“We live in the age of the permanent campaign, and everywhere I turn I see Democrats, actual Republicans (as opposed to Trumpists), and supposed ‘independents’ looking forward to next November’s midterm congressional elections with hope, even excitement: Democrats will take the US Senate and the House, they hope, thwarting Donald Trump’s policy agenda. The odds are not with those hopes or that excitement. … Government THROUGH politics is not going to get us out of the mess we’ve been putting and keeping ourselves in WITH politics for more than a century now.” (12/27/25)
“The Republican Party that I joined in the 1980s (and later left) espoused a straightforward set of principles. It believed in free markets, limited government, peace through strength in dealing with international aggressors, and ‘traditional’ values. Sure, the last one was nebulous and the party often was hypocritical, but these core ideas were the key to its eventual resurgence. … Engaging in nostalgia is a hazard of growing older, but one need not be misty-eyed to compare that Grand Old Party to the current freak show. Sure, Democrats were pretty awful during that era (and embraced views surprisingly common in Republican circles today) and largely remain so, but the GOP was the voice of sanity. With the GOP’s dark and nasty pivot, advocates for those age-old ideals have nowhere to turn.” (12/26/25)
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Joe Wolverton, II
“There are many events in the history of the formation of this Republic that go unnoticed, unremembered, and unheralded. Today is a chance to remedy that and remember the Regulators. As if cut from today’s headlines, patriot farmers and small ranchers in North and South Carolina led a rebellion against armed government officials trying to exercise control over western lands. History has dubbed the uprising the War of the Regulation, the final battle of which happened on May 16 in 1771. The West in this case, of course, was not Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, but the rural counties of the Carolina backcountry. Historian James Whittenburg described the events as ‘the last and greatest of the social upheavals’ that led to the War for Independence.” (12/27/25)
“In 2026, the leaders of America’s (former) trading partners are going to have to grapple with the political consequences of tit-for-tat tariffs. A tariff is a tax paid by consumers, and if there’s one thing the past four years have taught us, it’s that the public will not forgive a politician who presides over a period of rising prices, no matter what the cause. Luckily for the political fortunes of the world’s leaders, there is a better way to respond to tariffs. Tit-for-tat tariffs are a 19th-century tactic, and we live in a 21st-century world — a world where the most profitable lines of business of the most profitable US companies are all vulnerable to a simple legal change that will make things cheaper for billions of people, all over the world, including in the US, at the expense of the companies whose CEOs posed with Trump on the inaugural dais.” (12/26/25)
“I think we would all agree that education is one of the most important facets of any society. I’m not just talking about ‘going to school;’ there is much more to education than that. Education can even begin in the womb, and takes off from birth. Everything we are surrounded by ‘educates’ us, in one way or another — for good or ill. Not all education is ‘good.’ It should be unnecessary to say that. People can only know and act upon what they have been taught. If people don’t know what ‘freedom’ and ‘tyranny’ are — and the source of both — then they will not know how to protect the former and guard against the latter.” (12/26/25)
“The start of the second Trump administration in January brought optimism that the crypto economy was headed for better times. During the run-up to the November 2024 U.S. elections, Donald Trump had pledged to eliminate the Biden administration’s anti- crypto policies and end government ‘lawfare’ against crypto entrepreneurs. It was hardly a surprise that bitcoin and a wave of altcoins surged in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory and the pro- crypto Republican Party’s consolidation of power in Congress. … Yet the rally soon gave way to the darker side of crypto’s DNA: volatility. The months that followed reminded traders that parabolic gains are often followed by brutal corrections.” (12/27/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Galen Carpenter
“U.S. administrations even have a long history of discouraging America’s technologically capable, firmly democratic allies from crossing the nuclear weapons threshold. Washington has not been shy about pressuring (if not outright bullying) Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to foreswear building independent nuclear weapons capabilities instead relying totally on the United States for deterrence. A similar hostility has been directed toward any manifestations of interest in a nuclear deterrent by Germany and Washington’s other European allies. At the very least, it is time for U.S. leaders to review that rigid policy and carefully reconsider its various implications. Japanese who want their country to reduce or eliminate its total dependence on the United States for nuclear deterrence are not being reckless or unreasonable, given the realities of today’s regional and global security environments.” (12/27/25)
“All major American professional sports have a time of year when they capture the eyes of the nation. America’s pastime, baseball, has the ‘Fall Classic,’ the NFL dominates Thanksgiving, and the country has an entire weekend dedicated to the Super Bowl. Christmas Day is the NBA’s time to shine with action from noon to midnight (though the NFL tries to get in on the action). When Americans tune in to watch Lebron James and Kevin Durant battle it out on the court, they usually aren’t thinking about the referees, but it’s impossible to play without them.” (12/26/25)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Opponents argue that even the best legal system sometimes makes mistakes and that a system that sometimes makes mistakes ought to limit itself to mistakes that can be corrected. Letting a wrongfully convicted defendant out of prison is easier than bringing him back from the dead. The irreversibility of the death penalty is good rhetoric but bad argument.” (12/26/25)
