Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Emmanuel Rincon

“I think that if there is something we can all agree on is that we do not like it when a referee wants to be the protagonist in a soccer match; obviously at the time of a match each one has his team, but we do not expect the referee to make up 5 penalties in our favor and omit the fouls of our team to win. What we all aspire to is a fair game, that our team plays better and the referee simply points out the fouls to avoid injustices. Regardless of the context, the referee should never be a player who influences the result, much less an almighty God who before the match can determine who will go to the next round or be crowned champion, otherwise, the game would lose all its essence and the sport would fall apart.” (10/23/21)

https://fee.org/articles/what-soccer-referees-can-teach-us-about-politics-and-government/

Source: The American Prospect
by Noah Kulwin

“There were many worse American generals in the last century than Colin Powell, men who also died, like Powell, largely celebrated for their accomplishments. Curtis LeMay (firebombed Tokyo, nearly incited a third world war on multiple occasions), Douglas MacArthur (provoked the Korean War, attempted to start nuclear war), and perhaps Tommy Franks (oversaw the invasion of Iraq), to name a few. But Powell was uniquely bad, fundamentally a bureaucrat and public relations man for the American political and military establishment. His consistent popularity, even after the debacle of the Iraq War and the George W. Bush administration political morass, speaks to the success of his mendacity and not the height of his virtue.” (10/22/21)

https://prospect.org/politics/invisible-general-how-colin-powell-conned-america/

Source: Reason
by Jacob Sullum

“‘We’re not going to put a dollar figure on human life,’ Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who was then New York’s governor, declared four days after he imposed a statewide COVID-19 lockdown last year. The goal, he explained, was to ‘save lives, period, whatever it costs.’ Ryan Bourne’s Economics in One Virus offers a much-needed rejoinder to that morally obtuse position. Bourne, an economist at the Cato Institute, highlights considerations that politicians like Cuomo too often ignored as they decided how to deal with a public health crisis more serious than any the country had faced since the influenza pandemic of 1918. Eschewing unwarranted confidence, Bourne takes no firm position on the cost-effectiveness of mass business closures or stay-at-home orders. But he does insist, pace Cuomo, that cost-effectiveness matters, and he deftly shows how economic reasoning illuminates such issues.” (for publication 11/21)

https://reason.com/2021/10/23/lockdowns-high-costs-and-murky-benefits/

Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton

“What can we learn about liberty from the Monroe Doctrine? Not that it was created for the purpose of exploiting the other American republics from DC and therefore automatically evil. Rather, that even ideas with good intentions and of great importance are corrupted by government. And by ‘democratic’ action — the lusts of the mob and its leaders. The Monroe Doctrine, like so many seemingly good ideas became the EXCUSE for intervention by DC in virtually every Latin nation in the New World for 150 years. And continues to be so today.)” (10/23/21)

https://thepriceofliberty.org/2021/10/23/21571/