Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“Contrary to its misunderstanding and misrepresentation by Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and conservatives, libertarianism has nothing to do with greed, selfishness, one’s lifestyle, morality, vices, or religion. It is a political philosophy that deals with the proper role of violence in society. … The creed of libertarianism is nonaggression: freedom from aggression and violence against person and property as long as one respects the person and property of others. … Most Americans would claim to hold to the nonaggression principle on a personal level. … Yet most of these same people have no problem supporting government aggression against those who are not aggressing against the person or property of others, are participating in certain activities, or are engaging in prohibited commerce in order to effect changes in behavior, compel virtue, punish vice, or achieve some desired social end.” (05/06/26)
“What [Dr. Edith] Eger understood, and what makes her work so urgent now, is that Jew-hatred is never only about Jews. It is a symptom of a deeper moral disorder; the same disorder she spent her career treating in her patients and herself. When we dehumanize any group, we do not harm only them. We do something to ourselves. We coarsen the inner voice that Adam Smith called the impartial spectator. We silence the conscience that might otherwise call us back. The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers; it began in the minds of people who decided that some human beings do not belong to humanity. That decision is always available to us. So is the opposite one.” (05/06/26)
“It’s possible that modern slavery is indeed increasing. We tend to think that’s a result of the expansion of what slavery is meant to mean but perhaps that’s just us. There is though this problem of using independent bureaucracies to run all of these different things. Commissioners for this and that, commissions for the other and so on. … Say that you had a touch of the cynic in you. What would you expect a report from a bureaucracy to say about the issue that bureaucracy is meant to be dealing with? … The aim of a bureaucracy, as an organisation, is to continue to exist and to grow – to increase its budget. That’s it, that’s just what happens with this life form. Therefore every report from a bureaucracy is going to be well … yes … very difficult problem … growing all the time … give us more money.” ()5/06/26)
“Regulators no longer have to worry that Spirit Airlines might upset the air-travel market by merging with the wrong competitor. The now-defunct airline made poor business decisions and had to cope with tough circumstances. But if its demise were an Agatha Christie mystery, the fingerprints of Joe Biden’s antitrust officials would be all over the crime scene. These zealots fought a proposed deal between JetBlue and Spirit, and congratulated themselves on a 2024 court victory that doomed Spirit to likely oblivion. This was wanton economic destruction masquerading as antitrust enforcement. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who never met an antitrust action she didn’t like, exemplifies the perversity.” (05/05/26)
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Acting Comptroller Jules Hurst told Congress last week that the Iran War had cost $25 billion through the first 60 days. The next day, CBS reported that officials familiar with the Pentagon’s internal assessments estimated the cost was actually closer to $50 billion — double the amount department leadership had just stated publicly. However, even the figure reported as the war’s ‘true cost’ is at least $22 billion too low. Popular Information conducted a cost estimate of the Iran War based on officials’ statements, military procurement and operations data, and reporting on deployments and armament use. Through 60 days, the US spent an estimated $71.8 billion on the Iran War, or $1.2 billion per day on average.” (05/06/26)
“While debates rage online about the Democratic party needing to be more moderate or more progressive, Democratic primary voters are focused on a different set of priorities entirely. They want fighters who can win and seem like they care about average people struggling in this economy. It makes sense that Democratic voters are in the mood for a candidate like Platner, with his oyster-farmer aesthetic and ‘not a regular politician’ energy. But we were still left wondering how voters were processing Platner’s laundry list of personal baggage, from the much-discussed Totenkopf tattoo to the slew of bad Reddit posts. Here’s what they said …” (05/06/26)
“Since Trump returned to office, Democrats have overperformed in 90 percent of competitive elections and hold a perfect 30–0 record in flipped state legislative seats. Republicans may dominate the cash-on-hand conversation in political media, but Democrats are investing resources into actual electoral gains. That disconnect underscores how fundraising comparisons are, at best, an incomplete measure of political strength. Importantly, many of these gains are happening in places national Democrats historically have ignored.” (05/06/26)
“It goes without saying that any tool or power government acquires for addressing some crisis of the moment will eventually—often, almost immediately—be deployed against the general public. So it is with border enforcement and the crackdown on immigrants. Surveillance technology ostensibly intended for the enforcement of laws regulating migration is being turned against Americans.” (05/06/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Kerry Jackson
“It was supposed to cost $33 billion when voters approved the train in 2008. It will now cost at least $126 billion. It was also supposed to be carrying 65.5 million to 96.5 million intercity riders a year by 2030. Yet now 2040 is the date for ‘full service to start.’ Skeptics don’t believe we’ll ever see the train run with paying customers aboard.” (05/06/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Murtaza Hussain
“Over two decades after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, it is difficult to understand what the precise relationship is between Baghdad and Washington. Economic, political, and cultural ties between the two countries are weak—mostly reflecting in-built structural dependence by Iraqi institutions on the U.S. financial system—while a legacy of suspicion and hostility has outlived the war. This alienated relationship will be strange to those who remember the justifications for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was depicted as another step in an unstoppable march of liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War, intended to benefit not just Iraqis but Americans themselves.” (05/06/26)
