The Not-So-Current Year: 2020 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 2020 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.

Benjamin Welton began the year by considering Chile's leftward lurch in the previous year, as well as the prospects for doing something about it.

On Nov. 29, 2019, Quillette published an essay by Chang Che titled “The Case for Compulsory Voting” in which he argues that the right to vote is under attack and that making voting mandatory is the remedy for this and other problems. I wrote a thorough rebuttal to his case. I then went for an atypical second bite of the apple as an episode of “Agreeing With Statists For The Wrong Reasons,” the only one for the year.

Book reviews have long been part of my intellectual output, and 2020 was no different. I read and reviewed Jonathan A. Rodden's Why Cities Lose. Several more books that I read in 2020 will be reviewed in 2021.

On Mar. 3, 2020, there were 15 contests in the nomination process for President of the United States. Primary elections took place in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia, while caucuses took place in American Samoa. Collectively, this is known as Super Tuesday because more delegates are awarded on this date than on any other date in the nomination process. I wrote a list of observations on the presidential race up to that point.

Also in March, Welton argued the case that American foreign policy in Afghanistan has been a disaster and will continue to be so unless a more traditional strategy of installing and backing a proper monarch is adopted.

My glossary of social justice warrior terminology is the most popular article ever posted at Zeroth Position. After two years of continued craziness from radical leftists, I decided to revise and expand it to create a second edition in 2018. I did so again this year. This is likely to need continual updating, and two years is a proper amount of time between editions, so look for the fourth edition in 2022.

Of course, the overarching theme of 2020 was the novel coronavirus, or the Wēnyì (Chinese: 瘟疫; plague, pestilence, epidemic, murrain), as we prefer to call it here at Zeroth Position. I wrote an essay addressing pandemic response from a libertarian reactionary perspective. Before this, my poetic side came out as I wrote song lyrics to the tune of Don't Fear the Reaper about the plague and the ineffective public health response.

I welcomed Edward Maxwell III, the fifth additional writer at Zeroth Position, in August for a series called Colonize Your Bookshelf, the title of which is a jab at social justice warrior rhetoric about “decolonizing spaces.” Four parts were published in 2020, each of which summarizes and analyzes a book or essay that progressives would likely find distasteful and which is available or intended for future release through Maxwell's own Imperium Press. Part I contemplates Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings. Part II discusses Joseph de Maistre's Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions. Part III covers Lothrop Stoddard's Into the Darkness: Nazi Germany Today. Part IV reviews Fustel de Coulanges' The Ancient City. The series is likely to continue next year.

Nathan Dempsey submitted an essay which examines David D. Friedman's book The Machinery of Freedom through the lens of his own Liberty Minecraft project.

On October 28, my pseudonymous Twitter account was permanently suspended. I wrote an essay reflecting upon that event. As of this writing, the Zeroth Position brand account is still active, but who knows for how long.

Black Friday is revered by most libertarians as a celebration of free-market capitalism. I updated my explanation of why this reverence is misplaced.

We bade Benjamin Welton farewell. We wish him the best in his future endeavors and hope for his return to our pages someday.

Finally, the site itself made some important steps forward. We added an Affiliate page which displays products from the top vendors at WarriorPlus, each of which helps to pay for the operation of Zeroth Position whenever someone makes a purchase. We also changed our Friends page to an RSS feed of somewhat like-minded sites.

All in all, it was an interesting year full of occasions to make sharp libertarian and reactionary arguments. May 2021 bring more and better. Happy New Year!