LR Podcast S2, E31: Omicron: Here we go again.

If the short, yet well-chronicled history of the COVID pandemic teaches us anything, is that news of the Omicron variant will be exploited as a reason to administer (read sell) more vaccine doses. It will be used as justification for all sorts of limits to our freedoms, even as the Western world grows sick, not from COVID, but of things like vaccine mandates and COVID apartheid.

Why I’m optimistic about the COVID crisis ending this year.

At that point, when everyone who wanted the vaccine has gotten one and someone in authority suggests that restrictions should remain in place, or that you should continue to wear a mask, the question we should all be prepared to ask them is: “Who would I be doing it for?”

LR Podcast #32: Who ‘topia? U-topia!

St. Thomas Moore had his Utopia, Marx and Engels had their Communist Manifesto. Though the latter is better known for the destructive nature of its implementation in this and the last century, it has a commonality with the other books mentioned: the necessity of authoritarianism. It is this need for an authoritarian form of government and a ruling class, either explicit as in the Republic or implicit as with Marx and Engels that binds most, if not all Utopian systems with each other.