“Montreal (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – ‘If the state sends people, soldiers, for the honor of the state, and they kill people, is that permissible? It is plain murder. They [the government] incite murder. This is what they do. They wage wars not to save lives, but only for the honor of the state. Certainly, this is not new. So, is this permitted? Just to raise the status of the state or something else?’ These are not the words of a left-wing anti-Israeli activist from an Ivy League campus. They were spoken on July 19, 2026, by the 96-year-old Rabbi Dov Lando, a senior member of the Council of Torah Sages in Israel.” (07/24/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“I got an email in my Inbox last night from Sen. Rick Scott, all proud that he’s introduced the ‘Safeguard Kids Act’ with the intention of protecting students K-12 from the evil risks of artificial intelligence (AI). I find his proposal preposterous for a few reasons, but much like my article last night on the SCOTUS reversal of Roe v. Wade, Washington has no place in our students’ local classrooms. While I agree with Scott that AI will likely be the greatest information innovation since Guttenberg’s printing press, his solution is misguided. The last thing AI needs is the stagnation of a federal government bureaucracy. I thought we were closing down the U.S. Dept of Education, anyway; what happened to that notion?” (07/24/26)
“Can a private company be worth more than Canada’s entire economy? Some people seem to think so. Every so often, a superstar company, usually in the tech sector, hits a record valuation, prompting comparisons to a country’s GDP. For example, NVIDIA’s market capitalization surpassed Canada’s GDP in 2025. By May 2026, the chip designer was worth more than the annual GDP of every country except the United States and China. The reason this comparison doesn’t give us much information beyond the emotional reaction is that the two numbers are measured in different units, so they are incomparable.” (07/24/26)
“Last December, the U.S. State Department imposed visa bans on five persons who, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, ‘have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.’ But is it okay for the U.S. government to withhold visas from foreigners acting to undermine the freedom of speech of Americans?” (07/24/26)
“Some left-wing ideologues reject space exploration altogether—especially private space exploration—while others dream of a planned economy in space or even socialism. We should not underestimate the danger of such ideas. They have already caused enormous harm on Earth. Around two dozen socialist experiments have failed over the past 100 years. Every single one. Without exception. Yet the failed ideas of central planning and socialism have become popular once again.” (07/25/26)
“Airport security screeners at the 20 private-contract airports get paid during a government shutdown. A public sector union wants to make sure that doesn’t happen.” (07/24/26)
Source: CounterPunch
by John W Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget calls for an unprecedented $1.5 trillion in national-defense spending—a staggering increase that would pour still more money into a military apparatus that cannot account honestly for the costs of its current war, maintain its existing priorities, or keep from returning to taxpayers for another bailout. The problem is not simply how much the war machine consumes. It is how little accountability accompanies that spending.” (07/24/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joshua Mawhorter
“Contrary to the popular assumption that centralized political power was necessary to destroy slavery, federal power spent much of its history protecting and enforcing the institution. This privatized costs for a privileged few and socialized and diffused the costs onto others in society. This is a common reality with any state intervention, indeed, it is the point of state intervention. … Only after certain slaveholding states attempted to leave the Union—explicitly citing slavery as a principal cause of secession—did the federal government cease acting as slavery’s protector and begin acting as its destroyer. … By the 1840s, William Lloyd Garrison and the Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement had made disunion a central part of their program. Convinced that the Constitution and Union protected slavery, they adopted ‘No Union with Slaveholders’ as a rallying cry and urged Northern separation from the slaveholding South.” (07/24/26)
