Effen Cooper

Twitter scroller. Living the Objectivist life.

[Effen Cooper @EffenCooper]

@lectroidjohn @Rothmus I’m sure you’re a beacon of morality and generosity with wealth created by others.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Man was trading long before he was civilized. He traded stones, food, labor, and favors before he had written a single law.

But the notion that a man may peacefully keep what he has honestly acquired is a comparatively rare and delicate achievement. For most of history, property consisted of whatever the king, warlord, or mob had not yet decided to take.

It is therefore curious to observe modern men, enjoying unprecedented prosperity under secure property rights, laboring diligently to convince themselves that such rights are an injustice and ought once again to depend upon political permission.

[Effen Cooper @EffenCooper]

@iamdylanjenkins @nypost Not true. Islam is the most evil, in its own tier. Then Catholicism (I am ex-Catholic, fwiw), and then the other Christian faiths.

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

Americans should not reduce the Islamic threat in America to terrorism. It is a fatal mistake to become concerned about Islam only when there is a terrorist attack.

First, Islamic terrorism has been rebranded in America to the point that it is no longer even recognized as Islamic. It is placed in the same category of "terrorism" as drug cartels or the KKK.

Then came a second rebranding after October 7, portraying it as "resistance to occupation" or a "response to imperialism."

If terrorism is the only aspect of Islam that concerns you, then you will completely miss the broader nature of the Islamic threat in America.

The Islamic threat is not primarily about violence. It is about sovereignty, individual liberties, and the gradual weakening of the liberal democratic order that built the West.

Wherever Islamic movements gain influence, they seek to impose blasphemy norms under different banners, such as "fighting hate speech," "combating incitement to violence," or "fighting racism."

These restrictions, along with the accommodations they demand from the host society, gradually become the norm, while equal application of the law becomes the exception. This, in turn, opens the door for other groups to seek the same special privileges.

Self-censorship is another consequence. Laws may remain unchanged on paper, but people begin censoring themselves out of fear or social pressure. Over time, this culture of self-censorship spreads beyond Islam. Like a contagious disease, it expands into other areas of public life.

National sovereignty is another concern. As more Muslim politicians who prioritize Islamic causes gain influence, national sovereignty get weakened through foreign policy and national security decisions that advance those causes rather than the interests of the nation they serve.

Excellence also suffers. Islam, as a fear-based system, cultivates a mentality that seeks to meet the minimum required rather than striving for the maximum possible. That mindset ultimately weakens innovation, ambition, and excellence within society.

These are only a few examples of the much broader challenges that Islam can pose to a liberal democratic society.

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

Muhammad canonized his culture. The tribal raid became jihad. The tribal code became Sharia. Tribal loyalty became submission, the literal meaning of the word Islam.

And the tribal chieftain’s psychology, jealous of rivals, generous to the loyal, merciless to the disloyal, and above all incapable of absorbing an insult, was projected onto the heavens and named Allah.

Men everywhere create gods in their own image; the men of Muhammad's time and place created a god who, like them, would rather kill than be laughed at.

Other civilizations outgrew their tribal deities, Islam sealed the tribal moment inside a book declared perfect and eternal, and shipped the seventh century, intact and unrevisable, into every century that followed, including ours.

When a mob in a modern capital demands blood over a cartoon, you are watching ancient Arabia, cryogenically preserved in scripture, thawed out on a twenty-first-century street.

The link to my latest article in the comments

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

The West’s most powerful weapon against Islamic supremacism is not a missile or a ban.

It is the cartoon. The stand-up comedy. The scholarly dissection of the Quran’s borrowings and contradictions.

The film about Muhammad’s marriages that treats him with exactly the reverence Hollywood showed Jesus, which is to say, none.

The university course that reads the hadith the way it reads Homer. Criticism, satire, and ridicule, applied to Allah, Muhammad, the Quran, the companions, and the conquests, industrially and without embarrassment, protected by the full force of Western law and celebrated by Western culture, this is the policy.

Read the full piece- the link in the comments.

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

This is Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who spent 8 years on death row after being accused of “blasphemy” for drinking water from a Muslim’s cup.

Asia was working in the fields with her Muslim coworkers. She got thirsty and went to fetch water from the well, where she took a drink with an old metal cup she had found. This is all it took.

Christians are considered dirty and impure in Islam, and she was accused of attempting to contaminate the Muslims’ water just by drinking from their cup. She was sentenced to death by hanging.

The governor of her province voiced opposition to the verdict and was assassinated by his own bodyguard.

When she was finally acquitted in 2018 due to international pressure, tens of thousands of Muslims rioted, demanding her immediate execution.

