“Henry Kissinger famously (if apocryphally) said, ‘It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.’ This may be the year the world finally got the message. President Donald Trump said he wanted his legacy to be ‘the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.’ It won’t be. Instead, he will be remembered by history as the president who squandered trust in and respect for Washington and brought the post–Cold War era of American hegemony to an end.” (08/26/26)
“David Hume thought philosophically about politics. If he had not, John Witherspoon, the Princeton educator who taught a future president, a future vice president, as well as future judges, senators, and representatives, would not have recommended his writings to his students. Thomas Reid, the Scottish philosopher, would not have developed an entire system of thought—taught in Scotland and the United States for the next century—as a direct response to Hume. Theologians, such as Jonathan Edwards, and college presidents, such as Timothy Dwight, Edwards’ grandson, would not have wrestled with and publicly commented on Hume’s philosophy. Had Hume not thought philosophically about politics, we would not be reading about him today.” (08/26/26)
“In 2014 the French bank BNP Paribas pleaded guilty to processing transactions for Iran, Cuba, and Sudan and paid an $8.9 billion settlement, its dollar-clearing business barred for a year. No French court convicted it. No French statute was broken. A European institution was fined nearly nine billion dollars by a foreign government for conduct that was legal where it occurred. Every treasurer in every bank outside the United States understood the message, and has behaved accordingly ever since. It was not meant to be this. When the dollar emerged from the last world war as the axis of global settlement, its dominance was a matter of commercial convenience—the currency everyone happened to hold because everyone else held it too. Convenience hardened into infrastructure, and infrastructure, in the hands of a state that noticed what it possessed, hardened into leverage.” (08/26/26)
“A Massachusetts judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration violated a nationwide injunction by finalizing a rule that would significantly overhaul mail voting if allowed to take effect. The order allows the Trump administration to publish the rule Wednesday, but the U.S. Postal Service remains barred from making the dramatic changes to mail-in ballots. … Tuesday’s ruling came in response to a motion from the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts asking Talwani to enforce her nationwide injunction blocking the new mail-ballot rules. The injunction bars the administration from directing USPS to reject ballot mail that doesn’t comply with the administration’s new design requirements until after the 2026 midterms.” (08/25/26)
“Strip away the diplomatic briefings, Congressional hearings and the endless cable news loops about centrifuges, regional proxies and cyber attacks, and you hit a raw unvarnished nerve. What truly disturbs the United States about the Islamic Republic is not its policies, its rhetoric or even its nuclear ambitions. It is Iran’s audacity to exist completely outside the American orbit; and make it work.” (08/26/26)
“The average voter, from personal experience or attempted avoidance thereof, is probably aware that excessive debt is bad, but he or she may be less clear about its deleterious national economic consequences. Even less obvious are the national security ramifications.” (08/25/26)
