoever in a second opinion which, in this case, would overwhelmingly repudiate Lord Fauci’s latest lie.  They apparently consider him to be the Father of Settled Science, a phrase that is obnoxious to any real scientist.

As a thank you for helping to justify future lockdown/national mask mandate tyranny, the Bidens went online to sing Happy Birthday to His Lordship.

Dear Jean:

Thanks for your kind words about the MI and me.

Yes, my fellow co religionists are so smart, IQ wise, and so stupid in many other contexts.

Best regards,

Walter

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From: Sergey Fedorov

Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 10:39 PM

To: Walter Block <wblock@loyno.edu>

Subject: question about infamous utility

Greetings, dear Professor Block!

I have a brief question about the “utility” and its aggregation and comparison.

(Please do not take it as an effort to justify Neoclassical models, my question is exclusively on methodology.)

Do we refuse to accept any substance behind the concept of “utility” on praxeological or empirical grounds? That is, would you say it is impossible by definition or impossible due to actual limitations and imperfections of our knowledge?

It seems to me that an objective measure of “subjective satisfaction” might make sense at least when taken to stand for “pleasure”, even if current technology does not allow it practically.

Certain regions of brain cortex activate and certain hormones and neurotransmitters change when a given emotion is experienced. (I am not an expert on brain biochemistry, but I think my statement is sufficiently accurate.) If so, it should be possible to measure these, which would allow us to introduce a common denominator, be it a number of activated neurons, level of hormone in blood or what not.

What do you think?

P. S. I do understand that it is a very narrowly defined “utility” (someone can see a value in a thing that is not pleasurable – on ethical grounds etc.).

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Letter 1

From: Madlovics Bálint

Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2020 4:52 AM

To: Walter Block <wblock@loyno.edu>

Subject: Re: The libertarian case for mandatory mask wearing and quarantine

P.S.: Thinking about it, I think the deadliness of the virus might not even count. Only the probability. (If Russian roulette is played with pointing the gun at my leg, not my head, it’s still coercion.) So it doesn’t have to be the bubonic plague or something similarly deadly, it can be anything which is so infectious that almost anyone can spread it. In my point, that would justify universal countermeasures, involving those who are not proven contagious as well.

Dear Walter,

I got into a debate with someone on mandatory mask wearing. I generally argued against it, but came up with the following argument showing how it can be possibly justified on libertarian grounds:

The non-aggression principle prohibits any act of violence or the threat thereof. It is clear that spreading the virus counts as violence. The question is whether people who are not proven contagious but have a probability of spreading the virus can be compelled to do anything about it (wear masks, quarantine themselves etc.).

My answer is inspired by your reply to David Friedman (http://libertarianpapers.org/wp-content/uploads/article/2011/lp-3-35.pdf), who speaks about Russian roulette played while pointing the gun at your head instead of mine, and therefore presenting only a probability of coercion. You say that this counts as “clear and present danger”, as opposed to Friedman’s other, supposedly analogous example, an airplane with a very small probability of falling off.

Inspired by your argument, I make the case that a very small probability of having the virus does not constitute clear and present danger. But a higher probability could. How much higher is, of course, a continuum problem, but suppose that it has as high probability as a bullet being shot while playing Russian roulette–1/6. If every sixth person spread a disease as deadly as a bullet to the head, I would see countermeasures justified, every person being a “clear and present danger.”

Obviously, this is not the case with COVID, and probably not even the bubonic plague would qualify (Wikipedia says it has 10% mortality with treatment, probably lower than the mortality of headshots). However, being a continuum problem, even a Rothbardian judge could make the case that a bubonic plague epidemic, if not properly contained, makes everyone such a clear and present danger that countermeasures are justified. Such as mandatory mask wearing or quarantine.

I wonder what you think about this argument.

Best wishes,

Bálint

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From: Darin Avery

Sent: Friday, December 18, 2020 9:25 AM

To: wblock@loyno.edu

Subject: on mandatory mask wearing

Walter,

Theoretically it seems plausible that this could be compatible with NAP.

What mechanism guarantees that it is in any particular case?  In other words, who bears the burden of proving that 1) a harmful pathogen is out there, 2) it transmits human-human via breath or air, and 3) masks suppress that transmission?  How high is the burden?  Preponderance? Beyond a reasonable doubt?

