Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘philosophy’ wasn’t deep — it was dirty



Anyone can search the currently available Epstein files and see what turns up. As a professor at Arizona State University, I searched for my own school. I did not expect to find so much ASU-related material.

One reason: ASU employed Lawrence Krauss, paying him a substantial salary to write books arguing that the universe created itself from nothing.

Epstein’s philosophy collapses under its own weight because it begins with a lie about God.

That claim is its own story. You will object, rightly: “But we can’t get something from nothing.” Krauss replies, “By ‘nothing’ I mean quantum foam.” And you respond, “Then the title misleads. You don’t mean nothing. You mean quantum foam.”

Krauss also became close with Jeffrey Epstein. In one exchange, Krauss wrote: “I really do love you deeply as a friend Jeffrey. I don’t think I know anyone else who so honestly cares about me, and I don’t think I can ever truly express how wonderful that feels. Thank you. The cruise was a great reset.” In other messages, they discuss science and religion.

That is what caught my attention. As I read Epstein’s comments about religion — and listened to his interview with Steve Bannon on similar themes — a picture began to form of how Epstein made sense of the world and, more chillingly, of himself.

How a monster sleeps

A question hangs over every moral horror: How does a moral monster live with himself? Even if we limit ourselves to the explicit immorality in the files — without speculating about coded language or hidden networks — how did he sleep at night? What silenced his conscience?

Several pieces fit together.

In the ASU-related material and in interviews, Epstein does what I have often seen among intellectuals: He retreats into abstraction. He speaks about the history of ideas, mathematics, and cutting-edge research in a way that floats above concrete people and particular moral obligations.

That retreat protects a self-image. He can pose as the enlightened patron of science, funding humanity’s progress. That image sits in grotesque contrast with the cruelty he inflicted on actual human beings.

Abstraction as a moral anesthetic

This pattern tracks with Paul Johnson’s thesis in “Intellectuals”: Intellectuals who talk about serving “humanity” often treat individuals in their orbit badly. Grand claims become a shield. The rhetoric of progress becomes moral insulation.

Think of the professor who preaches liberation while using DEI programs to impose racial essentialism and ideological coercion. He can tell himself he is helping “the marginalized” even as he harms colleagues and students in the real world.

Or consider the pop star who repeats slogans like “no one is illegal on stolen land.” The moral performance happens at the level of abstraction. The carelessness happens at the level of reality.

RELATED: Why Christians should care about politics

Marco Bello/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Epstein’s ‘unknowable’ God

Epstein goes further by trying to dissolve moral accountability at the metaphysical level.

He argues that physicists once believed reality could be fully captured by mathematics. Now, he claims, we understand reality is irrational. Mathematics can only approximate what he calls “the limit,” but the limit itself remains unknowable. Some call that limit “God.”

But if God is unknowable, then God becomes irrelevant to our calculations about life and moral choice.

At one point, Epstein frames this as a male-female divide. The male mind, he says, runs on logic and mathematics. Reality, however, does not fit that paradigm. Reality is fundamentally irrational and accessed through feminine intuition. Ultimate reality, in his telling, is best understood as the divine female.

Humans, in Epstein’s view, are beasts with frontal lobes sophisticated enough to rationalize their impulses.

He may have believed he was elevating the feminine. The framework reads more like a metaphysical excuse: reason fails, therefore the standard fails.

The tension between reason and intuition is ancient. Epstein narrows “reason” to a single project: reducing the world to material causes through mathematics. When that project does not deliver what he wants, he does not abandon reductionism. He abandons reason.

Francis Schaeffer described this move in godless intellectual life: When autonomous reason cannot sustain itself, the thinker does not repent. He escapes into irrationality. Intuition becomes the alibi. Mystery becomes permission.

Religion as therapy, not truth

In conversation with Krauss, Epstein defends a kind of religion, but not biblical religion.

Krauss, echoing the New Atheists, treats religion as an evolutionary leftover — maybe useful in an earlier age, unnecessary for modern man. After all, modern man allegedly knows universes can create themselves out of nonexistence.

