Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Brownstone Institute
by Sinead Murphy

“At school, my son is studying King Lear. In a recent test, he came fifth best of twenty-two students. ‘What was the subject of the test?’ I asked him. ‘It is impossible to feel sorry for Lear in the first two scenes of Act One,’ he told me. ‘What did you write?’ I asked. ‘That it is not impossible to feel sorry for Lear. Because of Lear’s cognitive decline.’ Lear, victim of Alzheimer’s disease. One of the richest literary outputs of human history: swallowed by a diagnosis.” (11/12/26)

https://brownstone.org/articles/diagnosis-in-place-of-reason-and-feeling/

Source: Law & Liberty
by Jacob Howland

“When Vladimir Bukovsky’s memoir of his public struggle against Soviet tyranny appeared in 1978 in Michael Scammell’s energetic English translation, reviewers welcomed it as an exceptional book. Written with literary flair and suffused with quiet moral authority, it exposed, in excruciating detail, the demonic brutality of the psychiatric repression of political prisoners under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. To Build a Castle also vividly portrayed the misery of life on both sides of the barbed wire in a country ruled by fear, plagued by pervasive aggression, alcoholism, and nightmarish bureaucratic torments, and impoverished by universal corruption and an economically murderous ideology.” (11/12/26)

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/a-soviet-handbook-for-fighting-totalitarianism/

Source: The Nation
by Michael T Klare

“The offenses cited by Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) in commencing impeachment proceedings against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—that he initiated and sustained the war with Iran without required congressional approval, conducted military operations in Yemen and the Caribbean without such approval, and eroded protections for civilians trapped in overseas war zones—are all valid and fully justify his removal from office in accordance with constitutional precepts. But however worthy, they fail to capture his essential, unpardonable offense: strategic malpractice when commanding troops in battle.” (11/12/26)

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/pete-hegseth-iran-war-military-strategic-failure/

Source: Cobden Centre
by Patrick Barron

“When French finances go deeply negative France cannot simply demand that the Bank of France print more francs out of thin air. The franc is gone and the Bank of France, which still exists, is an intermediate entity between French banks and the European Central Bank. The power to print more euros and buy French bonds is difficult because the other members of the European Union have power to oppose what they easily see as monetization of French debt that probably will not be repaid in euros of purchasing power as lent. If they accede to a new round of bond buying at all, the interest rate will be much, much higher.” (11/12/26)

https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/11/says-law-and-the-riots-in-france/

Source: Washington Monthly
by Jarod Facundo

“Conventional wisdom holds that Walmart’s low prices reflect volume discounts and economies of scale used by the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer—America’s largest employer and largest grocery retailer by sales. But the PepsiCo suit, brought by the FTC under its then-Chair Lina Khan, presented evidence of the opposite of efficiency: PepsiCo’s painstaking micromanagement of prices to protect its most powerful buyer. For consumers, this raises the possibility that Walmart’s market power does not, at least in this case, discipline prices downward, but inflates them across the market. … But before the FTC suit regarding PepsiCo was filed in January 2025, private plaintiff antitrust suits against Walmart and battery maker Energizer had already been underway for two years. These cases, which have received scant media attention, provide another set of allegations that Walmart may be influencing its suppliers’ pricing decisions in ways that harm consumers.” (11/12/260

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/11/12/did-walmart-use-market-power-to-rig-battery-prices/

Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall

“This sounds distinctly non-optimal: ‘Disabled people in England ‘have to wait up to two years for wheelchairs’’ … We do grasp that wheelchairs are more than simply four wheels and a chair these days. Also that there’s more than a little personal optimisation dependent upon the specific disability being catered to. But they’re not that complicated. … There is competition for the trade so where is the problem? Why is it that it can take up to two years? No, we don’t know either and it seems to us one of those things where we’d all like to know the answer. Our assumption is that the problem is with the monopoly, the NHS.” (11/12/26)

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/but-why-do-nhs-wheelchairs-take-so-long