Source: Independent Institute
by Scott Beyer

“Socialism is having another moment in U.S. politics. Politicians and activists increasingly describe themselves as socialist while their opponents use the same label as a term of condemnation. Yet both sides employ the word so loosely as to become meaningless. Sweden gets called socialist because it has high taxes and universal health care; Venezuela does because the government nationalized industries and imposed price controls. The rise of the phrase ‘democratic socialism’, which lumps together two unconnected words, adds to the confusion and makes debate difficult. Before deciding whether socialism works, we ought to determine what it actually is—and which countries practice it.” (08/17/26)

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/08/17/which-countries-are-actually-socialist/

Source: Liberalism.org
by David Bernell

“Athletics socialize us into essential democratic habits and teach us what liberal institutions require to succeed.” (08/17/26)

https://www.liberalism.org/p/sports-a-training-ground-for-liberal-democracy

Source: Show-Me Institute
by Avery Frank

“Specifically, utilities want to reduce competition by halting competitive bidding for multi-state transmission projects, as the bidding process can take 16 to 20 months. If approved, the utilities would be the default developers of those projects, with no competition involved. In Missouri, both Ameren and Evergy, our state’s largest utilities, operate in multiple states and would gain that right of first refusal. For starters, it’s worth acknowledging that 16 to 20 months is a long time to select a developer, and these companies are right that we quickly need more energy to serve big new customers. This situation illustrates why Missouri is between a rock and a hard place in its efforts to modernize our electricity grid. … There has to be a better way—and fortunately, there is. Missouri instead could allow private electricity grids (also known as consumer regulated electricity, or CRE) for large customers like data centers.” (08/17/26)

https://showmeinstitute.org/article/energy/utilities-want-more-control-to-meet-growing-energy-demand/

Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob

“There are people who still debate the term ‘woke.’ From the beginning, defenders of woke judgments, discourse, and activism claimed it was ‘just good manners’; others said it didn’t exist, a mere figment of ‘right-wing paranoia.’ Truth is, it was a new, trendy term used to replace ‘social justice’ and the peculiar bent and activism methods of ‘social justice warriors,’ after ‘SJW’ became fodder for ridicule by collegiate leftism’s opponents.” (08/17/26)

https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/08/17/awake2evasion1p0/

Source: In These Times
by Miles Kampf-Lassin

“Screwworms feeding on cattle across the South, tainted vegetables spreading a parasite causing explosive diarrhea, smoke from wildfires poisoning the air and President Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran surging gas and grocery prices. All would be enough to label summer 2026 a time of crisis in the United States. Still, it’s been made far worse by the brutal heat waves plaguing much of the country …. Every summer is getting hotter, longer and more intense as fossil fuel-spawned climate change warms the globe at an unbridled rate. Now, the pace of these impacts is being accelerated by the rapid spread of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and the energy-guzzling power plants being built to fuel their usage, which Trump has been fervently working to expand.” (08/17/26)

https://inthesetimes.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-data-centers-palantir