“What’s the difference between a 15-year-old and a transgender adult? The 15-year-old can drive legally in Kansas. It sounds like a joke, but it’s a cruel reality. As of Feb. 26, Kansas has invalidated the driver’s licenses of the approximately 1,700 trans Kansans whose licenses reflected their gender rather than their birth-assigned sex. Unlike states that never allowed changes to gender markers, Kansas’[s] move is a striking reversal of its prior permissive policy. This law, one of hundreds of pieces of anti-trans legislation across the country senselessly targets the small minority of people who happen to be trans.” (03/16/26)
“The anarchist as a figure in crime is distinct. His goals are not financial, and the terrorist acts committed under the heading of anarchism have ranged from assassinations of public figures to bombings of random civilians. He has also slid far enough into history to seem quaint, or vaguely romantic, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century.” (03/16/26)
“The Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, is holding its annual summit in New York City this week. The ironically-named ‘summit on hate’ features far-right MAGA pastors and politicians, billionaire CEOs, and conservative journalists among its speakers. No longer putting on the pretense of opposing all forms of bigotry, the ADL has shown it’s perfectly comfortable with Trump-era racism. In the year since the last summit, the ADL has withdrawn its criticism of white supremacist groups, denounced antiracist education as ‘radical,’ continued to loudly back Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and cheered on Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations of students and other noncitizens who have criticized Israel’s violence and stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In fact, the ADL endorsed the executive order issued by President Donald Trump in 2025 targeting critics of Israel and threatening those who aren’t US citizens with deportation for protesting in support of Palestinian human rights.” (03/16/26)
“The New York Times recently ran an article about efforts to pass medical freedom legislation in states across the nation. The article mischaracterized not only what health freedom advocates like myself seek, but also portrayed medical freedom as unpopular with the electorate. The article, and the fake polls it cited, was one of the reasons that my organization, Health Freedom Defense Fund, and Brownstone Institute collaborated to commission our own poll – an honest, objective survey which revealed staggering supermajority support for medical freedom, informed consent, transparency, and accountability.” (03/16/26)
“In the technology arms race between the United States and China for dominance in artificial intelligence (AI), we are often told that the decisive factor will be computational power: who can build more data centers, secure more advanced chips, and train larger models more cheaply. Those are not irrelevant, but nor are they the crux of the competition. The true contest is one of political culture.” (03/16/26)
“My son spent last week training in defensive pistol use at Gunsite Academy, in Arizona. The scheduling couldn’t have been timelier given the double terrorist attacks on Thursday. Both incidents were stopped by people at the scene who were willing and able to end the threat without waiting for police to arrive. It’s not something most of us want to think about. But if somebody decides to take out their grievances on innocents, any of us could become default defensive details for ourselves and the people around us.” (03/16/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“When a monster military like the US circles its prey for possible attack, very little can go wrong. Painful lessons of past wars have taught state leadership how to avoid mistakes that can drag the country into interminable conflict. If the order to pounce is given, the outcome will soon be decided and the winner never in doubt. The foregoing is offered as the naive view of US foreign policy. But maybe the one currently in charge of the planet has digested Sun Tzu. Maybe the blatant seriousness of the threat will frighten the enemy into submission without a single shot—or missile—being fired. But what happens after they surrender?” (03/16/26)
“In Observations upon Liberal Education, Turnbull delivered ‘the substance of all that hath been said [on the subject of education] by the ancients or moderns’ — including Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Locke, Milton, and Rollin. Turnbull borrowed freely from these authors. He described education as the French historian Charles Rollin did, as ‘the art of fashioning the heart and mind.’ Although he recommended the Socratic method — that is, for-and-against argumentation — as the best way to teach, he did not think the teacher’s role was to remain ‘neutral’ about content. He stated plainly that education should be oriented toward the ‘true philosophy,’ which includes ‘just and full conceptions of human duty, dignity, and happiness.’ What makes Turnbull’s educational program liberal is that it enables the student to develop mastery over passions and appetites. This is a far cry from what we think of as ‘liberal’ today.” (03/16/26)
“Tennessee lawmakers have taken a bold stand against the misuse of taxpayer dollars in public education. On March 10, House Bill 793 advanced out of a full committee with a 15-9 vote, divided mostly along party lines, with Republicans in favor and all seven Democrats opposed. The proposal is scheduled to be heard on the House floor on March 16. The measure now requires public and charter school officials to verify students’ immigration status at enrollment and report the aggregate results to the state. The proposal originally empowered school officials to deny enrollment to students who could not prove lawful [sic] presence in the United States or to charge their families tuition.” [editor’s note: If you doubted that DeAngelis’s fake “school choice” advocacy was about anything and everything but freedom, now you know for sure – TLK] (03/16/26)