William James, a remarkably thoughtful psychologist and philosopher, makes an intriguing suggestion about humanity’s attraction to the idea of God. The suggestion occurs in the course of a discussion of what James calls our “social selves.” By “social self,” James means the recognition we get from other people. We all value our social selves, James tell…
This strikes us as more than a bit off:
The leader of a flag campaign group has been arrested on suspicion of causing religiously and racially aggravated harassment.
Ryan Bridge is the co-founder of Raise the Colours, which has put up hundreds of union and Saint George flags across England and attracted criticism for spreading anti-immigrant rhetoric. He was arrested on Tuesday and released on police bail the following day.
Now, yes, we’re aware that we British don’t, traditionally, do this. As with not bothering to put the name of the country on the stamps, it’s every J Foreigner that has to in order to distinguish themselves from us. The proper function of the Union Jack is to point out to some place where Foreign, J, resides that the Navy - just Royal, thanks, The, no need to define further - has arrived and wishes to have a chat. To put it in the terms of 1066 and all that.
And yet:
In a video posted on Facebook after his release, Bridge said: “I’ve just been let out – 18-and-a-half hours for a public order section 5 causing people alarm and distress. The world’s gone mad.
A person is guilty of an offence if he—
(a)uses threatening [or abusive] words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b)displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening [or abusive],
within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.
Which is to very much miss the point. It’s the very speech no one wishes to hear that has to be protected:
As the academic Adam Tomkins, who is the John Millar Professor of Public Law at the University of Glasgow, has highlighted - there are a number of cases in the last 12 months that demonstrate how poorly drafted laws and being poorly enforced. Whilst the cases of Allison Pearson, Lucy Connolly, Graham Lineham, and Palestine Action all differ, each highlights the same problem: we have failed to uphold freedom of speech, even for those whose speech we may find offensive, repugnant, or, to us, dangerous. There should be no right to protect us from offence, yet, the law thinks otherwise.
There are many Americans who - quite righteously - find the burning of that nation’s flag to be offensive, even repugnant. Yet the Supreme Court has insisted that people are indeed free to do so. Because it’s precisely the speech which people find offensive, repugnant, that must be protected. For there’s no point in mithers about free speech if it doesn’t include what people don’t want to hear, don’t want to have said.
It’s also possible to be a bit more basic, base even, about this. It’s an offence to fly the flag of the country you’re in. Yer Wha’?
Tim Worstall
From StephanKinsella.com.
On my list of things to write someday is an overview of the social thought of Hoppe, whom I consider to be the preeminent social thinker of our time, along the lines of Oxford University Press’s 100-page “A Very Short Introduction” series (previously called “Past Masters“).1 I may use the term “A Précis” due to my fascination with Louisiana law and French terms and my former law professor Alain Levasseur’s fondness for this term for a concise, student-oriented textbook or summary-style treatise, something shorter and more accessible than a full-scale, comprehensive treatise, or “a student edition of a comprehensive treatise with the same title.”2
In the meantime, the assembled links will have to suffice.
That Germany is not a free country and that free speech is under attack there, as all over the so-called free world, is hardly news. However, there are some peculiarities of Germany illustrated here.
The AFD (Alternative for Germany) election campaign poster from Wilko Möller below reads: We protect your children.
AFD (Alternative for Germany) election campaign poster from Wilko Möller: “We protect your children”
In 2026, a German court ruled that the raised-arm gesture (especially the man’s right arm) visually resembled the banned Hitler salute closely enough to violate a special German law prohibiting the use of symbols of so-called unconstitutional organizations. Möller was fined 11,600 Euros. The verdict is still under appeal.
Incidentally, the same law prohibits the exclamation, in public speeches, of “Alles für Deutschland” (Everything for Germany). AFD politician Björn Höcke was found in violation of the law twice, and fined first 13,000 Euro, and for the second time 19,900 Euro.
There’s a strange contradiction at the center of modern tax rhetoric.
We’re told that wealthy individuals are greedy hoarders. That they care about nothing but profit. That every decision they make is driven by maximizing their own financial gain.
And then, in the very next breath, we’re asked to believe something completely different.
That these same people will calmly accept wealth taxes, absorb the cost, and voluntarily sacrifice their profits for the greater good.
No shifting behavior.
No changing strategy.
No passing along costs.
Just quiet compliance.
If you actually believe that wealthy individuals relentlessly pursue profit, then you have to follow that premise to its conclusion.
They will respond.
They will restructure assets.
They will move capital.
They will change how and where they invest.
They will raise prices where possible, cut costs where necessary, and avoid losses wherever they can.
Because that’s exactly what you claim defines them.
You don’t get to describe someone as ruthlessly self-interested and then build policy on the assumption that they’ll behave selflessly.
That contradiction isn’t a small oversight.
It’s the entire argument collapsing in on itself.
And the consequences don’t stay at the top.
When costs are imposed, they don’t disappear. They move.
Into prices.
Into wages.
Into hiring decisions.
Into investment that never happens.
Large firms, with scale and flexibility, can adapt. Smaller firms can’t. That’s how policies sold as targeting the wealthy end up consolidating power in the hands of the largest players.
So the real question isn’t whether the wealthy should “pay more.”
It’s whether you understand how people respond to incentives.
Because if you don’t, you’re not designing policy.
You’re writing fiction.
There’s no such thing as a “little bit” of slavery.
You either own your life, your time, and your labor
or someone else does.
That’s the entire line.
People hear “property rights” and think about land, money, or assets.
That’s backwards.
Property rights start with you.
If you don’t own your own body, your own effort, your own time, then you don’t own anything. You’re just managing what someone else allows you to use.
That’s not a right.
That’s permission.
And permission can be taken away.
Every form of slavery in history follows the same pattern.
Not race.
Not geography.
Not time period.
The same principle:
Some people are denied ownership of themselves.
That’s it.
Once that happens, everything else becomes negotiable. Their labor, their movement, their future.
They become a resource.
You can’t have a system that claims to respect property while denying people ownership of their own lives.
That’s a contradiction.
You can have markets in goods, trade in resources, even wealth creation on paper
but if people themselves are excluded from ownership, you’ve abandoned the principle where it matters most.
Slaves weren’t participants in a free system.
They were explicitly excluded from it.
Slavery has existed everywhere. Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe. It still exists today.
That should tell you something uncomfortable:
Slavery isn’t rare.
It’s the default when rights aren’t protected.
What’s rare is a system that consistently enforces self ownership without exception.
If a human being can be owned, then rights don’t exist.
If rights don’t exist, everything becomes conditional.
And once everything is conditional, power decides.
That’s the entire game.
The only consistent protection against slavery is a system that recognizes and enforces self ownership as a property right.
Not sometimes.
Not for some people.
Not when it’s convenient.
Always.
Because the moment you make exceptions
you’ve already accepted the premise that some people can be treated as property.
And once that premise is accepted
you’re just arguing over who qualifies.
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