Epstein pushes back, but only to reduce religion to psychological management. Religion concerns the “inner world,” he suggests, while science and mathematics concern the outer world. We cannot ignore the inner world. Its purpose is peace. Anxiety and depression signal inner disorder; religion restores equilibrium. That, for Epstein, becomes religion’s function.

Not worship. Not truth. Not repentance. Peace.

That is New Age self-help with a faux religious vocabulary.

A Nietzschean pattern

Put the pieces together and a Nietzschean outline emerges.

Nietzsche described the dialectic between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Apollonian seeks order, reason, structure. Yet it can become sterile and suffocating. The Dionysian seeks raw experience — ecstasy, pleasure, intoxication, release. Dionysian revelry becomes not only indulgence but purgation: a controlled environment where darker impulses can be acted out so a man can return to ordinary life and call himself functional again.

God’s moral law is written on the heart. We are not left with "unknowable limits" as our excuse. We are without excuse.

Humans, on this view, are beasts with frontal lobes sophisticated enough to rationalize their impulses.

That is the worldview of the modern pagan: order and chaos, calculation and intoxication, “science” by day and ritualized transgression by night. Add Epstein’s skepticism about knowable truth and his reduction of religion to inner peace, and the method of self-justification comes into focus.

His reported fascination with longevity technologies and strange diets fits too. Death becomes the great enemy. It must be cheated — through science, mythic elixirs, or Silicon Valley innovation.

RELATED: America’s old cultic trick: Sex, salvation, and the return of polygamy

cglade via iStock/Getty Images

Temptation is not his alone

The unsettling part: These temptations are not unique to Epstein.

Many people oscillate between cold rationalism and irrational indulgence. Many treat morality as a social construct and religion as therapy. Many use abstractions to excuse what they would never defend in plain language.

That should drive self-examination, not mere disgust. Are we living inside the Apollonian-Dionysian loop, shifting between self-justifying “reason” and self-excusing “release”?

The lie at the center

Epstein’s philosophy collapses under its own weight because it begins with a lie about God.

God has not hidden Himself. Scripture teaches that His eternal power and divine nature are clearly revealed through creation. His moral law is written on the heart. We are not left with “unknowable limits” as our excuse. We are without excuse.

The claim that reality is fundamentally irrational is not a profound insight. It is an evasion. It is a way to suppress what is plain.

That is why Lawrence Krauss’ self-creating universe and Epstein’s divine female belong in the same category: idols. They exchange the truth for something else — something that grants permission.

Romans 1 describes the pattern of Epstein’s life: the darkened mind, the suppression of truth, the exchange of glory for self-justification, and the descent into sexual corruption. The cure is not oscillation between sterile rationalism and ecstatic purgation. The cure is redemption. The cure is communion with God restored.

We need Christ, who alone frees us from the pagan dialectic — ancient and modern — and grants eternal life, “that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3).

A Viral Video Shows How The Left Coerces Fake Agreement

You’ve probably seen the video making the rounds today of the “Peak AWFL” meltdown in a Minneapolis yoga studio. You can see a bunch of obvious themes in this mega-cringe showdown, starting with the feminization thesis advanced by Helen Andrews and the problem of Cluster B politics that Christopher Rufo has described. But the moment […]

Ending Mail-Order Abortion Would Fulfill 3 Trump Campaign Promises

The medical reasons that led prior FDAs to require in-person doctor visits before women could access the abortion pill still stand.

CDC knew the COVID jab was dangerous — and pushed it anyway



Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) dropped a bombshell last week about what the Biden administration knew — and covered up — about the dangers of the COVID shot. His roundtable featured Dr. Peter McCullough, arguably the country’s leading cardiologist and a frequent guest on my show since the pandemic fell upon the land in 2020.

Let’s talk about what they exposed — starting with VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. VAERS came out of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which gave pharmaceutical companies legal immunity for vaccine-related injuries. In exchange, the government created a “self-reporting” database where anyone could report adverse events. But good luck using it. The interface often crashed or timed out, forced users to restart from scratch, and made tracking real harms nearly impossible.

