“There is a particular intellectual posture that has become distinctly fashionable at the edges of the liberty movement. It goes roughly like this: a public figure makes a contested empirical claim. Experts in the relevant field find the claim unsupported by the available evidence and say so. The figure, rather than producing better evidence, reframes the disagreement as persecution and blames ‘the establishment’ for it. Sympathetic bystanders, some of them part of the pro-liberty movement, often rally to the outsiders’ defense, not because they sincerely agree with the underlying evidence, but because they see an outsider being criticized ‘by the establishment.’ The liberty tradition, they argue, must side with the outsider, regardless of evidence. Such reasoning is unpersuasive and it may come at a reputational cost for the pro-liberty movement.” (06/03/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“[T]he only real argument for the legalization of marijuana is freedom. It doesn’t matter if marijuana has no medical benefits and that advocates of the legalization of medical marijuana just want to get high. Just like it doesn’t matter if using marijuana for recreational purposes is addictive, harmful, risky, unhealthy, immoral, sinful, or dangerous. It is not the business of government at any level to concern itself in any way with the eating, drinking, and smoking habits of Americans. It is not the business of the American Enterprise Institute or any other conservative think tank. It is not the business of Naomi Schaefer Riley or any other nanny-state, conservative drug warrior.” (06/03/26)
“Americans aren’t interested in reinstating a military draft, but that’s not stopping the government from ‘streamlining’ Selective Service registration — for young men’s own good, we’re told. That’s right, the government is automating draft registration, using the excuse that it’s saving registrants from the legal peril inherent in choosing to not register. The real reason, of course, is that fewer men were voluntarily registering, and the government wants to gloss over that mass rejection by potential draftees.” (06/03/26)
“It’s not about whether technology is inherently good or bad, liberating or oppressive. Architecture shapes incentives; incentives shape outcomes.” (06/03/26)
“If you own property in California, you’re not safe. A new ballot measure will empower the state to confiscate a percentage of the assets of any resident, even though its initial provisions don’t communicate that intent. California’s ‘One-Time Wealth Tax for State-Funded Healthcare, Education, and Food Assistance Programs Initiative,’ which has already qualified for the November ballot, is even worse than it appears. It’s not as if appearances aren’t bad enough. The explicit intent of the initiative already chased at least six billionaires out of the state in 2025. … Just the departure of these six men has lowered the potential take from the wealth tax by an estimated $27 billion.” (06/03/26)
“Though he had been, by his own description, ‘shy and retiring’ as a young man, Kameny was ‘radicalized’ by the way his government had treated him. How could his homosexual orientation possibly affect his work as an astronomer or, as he one day hoped to be, an astronaut floating hundreds of miles away from Earth’s surface? On the contrary, it was the government that had wronged him. ‘I simply felt something had to be done,’ he recalled. And so, Kameny did what no gay man or woman in his position had yet done: He fought back.” (06/03/26)
Source: The Atlantic
by Vivian Salama, Jonathan Lemire, & Nancy A Youssef
“[Trump]wanted the conflict over. But he had become irritated by comparisons between the emerging framework and the Obama-era agreement, which set restrictions and time limits on Iran’s nuclear-development program. Administration officials said Trump repeatedly complained that critics were calling his team’s draft agreement a weaker version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which he had spent years attacking and tore up in his first term. Trump wanted a way to argue that Iran had accepted terms from him that Obama never managed to extract, aides told us. … He may be content to simply wait rather than do a deal that invites unflattering comparisons to one that already existed — and which didn’t come at the cost of 13 U.S. service members and at least 1,700 Iranian civilians, tens of billions of dollars, the depletion of U.S. munitions stockpiles, and a global energy crisis.” (06/03/26)
“In 21 conflicts around the world, sexual violence as a tactic of war ‘surged’ last year, according to a new United Nations report. Yet in only one conflict – the civil war in Sudan – such atrocities are ‘a defining feature’, used in fear campaigns between rival ethnic groups, as explicitly stated by perpetrators. In Africa’s third-largest country by area, preventing conflict-related sexual violence or helping survivors has been difficult. The civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, now in its fourth year, has yet to yield to international efforts to end it. Sudan has become the world’s most dire displacement crisis. ‘Many women and girls fleeing the conflict only sought help after reaching neighbouring countries,’ the report stated, ‘which underscores the importance of assistance in all phases of displacement.'” (06/02/26)
