A common exchange I have in my YouTube comments is a viewer, upset about something I said, will accuse me of being a “Trumper” a “MAGA-T” or some variation of insult indicating I am Republican or voted for President Trump. My response is always the same: You’ll never see a red hat on me.
I keep it short because I don’t do political content and I don’t care what the drive-by commenter thinks of me in general or of my “politics” specifically. I put politics in quotes because what drives me isn’t really about elected officials or anything that ends up on a ballot. It’s freedom. And paradoxically, it’s about the firm boundaries that make freedom possible.
I’m known for being highly rebellious. Disagreeable, even. I lash out aggressively if someone speaks out of turn to me. I despise tyrants, big and small, and it makes me sick watching people censor themselves and fall over themselves to avoid drawing ire from the mob. I care about people running their businesses the way they want and not having torch-bearing lunatics thinking they have the right to dictate terms.
Given all that, it may surprise you to learn that I yearn to reinstate certain elements of the Victorian Era. Yes, the fashion, of course. Gorgeous. But also the way societal rules were enforced. The Victorians understood something we’ve forgotten: clear boundaries don’t restrict freedom. They protect it.
Rule One: Do Not Impose
When a Victorian woman’s husband died, she entered what was called “deep mourning.” For two years, she wore only black—dull, lusterless fabrics like paramatta silk or bombazine, with no shine or ornamentation. Even her stationery, umbrella, and fan were black. The household drew its blinds. Visitors did not call except close family. She was excused from all social obligations.
To modern eyes, this might look like a punishment. “Why are you locking this poor woman away! She needs to get back to normal to get over her grief!” But actually, no. These rules protected her. Don’t believe me? I know I’m not the only one who’s heard stories of poorly behaved relations treating a funeral repast like a family reunion or expecting the widow to wait on them during their visit. In the old days, everyone who saw that black dress knew instantly that a woman was in mourning, and knew they were not to make demands on a woman in mourning. You did not expect her to entertain you, charm you, fulfill social obligations, or pretend to be fine. The dress was a visible barrier that communicated: Leave me alone. I am dealing with something you cannot help with.
The customs extended outward in proportion to the relationship. Children mourning parents wore black for a year. Siblings, six months. Aunts and uncles, two months. First cousins, four weeks. The graduated system meant society knew exactly what to expect from you at any given time. You weren’t constantly negotiating or explaining yourself. The rules did the work so you didn’t have to.
And crucially, the rules prevented other people from demanding explanations. It wasn’t your place to ask why a widow wasn’t attending balls. It wasn’t your place to suggest she should be over it by now. The boundary was clear, publicly understood, and socially enforced.
These enforcements managed daily interactions as well. You simply could not speak to someone to whom you had not been properly introduced. To modern ears, this sounds insufferably stuffy. But think about what it meant in practice.
An introduction was a voucher. When you introduced someone to your friend, you were staking your social reputation on that person’s worthiness. If they turned out to be a scoundrel, that reflected on you. As etiquette manuals of the time warned: “An introduction is a social endorsement. Discrimination should be used in introducing people, especially those of whose character one is ignorant.”
This created a protective layer around everyone, especially women. A strange man could not simply walk up to a woman at a ball and begin making conversation, no matter how charming he thought himself. He needed a mutual acquaintance to vouch for him. And that acquaintance was permitted to decline. The etiquette books are explicit: “If a person asks you to introduce him to another, and you find the introduction would not be agreeable to the other party, you may decline on the grounds that your own acquaintance is not sufficiently intimate to take that liberty.”
What this meant, practically, was that your social circle was yours. No one could force entry into it. If someone behaved badly, you could employ the “cut direct”—looking directly at them when they attempted to greet you, acknowledging that you saw them, and then turning away without a word. This was the nuclear option, reserved for serious offenses. But it was available. And everyone knew it was available, which made most people behave better.
The Modern Inversion of Propriety
All of this sounds quaint until you realize what we’ve replaced it with.
The modern assumption runs something like this: “I am a person. I have feelings. Because I am a person, I have intrinsic worth. Likewise, my feelings are all, without exception, valid and to be taken seriously. You, fellow human being, are therefore responsible for protecting my feelings. To do otherwise is to dehumanize me.”