In at least one state, the governor “ordered” (ie, violated article 4 section 4 guarantee that every state shall have a republican form of

government)  “lockdowns” (ie, prohibitions on association and travel) and the state supreme court suspended certain legal time limits back in march-may-july based on things like “the WHO declared” rather than a party proving, subject to cross examination and rebuttal, that any problem existed and that those remedies would solve it.  I see the revocation of the fundamental rights to associate and travel on such grounds legally problematic (it generally takes convincing 12 jurors beyond reasonable doubt to deprive of liberty) and highly problematic from the NAP standpoint. (as in, what individual can tolerate aggression without seeing proof?  he surely can’t rely solely on the word of a governor who himself acknowledges no knowledge but has a prop in a lab coat next to him at every press conference.  Nor can bystanders that would come to his aid.)  What say you?

Thanks,

Darin

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Dear Charles:

The burden of proof, properly, always rests with the plaintiff, with he who wants to change property titles, etc.

Best regards,

Walter

(more…)

We’ll get a small fraction of it back at most, Adam. I didn’t know Hogan’s Heroes was still running on any network.

Good point on the obsession with safety and how Leviathan creates a more dangerous society, but you can keep the masks, Mike.

More COVID double standards.

Even slight resistance can earn great rewards. Enthusiastically backed up by a superior, which is interesting enough, and the Thomas More Society.

Responding to David Mueller’s reprimand of Elizabeth Warren, Monnie Matthews put together a list of indictments to rival Jefferson’s against George III:

She  decried the high cost of secondary education while collecting a $400,000 annual salary for “teaching” ONE class at Harvard.

She used her few drops of native blood from some tribe in the Americas to get said Harvard position. (I actually have more Native blood than she does, but have never applied to Harvard for anything. However, my Irish and Scottish ancestry would more than disqualify me for a job or admission as a student.)

Now Princess Paleface is graciously offering her serfs $2,000 as their price for relinquishing their liberty to their betters. That would be about three days’ pay for her, and might make a decent down payment on a Pelosi freezer. 

That’s particularly deft, don’t you think?!

I hereby grant her the runner-up award in the Marie Antoinette Sweepstakes. Nancy Pelosi’s even more outrageous behavior won her the top honor.

As if to deliver a coup de grace to our dignity, they passed a 5,600-pg “Covid relief bill” on a straight-up yes-no vote with no time to read it first. 

How much more of this are we supposed to take?

Not much. The drums are beginning to beat for war…

Tiffany Dover, the nurse at a Tennessee hospital who fainted after getting her COVID-19 shot last Thursday, disappeared for three days.

Many thought she was dead.

Then on Monday, the hospital released a 21-second video of her back at work.

Except, she seems to have undergone a bit of a metamorphosis.

Which a sleuth, who’s 

done two years of intense fine art training at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy; followed by three years of working as a professional portrait artist. … Safe to say, I have had an extensive training in morphology[,]

condemns as starring another woman entirely. Far from being a double, her eyes aren’t even the same color. Our Rulers harbor such contempt for us, they no longer worry about credible lies or propaganda.

As our hero asks,

Has she died and her records are purposely being suppressed? Is she in ICU, and a double was used as a placeholder in hopes that she will recover? If she did indeed die, why would they simply not admit it? Do they think people have become so willing to believe the mainstream media assessment of a situation that they’ll deny their own senses and accept this mute and unconvincing look-a-like as evidence?

Well, yes, they do. And they’re largely correct.

So cherish this moment: leftists are almost never right.

“Trump vetoes colossal $740 billion defense bill, breaking with Republican-led Senate,” blares the headline at CNBC.

And not only with Senile Rethugs: he breaks with his predecessors, too. A mere four presidents in the 50+ years of the “must-pass” National Defense Authorization Act courageously refused to sign this legislation that picks Americans’ pockets for “our troops.” (And those four capitulated later. Assuming, that is, that we can trust our source: the Rethugs on the House Armed Services Committee. Which I doubt, given their propaganda in what should be a simple recital of facts: “This is the first time that the Commander-in-Chief will sacrifice national security by vetoing a bill that provides pay and benefits for our troops, as leverage for his larger domestic political agenda.” Hey, with brainwashing this egregious, these politicians oughta be in media. What’s that? Oh, you’re right: they are).

Trump’s action here is truly heroic, as is his explanation of his veto:

“Unfortunately, the Act fails to include critical national security measures, includes provisions that fail to respect our veterans and our military’s history, and contradicts efforts by my administration to put America first in our national security and foreign policy actions,” Trump wrote in a lengthy statement to Congress.

