Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Reason
by Ily Somin

“Labor Day is a great time to remember that we can make workers vastly better off by empowering more of them to vote with their feet, both within countries and through international migration.” (09/07/26)

https://reason.com/volokh/2026/09/07/help-workers-by-breaking-down-barriers-to-labor-mobility-4/

Source: Asia Times
by Greg Barton

“In September 2026 we live in a world of uncertainty and change. Geopolitics, technology and the physical world are experiencing rapid transformation that fascinates and terrifies in equal measure. Much of this would have occurred without September 11, but there is a sense in which that day changed all these things. The collapse of 80 years of global order cannot be said to have simply resulted from the world’s biggest terror attack, but it certainly played a role in triggering a series of responses that changed all the nations involved. Could the September 11 attacks have been foreseen and prevented? Absolutely. … One clear way the September 11 attacks changed the world was as a catalyst for a decades-long global ‘War on Terror.’ This war never had a clear strategic plan or an agreed endpoint.” (09/07/26)

https://asiatimes.com/2026/09/not-stopping-9-11-was-catastrophic-but-bigger-mistakes-came-later/

Source: The UnPopulist
by Brink Lindsey

“Every Labor Day, Americans participate in a holiday whose meaning has gradually thinned out—stripped down to a three-day weekend, end-of-summer sales, and only a passing nod to ‘workers.’ American thinking about work and freedom used to run much deeper than that. At the Founding, and for the decades that followed, working for wages wasn’t seen as a normal fact of economic life. Rather, it was widely regarded as a form of dependence, a glorified form of servitude. That suspicion of wage labor shaped one of the 19th century’s defining political movements. Today, on Labor Day, its logic is worth closer examination. I’m proposing that we go back to the future, reviving the ‘free labor’ vision of Abraham Lincoln and fellow early Republicans.” (09/07/26)

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/is-wage-labor-freedom-or-servitude

Source: Liberal Currents
by Alan Elrod

“The descent of stable societies into ones of endemic violence rarely produces anything but new forms of tyranny and terror. People are fond of citing history’s most famous revolutions in support of such extremism, but the full record of armed revolt is mixed to say the least. Widespread revolt in contemporary America is unlikely, but it is also not something we should wish for. Luigi Mangione is not patient zero for revolution discourse, but he is a good example of how febrile contemporary American politics has become.” (09/07/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/you-wont-win-the-revolution/

Source: Brownstone Institute
by Alan Cassels

“In 2009, during the H1N1 swine flu panic, I was among a few vocal health policy critics remarking that public health officials were strangely and repeatedly invoking the terrifying spectre of the 1918 Spanish flu. Why? We had no idea what was going on, but in hindsight the game being played was quite clear: Evoking the worst infectious outbreak in living memory was pretty much a corporate-backed push to justify the stockpiling of an antiviral known as Tamiflu (generic name: oseltamivir). … Roche, the drug’s manufacturer, assured us that it would prevent flu complications, reduce hospitalizations, and stop transmission. Those are the bad things we hoped Tamiflu would help us avoid. The global gastronomic appetite for Tamiflu came with a bit of heartburn: the manufacturer hid the data which supported its approval and licensing.” (09/07/26)

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-multi-billion-dollar-tamiflu-con/