“As a private citizen, who you are and what you look like is none of the government’s business until and unless there’s probable cause to believe you’ve committed, or are in the act of committing, a crime. As a government employee, who a cop is and what he or she looks like is entirely the public’s business any time we want it to be. The cop at least pretends to work for — ‘serve and protect’ — us, while collecting a paycheck from the taxes we fork over. We’re the bosses, at least in theory. They’re our employees, at least in theory. The idea that they’re entitled to hide their identities from us while waving guns at us and ordering us around gets that relationship completely bass-ackward.” (06/12/25)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“As of April 2025, the U.S. national debt stands at a staggering $36.2 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that net interest payments on this debt alone will reach $952 billion in fiscal year 2025 — nearly a trillion dollars just to service past borrowing. Over the next decade, the debt is expected to rise by approximately $2 trillion per year, bringing the total to over $56 trillion by 2034. And still, there is no serious movement among America’s political class to stop the hemorrhaging. It is long past time to confront a fundamental truth: the United States must default on its national debt.” (06/12/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Kerry McDonald
“When my home state of Massachusetts became the first to enact a compulsory school attendance law in May 1852, it set a troubling precedent. For the first time, parents were compelled to send their children to school under a legal threat of force. … just three weeks ago, a Florida judge sentenced two parents to jail for not sending their kids to school. These laws have got to go. If schools are desirable places to grow and to learn, then families and students will happily flock to them, as they do to the schools and spaces featured in my new book, Joyful Learning. … The current ‘chronic absenteeism’ epidemic in schools across the country, typically defined as students missing at least 10% of schooldays, is a sign that forced schooling isn’t desirable for many students and their families.” (06/12/25)
“I have no objections on principles to extending the expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Allowing these cuts to expire would deliver some measure of pain to the economy and add to our troubles. Tax hikes at a time when individuals and businesses are expecting tax stability would undoubtedly depress investment, employment, and overall economic confidence. Americans are already getting a huge tax hike because of Trump’s tariffs. However, making a sound case for maintaining the current tax structure is fundamentally different from making the case that it will bring about substantial new growth. It’s largely a defensive move. Realistically, the economic boost will be modest at best. In fact, the administration and congressional supporters of this bill admit that much without realizing it.” (06/12/25)
“To listen to some people, you’d think that America had been run by economists — and specifically free-market economists — for the last fifty years or so. Of course, this isn’t really true, as any glance at the ever-climbing nature of federal spending or regulations would show you, but whatever influence economists might have had is being jettisoned in favor of what my late friend, the British economist David Henderson, called ‘Do It Yourself Economics.’ … He describes ‘Do It Yourself Economics’ (DIYE) as ‘economic policies [that] have been influenced or decided by firmly held intuitive economic ideas and beliefs which owe little or nothing to economic textbooks or treatises, or to the evidence of economic history.'” (06/12/25)
“Thanks to our current misbegotten model of manhood, we are once again arguing about this moral question: Should former Cincinnati Reds player and manager Pete Rose be inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame? In a sane time, the proper answer would be: Are you kidding? Maybe many of you reading this couldn’t care less. Unfortunately, you probably should care because the real question in these chaotic times of ours is: What does the Hall of Fame stand for? In the same way, you might now wonder what America stands for and whether, in our moment, Pete Rose (bully, liar, cheat, sexual predator, and fan-favorite superstar athlete) has, in fact, become a sports surrogate for Donald Trump. Back in my sports-writing days for the New York Times, I must admit that I liked Rose for some of the same reasons I liked that other shady character I covered: Trump.” (06/12/25)
“Earlier this month, former US Congressman Ron Paul in a post on X said: ‘the BRICS bloc is preparing its Rio Reset for July, exactly the kind of challenge to dollar hegemony I have predicted for years.’ In another post, Ron Paul points to the expansion of BRICS+ and how it could play a role in the decline of the US dollar. … This is not the first time that Ron Paul has made such a forecast regarding the decline of the US Dollar. On earlier occasions also, he has spoken about the diminishing status of the US Dollar. … while it is true that countries are seeking to look at alternatives towards the US Dollar, it is important to understand the fact that ‘de-dollarisation’ is not driven solely by geopolitics.” (06/12/25)
Source: Isonomia Quarterly
by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
“What is this ‘liberalism’ enunciated by the forefathers and foremothers — Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft, Frédéric Bastiat and Alexis de Tocqueville, Ramon Aron and Rose Wilder Lane? Briefly, it is equality of permission. Parts of such an equality are human dignity, in cosmopolitan fashion ,and equality of standing to speak, in pluralistic fashion. But more generally it is an equality for all responsible adults to endeavor. It is not the equalities of outcome or of opportunity, which of course are properly accorded to children in a loving family. Outcome and opportunity as political ideals, to be contrasted with an adult and responsible permission, became popular — though never achieved — in the middle of the 19th century.” (06/12/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The Palestinian Authority said on Thursday that internet and fixed-line services are down throughout the entire Gaza Strip following an Israeli attack on the last fiber-optic line in the enclave, AFP reports. Communications had already been cut off from northern Gaza the previous day. … Israel is continually seeking out new ways to obstruct the world’s visibility into what’s happening with Gaza. That’s why they’ve been assassinating journalists who live in Gaza at a historically unprecedented rate while banning journalists outside Gaza from entering. It’s a nonstop war against visibility and truth, because Israel thrives on lies and darkness.” (06/12/25)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by James Kirchik
“Five years of FIRE surveys demonstrate that the nation’s future leaders harbor a shocking degree of ignorance about America’s uniquely robust free speech principles, content neutrality foremost among them. To be sure, college students are like many other if not most Americans in this regard. Ask any random person on the street if they believe in free speech, and they’ll probably say ‘yes,’ but dig down and you’ll discover that they adhere to the proposition, ‘free speech for me, but not for thee.’ … Particularly disturbing to me in reading this year’s survey is a trend I’ve been monitoring for some time: the persistently lower support for free speech among LGBT students compared to their heterosexual peers.” (06/12/25)