“It is a ‘gift’ to China and Russia…”

Wow. And yet the Dims pretend that most Americans were stupid enough to vote for President-Select Biden. 

Another interesting appearance two nights in a row. Hmm, I wonder if someone is up for a Fox News Contributor job early in 2021?

Pretty gutsy and unexpected whistleblowing by a bureaucrat.

Pathetic that no pastors or members of the clergy thought of this. Instead it was a goofy actor.

President Trump Delivers Remarks on Election Fraud

With Biden’s New Threats, the Russia Discourse is More Reckless and Dangerous Than Ever, by Glenn Greenwald

The U.S. media demands inflammatory claims be accepted with no evidence, while hacking behavior routinely engaged in by the U.S. is depicted as aberrational.

Supporting the trillion dollar “COVID Relief” bill that is apparently about to become law.

If the competition weren’t so stiff, Fauxcahontas would be American politics’ biggest hypocrite. This despot can’t seem to open her mouth without showcasing her double standards (and how she has the gall to show her pale face anywhere after all her lies, I have no idea).

Ergo, when she tweeted that she is “100% onboard with $2000 survival checks for struggling families,” David Mueller responded,

Elizabeth Warren makes [notice he didn’t say “earns”!] $14,700* a month as a Senator. And she wants Americans to get survival checks of $2,000.

Politicians don’t want Americans to prosper. They want us to survive on the government plantation.

*David advises me he erred and it’s actually $14,500.

For a site that publishes so many controversial opinions, it’s rather odd that one of our most controversial topics is Ebenezer Scrooge. Is he a maligned captain of industry or just someone who clings to old myths of homo economicus and anti-consumption crankery?

In this year’s Christmas edition of Radio Rothbard, Tho Bishop and I debate whether or not Scrooge has much to teach us about economics.

In Jeff Thomas’ article on LRC today, Is Collectivism Inevitable? he discusses a distant relative of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one Clinton Roosevelt, who was the author of Science of Government Founded Upon Natural Law. 

Dr. Emmanuel Josephson, an indefatigable researcher into the arcane hidden dimensions of American history, economics, and politics (and who was a particular favorite of economist/historian Murray N. Rothbard for his utilization of an early primitive version of power elite analysis, e. g., see “Only One Heartbeat Away” in the September 1974 edition of The Libertarian Forum) republished this volume within his own book, Roosevelt’s Communist Manifesto. 

In 1948, the celebrated Dr. Josephson wrote The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt:  A History of the Roosevelt-Delano Dynasty — America’s Royal Family.  Josephson was a great independent researcher and anti-establishment muckraker.  He was a sworn enemy of the Morgans, the Rockefellers, FDR and the New Deal, the Communists, the Nazis, the Socialists, the Fascists, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Fed. He traced the origins of what Rothbard later dubbed “the welfare-warfare state” to Bismarck.

We are all familiar with the wonderful descriptive term, “the welfare-warfare state.” Ron Paul frequently uses it, as does Lew Rockwell, the late Justin Raimondo, Tom Woods, and myself. Murray N. Rothbard coined it in his brilliant essay, “The Great Society: A Libertarian Critique,” in Marvin E. Gettleman & David Mermelstein, ed., The Great Society Reader: The Failure of American Liberalism, 1967. This is one of three crucial articles by Rothbard which defines and outlines this important concept describing our society today and how it became that way. The other two articles are: “Origins of the Welfare State in America,” and “World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals.” 

The concept has its origin with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who united Germany under his doctrine of “Blood and Iron.” Bismarck, in creating the ideological justification for what became “the welfare-warfare state,” approached the revolutionary Karl Marx to edit one of Germany’s leading publications. Marx refused. But the important thing is that Bismarck felt that the pliable Marx was approachable and capable of being co-opted and compromised. This has not gone unnoticed by history.

