Perhaps.
Always about ideology. Despots are always and everywhere authoritarians and collectivists, but if you scratch the surface, their socialist origins will be evident. I challenge you to find a single libertarian despot.
A silly statement. Think:
Franco.
Pinochet.
The bewildering long list of South American dictators whose names Americans never bother to learn, who spent their time hunting down communists and socialists.
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The word ‘libertarian’ as you use it only came into being in the 1960s. Before that the word has had several other meanings since the 1700s, many mutually contradictory to each other. So to drag the term into the conversation here is useless.
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kind of like a -
Jumbo Shrimp
Honest Politician
gentle torturer
or a constructive participant troll
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Authoritarians? 
Collectivists?
You have to scratch around a bit yourself to find the socialist under the surface.
We have them here. But they are collectivists, sadly.
Also sadly, we had to change and call them ‘shrimps’ so yanks would understand we were talking about what we call prawns. Here’s Hoges inviting you to visit.
Of course you evade the whole point. Nasty dictators are never champions of individual liberty which is what libertarians say … and what I said.
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I found this the other day - Remarkable how both sides, even the extremes, can read this and agree………
For a small amount of perspective during these crazy times, imagine you were an American born in 1900. When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.
When you’re 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet.
When you’re 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million. At 52, the Korean War starts and five million perish.
At 64 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn’t end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict. Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening.
As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A kid in 1985 didn’t think their 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents (and now great grandparents) survived through everything listed above.
Perspective is an amazing art. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Let’s be smart, help each other out, and we will get through all of this. In the history of the world, there has never been a storm that lasted. This too, shall pass.
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great piece -
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Yesterday’s email is nautical related, the burning of Portland Maine, then called Falmouth, Massachusetts, 250 years ago today.
On the morning of October 18, 1775, a small fleet of Royal Navy vessels opened fire on the seaport town that is now known as Portland, Maine. Under the direction of Captain Henry Mowat, the ships fired incendiary shot into the trading port’s wooden buildings, which caught fire. A landing party followed to complete the destruction of 400 buildings in the town. By the time the sun went down, almost all of the town was smouldering ruins.
The burning of the town then known as Falmouth, Massachusetts—not the same town as today’s Falmouth, Maine, or Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod—was retaliation for raids local mariners had made against British ships along the coast of New England. Since 1765, with the arrival of news of the Stamp Act to raise revenue to pay for the French and Indian War, residents of Falmouth had joined other colonists in protesting British policies.
In spring 1775, the colonies agreed to boycott British goods in order to pressure Parliament into addressing their grievances. In March a shipload of sails, rope, and rigging arrived in Falmouth for a loyalist shipbuilder. Patriots demanded the ship carrying the supplies leave port, but they agreed to let it undergo repairs before heading back across the Atlantic Ocean. While shipbuilders worked on the vessel, the British man-of-war Canceaux arrived from Boston under the command of Captain Henry Mowat. Under the Canceaux’s protection, the loyalist unloaded the ship’s cargo.
While the Canceaux lay at anchor, news arrived of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, where British regulars had opened fire on the colony’s militiamen. When they heard of the battles, militia from Brunswick, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Falmouth, decided to capture the Canceaux . Led by tavern owner Samuel Thompson, they traveled to Falmouth in small boats in May and captured Mowat while he was on shore. The sailors on the Canceaux threatened to shell the town if the militia didn’t release Mowat. Eventually, the militiamen released him but refused to turn Thompson over for punishment, and locals forced the Canceaux to leave the harbor.
In June, when news of the Brunswick militia’s escapade reached militiamen in Machias, near the Canadian border, they decided to capture the Margaretta , a British armed schooner that was protecting two merchant ships carrying supplies to the troops hunkered down in Boston after the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
Heartened by these successes, during the summer of 1775, American privateers raided British ships. Coming after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, their harassment helped to convince the king’s Cabinet that they must use military and naval force to put down the rebellion in the colonies.
On October 6, 1775, Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves, who commanded the British North Atlantic fleet, decided he would regain control of the coastal townspeople by terrorizing them. He ordered Captain Mowat to retaliate against the colonists, directing him to take four ships and “lay waste burn and destroy such Seaport Towns as are accessible to his Majesty’s Ships.” “My Design is to chastize Marblehead, Salem, Newbury Port, Cape Anne Harbour, Portsmouth, Ipswich, Saco, Falmouth in Casco Bay, and particularly Mechias where the Margueritta was taken,” Graves wrote. “You are to go to all or to as many of the above named Places as you can, and make the most vigorous Efforts to burn the Towns, and destroy the Shipping in the Harbours.”
Mowat decided against attacking the towns near Boston, recognizing that they were close enough together to mount a spirited defense. Instead, he headed for Falmouth, dropping anchor there on October 16. The next day, Mowat accused the townspeople of “the most unpardonable Rebellion” and informed them that he had “orders to execute a just Punishment on the Town of Falmouth.” He warned them “to remove without delay the Human Species out of the said town” and gave them two hours to clear out.
