Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie

“As a graduate of St Andrews, I take a keen interest in its doings. Scotland’s oldest university has started a new tradition. Every winter day it feeds trees into a furnace in a disused paper mill, then pumps the hot water four miles down the road to warm its laboratories. It calls this sustainability. A more skeptical observer might call it an expensive way to set fire to forests and public funds at the same time.” (11/11/26)

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/chips-off-the-old-block

Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander

“Here’s a fun argument you can use to discredit anyone at any time. Start by calling them an arrogant fanatic with a totalizing ideology, someone who thinks they personally have solved all problems and can’t possibly learn from dissenting viewpoints. If they have friends who agree with them, they’re a cult who collectively work to shelter themselves from any dissenting viewpoint. Then your victim responds by presenting one hundred notarized affadavits describing times when they have engaged with their critics, spent years studying books by their critics to see what they could learn from them, and even changed their beliefs in response to criticism. Then you spring the trap: ‘Ah, but you cherry-picked critics who operate within your worldview, a sort of loyal opposition. You continue to dismiss and exclude genuine critics who challenge your smug assumptions.’ This always works.” (11/11/26)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/escaping-the-outside-criticism-trap

Source: The Next Move
by Jay Nordlinger

“We all have different ideas of staunchness and squishiness. [Mitt] Romney strikes me as admirably staunch—on the rule of law, a free economy, the national interest … He can be counted on to defend basic American values, as many of us conceive them. DeSantis? He’s apt to blow with the Republican wind. I would not call him a ‘total squish,’ as he called Romney. But I would not cite him as an example of spine.” (11/11/26)

https://www.thenextmove.org/p/romney-and-desantis-a-study-in-contrasts

Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey

“Yesterday’s parliamentary maneuver is yet another example of how Congress manipulates public perception through these obscure rules. Politicians use procedural votes to avoid taking a public stance on executive overreach. A direct vote forces accountability. A referral motion allows representatives to defeat a measure while claiming they want committee review. So Republicans are crowing that Massie defamed Hegseth, showing how his effort was defeated, but there was never an up-and-down vote on Massie’s articles. They use these tactics to fundraise and create media sound bites without doing the difficult work of governance. We need more up-and-down votes to show accountability of our members of Congress, rather than have them meekly shy away from answering the question.” (11/11/26)

https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/house-kills-massies-hegseth-impeachment

Source: The Daily Economy
by Jeffery L Degner

“Today, Americans observe Veterans Day, originally known as Armistice Day, to honor those who have served in uniform. But World War I offers another lesson: how governments used borrowing and money printing to finance war, obscure its costs, and prolong the bloodshed.” (11/11/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/how-inflation-fed-the-slaughter-of-world-war-i/