“Postliberals certainly agree that serious political, economic, and cultural missteps have happened under liberal regimes. But their critique runs much deeper than that. They believe liberalism itself is fatally flawed. Although postliberals come in many varieties, a common thread is that liberalism is intrinsically defective — that it inexorably leads to social atomization, cultural degradation, and oppression and inequality. Perhaps the best known purveyor of this view is Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen …. Deneen’s analysis suffers from three basic problems: he misrepresents liberalism’s fundamental principles; he presents a warped history of liberalism that dismisses its achievements and exaggerates its weaknesses; and he offers nothing in place of the liberal-democratic framework he wants to destroy.” (12/16/25)
“Most people would know that totalitarianism is not a desirable social or political set of circumstances. Even the word sounds ominous, but that is probably only to those who already know what it denotes. I have written on it before, in different contexts, but it is now more relevant than ever. We should remind ourselves what Orwell wrote in that uncannily premonitory novel.” (12/16/25)
“Any story about resistance within the military must begin by recognizing that it’s not an easy thing to do. Apparently, that’s true even for a much-decorated retired Navy commander, former astronaut, and sitting United States senator. I’m talking about Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. He was one of six Democratic legislators, all military veterans or former intelligence officers, who, on November 18th, released a 90-second video reminding members of the military that the oath they took on enlisting requires them to refuse illegal orders. The implicit context was the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops to American cities, but their message took on added urgency after the Washington Post published an exposé about an order coming from high up to kill survivors of an airstrike in the Caribbean Sea.” (12/16/25)
“The past decade, since the entry of Donald J. Trump into electoral politics, has been a disorienting one for … well, everyone. But especially, perhaps, for ‘movement’ conservatives who regard the principles they have always held dear to be as sound as ever, but beleaguered in practice by the events of this young century. Conservatism, from this point of view, should have emerged from the Bush and Obama years bloodied but unbowed, ready to refresh and recommit itself to principles of classical liberalism …. Yet that form of conservatism … is now eclipsed by a new right that is in many ways very old and reactionary: preferring authority to law and rent-seeking to free markets, cheap moralism to authentic morals, and a fearful and inward-looking nationalism to a confident, patriotic internationalism.” (12/16/25)
“Within a day after two gunmen killed 15 people during a gathering for the Jewish holiday Hanukkah at Australia’s most famous beach, a very resilient country began to focus on ways to prevent a similar tragedy: Better gun regulations. A warm embrace of Jewish Australians. A sterner check on antisemitism. Tighter surveillance of potential terrorists. Yet a particular act of selfless heroism during the Dec. 14 mass shooting has offered up one more possible solution. A video shows Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Muslim shop owner in Sydney, tackling and disarming one of the alleged Bondi Beach shooters, also a Muslim. This bystander, by bursting bravely into action, may have saved countless lives even as he was shot. ‘God gave me strength’, he reportedly told a cousin from a hospital bed. His father, Mohamed Fateh al-Ahmed, perhaps best described the motives of his son, who gained Australian citizenship in 2022 after fleeing conflict in Syria.” (12/15/25)
“Based on shrewd observation of likely weather patterns and early budding of snowdrops and Indian maize, Madsen has been able to describe the events of 2026 as they actually happened.” (12/16/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“On March 16 of this year, Reuters published an article titled ‘Israeli strikes kill 15 people in Gaza over past day, Palestinian medics say’. Does anyone remember the 15 Palestinians who died on March 16, 2025? Does that day stand out in anyone’s memory as particularly significant in terms of mass murder? No? Same here. I honestly can’t remember it at all. This would have been during the tail end of the first fake ‘ceasefire’, a couple of days before Trump signed off on Israel resuming its large-scale bombing operations in Gaza, so this wasn’t one of those days with huge massacres and staggering death tolls. It doesn’t exactly stand out in the memory.” (12/16/25)
“In theory, tariffs should shift jobs to the protected industries. If these tariffs protect manufacturing, why aren’t jobs shifting there? The argument for tariffs to protect manufacturing relies on an assumption that the imports are of final goods and that the protected country has tariff-free access to intermediate goods (the goods used in manufacturing). In 21st-century America, that assumption doesn’t hold.” (12/16/25)
“Discussions of the war in Gaza tend to focus on what’s visible. The instinct is understandable: Over two years of brutal conflict, the Israel Defense Forces have all but destroyed the diminutive strip on the Mediterranean coast, with the scale of the carnage illustrated by images of emaciated children, shrapnel-ridden bodies, and flattened buildings. But underlying all of this destruction is a hidden force — a carefully constructed infrastructure of Israeli surveillance that powers the war effort and keeps tabs on the smallest facets of Palestinians’ lives.” (12/16/25)
“For more than half a century, Americans have been urged to shy away from saturated fats, found mainly in animal products. We have been told to cook with canola oil instead of butter, select skim instead of whole milk, and to fill our plates with pasta instead of steak. Paradoxically, decades of adherence to this advice has coincided with rising levels of chronic disease. As people cut more saturated fat from their diets, the nation grew heavier and sicker — not healthier. Put plainly, the war on saturated fat, rooted in the hypothesis that it causes heart disease, has never been based on sound science. In fact, a large and growing body of evidence reveals that saturated fats aren’t a menace but a key part of a healthy diet. And they should be recognized as such in national nutrition policy.” (12/16/25)