The logical problem is obvious: there’s no limiting principle. If your emotional state creates obligations for me, those obligations are infinite and unilateral. You can demand anything in the name of your feelings, and I have no standing to refuse.
This brings me to what prompted this essay in the first place.
An author recently discovered that she had inadvertently purchased AI-generated art to distribute with her book. She had been deceived by the seller. Upon realizing this, she issued what can only be described as an over-the-top mea culpa. She begged for forgiveness. She offered refunds for her books—books that themselves contained no AI assets whatsoever. She pleaded with her followers not to attack other artists she had previously worked with, as if the mob might not be able to distinguish between different humans.
It was the response of a hostage reading a statement written by her captors.
The apology was galling enough. But what really set me off was the comments defending it. “She’s apologizing because she’s a good person. Whoever takes the most accountability is the most virtuous. If apologizing makes people feel better then you should do it.”
Is it right to apologize when you’re the one who’s been taken advantage of? That doesn’t seem right at all to me.
I say this with no malice: the belief that “the person who takes responsibility is the most virtuous person in the room” will make you a prime target for cluster B-disordered individuals and bad actors of all sorts. You are only responsible for your own actions and motives. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to manipulate you, and probably already has.
The feelings-based justification—”if it makes people feel better, you should do it”—has been used to manipulate women into accepting convicted male sex offenders into women’s sports, changing rooms, prisons, and domestic violence shelters. All because of a collapse in firm boundaries about who actually has the power to tell whom what to do.
The Cancel Pigs Are Still Here
“It’s not happening. Okay it is happening and it’s a good thing. And if you disagree that it’s a good thing, that’s violence. That means anything I do to you is self-defense.”
No Power is Universal
The lack of limiting principles is a slippery slope, which is why I get just as frustrated with Rightoids as I do with the Commies. Consider a police officer. His badge gives him certain authority over law and order within his jurisdiction. I’m glad this job exists. But that badge does not allow him to do whatever he wants (much as he might wish it did). The authority is limited, specific, and bounded by the duties that justify it in the first place. He has the power to arrest criminals, not to dictate your daily life.
During Covid, we watched police across the Western world violate this principle spectacularly. Officers pulled over law-abiding drivers and instructed them to return home, as if governments have the right to imprison citizens without charge. They arrested families playing with children at outdoor parks. All because they had been ordered to.
And if we’re being honest, it’s hard to imagine they had a problem with following those orders. They got to extend their own authority, even though it wasn’t truly theirs to extend.
This is what happens when jurisdictional boundaries collapse. Every institution, every person, starts grabbing for power that doesn’t belong to them. The Twitter mob acts like it has the authority to demand apologies from people who have done nothing wrong. The state acts like it has authority over your movements and associations. Random strangers act like they have standing to lecture you about your life choices.
The Victorian woman in mourning dress didn’t have to explain herself to anyone. Today, everyone demands an explanation for everything and considers your failure to provide one as evidence of guilt.
Belief Without Slogan or Flag
I don’t think there’s a neat political label for my worldview. I’m not an anarchist, as I believe in legitimate authority structures. I’m not a libertarian in the modern sense. I believe in duties and obligations that extend beyond the non-aggression principle.
I am a child of the Most High God, and my right to live free comes from Him. No man has the right to impose on that freedom.
HOWEVER…
This means I have no right to impose on the freedom of others. No right to demand the time, labor, or even goodwill of other people. None of that is owed to me. That is why I am grateful for kindness, because it is not my due. I don’t even expect random men to intervene if I’m attacked by a street criminal. A stranger is not obliged to endanger his safety or his life in the protection of mine. This is precisely why men who do intervene are heroes and should be feted as such. Because we are not owed their help.
The same applies to government. I hate my pocket being picked to give to able-bodied people who simply don’t work. I hate that social welfare programs are being defrauded en masse, causing the government to pick my pocket even more. I especially hate that my money is taken from me to fund people in foreign countries.
But with that hatred comes the knowledge and belief that I am not owed help from the government either. I am not owed other people’s money, earned from their labor and time away from their families. If they choose to give it to me when I fall on hard times, that is called charity. It is a blessing, and people who give it freely are to be commended.
