Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall

“Let us imagine, just for a moment, that this climate change thing is really big and important. So much so that we’re going to subsidise people moving from internal combustion engines over to electric vehicles. No, no, don’t worry about whether all that is true or not, necessary or a good idea. That’s just the set up. We’ve got to shift that transport sector and we’re going to do it via subsidy. ‘Andy Burnham is preparing to raise tariffs on Chinese electric cars as part of a closer relationship with the EU.’ … The answer to climate change is that we both subsidise electric vehicles and also that we tax electric vehicles at a rate of 45%. That the political process would even consider this – this before how we all know there will be those who think it a good idea – shows, precisely, why politics and good economics just do not mix.” (10/09/26)

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/a-lovely-example-of-why-politics-is-bad-at-economics

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joshua Mawhorter

“The masterful socialist strategy is to present only the benefits of their policies with no (or almost no) costs, and then assert that the consequences of state intervention are actually the costs of free-market capitalism. Ironically, however, the socialists need the genuine production and exchange from some degree of market capitalism in order to give anything to anyone. What does not exist or is not possessed cannot be given.” (10/09/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/socialism-me-definition-wishful-thinking

Source: The Weekly Dish
by Andrew Sullivan

“For the ancients, thymos always had to cede to reason to be exercised properly, and always, as for every virtue, in moderation. The consequences of unrestrained thymos could be disastrous, as Socrates taught, and Alcibiades, who rashly got Athens into a war it could not win, proved. So no, the West is not defined by ambition, nor by ‘the unapologetic pursuit of national power.’ For most of the last two thousand years, after all, ‘national power’ did not exist. Christendom did. The West is defined by reason allied with Christianity, which eventually gave us the liberal order. Rubio wants to replace that with unconstrained passion allied with the will to power. God help us. But that just reveals how virulently anti-Christian the American right has now become.” (10/09/26)

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-floundering-anglo-american-right

Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Marta Roels

“At the turn of the century, Italy was a G7 industrial power, admired for its fashion, automobiles, machinery, food, and design. Since then, a rigid labor market, complex taxation, slow courts, small family firms, heavy public debt, demographic decline, and the constraints of the euro have combined to undermine growth. Italy has not dramatically collapsed; it has lost time. Between 2000 and 2022, Italian labor productivity fell by roughly 4%, while the EU average rose around 20%.” (10/09/26)

https://fee.org/articles/how-italy-lost-the-21st-century/

Source: Liberal Currents
by Katherine Alejandra Cross

“Like the man himself, Francis Fukuyama’s new memoir ‘In the Realm of the Last Man’ combines startling insight and baffling contradiction.” (10/09/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/fukuyamas-glasses/

Source: The UnPopulist
by Paul Crider

“I think of Sarah Longwell as a kind of political sin-eater. The founder and publisher of The Bulwark sprinkles quotes like the above throughout her new book, a New York Times bestseller, How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time. They are a small sampling of her regular focus groups of American voters. She listens to the most infuriating inanities from the world’s most irresponsible voters because the rest of us would be driven to madness from the Lovecraftian horror that is American public opinion. Longwell uses her vast trove of qualitative voter data and her long experience in Republican communications to end the electoral dominance of her former side and enact reforms long and deep enough to decisively resolve the authoritarian crisis.” (10/09/26)

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/a-former-right-wingers-guide-on-how