Far too many Americans can only see COVID in the rearview mirror now, when they should still be seeing it in their nightmares and demanding severe justice.

That wasn’t a bug. It was the point.

A Harvard Medical Review study concluded more than 25 years ago that VAERS undercounted adverse events by a factor of 100. The CDC knew it. During COVID, instead of fixing VAERS, the CDC quietly built a separate system — V-safe — to track mRNA shot outcomes. It compiled peer-to-peer data from over 10 million Americans. The CDC buried those results until Del Bigtree and the Informed Consent Action Network forced the release through a lawsuit.

What did V-safe show? Eight percent of people who got the COVID jab suffered an adverse event requiring medical attention — from checkups to death. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a scandal. The United States has pulled vaccines from the market for far smaller complication rates. Meanwhile, the Biden administration forced this shot on everyone — including healthy kids — while knowing it was more dangerous to them than the virus itself.

Remember the wall-to-wall propaganda campaigns pushing the jab? Did any of them warn you about the 8% of recipients who suffered serious side effects? No. Were you offered a real choice based on your age, health status, or risk profile? Or were you coerced — by a toxic blend of government, corporations, and media lies — into rolling up your sleeve?

We all know the answer.

That’s not just manipulation. That’s a crime. The CDC’s own data from the height of the pandemic showed that only 2% of COVID cases required hospitalization. Yet polls showed Democrats believed the number was 25%. That disconnect didn’t happen by accident. It was manufactured. A psychological operation convinced Americans that the shot was the only way out, even though the jab carried a four times greater risk of harm than the virus itself — before even factoring in age or comorbidities.

RELATED: Heroic COVID docs punished as Abbott, Texas lawmakers stay silent

Deagreez via iStock/Getty Images

Younger, healthier Americans faced almost no threat from COVID. They weren’t told that either. They had to find out on shows like mine.

By spring 2022, the final infection fatality rate was in. Just 0.5% for the elderly. For children and teens (ages 0-19)? A microscopic 0.003%. But the government shut down schools, crushed businesses, and destroyed lives — all while pushing an experimental shot with exponentially higher risks.

No one but MSNBC viewers would have lined up for this poison if they’d known the truth. But platforms like YouTube, the largest video site on the planet, actively censored anyone who tried to sound the alarm. That included me — and brave doctors like McCullough — who were banned for speaking plainly about early treatments and adverse events.

Instead, they stuck ventilators down people’s throats while TikTok nurses danced for clout.

So will anyone ever pay for this disaster before the spike proteins strike midnight? Or are exploding hearts, turbo cancers, and collapsing fertility rates just the price we pay for compliance?

Far too many Americans can only see COVID in the rearview mirror now, when they should still be seeing it in their nightmares and demanding severe justice.

The progressive elite’s downfall: Foxes failed to become lions



Political theorist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto identified two main personality types among ruling elites: foxes and lions. Foxes govern through manipulation and innovation, while lions rely on tradition and force. In a healthy civilization, power circulates between these two types, allowing a balance that meets the needs of society at any given time.

For decades, Western nations have been dominated by foxes, who favor manipulation over force. However, as populist movements began challenging their grip on power, the ruling class attempted to pivot to hard power. The American left responded with riots, imprisonment of political opponents, and even an assassination attempt on the populist presidential candidate. Yet these efforts failed, and Donald Trump won office with a decisive mandate.

Now that the attempt to transition to brute force has failed, the left is in disarray.

Now, after their failed shift toward coercion, progressives find themselves disoriented and divided. Their system of information control has been disrupted, and their attempts at brute force have backfired, leaving them uncertain about their next move.

In “The Mind and Society,” Pareto explained that every civilization has a ruling class, which can generally be divided into two groups. The first, type one residues or foxes, manipulates information and adapts quickly to shifting social dynamics. The second, type two residues or lions, is patriotic, courageous, and committed to preserving identity and tradition. Lions excel in physical defense and thrive in times when societies must carve out territory, settle new lands, or defend borders from external threats.

