“According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, the military interventions we collectively know as the Global War on Terror (GWOT) led to the deaths of over 900,000 people and cost the United States more than $8 trillion. Afghanistan and Iraq ended in failure. Most Americans (at least, those not named Marc Thiessen or Bill Kristol) believe that the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East were a mistake. Indeed, this was a major part of Donald Trump’s initial appeal: ‘They lied,’ he said of the GWOT’s architects in 2016. We are now a quarter of a century on from the horrific events of September 11. And looking back, it is more important than ever to understand what caused them, and why bin Laden seemed to have gotten what he wanted out of the attacks.” (09/08/26)
“Labor Day is a great time to remember that we can make workers vastly better off by empowering more of them to vote with their feet, both within countries and through international migration.” (09/07/26)
“The primaries are over, and the November general election looms. Suddenly, the Islamo-socialist podcaster Hasan Piker (who is now infamous for blaming America for 9/11 and warning Jews that ‘someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews’) is persona non grata on the Democratic stump. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in the Michigan Senate race, once enlisted Piker to jump-start his lethargic candidacy. Now that he is locked in a close general-election race against a strong Republican, El-Sayed dismisses the antisemite, who has suddenly outlived his usefulness, as a mere ‘social media person in California’. Clinton-era Democratic politicos like Rahm Emanuel and James Carville insist that Democrats have ‘divorced’ themselves from the hard-left Democratic Socialists. Really? If that divorce were real, why would so many Democrats be cheering a potential Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presidential run in 2028?” (09/08/26)
“In September 2026 we live in a world of uncertainty and change. Geopolitics, technology and the physical world are experiencing rapid transformation that fascinates and terrifies in equal measure. Much of this would have occurred without September 11, but there is a sense in which that day changed all these things. The collapse of 80 years of global order cannot be said to have simply resulted from the world’s biggest terror attack, but it certainly played a role in triggering a series of responses that changed all the nations involved. Could the September 11 attacks have been foreseen and prevented? Absolutely. … One clear way the September 11 attacks changed the world was as a catalyst for a decades-long global ‘War on Terror.’ This war never had a clear strategic plan or an agreed endpoint.” (09/07/26)
“Every Labor Day, Americans participate in a holiday whose meaning has gradually thinned out—stripped down to a three-day weekend, end-of-summer sales, and only a passing nod to ‘workers.’ American thinking about work and freedom used to run much deeper than that. At the Founding, and for the decades that followed, working for wages wasn’t seen as a normal fact of economic life. Rather, it was widely regarded as a form of dependence, a glorified form of servitude. That suspicion of wage labor shaped one of the 19th century’s defining political movements. Today, on Labor Day, its logic is worth closer examination. I’m proposing that we go back to the future, reviving the ‘free labor’ vision of Abraham Lincoln and fellow early Republicans.” (09/07/26)
“The descent of stable societies into ones of endemic violence rarely produces anything but new forms of tyranny and terror. People are fond of citing history’s most famous revolutions in support of such extremism, but the full record of armed revolt is mixed to say the least. Widespread revolt in contemporary America is unlikely, but it is also not something we should wish for. Luigi Mangione is not patient zero for revolution discourse, but he is a good example of how febrile contemporary American politics has become.” (09/07/26)
“The Detroit–Windsor, Ontario region was poised for an economic and psychic boost courtesy of the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge this summer. Travelers would save time transiting the border, tolls would be cheaper, and even cyclists and pedestrians could make the trip. But the White House had so poisoned the atmosphere surrounding the bridge—demanding and securing new concessions on revenues, even though Canada fronted all the costs—that Michigan and Ontario ended up holding separate celebrations. Ontario Premier Doug Ford headlined the Canadian ribbon-cutting, featuring various provincial and national dignitaries and members of Gordie Howe’s family. Michiganders had Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) cruising across the span a couple of days later in a Michigan-made Mustang convertible.” (09/08/26)
“In 2009, during the H1N1 swine flu panic, I was among a few vocal health policy critics remarking that public health officials were strangely and repeatedly invoking the terrifying spectre of the 1918 Spanish flu. Why? We had no idea what was going on, but in hindsight the game being played was quite clear: Evoking the worst infectious outbreak in living memory was pretty much a corporate-backed push to justify the stockpiling of an antiviral known as Tamiflu (generic name: oseltamivir). … Roche, the drug’s manufacturer, assured us that it would prevent flu complications, reduce hospitalizations, and stop transmission. Those are the bad things we hoped Tamiflu would help us avoid. The global gastronomic appetite for Tamiflu came with a bit of heartburn: the manufacturer hid the data which supported its approval and licensing.” (09/07/26)
“President Donald Trump’s latest temper tantrum over Canada, including the renaming of Lake Ontario as Lake America after the collapse of trade negotiations, is premised on the claim that ‘Canada has been ripping off the United States for decades.’ At least, that’s what the White House insisted in an August 25 press release about the tariff dispute. But, if that’s true, why are Canadians poorer than Americans and falling further behind? A new study from Canada’s Fraser Institute points out that while our northern neighbors started the century with high hopes for their economic prospects, the years since have shown them lagging Americans. If Canadians are taking advantage of us, they’re doing a remarkably poor job of it.” (09/07/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“Apparently, the Pentagon is actively purging any dissent it finds within its ranks, even when it’s for constitutional reasons. Reminds me of the Oathkeepers before the org went a bit rogue, in my opinion. So federal investigators subjected around 50 senior military officers assigned to the U.S. Joint Staff to polygraph lie detector interrogations. Not for espionage or treason, but to find whistleblowers — though the White House will say it is to ferret out traitors. The polygraph sweep was ordered after leaked Pentagon records revealed that six four-star military commanders formally expressed dissent against extended foreign operations, warning that ongoing strikes are ‘unsustainable’ and have severely depleted domestic weapons stockpiles, putting our country at risk. But rather than deal with these warnings by senior military leadership, they were met with a hunt to find and punish any whistleblowers.” (09/06/26)