A local poll found that 10 MILLION Pakistanis would personally kill her if given the chance. Just for drinking water from a cup.

Her lawyer had to flee the country. And after months in hiding, she was finally able to escape Pakistan and received asylum in Canada.

This is Sharia-ruled Pakistan, where non-Muslims live under the constant threat of death. The more I learn about this country, the more it just feels like ISIS with a formal government.

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

BREAKING: In an unprecedented move, the UN has finally admitted that Hamas is blocking aid into Gaza.

They describe a system of arresting drivers, intimidating and threatening aid workers, and limiting aid.

Israel has been vindicated once again.

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

For over two years, we told you: Hamas used hospitals for military purposes. The dead “journalists” were combatants. Hamas used child soldiers. That aid was being diverted by Hamas. Tens of thousands of the dead and wounded in Gaza were combatants. Hamas used human shields.

And so many other things, all of which are now proven as incontrovertibly true.

Yet, not a whisper to set the story straight from the global media who pushed the genocide and war crimes lies since 7th October.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

But don't you understand?

There was a way. There was always a way.

We had it within our grasp, because we had already grasped it. The childhoods that you and your daughter had were available because you and your daughter had them.

All that the Boomers, and their parents, the eldest of the post WW2 generations, had to do was...

Nothing.

Just live in the paradise that their ancestors won for them, and make the minimum, the bare minimum, of effort that would have been required to actually sustain it.

That's all.

Just keep things the way they were.

But they couldn't handle that. Their fathers and grandfathers, the heroes that won WW2, made them jealous.

They wanted to be heroes, too.

So, for the sake of their own egos, they had to become Social Justice Warriors. They had to be Champions of Progress and Change.

They had to see the world they inherited as a pile of problems to be solved, rather than a pile of solutions to be cherished and preserved.

So they could feel like they were doing something important.

Almost all of the elder generations, even the ones who call themselves conservative and vote republican, are, in truth, socialist liberal progressives. Because they looked at paradise, and wanted to fix it instead of protect it.

That's why the "republican" option was Reagan, the gun-ban guy, the social-welfare guy, the kiss-up-to-the-commies guy, the amnesty-for-foreign-invaders guy.

Reagan, the Hollywood liberal, the Obama of the 80s, instead of Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, and Pat Buchanan.

Teens can't have a summer job because elders had to be Third-World Compassion Heroes, and give us Hart-Cellar and eleventy-billion barbarians who don't care about civilization, but will work cheap.

Teens can't have a car because elders had to be Climate Emergency Heroes and give us emissions control laws and Cash for Clunkers.

Teens can't have safe schools to learn at, because elders had to Anti-Racist Heroes and made it illegal to exclude violent thugs from our school districts. Just because those thugs generally come color-coded for your convenience.

Teens can't have safe public spaces to hang out in, because elders had to be Compassion for the Underclass Heroes, and release violent savages into society, again and again, with a lecture and a slap on the wrist.

Teens can't have a healthy economy to inherit, because elders had to be Equality Heroes and make sure every corporation that actually did anything useful was punished for not being Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive enough to suit the ideal universe that exists only in their heads.

Teens can't have dates, because elders had to be Anti-Sexist Heroes, and let feminists spend forty years diminishing the social value of men, until you had to a be a billionaire rockstar adventurer to avoid being an unsexy loser by default.

Teens can't even be fit, healthy, and pretty, because elders had to be Sex Equality Heroes, and move women into the corporate workforce in droves, leaving children to be fed by corporate industrial slop factories.

Teens can't have sane, well-adjusted, unspoiled girlfriends and wives, because elders had to be Champions of Sexual Freedom, and normalize unlimited female promiscuity, all in exchange for the largely unfulfilled promise of a little unshaven free-love yeti snatch.

And worst, of all, the crowning irony, the final dead hamster in the water pipe, is that all of this would be fixable, perhaps in three to five election cycles...

Except.

Except the elders don't understand that any of this of this is happening.

They haven't had a child in the household since 1997. They haven't looked for an entry-level job since 1973. They haven't gone on a date since 1981. They haven't been laid off... ever.

They are safe with their paid-off houses and their investments and their pensions from 45 years at the same company and their social security and their medical plans.

It's affecting the youngest generations first and worst. While the elders sit on their cruise ship, surveying the short with binoculars, wondering who all these ragged distressed looking people standing on the shore are.

And why they are holding signs that say "HELP", "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT", and "YOU STOLE THE LIFE I WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE".

Then they shrug, conclude that these must be the whiny losers, and everyone further inland is probably just fine, and everything is fine, because they fixed everything and they are all heroes, and the Summer of Love was the end of the Problematic Era of History and the beginning of the Great Enlightenment.