Lions typically rule through hierarchical structures and strategic applications of force, maintaining stability through a sense of duty and order. In contrast, foxes rely on deception and social engineering to achieve their ends. When either group dominates for too long without the other’s influence, societies risk stagnation, corruption, or collapse.

Foxes are intelligent and adaptable, skilled at manipulating ideas and combining concepts. They are not bound by tradition, which allows them to envision and implement radical changes. As societies grow more complex, they often turn to foxes, as the challenges faced by elites in advanced civilizations require abstract thinking and innovation. Foxes typically rule through soft power, using information control and bureaucratic systems to shape society.

Pareto argued that functional societies must maintain a balance between these two elite types. When a country overwhelmingly favors one over the other, it eventually declines. For decades, Western nations have prioritized foxes while marginalizing lions in elite institutions. Patriotic, strong, and tradition-oriented individuals have been pushed aside, while cunning and manipulative figures have been elevated.

This imbalance has led to an elite class that excludes many of its most capable potential leaders while embracing mediocrity or even corruption — simply because those in power share a similar mindset.

Foxes rule through manipulation and soft power, relying on information control and propaganda. Their preferred tactics involve getting political opponents fired, freezing their bank accounts, or using public shaming rather than resorting to direct force. News media, entertainment, and academia serve as their primary tools, while public humiliation remains their most effective weapon.

By carefully adjusting algorithmic information delivery and forging partnerships between corporations and intelligence agencies, fox-style elites can censor dissent without technically violating civil rights protected by Western constitutions.

Soft power allows elites to establish totalitarian practices without provoking the direct resistance that comes with brute force. But it depends on the credibility and prestige of the institutions enforcing it. People comply with these institutions because defying them can mean social and professional ruin — losing jobs, friendships, and status in polite society. To maintain control, foxes rely on institutions that command respect and influence.

These institutions can manipulate narratives and even push absurd claims occasionally, but overreach threatens their credibility. This became most evident during the pandemic lockdowns, when scientific, medical, and government authorities were caught lying so frequently that much of the public stopped trusting them. At a certain point, the cost of compliance with these institutions' demands outweighed the social penalties of defiance. Faced with growing dissent, the foxes began to panic.

As their grip on power weakened, the foxes turned to new tactics to reassert control. First came the violence of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, groups that effectively served as the Democratic Party’s paramilitary arms. This mob violence, cloaked in plausible deniability, aimed to intimidate those who had abandoned institutional authority back into compliance. Once the election was secured, Democrats shifted to more overt hard-power tactics, deploying the FBI to monitor church services and intimidate parents at school board meetings. Fearful of losing control, the fox-style elite attempted to rule like lions.

Nowhere was this desperation more evident than in the left’s relentless attempts to stop Donald Trump. The real estate tycoon provoked such an unhinged response that progressives sought to bankrupt him, remove him from the ballot, imprison him, and even assassinate him. These blatant displays of force resembled tactics used by third-world dictators. But a wounded animal is the most dangerous, and the foxes were willing to do anything to hold on to power.

Despite their efforts, both soft-power censorship and hard-power crackdowns failed. Trump secured a resounding mandate in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. At that point, Democrats faced a stark choice: embrace full-scale authoritarian repression or allow the duly elected Republican to take office. Their manipulation of information had collapsed. Their attempts to jail or kill Trump had backfired.

In the end, foxes lack both the skill and the resolve for violence. They are neither suited for nor adept at wielding force, and their sudden shift toward hard-power tactics only underscores their desperation. Now that the attempt to transition to brute force has failed, the left is in disarray. The American people rejected both manipulation and coercion — so what options remain?

For now, progressives seem trapped in a state of confusion, waging an internal battle between radical activists pushing for even more extreme measures and an establishment scrambling to rein in the movement they unleashed. Their failure to shift from soft power to hard power has left them demoralized. Let’s hope it stays that way.

The ‘propositional nation’ myth crumbles under real-world tests



Americans elected Donald Trump because they were tired of being despised by their own leaders. The real estate billionaire has his flaws, but at a time when politicians left and right were calling the country sexist, racist, lazy, and entitled, Trump called on Americans to Make America Great Again.

