“One of the best nonfiction books to appear following the onset of the Great Depression was by the financial journalist Garet Garrett (1878–1954). It is called A Bubble That Broke the World (1931), and it was a bestseller. His analysis was exactly right. This was not a crisis of capitalism, he wrote, but of postwar credit expansions and imbalances. The economic downturn represented the coming due of the bill, and a cry for rebalancing production, consumption, savings, and interest rates in the US and all over the industrialized world. If Garrett is known at all today, it is by those who are captivated by the handful of intellectuals who wrote in opposition to the New Deal planning state and the regimentation of national life that it brought about. They were a rare breed, and largely forgotten. Aside from that, there is much more to Garrett than people know.” (11/06/26)
“The Supreme Court has made clear that racial discrimination has no place in public school admissions. But when schools hide discrimination behind ‘race-neutral policies’, lower courts have let them get away with it — as long as the targeted racial group isn’t hurt too much. On Oct. 19, the court agreed to hear a case brought by parents in Montgomery County, Md., challenging an admissions policy designed to reduce Asian American enrollment at the county’s magnet middle schools. At stake is a fundamental question: Does the Constitution protect students as individuals, or do their rights depend on how others of their race perform? With this case, the Supreme Court could reverse a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals precedent that Justice Alito once called ‘flagrantly wrong’ and ‘a virus that may spread if not promptly eliminated’.” (11/06/26)
“Numismatic egomania aside, the ballroom and the arch are exercises in grandiosity and vulgarity, monuments to Trump’s fragile ego, excrescences on the face of the nation’s capital city. Shubow professes to defend aesthetic standards—except, apparently, when the patron is Donald Trump. Trump may aspire to be a strongman, but he is no Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un, let alone a Hitler or a Stalin. He is an aged lame-duck president who, belying his pretensions to strength, frequently drifts off to sleep in front of television cameras. The new Democratic-controlled Congress should halt the bulldozers and cranes in their tracks and begin restoring what Trump has taken without the public’s consent.” (11/06/26)
“No one needs reminding that populism is fashionable. That might sound good to opponents of elitist authoritarianism, but it is not good. That’s not to say the latter is attractive to liberty-loving individualists who cherish the pursuit of happiness through, among other voluntary institutions, the marketplace. Not a whit. Yale Professor William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) would agree. Yet the remarkable classical-liberal sociologist insisted that populism would provide no relief whatsoever from government oppression.” (11/06/26)
“Norm [Macdonald] was extremely intelligent, even though his comedic approach often entailed playing the ‘dumb guy.’ He was also deeply introspective. He suffered from bowel cancer in his twenties and thought often about death, faith, and the human condition in the postmodern world. He was a devoted reader of great literature, especially Tolstoy. And of course, for over his last eight years, he waged his courageous battle with leukemia without telling anyone outside his immediate family and agent. He was a joke maker who was very familiar with the deeper questions of human life. But like most good comedians, he wasn’t out there to show off his own smarts. His intelligence manifested in his ability to puncture the stupidity around him—usually not by straightforward mocking, but by subversion.” (11/06/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler
“On October 28, 69 people were killed in a train crash in the Toledo province of central Spain. The collision occurred on the high-speed line connecting Madrid with the southwestern city of Seville, just one month before a general election on November 29. It is the second disaster on the Madrid–Seville corridor this year, after a crash near Córdoba in the south in January killed 46 people. Due to its timing, the Toledo collision is likely to be even more politically contentious than the last, further diminishing Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s chances of reelection. Both tragedies suggest that a once cutting-edge rail network is now showing its age—and that successive Spanish governments have failed to invest in its maintenance.” (11/06/26)
“The day after the Nov. 3 midterm elections, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) released a video that encapsulated the left electoral movement he helped bring to life. Set to David Bowie’s iconic song ’Starman’, the video shows Sanders clasping hands with many of the candidates he endorsed this cycle. Not only did Sens.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI), James Talarico (D-TX), Troy Jackson (D-ME) and Peggy Flanagan (D-MN) (along with more than 50 U.S. House and down-ballot victors backed by Sanders) win their races, they were instrumental in delivering Democrats’ sweeping tidal wave in this year’s midterms. Far more than just a flex, the video served as a reminder of how deeply Sanders — the iconoclast democratic socialist leader — has transformed U.S. politics over the past decade.” (11/06/26)
