Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“As a politician, Donald Trump has always been almost unmatched in his ability to direct and steer the media in ways that benefit him. Throughout his first term, Trump was excellent at making sudden policy reversals and grand, out-of-the-blue announcements that would leave the legacy media scrambling to keep up and therefore keep news consumers from looking too closely at his actual actions for too long. He would completely make up accomplishments and great political victories and operate as if they were real. … That approach of essentially creating and stoking delusions of success in the minds of voters is not actually a bad strategy for a politician. … But the fact remains that Trump has done very little to improve the material well-being of the American people and quite a lot to worsen it.” (09/23/26)
“President Donald Trump signaled that he is entitled to raze the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts if he is not permitted to add his name to the building’s front wall. … The Trump administration’s contortions on this issue almost make Trump’s ravings on the Reflecting Pool seem sane. The Kennedy Center was doing fine financially until Trump took it over at the start of his second term. His behavior is Exhibit A on why culture should be separated from the State. Ironically, aside from his childlike obsession with renaming the Kennedy Center after himself, Trump has made some excellent proposals on federal cultural subsidies.” (09/23/26)
“How does anything get built? What are the political precursors to development? Michael Munger has an interesting, and at times persuasive, argument that self-interest combines with particular institutional designs, such as public hearings, to create a prisoner’s dilemma where everyone knows that development is in aggregate desirable but wants that development to be in the next town over. This is, in many ways, the conventional story of NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) politics. That story isn’t wrong per se, but it’s missing a critical component: culture. … I argue that three cultural practices (growth orientation, property rights norms, and positive-sum attitudes) act essentially as gates. If a place fails on any one of them, it is very likely to underbuild. Development will thus, over time, gravitate toward places that can pass all three of these cultural tests.” (09/23/26)
“‘Civilization’ has been an anchor for a host of moral panics, outbursts of violence, and dubious state-aggrandizing schemes. Liberalism’s enemies may say that we can’t have it. And yet we must, and we will. Liberalism isn’t just compatible with civilization. Liberalism offers an understanding of civilization that’s worth wanting and defending.” (09/23/26)
“On a chilly Thursday evening last December, citizens in Dorr, Michigan, a small community about a half-hour south of Grand Rapids, attended a town hall meeting to discuss the possible construction of a data center on the north end of town. Some of the attendees came from families who had lived in Dorr for generations and, worried about the disruptions posed by a new data center, came ready to defend their town. Instead, to their dismay, they discovered the township supervisor had, without a public hearing, already signed an agreement. Microsoft, never bothering to send a representative to meet the public, now held the deed to more than 250 acres of prime farmland, an arrangement citizens knew nothing about until everything was signed and sealed. With the land already sold and the ink dry, the citizens’ impotence turned to repressed rage.” (09/23/26)
“Many of us are gearing up with columns previewing the Court’s October term and have highlighted the upcoming arguments over bans on AR-15s and semiautomatic weapons out of the Seventh Circuit in Chicago (Viramontes v. Cook County) and the Second Circuit in New York (Grant v. Higgins). In a recent column, Professor Rory Little suggests that these cases will strike at what he considers a glaring flaw in the Heller decision that recognized the individual right under the Second Amendment. Professor Little repeats a common claim about Heller that some of us have challenged. I wanted to briefly address that controversy again.The column appeared in Scotusblog, a respected site that offers tracking and commentary on pending Supreme Court cases.” (09/23/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Of course, things like a bad home life, sexual abuse, and other things must always be considered possible factors when it comes to suicide among young people. But what no mainstream press reporter or commentator will ever acknowledge is another potential factor in teenage suicide — the fact that government officials indoctrinate young people into living lives based on lies and delusions. The fact that most young people are unaware of the false reality that they are living makes their situation significantly worse.” (09/23/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“I strongly disagree with the idea that it’s unhelpful to bully celebrities about their position on Palestine. On the contrary, I think we should bully them more. We tend to underestimate the consequences of the fact that all the most amplified voices in our society are millionaires. Under capitalism the people with the largest platforms and the biggest audiences are all wealthy enough to have a vested interest in preserving the status quo, so they’re reluctant to rock the boat politically in any major way. When all the most influential voices in our society are creating the illusion that the system is more or less fine the way it is by what they say and what they don’t say, it cannot help but significantly influence public political opinion. In this way celebrities function as a kind of goalkeeper preventing dissident thought from reaching the minds of the masses.” (09/23/26)
“I’ve written literally thousands of words about breadwinner jobs. I’ve explained why they are destroying family formation, family stability, and the fertility rate. I’ve pontificated about how this deficit explains so much of American politics. I’ve stated that we’re probably not going to fix anything politically until candidates focus on fixing this. Despite this, I’ve yet to really define the term. And I think my experience can help illuminate what a ‘breadwinner job’ is and why I think it matters so much. If I had to sum it up, I’d say a job is a breadwinner job if it makes a woman feel safe enough to get pregnant. Or get sick. Or otherwise become unwilling or unable to work outside the home.” (09/23/26)