Now, as Trump’s second term begins with an impressive start, most of his supporters feel relieved to have a president who loves the country back in office. However, his early success raises larger questions. Greatness is tied to what Aristotle called telos — the ultimate purpose or end. To make America great, we must first answer the defining question of our time: Who are we?

If conservatives retreat from this debate out of cowardice, they will find themselves living in a world shaped by their ideological opponents.

Trump’s election marked a clear rejection of several ideas about national identity. Americans do not want to be “global citizens.” They want a distinct and sovereign nation. They do not want to live in a multicultural patchwork of segmented communities speaking different languages and celebrating different identities.

Americans reject the idea of acting as the world’s police force, sacrificing their sons and national resources to impose a global order that places their own country last. They do not want the United States to function as an office park or an economic zone. Instead of maximizing arbitrary economic measures like gross domestic product, they want a government that prioritizes the well-being of its people.

The American people are tired of leaders who belittle them for wanting a real nation — one that values its citizens above abstract economic statistics or globalist ideals. While Americans have clearly rejected progressive visions of identity, the question remains: Is there a unifying identity they can embrace?

An unrecognizable world

Rejecting multiculturalism, globalism, and economic essentialism is not enough. To make America great, conservatives and right-wing leaders must present an alternative identity — one that unites the nation and gives it a clear purpose.

This realization unsettles many conservatives, who have been conditioned to avoid discussions of identity for fear of being labeled extremists. That fear is understandable. Identity is powerful; it can inspire both great and terrible actions. It should not be taken lightly. However, conservatives cannot afford to abandon this conversation to Democrats and the political left. The question Who are we? will be answered — either by those willing to engage or by those who wish to redefine America entirely.

If conservatives retreat from this debate out of cowardice, they will find themselves living in a world shaped by their ideological opponents.

Is America merely a dream — an unattainable goal toward which the nation is always striving? Is it a set of ideas that anyone from anywhere can adopt and embrace? For decades, conservatives have promoted the idea of a “propositional nation” — one built on adherence to a set of principles rather than shared culture or heritage. With the failure of the multicultural globalist vision, many on the right now seek to return to this framework.

The problem is that this definition does not hold up to scrutiny.

The Liberia test

If America is merely an idea — a collection of abstract principles that anyone can adopt — then any society should be able to replicate those ideas and achieve the same results. There would be no need for immigrants to physically come to the United States or integrate with its people, because the location and the population would be irrelevant — only the principles would matter.

Yet history suggests otherwise. Liberia, for example, was founded as an African republic for freed slaves and freeborn black Americans. Its constitution mirrored the United States’ system, incorporating separation of powers, checks and balances, and a Bill of Rights. On paper, Liberia should have thrived under the same principles.

But reality tells a different story. Despite adopting America’s founding framework, Liberia has experienced persistent corruption and instability, ranking among the most corrupt nations in the world. Its struggles challenge the core assumptions of the propositional nation and raise a critical question: If America is just an idea, why can’t it be easily replicated?

The idea of a propositional nation falls apart when applied to domestic politics in the United States. The argument suggests that anyone who believes in America’s founding principles should be welcomed as a citizen. This assertion is rarely followed to its logical conclusion, however.

Consider Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Somali immigrant serving in Congress who frequently criticizes the United States. Omar has repeatedly described the country that granted her asylum as racist and oppressive. She often addresses her supporters in Somali and has pledged to prioritize the interests of Somali immigrants — and, depending on the translation, Somalia itself.

Media reports have suggested that Omar’s second husband was actually her brother, allegedly part of an immigration fraud scheme. Despite this, there has been no serious effort to remove her from office or to revoke her citizenship.

Who will enforce the idea?

If America’s identity is based solely on adherence to its founding principles, Omar’s open disdain for those principles should disqualify her from political leadership. Yet even suggesting denaturalization for her alleged immigration fraud — let alone her rejection of American values — would prompt accusations of racism or fascism, even from many conservatives.

