Tom Woods responds to a critic and applauds Vivek at last night's GOP presidential debate
Tom's new book is out
Tom’s today email.
I'm going to save that bit of juiciness for the second half.
First, one of the best moments -- if not the very best -- in the history of American political debates occurred last night, and I missed it.
I was at the Tampa Bay Lightning game, watching the Bolts defeat the Pittsburgh Penguins, with the Tenth Amendment Center's Mike Maharrey. We actually caught a puck, which hockey player Maharrey now has as a prized possession.
But here's Vivek Ramaswamy from last night:
Foreign policy experience is not the same as foreign policy wisdom. I want everybody at home to know that I was the first person to say: we need a reasonable peace deal in Ukraine. Now, a lot of the neocons are quietly coming along to that position, with the exceptions of Nikki Haley and Joe Biden, who still support this, what I believe is pointless war in Ukraine.
And I think those with "foreign policy experience" -- one thing that Joe Biden and Nikki Haley have in common is that neither of them could even state for you three provinces in eastern Ukraine that they want to send our troops to actually fight for. Look at that. [He's asking the audience to look at Haley's blank expression.] This is what I want people to understand. These people have -- I mean, she has no idea what the hell the names of those provinces are, but she wants to send our sons and daughters and our troops and our military equipment to go fight it.
So reject this myth that they've been selling you, that somebody had a cup-of-coffee stint at the UN and then makes 8 million bucks after, has real foreign policy experience. It takes an outsider to see this. Look at the blank expression. She doesn't know the names of the provinces.
And Matt Walsh is absolutely right: this was a gamble. "People don't appreciate what a risky maneuver this was by Vivek," Walsh wrote. "If Haley names three on the spot, it immediately turns into a crushing embarrassment for him and probably ends his campaign. But he wagered that she wouldn't be able to do it, and he was right. Extremely well played."
It was a brutal demolition. Chris Christie claimed to be outraged that Vivek had questioned Haley's intelligence, but that's precisely what was so beautiful about it: Vivek showed that the so-called serious people in the room, who with their vaunted "foreign policy experience" always want more foreign intervention, are intellectual lightweights, almost every single time.
Vivek also lit into Haley for how she curiously went from bankruptcy to multimillionairedom, and laid out various corrupt dealings she'd had. "This is a woman who will send kids to die so she can buy a bigger house," he said.
Okay, but now: let me deliver on my subject line.
This week I released Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania. I also released (as a free bonus to everyone who buys that book) a book you readers helped me put together: Collateral Damage: Victims of the Lockdown Regime Tell Their Stories. That one is available for free only at DiaryOfCovid.com.
Anyway, someone responded this way: "This title is pretty offensive to people who experience psychosis and just further stigmatizes the association the word has on people in society."
Here's my reply to that guy:
Nah, being offended is for sissies and it's about time people got over this crap. I didn't realize that the title would also have the merit of repelling people who think this way, especially since your last sentence [in which he spoke of "the amount of stress that the public health system was under"] sounds as if you still think the measures they recommended were wise and necessary, even though there is absolutely no difference in outcome between places that implemented them and places that didn't. Just adjust for age and you'll see I'm right.
Since unlike you I actually care about mental health, as opposed to simply posturing about it on Facebook related to somebody's book title, the useless measures that were imposed on us had terrible mental health outcomes that can never be allowed to happen again. That is far more important than being a [I used a bad word here, dear reader] about my book title.
Boom.
If you click on absolutely nothing else I send you all year, let it be this, because what's there is truly a work of art (for which I am grateful to the brilliant friends who helped me):
https://DiaryOfCovid.com
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support. You guys are all I have.
Tom Woods