The townspeople were shocked. An eyewitness recalled that a committee of three men asked Mowat what was going on, and he answered “that his Orders were to set fire on all the Sea Port Towns between Boston and Halifax & that he expected New York was then Burnt to Ashes.” The committee negotiated to put off the attack for the night, but they would not agree to Mowat’s promise to spare the town if they would relinquish all their weapons and hand over “Four Gentlemen of the Town as Hostages.”
Throughout the night, the townspeople hurried to save their possessions and move out of danger.
The next morning was clear and calm, and at 9:40 the Canceaux and the other ships opened fire. “In a few minutes the whole town was involved in smoak [sic] and combustion,” an eyewitness recalled. “The crackling of the flames, the falling of the houses, the bursting of the shells, the heavy thunder of the cannon, threw the elements into frightful noise and commotion, and occasioned the very foundations of surrounding nature to quake and tremble.” When a lack of wind kept the fires contained, Mowat sent sailors ashore to spread them.
Although Admiral Graves was pleased with Mowat’s assault on Falmouth, the attack backfired spectacularly.
Rather than terrorizing the colonists into submission, the burning of Falmouth steeled their resolve. From his position at the head of the brand new Continental Army in Cambridge, Massachusetts, George Washington wrote to revolutionary leader John Hancock that the burning of Falmouth was “an Outrage exceeding in Barbarity & Cruelty every hostile Act practised among civilized Nations.”
Washington noted that Mowat had warned that he would make similar attacks on port towns all along the coastline, prompting the Continental Congress on November 25 to authorize American ships to capture British armed vessels, transports, and supply ships. Meanwhile, the people in the coastal towns fortified their defenses and prepared to fire back at any attacking British ships.
Colonists saw the burning of Falmouth as proof that their government had turned against them, and began to suggest they must declare independence. About a month after Falmouth burned, William Whipple, a prominent resident of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, wrote to a friend that the destruction and threat to visit such ruin on other towns caused “everyone to risque his all in Support of his Liberties & privileges…the unheard of cruelties of the enemy have so effectually unified us that I believe there are not four persons now in Portsmouth who do not [oppose] the Tyranny of Great Britain.”
—
Notes:
Donald A. Yerxa, “The Burning of Falmouth, 1775: A Case Study in British Imperial Pacification,” Maine History 14 , 3 (1975): 119–161, available at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1758&context=mainehistoryjournal
https://navydocs.org/node/13003
https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/899/page/1310/display?page=2
https://www.mainememory.net/record/6777
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0210-0002
Letter of the Reverend Jacob Bailey on the Burning of Falmouth, in Collections of the Maine Historical Society , volume 5, (Portland, 1857), pp. 447–448, available at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Collections_of_the_Maine_Historical_Soci/UgY8AAAAIAAJ
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0210-0001
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"October 23, 2025 (Thursday)
Julia Ainsley and Didi Martinez of NBC News reported today that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s rush to get new recruits onto the street has meant they have pushed into their training program more than 200 people who have disqualifying criminal backgrounds, fail drug testing, or don’t meet the academic or physical requirements.
The budget reconciliation measure the Republicans passed in July—the one they call the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act”—included more than $170 billion over four years for immigration and border security. The law tripled ICE’s annual budget, giving it “more than the annual expenditures on police by state and local governments in all 50 states and the District of Columbia combined,” according to Margy O’Herron of the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy law and policy institute.
Part of that money was to hire about 10,000 deportation officers. As O’Herron notes, a 2017 report by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found that to hire 10,000 officers would require vetting 500,000 applicants. Currently, law enforcement agencies have been having trouble finding enough applicants. O’Herron notes that ICE can bypass the usual requirements for federal employees, but in the past, when the government tried to hire 5,000 Customs and Border Patrol officers quickly, the result was dramatically higher corruption rates, including for bribery by trafficking and smuggling operations.
In August, ICE began to offer a $50,000 signing bonus and got rid of its age limits. To fill the ranks, Ainsley and Martinez note, ICE has already shortened its training program from 13 weeks to 6. They report that nearly half of those dismissed from ICE over the past three months could not pass an open-book exam. Others could not run 1.5 miles in less than 14 minutes, 25 seconds, or do 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups.
Sociologist Ian Carillo called attention to a 2020 article by political scientists Adam Scharpf and Christian Glässel looking into why secret police agents are often “surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect.” By examining the 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina from 1975 to 1983, they discovered that the ranks of secret police are filled by those who perform poorly in merit-based systems. Facing firing for their poor performance, they turn to more burdensome secret police work.
Today Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker established the “Illinois Accountability Commission” to compile evidence against federal agents who have harassed, intimidated, brutalized, and detained American citizens and legal residents in Illinois. “None of this is about crime or safety,” Pritzker said. “If it were, there would be coordination with local law enforcement and judicial warrants…. Under normal circumstances,” he said, “federal agency supervisors and inspectors general would enforce proper legal procedures and protocols and hold accountable those who violate them.” But Trump has fired 17 inspectors general and installed cronies at the Department of Justice, while MAGA congress members refuse to hold hearings or conduct oversight. Administration officials are acting as if they are “immune from investigation or accountability,” Pritzker said “They are not.”