No one who promotes the idea of a propositional nation seriously intends to enforce it. Doing so would require a totalitarian state where citizenship depends on ideological conformity. Such a system would resemble actual fascism far more than the bogeyman that progressives like to conjure.

So if America is not a proposition, what is it? What defines it as a nation? The same factors that have shaped nations throughout human history: shared language, history, heritage, traditions, religion, and culture.

In “Who Are We?” Harvard professor Samuel Huntington — far from a right-wing radical — argued that America’s core identity is rooted in the Anglo-Protestant tradition. While Huntington, as a man of the left, did not advocate restricting American identity to Protestant Christianity or English ancestry, he recognized the necessity of a core culture. He believed that new members of the nation must assimilate into this cultural foundation for America to remain cohesive.

Without a clearly defined cultural heritage for new arrivals to embrace, a country risks devolving into a fragmented, multicultural patchwork. Principles and ideas matter, but they are not abstract concepts detached from the people who uphold them.

The American proposition emerged from a specific people — the American nation — and cannot simply be transplanted elsewhere with the expectation of identical results.

If America is to regain its greatness, it must do so within the context of its Anglo-Protestant heritage, ensuring that those fortunate enough to join this nation seek to assimilate into that tradition.

The question Who are we? will be answered, whether conservatives engage with it or not. It is essential that they put forward a shared national identity — one that honors America’s past while embracing the remarkable achievements its people can accomplish together in the future.

Colorado tried forcing a Christian designer to make websites for gay 'marriages.' Now, it has to pay up.



Lorie Smith is the owner of 303 Creative, a graphic design firm based in Colorado.

While generally happy to produce work for any paying customer, Smith wanted to offer wedding-related services exclusively to straight couples because complicity in the celebration of homosexual unions would otherwise "compromise [her] Christian witness." Since Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act would have forced her to do just that, she took the Democrat-run state to court — and won.

Months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Smith's favor and a federal circuit court barred the state from enforcing the CADA's communication and accommodation clauses against the designer, Colorado officials have come to a settlement, agreeing Tuesday to pay a hefty sum to the guarantors of their defeat.

"As the Supreme Court said, I'm free to create art consistent with my beliefs without fear of Colorado punishing me anymore," Smith said in a statement. "This is a win not just for me but for all Americans — for those who share my beliefs and for those who hold different views."

Smith's original complaint filed in 2016 claimed that Colorado law stripped her and her organization "of the freedom to choose what messages to create and to convey in the marriage context."

'The First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy.'

The complaint cited a section of the CADA that prohibits a person to refuse, withhold from, or deny the "full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations of a place of public accommodation" to an individual on the basis of sexual preference, "gender identity," and "gender expression." Another clause in the CADA prohibits individuals from advertising that refusal.

The lawsuit asked the U.S. District Court to restore the constitutional freedoms of Smith and 303 Creative "to speak their beliefs and not be compelled to speak messages contrary to those beliefs, and to ensure that other creative professionals in Colorado have the same freedoms."

The case ultimately got kicked up the Supreme Court, which decided in June 2023 that the First Amendment bars Colorado from coercing a website designer to create content with which she disagrees.

Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in the high court's majority opinion, "The First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy. In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance."

"All manner of speech — from 'pictures, films, paintings, drawings, and engravings,' to 'oral utterance and the printed word' — qualify for the First Amendment’s protections; no less can hold true when it comes to speech like Ms. Smith’s conveyed over the Internet," wrote the conservative justice.

"Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation's answer is tolerance, not coercion," added Gorsuch.

'No government has the right to silence individuals for expressing these ideas.'

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissenting opinion for the leftist minority that the ruling was "profoundly wrong" and will "mark gays and lesbians for second-class status."

Other social liberals similarly bemoaned the court's affirmation of free speech, including CNN talking head Van Jones, who said, "If you care about inclusion and equal opportunity and care about folks who don’t have much and are trying to make it today, this is a tragedy."

Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser, who unsuccessfully represented the state, said at the time that the ruling was "far out of step with the will of the American people and American values."