And when I am 74 years old, and the elders are all safely tucked into their cemetery plots, I will be torn apart by an angry mob for having white hair, and therefore being "one of them".

And the mob will not care that I didn't get to cast a vote until 1992, for the Man Who Predicted All Of This.

He called it the "giant sucking sound".

Which is apt because it's why everything sucks now.

[Effen Cooper @EffenCooper]

@shawnAH20 @DanHaymore @MHTruthUltra Because one leads to investment in innovation and the other leads to trains to nowhere

[Effen Cooper @EffenCooper]

@ToadWorld100 @RockChartrand Not true

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

It's because of the basic psychologies of fascism and communism.

Fascism is a disgust spiral, whose basic commandment is "thou shalt not be worse than me." It starts out with anti-smoking campaigns and burning child pornography, and ends up disappearing anyone who doesn't mow his lawn.

Communism is an envy spiral, whose basic commandment is "thou shalt not be better than me." It starts out targeting captains of industry and genius intellectuals, and ends up disappearing anyone who wears glasses, which create the suspicion that he might have read a book once.

This is why people with communist psychology (the left) equate clean streets with fascism.

Leftists can't keep their streets clean and their lawns mowed, but instead of the psychologically healthy response of being slightly embarrassed and resolving to do better, they decide that anyone in a nice neighborhood is a fascist who needs to be exposed and purged.

You, oh right-wing conservative, watching this video clip, think that leftists are accidentally pointing out the benefits of fascism.... i.e. that people can have nice things.

But if you understood communist psychology, really understood it, you would realize that the mowed lawns, clean streets, and neatly-groomed people are actually another accusation.

Not only are they racists, complains the narrative, they have nicer houses and neighborhoods than you. How dare they?

How dare they not be surrounded by trash and graffiti?

How dare they not be awoken at 3 AM by their drunk neighbors blasting loud music?

Who do they think they are, some sort of superior race?

You don't notice that accusation because you are not the target audience. The target audience is people prone to destructive envy, and the goal is to recruit them to communism.

They don't care if you think this points out the benefits of fascism, or even just the benefits of racism. Because you are not prone to destructive envy, so they can never recruit you anyway.

And it makes no difference if you point out that the end result of this is that every neighborhood is covered in trash and graffiti.

That's what commies want.

Why? Because their neighborhoods are always going to be messed up no matter what ideology is in control. Fascism, communism, liberalism, objectivism, doesn't matter. They are not disciplined enough to do battle with entropy through sustained effort, and not creative or intelligent enough to do battle with entropy through innovation.

But if their house is inevitably going to be surrounded by mountains of trash, just because of who they are, then the greatest comfort they can aspire to is a world where your house is surrounded by trash, too.

This is why communism ruins everything, and why communists cannot be dissuaded when you point this out. Ruining everything for anyone who's better off is what they want.

The trick is to get them to realize that communism allows anyone who is even worse off than they to ruin whatever they still have. Which isn't easy, because if they were smart enough to easily understand this, they wouldn't be surrounded by trash in the first place.

[Handre @Handre]

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of colonists decided that a distant king had no business taxing their tea, their paper, or their labor. They were right. Read the Declaration again and notice what it actually protests: not vague injustice, but specific violations. Taxation without consent. Standing armies in peacetime. Trade cut off by decree. These were economic grievances, and the men who signed the document understood that liberty and property are the same thing viewed from two angles.

You have inherited that idea, though you would hardly know it from your tax code.

Consider what freedom bought. In 1776 the average person lived close to subsistence, as every human had since the Pharaohs. Then free markets, sound money, and secure property did their work, and real income exploded. Millions of people traded voluntarily and kept what they earned, without central planning.

The men in Philadelphia never authorized a central bank that would shave 96 percent off the dollar's value since 1913. They never voted you a bureaucracy that spends four dollars for every three it collects. Jefferson warned you about this exact outcome in his letters, and you filed the warning away.

Freedom is the concrete right to trade, save, build, and refuse. Guard the specifics and the abstractions take care of themselves.

[James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames]

You've probably heard this before, but it's always worth repeating. Something extremely cool about the "Star-spangled Banner," the American national anthem, is that it asks a question, and it's the question at the heart of everything in the American worldview.

"Oh, say, can you see
By the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight's last gleaming..."

So the anthem begins with a question and a scene. One man, a patriot, is asking another man, another patriot, "can you see it?" at sunrise after a long, dangerous night.

The "it" in question is going to be revealed to be the flag, our "star-spangled banner," which they had last fully recognized and honored as the sun set, daylight failed, and night crept over them the evening before.

Can you see it? Say! Can you see it?!

