I don’t enjoy writing this kind of essay. It is the intellectual equivalent of cleaning a greasy kitchen: necessary, unpleasant, and guaranteed to offend the people who insist the smell is “authentic tradition.” But if we’re going to talk honestly about political extremes, you don’t get to treat one side as a dangerous cult and the other as a quirky hobby. Extremes are not philosophies. They are stress reactions with … Read the rest
Tag: immigration
The Fragile Fiction of Nations and the Fear of Strangers
I have a simple, possibly impolite thesis: the “nation” is a beautiful story we tell to coordinate strangers, and loud nationalism is what people reach for when the story stops paying their bills. Nations are not ancient tribes waking from deep time; they are recent inventions—clever ones—that industrial print, schools, and armies stitched together so we would feel kinship with people we will never meet. That is not an insult; … Read the rest
The Erotic Intelligence of Logic
Rationality, if you ask me, is deeply erotic. Commander Spock, that cool monument of logic, never had to flex muscles or shout in stadiums to attract attention. His power was quieter: the sharp eyebrow, the stillness of someone who has calculated every path through chaos and chosen the least destructive. Rationality, in its true form, is the art of long-term seduction — the kind that promises civilization itself might survive … Read the rest
The Uninvited Owner Comes
By Eric Le Roy
Here in Varna, Bulgaria, the city planners seem to have lost their minds…unless they have something up their sleeves that I don’t know about. Very possible, that. Fun fact: Bulgaria is losing population faster than any other country in Europe, and a 23% drop in population is predicted by 2050.
It’s for the usual reasons: declining birth rates that cannot keep up with … Read the rest
A Modest Proposal for Humanity’s Swift and Dignified End
Content 21+ In his article The More, The Merrier, Eric Le Roy offers us a sweeping, grand, and altogether delightful eulogy for human progress. The gist of it, if I may summarize, is this: humanity is a snarling, territorial beast, doomed to repeat its primal mistakes forever—so much so that any attempt at improvement is as futile as trying to teach calculus to a goldfish. Immigration, in particular, is … Read the rest