According to Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal group that represented Smith, the Supreme Court's decision has already been cited nearly 1,000 times in court opinions, briefs, and various legal publications.

Colorado's Civil Rights Division agreed this week to pick up the bill for the CADA's defanging, covering over $1.5 million in attorneys' fees.

Weiser's office confirmed to the Denver Gazette the settlement over the fees but declined to comment.

Kristen Waggoner, the CEO and president of Alliance Defending Freedom, stated, "The government can't force Americans to say things they don't believe, and Colorado officials have paid and will continue to pay a high price when they violate this foundational freedom."

"For the past 12 years, Colorado has targeted people of faith and forced them to express messages that violate their conscience and that advance the government’s preferred ideology. First Amendment protections are non-negotiable," continued Waggoner. "Billions of people around the world believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and that men and women are biologically distinct. No government has the right to silence individuals for expressing these ideas or to punish those who decline to express different views."

Smith expressed hope that "that everyone will celebrate the court's decision upholding this right for each of us to speak freely."

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Tech titan Larry Ellison teases AI-powered surveillance state that will keep you on your 'best behavior'



Oracle chairman and chief technology officer Larry Ellison, the world's second-richest man, recently revealed how his company could furnish authorities with the technological means to better surveil the populace and socially engineer those involuntarily living their lives on camera.

"Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on," Ellison said last week at the database and cloud computing company's financial analyst meeting. "It's AI that's looking at the cameras."

After discussing broadening and implementing surveillance systems in the health and education sectors, Ellison raised the matter of law enforcement applications and police body cameras.

'Truth is we don't really turn it off.'

"We completely redesigned body cameras," said the billionaire. "The camera's always on. You don't turn it on and off."

Whether an officer is having lunch with friends or in the lavatory, Oracle will never shut its eyes.

Ellison noted, for example, that if a police officer wants a moment of relative privacy so that he can go to the washroom, he must notify Oracle.

"We'll turn it off. Truth is, we don't really turn it off. What we do is we record it so no one can see it," said Ellison. "No one can get into that recording without a court order. You get the privacy you requested ... but if you get a court order, we will judge — I want to look at that, this so-called bathroom break."

"We transmit the video back to headquarters," continued the Oracle CTO, "and AI is constantly monitoring the video."

If AI spots behavior it has been trained to regard as suspicious, then it will flag it and issue an alert to the relevant authorities.

By constructing what is effectively a high-tech panopticon, Ellison indicated that police officers and citizens alike would be more inclined to behave as convention and law dictated they should "because we're constantly recording — watching and recording — everything that's going on."

Ellison indicated that this system of digital eyes on cars, drones, and humans amounts to "supervision."

The tech magnate framed these applications as benign — as ways to curb police brutality. However, Oracle has recently given cause to suspect that there is potential for abuse.

In July, Oracle agreed to pay $115 million to settle a lawsuit in which the company was accused of running roughshod over people's privacy by collecting their data and selling it to third parties, reported Reuters.

According to the plaintiffs, Oracle created unauthorized "digital dossiers" for hundreds of millions of people, which were then allegedly sold to marketers and other organizations.

Critics responding online to Ellison's remarks also expressed concerns over how such applications will all but guarantee a communist Chinese-style surveillance state in the West — something that's already under way in the U.K., one of the most surveilled countries on the planet.

'There isn't much not being watched by somebody.'

The U.K.'s former Home Office biometrics and surveillance commissioner Fraser Sampson told the Guardian before ending his term last year that AI was supercharging Britain's public-private "omni-surveillance" society.

"There was a lawyer back in 2010 who used the expression 'omni-surveillance,' and I think, yes, we are in that. There isn't much not being watched by somebody. The thing is, almost all of it's been watched by people on private devices. And they now share it, whether they want them to or not, with everybody, the police, the state, the foreign government, anybody," said Sampson.

"When all that needed a human to edit it, it wasn't an issue because no one was going to live long enough to get through 10 minutes. But now you can do it with AI editing. All of a sudden you can tap that ocean," added the watchdog.