The commission will create an official public record of “[e]very instance of abuse, or law-breaking, or…violations of rights.” While “states have limited abilities against federal immunity,” Pritzker said, “we must remind everyone that…[t]here will come a time where people of good faith are empowered to uphold the law. When the time comes, Illinois will have the testimony and the records needed to pursue justice to its fullest extent.”
Dictators also enforce loyalty by protecting those who have been found guilty of crimes in the nation’s nonpartisan justice system. Last week Trump commuted the sentence of former representative George Santos (R-NY), ending his seven-year sentence for fraud with just three months served and removing his obligation to pay $373,749.97 to the victims of his crimes. Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,600 people, far more than most presidents do in four years.
Those convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol received most of the president’s clemency, but former assistant U.S. attorney Jeffrey Toobin notes in an essay for the New York Times that Trump has been free with pardons or commutations for criminal supporters. Toobin notes Trump’s social media post after commuting Santos’s sentence: “Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”
Today, Trump announced a pardon for Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to money laundering, paid a $50 million fine, and served nearly four months in prison. His company paid a $4.3 billion penalty. Gram Slattery and Chris Prentice of Reuters note that in May, Binance accepted the stablecoin USD1, put out by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture, as payment for an investment in Binance made by an investment firm from Abu Dhabi. The deal enables World Liberty Financial to keep any profits from the $2 billion investment, likely worth tens of millions of dollars a year, and it significantly boosted the venture.
Trump’s full and unconditional pardon enables Zhao to return to the business. On social media, Zhao posted that he was “deeply grateful for today’s pardon and to President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice.” He added: “Will do everything we can to help make America the Capital of Crypto.”
This afternoon, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Trump about the pardon and whether it had anything to do with Zhao’s involvement in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture.
“Which one? Who is that?.. The recent one? Yes, the? I believe we’re talking about the same person because I do pardon a lot of people. I don’t know, he was recommended by a lot of people. A lot of people say that—are you talking about the crypto person?—A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything. He served four months in jail, and they say that he was not guilty of anything, that what he did, well, you don’t know much about crypto. You know nothing about, you know nothing about nothing. You’re fake news. But let me just tell you that he was somebody that, as I was told, I don’t know him, I don’t believe I’ve ever met him. But I’ve been told a lot of support. He had a lot of support, and they said that what he did is not even a crime. It wasn’t a crime, that he was persecuted by the Biden administration, uh, and so, I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.”
The White House today released a list of those donating to Trump’s ballroom that he intends will replace the now-demolished East Wing of the White House. The list includes the Altria Group Inc., Amazon, Apple, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Caterpillar Inc., Coinbase, Comcast Corporation, J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul, Hard Rock International, Google, HP Inc., Lockheed Martin, Meta Platforms, Micron Technology, Microsoft, NextEra Energy Inc., Palantir Technologies Inc., Ripple, Reynolds American, T-Mobile, Tether America, Union Pacific Railroad, Adelson Family Foundation, Stefan E. Brodie, Betty Wold Johnson Foundation, Charles and Marissa Cascarilla, Edward and Shari Glazer, Harold Hamm, Benjamin Leon Jr., The Lutnick Family, The Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation, Stephen A. Schwarzman, Konstantin Sokolov, Kelly Loeffler and Jeff Sprecher, Paolo Tiramani, Cameron Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss.
Economist Robert Reich notes that the list includes “Google, whose CEO thanked Trump for [the] ‘resolution’ of an antitrust case[;] Palantir, which has lucrative contracts with ICE[; and] Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, who would profit from Trump’s regulatory rollbacks for private equity.” Reich commented: “Pay-to-play.”
By definition, those who could not make it in a merit-based system and who are dependent on the good will of an authoritarian leader have neither the skill nor the priorities to deliver good government for the country.
Today economist Paul Krugman noted that the administration’s $20 billion gambit to save Trump ally Javier Milei’s government in Argentina, with another $20 billion in the works, is a visceral wake-up call for parts of rural America in a way that cuts to social welfare programs have not been, despite the fact that rural areas depend on those programs more than urban areas do. Now Trump is talking about importing beef from Argentina. Farmers were already upset that Trump’s tariff war ended Chinese imports of U.S. soybeans; now ranchers are outraged at Trump’s focus on Argentina rather than on Americans.
Trump responded by insulting them: “The Cattle Ranchers, who I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States, including a 50% Tariff on Brazil. If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years—Terrible! It would be nice if they would understand that….”
But someone in the White House must have paid attention to yesterday’s news that a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PPRI), a nonpartisan independent research organization, found that 56% of Americans agree that “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy,” while only 41% see him as “a strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness.”
Today, after threats to send what he called a “surge”—a military term—of agents to San Francisco, Trump announced he had changed his mind. Trump attributed his change of course to “friends of mine who live in the area.”
On November 4, 2025, California voters will go to the polls to vote on Proposition 50, which would redraw the state’s congressional map to create more Democratic-dominated districts until 2030 in response to Texas’s new Republican-skewed maps.
ICE agents storming the streets of San Francisco two weeks before the vote would likely have added votes in favor of Prop 50.”
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