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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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"Men will endure bitter poverty, cold isolation, drink piss and eat lichen just for a chance to be free from the tyranny of the United Nations."

This is a purely hypothetical tyranny, of course. The United Nations has less power, and a lower budget per head, than your high school student council.

I also note that the internationally recognised government of Somalia has not controlled its internationally recognised territory for decades, meaning that de facto sovereignty was there for the taking. And the only people to take it were a group of locals who got their act together (Somaliland), pirates, and jihadis. And the pirates and jihadis aren't about freedom, they are about using "borrowed" Somali sovereignty as a base for predation.

I'm happy to concede that Kowloon Walled City prospered as a libertarian loophole, although every account I have written says that it wasn't as libertarian as it looked because the Triads enjoyed de facto sovereignty in the gap between Chinese and British de jure sovereignty.