The Not-So-Current Year: 2019 In Review
Though the specific demarcation of the passage from one year into another is a rather arbitrary social construct, it does provide a useful annual period for self-examination and remembrance. Now that 2019 has entered the history books, let us take a look back at a year's worth of essays and review the not-so-current year.
We begin, of course, with last year's article of the same kind. Some articles in this list are sequels to articles in that list. Aside from that, we may move on.
Book reviews have long been a part of my intellectual output, and 2019 was no different. I read and reviewed Bart R. McDonough's Cyber Smart, Ralph Ketcham's The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates, C.A. Bond's Nemesis, and Nancy Isenberg's and Andrew Burstein's The Problem of Democracy.
Nathan Dempsey was going to have a quarterly series of updates on his Liberty Minecraft project, but this project proved abortive, with only one entry.
On Jan. 18, students from the all-male Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky participated in the March for Life in Washington, D.C. Video emerged of an apparent standoff between a Native American elder and one of the students that was misunderstood, leading to intense backlash from Cathedral brahmins and establishment cuckservatives alike. I wrote a list of observations on the event.
When I launched Zeroth Position in January 2016, I wrote an article explaining the name of the site. I decided it was time to explain the pen name Nullus Maximus as well.
In the series “Agreeing With Statists For The Wrong Reasons”, I consider how government policies which seem terrible at face value can be exploited to achieve liberty and/or undermine statist goals. The subjects covered in this series in 2019 included taxing the rich and universal basic income. More episodes will come next year.
My poetic side resurfaced for April Fools, resulting in comedic song lyrics that go along with the general theme of some AWSFTWR episodes. As usual, I am only half-kidding.
On April 15, the Cathédrale Basilique Notre Dame de Paris caught fire, destroying centuries of art, culture, and history. I wrote down my thoughts about the event, as I believed it merited something deeper than the usual list of observations.
On May 3, Human Events published an article by Will Chamberlain titled “Platform Access is a Civil Right”. In it, he compares the de-platforming of political dissidents to the struggles of African-Americans with discrimination before the Civil Rights Act. He then lays out a proposal for defining platform access as a protected civil right which can only be lost through abusing said right to engage in illegal behavior. I argued against his proposal and in favor of my previous work on changing the requirements for having a corporation to forbid non-service to taxpayers.
Benjamin Welton returned with a proposal for ending the turmoil in Venezuela by installing a Pinochet-type strongman to impose libertarian reactionary reforms.
On June 6, National Review published an article by David French titled “Social-Media Censorship Is the Product of Culture and Commerce” in which he argues that corporate censorship is a market outcome that should not and probably cannot be corrected by legislative means. I rebutted his argument, arguing that power is the cause of and solution to this problem.
After an unintended hiatus, I offered a deep consideration of tariffs from a libertarian reactionary perspective. The article became so long that it was split into two parts, the second of which will appear next year.
Welton returned with an examination of the Ordnungszelle, a quasi-military government led by Gustav von Kahr in Bavaria that had significant success against both Nazis and Communists in Weimar Germany. He also considers Queensland, Australia under Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Quebec under Maurice Duplessis, and Massachusetts under Gov. Calvin Coolidge as examples of similar governance structures. He then discusses strategies for implementing such structures.
A number of high-profile mass shootings in July and August prompted heightened calls for gun control. I rebutted gun control arguments, then delved much deeper in an effort to understand the real problem. Concluding that the real issues cannot be resolved at this time, I recommended a horrorist rhetorical strategy for now.
Black Friday is revered by most libertarians as a celebration of free-market capitalism. I updated my explanation of why this reverence is misplaced.
In of my lengthiest offerings to date, I examined the nature of cancel culture from political, intellectual, biological, and practical perspectives. Next, I considered the effects of such ostracism on both the perpetrators and the targets. Finally, I explained why this will result in terrorism if it is not curtailed.
My final work of 2019 was a short response to the impeachment vote against President Trump. I compared the history of the Hero of the Soviet Union award to what could happen to the impeachment process if it is cheapened, and predicted a possible path by which the United States may formally transition from republic to empire.
We bade Insula Qui farewell. We wish her the best in her future endeavors and hope for her return to our pages someday.
2019 was a rather slow year at Zeroth Position, with several abortive projects and other circumstances causing longer delays between articles than usual. Hopefully, 2020 will be more of a return to form. Happy New Year!