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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻

@janetbufton.ca

3K followers 430 following 3.1K posts

Canadian mum, 3D liberal in Babylon Writing collected at janetbufton.ca diversity dynamism democracy Detroit Lions Elbows up.

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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · Jan 8

I've been working on a market liberal case for democracy. That case now spans four pieces, all of which are linked in my latest blog post.

ft most prominently Don Lavoie, Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social, Benjamin Constant, Adam Smith, and James Buchanan...

Democracy for liberal people

Market liberals need liberal democracy

www.janetbufton.ca

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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 1d

I know it’s easy to get inured to this stuff but imagine a podcast ep where @mikeduncan.bsky.social is telling you about this happening in some other country at the same time that a crisis in parliament has shut down the national budget.

Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 1d

Presidents have federalized a state's own Guard to use over its objection, most famously desegregation. And sometimes regular military has been used. But taking one state's soldiers and putting them in another state? This is a completely unprecedented breakdown of what the Union fundamentally is.

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Sons of Patriarchy @sonsofpatriarchy.bsky.social · 15h

Please, for the love of God and all things holy, if you are a reporter and you're looking at Christian Nationalism, Pete Hegseth, and/or Doug Wilson, START HERE.

We have spent THOUSANDS of hours researching this movement, please use our research and reach out to us BEFORE publishing.

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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 10h

womp womp

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Institute for Humane Studies @theihs.org · 14h

A free society depends on honest memory. We can face Churchill’s flaws without giving up his fight against tyranny.

Read the latest from Michael Tolhurst, managing director of academic relations at IHS, in @liberalcurrents.com. ⬇️

www.liberalcurrents.com/a-popular-fr...

A Popular Front of Memory

As the right begins to revise their view of Hitler, we must revive the example Churchill set in that era.

www.liberalcurrents.com

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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 12h

Sometimes I think about how I'm the one who was too much of a squish for some libertarians.

Anthony L. Fisher @anthonylfisher.bsky.social · 14h

"We took the freedom of speech away."

Take a bow, MAGA libertarians.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 14h

Trump: "We took the freedom of speech away because that's been through the courts and the courts said you have freedom of speech, but what has happened is when they burn a flag it agitates and irritates crowds."

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Anthony L. Fisher @anthonylfisher.bsky.social · 14h

"We took the freedom of speech away."

Take a bow, MAGA libertarians.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 14h

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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 21h

The Supreme Court is nice. The library is nice and I think anyone can still go, but they'll be confused if you want to go and you're not a lawyer or law student. (I wanted to read microfilms looking into rhetoric in the rulings.)

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Shannon Proudfoot @sproudfoot.bsky.social · 1d

Oh this will be good.

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 2d

i had no idea this is how canada's supreme court dresses

Nine members of the Canadian Supreme Court sitting for a photo. They are dressed in red robes trimmed in white.

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Chad Van Schoelandt @chadvanschoelandt.bsky.social · 1d

💯

Adam Kinzinger @adamkinzinger.substack.com · 1d

Never never never give up

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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 1d

I cannot wait until I don't have to see Curtis Yarvin anymore.

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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 1d

I wanted to make a sarcastic joke about Weiss and Soave not being able to tell the difference between someone concerned about Palestinians and antisemitic nuts going on about space lasers but it's too potentially true to be funny.

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Jason Kuznicki @jkuznicki.bsky.social · 1d

There's a Portland boomer antifascist ukulele band and I AM HERE FOR IT

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 1d

Shoutout to the Boomers, really showing everybody else up in 2025

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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 1d

between Coleman Hughes and Dave Smith

Oh ok

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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 1d

I am sympathetic to not wanting to vex Trump into eliminating visa-free travel for Canadians or something, but the idea that a new Trump deal will be in any way better than the existing Trump deal seems so naive.

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Jonathan Blanks @blanksslate.bsky.social · 1d

A German academic recounted this after the war, recorded in Milton Meyer’s “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45”

If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately come after the first and smallest, thousands—yes, millions—would have been sufficiently shocked if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German firm” stickers on the windows of the non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course, this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C, and so on to Step D. And one day, too late, your principles—if you were ever sensible of them—all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident—in my case, my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jew swine!”—collapses as it all at once, and you see that everything, everything has changed, and changed completely under your nose.

The world you live in, your nation, your people, is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there: all untouched, all reassuring: the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now, you live in a world of hate and fear. And the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves. When everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system that rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself, it was compelled to go all the way.

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Jonathan Blanks @blanksslate.bsky.social · 1d

I think normies believe that they’ll know tyranny when they see it; they oppose jackboots and swastikas and Gestapo guys in trenchcoats.

But it doesn’t work that way. These things are built over time and each encroachment seems bad but not evil.

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 1d

Absolute failure of our system that a federal judge can be “very concerned” about Trump’s unlawful attempt to send troops into a city, but also powerless to stop it.

The default should be to protect us from government abuse, not to protect government from temporary inconvenience.

National Guard deployment moves ahead in Illinois after judge declines state's suit to block Trump call-up — Chicago Tribune

Attorneys for the Trump administration said in court that Texas National Guard units could begin operations by Tuesday, the same day Illinois Guard members have been ordered to report.

apple.news

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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 1d

I was happier having forgotten about the Chick-fil-A sandwich story.

☕️ Jeremy Diamond @dmnd.me · 2d

Adam Rubenstein when asked about the Chick-fil-A sandwich story

Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 1d

They must not be allowed to be overwhelmed by the malicious snapping of the wokes.

Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 2d

I'm making this my canonical explanation for the SCC robe change.

Bill H @dahoovster.bsky.social · 2d

The racing stripes are classy, though: sometimes Justice comes at you fast

Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 3d

somebody duct tape some oven mitts on Arnold #OnePride

Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 3d

I'm pretty sure escalating U.S. authoritarianism is the reason we are also not paying more urgent attention. (Although it's not like 2003 (SARS) was a quiet year in U.S. politics.)

Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 3d

Has anyone down there paid attention to what happened in Canada with measles this year? I am sort of worried by how bad it was combined with the fact that it mostly didn't feel that urgent.

(Contrasted with SARS and H1N1, which didn't affect me but felt looming.)

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Dr Delyth Badder @folklorewales.com · 4d

Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet.

After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵

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Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 @janetbufton.ca · 4d

Of the three primers that came out of @originstorypodcast.bsky.social, I thought that I would like the centrism one the least. Instead, it's the one I most wish more people would read.

Centrism: The Story of an Idea by Ian Dunt, Dorian Lynskey

A coherent political philosophy or a vacuous cop-out? A pragmatic middle way between the extremes...

app.thestorygraph.com