The U.K. has ostensibly taken a turn for the worse under the current Labor government, which is working to greatly expand the use of live facial recognition technology.

While some have taken to keyboards to bemoan the growth of the Western surveillance state, so-called Blade Runner activists have, in recent years, taken to chopping down public and private cameras, including low-emission cameras.

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Bill Gates pushes for digital IDs to tackle 'misinformation' and curb free speech



Bill Gates has evidenced, both directly and through his foundation, an intense desire to shape public health, the news landscape, education policy, AI, insect populations, American farmland, the energy sector, foreign policy, and the earth itself. He recently hinted that he would also like to see free speech and engagements online shaped to his liking.

CNET asked Gates about what to do about "misinformation" — a topic explored in his forthcoming Netflix docuseries and some of his blog posts. The billionaire answered that there will be "systems and behaviors" in place to expose content originators.

The online environment Gates appears to be describing is some sort of digital ID-based panopticon.

Gates suggested that the "boundary between ... crazy but free speech versus misleading people in a dangerous way or inciting them is a very tough boundary."

"You know, I think every country's struggling to find that boundary," said Gates. "The U.S. is a tough one because, you know, we have the notion of the First Amendment. So what are the exceptions? You know, like yelling 'fire' in a theater."

The billionaire has previously hinted at the kinds of speech he finds troubling.

For instance, in a January 2021 MSNBC interview, Gates took issue with content encouraging "people not to trust the advice on masks or taking the vaccine."

When fear-mongering about potential "openness" on Twitter following its acquisition by Elon Musk, Gates intimated the suggestions that "vaccines kill people" and that "Bill Gates is tracking people" were similarly beyond the pale.

Gates, evidently interested in exceptions to constitutionally protected speech, complained to CNET that people can engage in what others might deem "misinformation" under the cover of anonymity online.

"I do think over time, you know with things like deep-fakes, most of the time you're online, you're going to want to be in an environment where the people are truly identified," continued Gates. "That is they're connected to a real-world identity that you trust instead of people just saying whatever they want."

The online environment Gates appears to be describing is some sort of digital ID-based panopticon.

Gates has backed various efforts to tether people to digital identities.

Gates' foundation has, for instance, been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a program called the United Nations Development Program-led 50-in-5 Campaign, which features a strong focus on digital ID.

The UNDP said in a November 2023 release, "This ambitious, country-led campaign heralds a new chapter in the global momentum around digital public infrastructure (DPI) — an underlying network of components such as digital payments, ID, and data exchange systems, which is a critical accelerator of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)."

Return previously reported that the Gates-backed Gavi, also known as the Vaccine Alliance, Mastercard, and NGOs in the fintech space have been trialing a digital vaccine passport in Africa called the Wellness Pass.

This vaccine passport, characterized as a useful way to track patients in "underserved communities" across "multiple touchpoints," is part of a grouping of consumer-facing Mastercard products aimed ostensibly at bringing people into a cashless digital ID system that both automates compliance with prescribed pharmaceutical regimens and fosters dependency on at least one ideologically captive non-governmental entity.

Extra to funding research into biocompatible near-infrared quantum dots indicating vaccination status, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backed the World Health Organization's 2021 "Digital Documentation of COVID-19 Certificates: Vaccination Status" guidance, which discussed the deployment of a vaccine passport "solution to address the immediate needs of the pandemic but also to build digital health infrastructure that can be a foundation for digital vaccination certificates beyond COVID-19."

Whereas there remain ways online by which people can interact anonymously — including whistleblowers and persons whose employment situations might otherwise preclude them from freely expressing their views publicly — largely free from government or private clampdowns, Gates fantasized in his CNET interview about "systems and behaviors that we're more aware of. Okay, who says that? Who created this?"

According to CNBC, Gates is "sensitive" to concerns that restricting information online could adversely impact the right to free speech. Nevertheless, he still wants new rules established, though he did not spell out what those would entail.

However, he has, in recent years, given an idea of where he thinks the government crackdown should start.

Gates told Wired in 2020 that the government should now permit messages hidden with encryption on programs like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

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