“President Donald Trump signaled that he is entitled to raze the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts if he is not permitted to add his name to the building’s front wall. … The Trump administration’s contortions on this issue almost make Trump’s ravings on the Reflecting Pool seem sane. The Kennedy Center was doing fine financially until Trump took it over at the start of his second term. His behavior is Exhibit A on why culture should be separated from the State. Ironically, aside from his childlike obsession with renaming the Kennedy Center after himself, Trump has made some excellent proposals on federal cultural subsidies.” (09/23/26)
“Bitcoin slipped on Wednesday, as sentiment for risky assets took a hit from soaring U.S. Treasury yields, a boost to Federal Reserve rate hike expectations, and a rise in oil prices as hopes for diplomatic progress between Washington and Tehran took a hit. After rallying nearly 7% on Monday and peaking above $87.3k to touch its highest level since the end of January, Bitcoin has given back some gains. Still, investors remain upbeat about regulatory proceedings around crypto despite the recent failure of the Clarity Act in clearing Congress. … U.S. Treasury yields surged on Wednesday amid a rise in odds of the Fed delivering a rate hike in October. The moves were driven by hot U.S. economic data.” (09/23/26)
“How does anything get built? What are the political precursors to development? Michael Munger has an interesting, and at times persuasive, argument that self-interest combines with particular institutional designs, such as public hearings, to create a prisoner’s dilemma where everyone knows that development is in aggregate desirable but wants that development to be in the next town over. This is, in many ways, the conventional story of NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) politics. That story isn’t wrong per se, but it’s missing a critical component: culture. … I argue that three cultural practices (growth orientation, property rights norms, and positive-sum attitudes) act essentially as gates. If a place fails on any one of them, it is very likely to underbuild. Development will thus, over time, gravitate toward places that can pass all three of these cultural tests.” (09/23/26)
“The Central Elections Committee voted Wednesday in favor of petitions to disqualify the Joint List slate — made up of Balad, Hadash, and Ta’al — altogether as well as Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party from running in the October 27 election, effectively barring all majority Arab parties from running in the election. The rulings by the panel, made up almost entirely of politicians representing Knesset factions, must be approved by the Supreme Court of Justice, which is expected to strike down the bans, due to the high legal threshold for preventing a political party from running.” (09/23/26)
“‘Civilization’ has been an anchor for a host of moral panics, outbursts of violence, and dubious state-aggrandizing schemes. Liberalism’s enemies may say that we can’t have it. And yet we must, and we will. Liberalism isn’t just compatible with civilization. Liberalism offers an understanding of civilization that’s worth wanting and defending.” (09/23/26)
“Italy’s Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to legislation paving the way for a return to nuclear power nearly four decades after the Chernobyl disaster prompted the country to abandon atomic energy. … The bill, which earlier passed the lower Chamber of Deputies, establishes a legal framework for next-generation nuclear technologies. It authorizes the government to draft implementing decrees over the next 12 months covering reactor licensing, safety standards, waste management and criteria for future sites. The vote puts Italy on a path toward reintroducing nuclear power after voters twice rejected it in national referendums, first in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and again following Japan’s Fukushima accident in 2011.” (09/23/26)
“On a chilly Thursday evening last December, citizens in Dorr, Michigan, a small community about a half-hour south of Grand Rapids, attended a town hall meeting to discuss the possible construction of a data center on the north end of town. Some of the attendees came from families who had lived in Dorr for generations and, worried about the disruptions posed by a new data center, came ready to defend their town. Instead, to their dismay, they discovered the township supervisor had, without a public hearing, already signed an agreement. Microsoft, never bothering to send a representative to meet the public, now held the deed to more than 250 acres of prime farmland, an arrangement citizens knew nothing about until everything was signed and sealed. With the land already sold and the ink dry, the citizens’ impotence turned to repressed rage.” (09/23/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Of course, things like a bad home life, sexual abuse, and other things must always be considered possible factors when it comes to suicide among young people. But what no mainstream press reporter or commentator will ever acknowledge is another potential factor in teenage suicide — the fact that government officials indoctrinate young people into living lives based on lies and delusions. The fact that most young people are unaware of the false reality that they are living makes their situation significantly worse.” (09/23/26)