Bismarxism! I always loved that wonderful connotative term since first encountering it decades ago in  Josephson’s The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt: A History of the Roosevelt-Delano Dynasty — America’s Royal Family, where he provided a rather comprehensive yet not scholarly rigorous outline of the genealogy of the concept. Also check out this unusual source for the idea. Michail Bakunin, the Russian anarcho-communist and great rival of Marx in the International saw this ideological confluence and connection and described it here. Check out this prophetic passage:

But in the People’s State of Marx, there will be, we are told, no privileged class at all. All will be equal, not only from the juridical and political point of view, but from the economic point of view. At least that is what is promised, though I doubt very much, considering the manner in which it is being tackled and the course it is desired to follow, whether that promise could ever be kept. There will therefore be no longer any privileged class, but there will be a government, and, note this well, an extremely complex government, which will not content itself with governing and administering the masses politically, as all governments do to-day, but which will also administer them economically, concentrating in its own hands the production and the just division of wealth, the cultivation of land, the establishment and development of factories, the organization and direction of commerce, finally the application of capital to production by the only banker, the State. All that will demand an immense knowledge and many “heads overflowing with brains” in this government. It will be the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and pretended scientists and scholars, and the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the name of knowledge and an immense ignorant majority. And then, woe betide the mass of ignorant ones!

Because of the tremendous number of key American intellectuals who studied in Germany to gain their doctorate degrees during the time of Bismarck, and who returned emboldened and willing to use the state to transform society, the Progressive Era was born. Intellectuals and politicians were drawn to Progressivism by the same elitist positivism that drew them to other “social control” rationalizations; commitment to the explanatory power of scientific social inquiry to get at the root causes of social and economic problems; the legitimacy of coercive social control, deriving from a holist conception of society as prior to and greater than the sum of its constituent individuals; and the efficacy of elitist social control via expert management of the state apparatus.

Given the “mass hysteria, mask hysteria,” as Alan Cassidy puts it, stealing our freedom, I suppose we should have expected our Marxist enemies to cancel Christmas. Whether it’s church services and pageants (Yo, Parson Goat: how could you quash the children’s Christmas program? Our Savior loves little kids, and yet you robbed them—and their proud parents—of this year’s celebration? Everlasting shame on you, Wretch), caroling, Christmas dinner with the extended family, or public concerts of the season’s magnificent music (Messiah, anyone?), Our Rulers have either prohibited these treasures outright or so terrified the sheeple that they dare not attend. We need a Christmas Truce a la the one from the First World War, a day in which the corporate media silences its propaganda, serfs remove their masks (maybe after that sample of fresh air, they’ll ditch their diapers for good!), and snitches and statists repent of their wickedness. 

Alas, no truce appears in the offing. The battle roars roundabout, with serfs ostentatiously pledging their obedience to the State and its “Great Reset,” i.e., their own enslavement, via “face coverings.”

Forthwith, reports from the patriots fighting this evil and its one-piece uniform. (more…)

In this video we will discuss Ivermectin prophylaxis in preventing COVID-19 infection. We will do an overview of the evidence to date on this regimen in preventing COVID-19 infection. We will discuss a study out of Egypt that looked at preventing COVID-19 in close family contacts demonstrating significant efficacy. We will then discuss the IVERCAR Trial that used Ivermectin and Iota Carrageenan in preventing COVID-19 in healthcare personnel, also demonstrating efficacy. We will compile these two studies and summarize their outcomes! Check out the video for the details!

SHAREABLE PLAYLIST WITH ALL OF OUR IVERMECTIN VIDEOS TO DATE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

WhiteBoard Style discussion on a new Perspective and Review published exploring another possible pathway in which SARS-CoV-2 may be leading to micro and macrothrombi; through the spike proteins interaction with the CD147 receptor on red blood cells, platelets, endothelial cells, and more. It is postulated that this leads to the aggregation and subsequent obstruction of blood vessels. Interestingly, this author proposes that maybe it is Ivermectin’s inhibition of this interaction between the spike protein and CD147 receptor that leads to its potential efficacy! Could this be another reason we have seen data supporting the efficacy of Ivermectin for COVID-19? Check out the video to find out more! To be clear, this video is based on a Perspective paper, which is strictly hypothetical! This is not a study that is coming up with an objective conclusion!

SHAREABLE PLAYLIST WITH ALL OF OUR IVERMECTIN VIDEOS TO DATE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

Link to article: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c…

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But Michiganders are taking it back, with a parade, live nativity, Santa and elves, and caroling this afternoon, at the State Capitol, from 4pm-7pm.

Please God, it won’t be a silent night in the little town of Lansing!

I think I like this vaccine wokeness. In fact, as a caucasian male, not only will I never get in line for it, just completely forget about me as payment for a “privilege tax.” Thanks.

Will Trump’s day in Congress go any better than his non-days in courts? I wouldn’t put serious money on it.