Source: Libertarian Party
by Rob Yates
“Two tribes, one reflex. When we are frightened, the person who chooses differently stops being a neighbor and becomes the threat. Every uniparty election campaign in America is built to harvest it. Politics learned the curfew lesson long ago. Fear travels faster than facts, and every cycle brings a new creature under the bed with a party beside it holding a flashlight and a donation link.” (11/05/26)
Source: Garrison Center
by Joel Schlosberg
“The ultimate testament to [Patrick] Stewart’s acting skill is that he made it hard not to suspend disbelief, one hour at a time, in what [Ryan] Zickgraf calls ‘authority with authoritarianism apparently filtered out.’ In the real world, we have what we need to exclude authoritarians from getting in the way of getting things done.” (11/05/26)
Source: Liberalism.org
by Michael Burger
“Rules of law can never always produce justice. That’s because life really is complicated. The facts that pertain to doing true justice are unpredictable. Inevitably, even the best-designed rules of law will sometimes get it wrong, with unjust results. When that happens, the law will be an ass. So in a perfectly just world we need sometimes to ignore rules of law. We need a government, or at least agents of government (in other words, judges) who will take into account all of the truly pertinent facts, not just the facts that rules of law say are pertinent. We need a government, in other words, that is not bound by the law, to really deliver justice in a way that the law cannot. Now medieval intellectuals had a term for a ruler unbound by law: a tyrant.” (11/05/26)
https://liberalism.org/essays/the-rule-of-law-will-sometimes-be-unjust-defend-it-anyway
Source: The American Conservative
by Doug Bandow
“With ever more Americans bizarrely rating ‘socialism’ favorably today, we should remember the high price paid by Hungarians to escape real socialism. Hungary’s tortured history reminds us of the fragility of liberty. Tragically, the Hungarian people lost their battle for freedom 70 years ago. However, their loss planted seeds for the ultimate destruction of Moscow’s satellite system and Europe’s liberation from communism.” (11/05/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/hungarys-lesson-beware-the-dangers-of-socialism/
Source: The Hill
by Don Wolfensberger
“In a recent op-ed, President Bill Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary, Robert E. Rubin, startled me with bizarre twist on potential electoral manipulation. Like others before him, Rubin boldly suggests that President Trump and his allies could also exploit ‘a procedural loophole involving the Clerk of the House that could enable them to refuse to seat duly elected Democratic members when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3.’ … In the 19th century, the office of clerk was highly partisan, and there were several instances in which clerks simply refused to call the names of certain members thereby blocking their being sworn and seated.” (11/05/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/6198772-clerk-loophole-house-election/
Source: Town Hall
by Mark Lewis
“Contrary to what we seem to think, Americans are not intrinsically or constitutionally superior to other human beings who have walked on this planet. Our country had the extremely good fortune of being founded by brilliant men who tried to establish principles that would guide the nation into freedom, virtue, and prosperity. But Americans, suffering from the same faults and foibles all humans suffer from, have rejected those principles. … Eventually, all nations, peoples, and tribes weaken or disintegrate entirely. How many Babylonians do you work with? Any Assyrians living close by? Who was the last Girgashite you met? It happens. It appears to be inevitable. Someday, the question will be, ‘How many Americans do you know?’ Nations, if they don’t disappear, always morph into something else.” (11/05/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2026/11/05/history-has-spoken-again-n2685926
Source: Expression
by Michael Hurley
“The Education Department’s final accreditation rule boosts campus speech protections in some places and invites trouble in others.” (11/05/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/the-good-the-bad-and-the-vague-in
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Ever since the U.S. government was converted to a national-security state after World War II, the national-security branch of the government — i.e., the military and the CIA — has wielded the power of assassination. Mind you, there was no constitutional amendment authorizing the federal government to wield this omnipotent, totalitarian-like power. It just automatically came with the conversion to a national-security state, whose inherent powers include assassination.” (11/05/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/11/05/jfk-assassination-and-the-national-security-state/
Source: American Greatness
by Stephen Bryen
“No matter what the Democrats and Republicans think, reality is fast catching up with the US and its allies. The bottom line: over the next 5 years, perhaps longer, the US will need to use extreme care when picking fights with potential adversaries; at the same time, the American and allied defense industrial base needs significant reform. Naturally, this means the US approach to Russia, Europe, Asia, and China must adjust, and the US may have to accept accommodations with potential adversaries, things it would not have done only a few years ago. The US lives with a depleted arsenal, a defense industrial base mostly incapable of mass-producing weapons that have not performed up to expectations, and it faces technological and operational challenges that mostly were not expected. During the Obama and early Biden administrations, China was not considered much of a problem.” (11/05/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/11/05/a-new-foreign-policy-yes-while-we-rebuild-americas-defenses/
Source: Exiled Policy
by Jason Pye
“Republicans should take the war’s political consequences seriously. They should also examine the damage done by tariffs, concerns about corruption, and their own unwillingness to check the president. If their explanation for this election begins and ends with Iran, they’ll avoid confronting problems that were evident long before the war. That may make the defeat easier to explain to themselves. It won’t give voters much reason to trust them again.” (11/05/26)
https://exiledpolicy.substack.com/p/some-initial-thoughts-about-the-election