The theological term for this is probably “sphere sovereignty”—the idea articulated by Abraham Kuyper that each sphere of life has its own distinct God-given jurisdiction. The state has authority in its sphere. The church has authority in its sphere. The family has authority in its sphere. And you have authority over yourself. None of these may legitimately intrude on the others.
The state doesn’t get to define your family. The mob doesn’t get to dictate your business practices. Random strangers don’t get standing to interrogate your choices.
The Jurisdiction Matrix
So let me try to lay this out clearly—a kind of “know your place” matrix for who has standing to say what to whom.
Over yourself: Total jurisdiction. Your time, your labor, your opinions, your associations. You can be wrong—God will hold you accountable—but other humans don’t get a vote unless you grant them one.
Over your household: Legitimate authority and responsibility. You can and must correct, direct, and protect. This is yours.
Over those who’ve entered covenant with you: Friends, business partners, fellow church members. You’ve mutually agreed to certain obligations and certain standing to speak into each other’s lives. This is voluntary and bounded by the terms of the relationship. If someone oversteps, you can end the covenant.
Over strangers: Almost none. You can warn them of immediate danger. You can defend yourself if they aggress. You cannot demand their time, resources, agreement, or emotional labor. They owe you nothing beyond not actively harming you. You owe them the same.
Over public figures making public statements: This is where it sometimes gets confusing for people. When someone enters the public square—whether as an author, politician, commentator, or anyone else making public claims—they’ve accepted that their public statements and actions are subject to public comment. This is why we scream from the mountaintops: “Don’t post about your relationship online! Stop posting your kids FFS!” This is because you are making what should be private fodder for the public. How then can you complain when the public comments? A public person’s worth as a human is not up for public debate. But their arguments, their work, their public conduct? Fair game for critique. This is why I can criticize an author’s public groveling without being a bully—she made it public. This is also why I tell all the pretty girls to keep the online selfies from the neck up. If you saw what went down with Grok last week, you know what I’m saying. Public means open for commentary. Think about that next time your finger hovers over that “post” button.
Why I Clap Back so Hard
Without jurisdictional boundaries, all we’re left with is passive-aggressive manipulation and mob-based compliance. There’s no heroism, no charity. Only obligation. I better do [this thing] or I’ll get canceled. It destroys virtue and bit by bit, it destroys freedom.
Without jurisdictional boundaries, there can be no freedom, only negotiated surrender to whoever has the most social power at the moment. Today it’s the anti-AI crusaders. Tomorrow it’s someone else. You’ll spend your life apologizing to whoever screams loudest.
The Victorian rules were far from perfect and foibles ranged from cruel (child labor) to hilarious ( a new husband leaving his wife on their wedding night because he was ignorant and repulsed by the existence of pubic hair). But they understood that fences make good neighbors because they clarify where your neighbor ends and you begin.
The mourning dress, the introduction system, the cut direct. All these boundaries protected something precious: the right to live your life without constant interference from people who have no standing to interfere.
I’m not calling for a hippy-dippy “anything goes” mentality. But I am calling for a return to the underlying principle of minding your own affairs and staying out of mine unless invited in. My mistakes don’t grant you the right to demand atonement. Your existence doesn’t obligate my service, much less my obeisance.
Know your place. And by that I mean: know what places are actually yours.
Whatever mob comes for you—and one probably will eventually—remember that their feelings don’t grant them standing. Their demands don’t constitute your duties.
You are only responsible for your own actions and motives. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to manipulate you.
Don’t let them.
Great parsing of the current social matrix. I was never a fan of the Victorian (though enticed by the floral garnishes of Ian McShane’s Al Swerengen in Deadwood) but now I have to give it some respect. Perhaps I’ll don a black ensemble for my next Youtube video to keep the critics from mouthing off.
An even-handed, creative and concise way to look at the freedom we all hold so dear and take for granted. Yes, enforcing boundaries and the recognition of evil are two 21st century survival skills sorely needed to navigate this changing world we live in. I appreciate your candor and the time it took to put this together. Keep up the good work.