Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Liberal Currents
by Janet Bufton

“Classical liberals must rejoin left liberals in fighting for emancipatory politics and against the illiberal right.” (05/19/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/liberalism-reunited/

Source: Persuasion
by Tim Requarth

“In 1981, a young Steve Jobs — bearded, bespectacled, brown corduroy blazer over an open-collared shirt — sat in front of an Apple II and explained what he thought a personal computer was for. He’d read an article in Scientific American that compared the efficiency of locomotion across species. The condor, he said, came out on top. Humans ranked about a third of the way down, ‘not too proud a showing for the crown of creation.’ But then someone had the insight to test a human on a bicycle, and the cyclist blew the condor away. … The computer, he said, was ‘a 21st century bicycle’ for the mind. In the age of AI, Jobs’ quaint bicycle has received an update from Silicon Valley. With the launch of ChatGPT, gushed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in early 2023, ‘We went from the bicycle to the steam engine.'” (05/18/26)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/what-the-inuit-know-and-ai-doesnt

Source: The Bulwark
by Jonathan V Last

“On Friday, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced that he would commute Tina Peters’s sentence. On the one hand, this is a tiny thing. Inconsequential. If we make it out of this period, then it will hardly be worth a footnote in the history of Trumpism. On the other hand, what Gov. Polis did for Peters is everything. It is the foundational question about how liberalism responds to an illiberal attack. And I’m going to swerve and tell you that I’m not really sure what I think about it. This might seem like an easy call — but it only seems that way.” (05/18/26)

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-devil-and-tina-peters

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jack Hunter

“As the voting opens in Kentucky today, polls are showing a neck-and-neck race with turnout for both candidates [Thomas Massie and Ed Gallrein] being key, thus Trump pulling out all the guns, even the defense secretary, to shift the tide against his nemisis. But obviously this is far more than just two regular Republicans vying for a House gig. Perhaps even more than Trump’s personal vendetta against Massie, the usual establishment coalition of neoconservatives, Christian Evangelical Zionists and wealthy pro-Israel mega-donors have made this a referendum on the acceptable levels of the Israel lobby’s influence in American politics and in American war policy.” (05/19/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/thomas-massie-election/