Category: Opinion

Source: Property and Environment Research Center
by Brian Yablonski

“Private bison ranchers turned a symbol of the American West into one of conservation’s greatest success stories.” (08/19/26)

https://www.perc.org/2026/08/19/bisonomics-2/

Source: American Greatness
by Larry Sand

“The recently released EdChoice ‘Schooling in America’ survey finds that 56 percent of parents believe K-12 education is on the wrong track. Indeed, too many traditional American public schools are failing to fulfill their role. Parental unhappiness is certainly understandable, given that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), aka the ‘Nation’s Report Card’, showed that in 2024, 12th-grade students scored their lowest in reading and math in decades. In math, 45 percent of high school seniors scored ‘below basic,’ the lowest level since 2005. In reading, 32 percent scored ‘below basic’, the lowest level since the exam’s inception in 1992. Among 8th-graders, 38 percent scored ‘below basic’ in science, meaning they couldn’t recognize basic facts, such as the fact that plants need sunlight to grow.” (08/19/26)

https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/19/escaping-the-educational-industrial-complex/

Source: Independent Institute
by K Lloyd Billingsley

“As Hinckley returns to the spotlight, his release raises questions about justice and the consequences of political violence.” (08/19/26)

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/08/19/john-hinckley-jr-assassination-chic-and-the-troubling-legacy-of-the-insanity-defense/

Source: The Guardian
by US Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT)

“The media pundits have written article after article desperately trying to understand why progressive candidates, despite being heavily outspent, keep defeating establishment Democrats in primaries around the country. Well, the answer is not complicated. Whether it is a corrupt campaign finance system, unprecedented income and wealth inequality, a broken and wildly expensive healthcare system, the enormous threats posed by AI or an immoral and destructive foreign policy, progressives are talking about the real issues facing working families. And they are providing real solutions. Establishment Democrats are not.” (08/19/26)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/19/poll-progressive-candidates-election-economy

Source: EconLog
by Leonidas Zelmanovitz

“In 1988, when I was 27 years old, I read Ayn Rand for the first time. It was her novel Atlas Shrugged, in its just-released Portuguese edition. At that time, I already considered myself a sort of classical liberal, but my superficial knowledge of political philosophy, among many other gaps in my education, made my convictions not very convincing. It was only after reading her that I gained the libertarian worldview I more or less hold to this day. Mind you, I was already in business and volunteering in the classical liberal movement in Brazil, but that was more of an irreflective reaction to being raised under a military dictatorship and then being governed by a left-leaning populist than the result of any deep thought.” (08/19/26)

https://www.econlib.org/econlog/atlas-shrugged-and-interventionism

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe

“In a year as chaotic, violent, and economically destructive as this one has been, it is interesting that, to many Americans, the great villain of 2026 is turning out to be a traffic camera. But, indeed, we are seeing visceral, cross-partisan opposition to so-called Flock cameras—named after the leading manufacturer of these automated license plate readers—take hold in communities across the country. And that opposition is, to be sure, entirely legitimate.” (08/19/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/flock-camera-backlash-very-good-sign

Source: The American Conservative
by George D O’Neill Jr.

“Now that the lofty 250th-anniversary rhetoric about the greatness of our country has faded, it is time to face the reality of our country’s actual behavior. The U.S. fashions itself as a generous and benevolent world leader enforcing the ‘rules-based order’—a deceptive construct used by globalist elites to bully other countries. The rules are arbitrarily changed to suit the bullies and are regularly fashioned into pretexts for military action against uncooperative nations. In short, it is a hoax, untethered from the principles and ideals of our founders.” (08/19/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/some-shattering-illusions-of-our-declining-empire/

Source: Jonathan Turley
by Jonathan Turley

“As many criticize higher education for pursuing indoctrination over education, Oregon State University (OSU) appears to be doubling down on a mandatory woke curriculum. The university is under fire for its mandatory undergraduate courses on ‘Difference, Power & Oppression’ (DPO). Much of the rhetoric on the university’s website reads more like the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) than an institution of higher education. OSU requires all undergraduate students who enrolled after the summer of 2025 to complete two DPO courses as part of its Core Education curriculum, including ‘Difference, Power & Oppression Foundations’ and ‘Difference, Power & Oppression Advanced’. This is all part of what OSU calls a ‘core curriculum’ that teaches students to be ‘adaptive, proactive members’ of society to ‘build a better world’.” (08/19/26)

https://jonathanturley.org/2026/08/19/difference-power-oppression-osu-requires-students-to-take-courses-on-how-to-disrupt-the-systems-of-oppression-in-the-united-states/

Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson

“‘Borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,’ wrote the 16th-century economist William Shakespeare, who went on to advise: ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’ Americans, who like to talk about their Christian faith more than study it (‘The wicked person borrows and does not repay, but the righteous one is gracious and giving’) have twice elected the self-proclaimed ‘king of debt,’ an infamous deadbeat and serial bankrupt, as president of the United States, while entrusting the national purse strings to the control of his self-abasing toadies in Congress. That’s going about as well as you would imagine.” (08/19/26)

https://thedispatch.com/article/debt-gdp-interest-rates-trump-republicans/

Source: The Daily Economy
by Kimberlee Josephson

“Businesses are increasingly judged by ethical scorecards. But when virtue becomes a target, firms learn to optimize the metric — crowding out what actually matters.” (08/19/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-corporate-virtue-trap/