IS IT STILL THERE?!

"Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched
Were so gallantly streaming..."

Here we find that the "it" is in fact the flag, our star-spangled banner, and we learn why the question is being asked.

The flag is described as having flown and streamed gallantly over ramparts of war through a perilous fight. All could have been lost. The flag, and even the fledgling country for which it stands, one nation under God and indivisible.

Say! Can you see it? Now that the light is back?

IS IT STILL THERE?!

"--And the rockets' red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there!--"

They could see it through the battle in the light of the rockets and bombs that threatened them, here and there in quick glimpses. But it was still there throughout! But now? At dawn?

Say! Can you see?

IS IT STILL THERE?!

"Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free
And the home of the brave?"

The urgency is palpable with every refrain. They have to know. It's the first thing they must know as the sun begins to light the sky, even before it rises.

IS IT STILL THERE?!

Say! Say!! Can you see? Can you see it?!

At the heart of every American beats the fundamental truth and reality that what we have here is precious, that it's worth fighting for, to the death if necessary, and that it's fragile. That at any moment it can be lost. That we have to remember to look for it because last night might have been the night in which it failed.

Every day, every year, every generation.

The American fight for freedom, to live in self-governance within ordered liberty, is ongoing and never-ending. The price of the land of the free is that it must be the home of the brave. We have to defend it, defend it, and defend it again, against all enemies foreign and domestic, because what we have is amazing, rare, fragile, and worth every cent of treasure, every drop of blood, and every risk to our sacred honor to protect it.

Our anthem is not a declaration. It is not a proclamation. It is not a statement.

It is a question.

Every time we sing our wholly unique national anthem, we as American ask the question again. IS IT STILL THERE?! Are we still America? Does that star-spangled banner yet wave?

Because it's a question, the answer is not known. It is not a guarantee. It cannot be taken for granted and isn't. And what an honor to ask and take up our part in the story, in the American Experiment, in the greatest country the world has ever known.

For tonight, the last night of our first 250 years, as the sun gave way to twilight's last gleaming and darkness overtook our land once again, the answer was still yes. We can see it even tonight in the red glare of rockets, with small bombs bursting in air, fill the sky with the noble tribute of fireworks once again.

And we all ask ourselves, will it still be flying at dawn?

This is what it means to be an American.

Happy 250th, America! Now for many happy returns!
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[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

Islam is not a religion, Islam has a religion.

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

The majority of Muslims are not jihadi Salafists, but the majority of Muslims do not theologically disagree with jihadi Salafism.

The difference between "normal" Muslims and the jihadists is not a different interpretation of the faith.

Both sanctify the same man and the same book.

The difference is in the level of commitment, not in the underlying belief.

Think of it by analogy.

The overwhelming bulk of active missionary conversion in Christianity is done by one branch, evangelical, born-again Christianity, with Catholicism as the next largest share.

But while not every Christian or Catholic is a missionary, nearly all of them regard proselytization as an essential part of the faith.

They don't devote their own lives to the mission, yet they approve of it, and they support it wherever they can.

Jihad functions in Islam the way the Great Commission functions in Christianity.

Most believers won't carry it out personally, but they affirm it, they won't condemn it, and the doctrine itself sits at the center of the religion, not the fringe.

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

I actually agree with this imam. The sharia penal code, the hudud, is barely 1% of Islamic sharia, and it isn’t even enforced in most Islamic countries.

So the fear that Muslims are coming to impose amputations and stonings on America is overblown.

But here is what the imam won’t tell you.

Sharia is not mainly about the penal code, and the threat it poses to the West was never primarily violence or terrorism.

The real danger is the erasure of individual liberty and religious freedom in any region that becomes heavily Muslim, because sharia governs the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, and it enforces blasphemy norms either by law, as in Islamic states, or by fear and self-censorship everywhere else.

By that measure, every single Islamic country on earth applies sharia. Not one of them permits full freedom of speech.

Not one of them grants non-Muslims the same rights as Muslims.

The penal code is the part they’ll debate with you. The erasure of your freedoms is the part they won’t.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

"We have socialism already...the fire stations we call upon"

Sure, if we ignore the fire engines, PPE, hoses, gated wyes, tankers, retardant, copters, chainsaws, and everything they use to save lives are created by private industry and only made possible through capitalist private sector supply chains.

Let's not forget, while the rest of the Palisades burned to the ground because our socialist government leaders slashed the LAFD budget by $17M, Rick Caruso hired private firefighters to successfully save all of his assets in the Village.

Fire departments aren't socialist...they operate in a MIXED ECONOMY. This is basic economics, folks. I can't tell if these socialists are filthy liars, or they're really just this stupid. Maybe it's both?