Source: Quillette
by Rosalind Arden
“The most consequential weakness of philosopher and journalist Kathleen Stock’s new polemic against assisted dying is its failure to engage with the empirical record.” (06/05/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Mohamed Moutii
“Once a dominant force in global energy markets, OPEC is facing growing fragmentation from within and intensifying competition from without.” (06/05/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/are-opecs-days-of-dominance-over-why-the-cartel-is-cracking/
Source: The American Conservative
by Anik Joshi
“The traditional blowback from Middle Eastern adventures has been in terms of refugee inflows and a less stable, more risky MENA region that produces knock-on effects across the European political frame. Going beyond destabilizing Europe to destabilizing the entire world as a function of Middle Eastern wars is unlikely to win converts to the Western cause, unless they share its dedication to their own destruction.” (06/05/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-wages-of-economic-warfare/
Source: The American Prospect
by Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
“After months of speculation and anger, the Democratic National Committee finally released its autopsy of the party’s loss in the 2024 presidential election just before Memorial Day weekend. Despite pledging to release the document publicly when first elected to lead the Democratic Party’s organizational arm in early 2025, DNC Chair Ken Martin reversed course in December of last year, announcing that the report would not be published. Why? Some speculated it was merely a way for party insiders to avoid accountability for their failures; many others that it showed Kamala Harris lost because of her refusal to disavow Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel. As it turns out, the coverup was due to a much more banal and embarrassing reason: Martin’s friend whom he hired to complete the report turned in a pile of garbage.” (06/05/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/06/05/can-democrats-learn-from-2024-loss-biden-harris-dnc/
Source: EconLog
by Max Molden
“‘Social construction’ is prominent: we are told in various places that this or that is a ‘social construct’: think of gender, race, or money. One book that played a central role in the emergence of that concept is Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s 1966 The Social Construction of Reality. That work can proudly claim more than 90,000 citations as of today — only in its English version, that is. Its influence within sociology, and then beyond, is thus enormous. … social constructivism shares roots with Austrian school thinking. Somewhere along the way, however, a fine but crucial distinction has been blurred within social constructivist thought.” (06/05/26)
https://www.econlib.org/econlog/social-constructs-and-spontaneous-order
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Wendy McElroy
“The U.S. border and the requirements for U.S. citizenship or residency are defining issues of this decade. But almost all the attention they receive focuses on one side of the coin: namely, how to control immigration and who is entitled to citizenship or residency. The other side: how easily can Americans emigrate and renounce their citizenship? Expatriation is rare in comparison to the deluge of immigration in recent years, but the ease with which a citizen can become an expatriate is a litmus test of a government’s authoritarianism. How tight a grip does America claim to have over an individual and his wealth because of a geographical accident of birth? Exit taxes provide an answer.” (06/04/26)
Source: Garrison Center
by Joel Schlosberg
“It may be 64 years after the New York Mets losing 120 baseball matches in their debut season led manager Casey Stengel to plead ‘Can’t anyone here play this game?’ Yet The Wall Street Journal columnist William A. Galston notes that the same question could still apply to another ‘two monumentally inept teams.’ … Galston has in mind the Democrats and Republicans, ‘Capitol Hill’s Unlovable Losers’ (May 27). Less than two full years after the 2024 presidential election, Galston has merely to nod at the former party’s abject failure to learn from their loss, and the latter’s squandering of what little momentum remains from their win.” (06/04/26)
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders
“Some argue that to sacralize others is not a legal contrivance, but an ontological discovery. Rights are real, some insist. Rights are a derivation, others argue. We need not settle that debate. Every tradition that has ever produced wisdom — whether Mosaic, Stoic, Vedic, or Taoist — arrives at the same conclusion: To trespass upon others without cause is not merely a crime, it is a desecration. … The very foundation of law, in every civilization that has not entirely lost its way, is an elaboration on this. One may not injure the innocent. One may not seize what is not his. One may not constrain a person without justification sufficient to meet the scrutiny of a free people who seek similar protections.” (06/04/26)
Source: Law & LIberty
by Mitch Daniels
“The evidence is persuasive that AI and related advances are already boosting the economy in the most important way possible, by raising productivity. That’s the biggest reason that GDP is surprising on the upside while job growth remains tepid. Moreover, forecasts that this favorable windage will accelerate seem highly credible. What’s not credible is the idea that even an AI-led productivity surge can suffice to offset our decades of dereliction. The Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve, and other forecasters peg average future economic growth at a little under 2 percent. Assume a 70 percent boost from the AI revolution, to 3 percent or so, and it becomes possible to imagine our [sic] current debt level stabilizing, not improving but merely getting no worse. But even this daydream requires far too many improbable breaks.” [editor’s note: The US government debt isn’t “our” debt, it’s the US government’s debt. There’s a difference – TLK] (06/04/26)
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“Progressives rallying around the troubled candidacy of Graham Platner, the habitually dishonest skirt-chasing Totenkopf enthusiast challenging that nice Maine lady for a Senate seat, have learned precisely the wrong lessons from Republicans’ experience with Donald Trump, an experience that has left the GOP morally debased and ethically discredited and—perhaps Republicans will actually care about this part—unable to get much of what it wants politically. Legitimate issues, such as immigration control and abortion regulation, have been tainted by association with Trump and Trumpism, which means dishonesty and stupidity in the formulation of policy followed by incompetence and corruption in the execution of policy. Progressives will get the same thing from such a figure as Platner.” (06/04/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/platner-trump-morals-perfect-maine-primary/