“Much of the spread of Zionist and Hindutva ideologies through powerful Jewish and Hindu spheres occurred from the efforts of connected professionals and financiers and technologists, as I have related in reports for the Libertarian Institute in August and November and December and April. But the spread of these ideologies among powerful Jews and Hindus likely also occurred because these ideologies played into the influence Jewish and Hindu players were already enjoying in American empire. Indeed, from their inceptions both Zionist and Hindutva ideology have been explicitly tuned to and so attractive to imperialists.” (04/21/26)
“Republicans are at it again, and it’s hard to overstate how chilling this is and what it tells you about the direction people in this Party want to take America. Texas Congressman Chip Roy is preparing to introduce legislation he’s calling the ‘MAMDANI Act,’ named after Zohran Mamdani, the recently elected democratic socialist mayor of New York City, that would let the federal government bar entry to, deport, and strip naturalized citizenship from any person who advocates for or is ‘affiliated with’ what Roy calls ‘totalitarian’ movements. The list includes, from Rep. Roy’s webpage: ‘[A] socialist party, a communist party, the Chinese Communist Party, or Islamic fundamentalist party, or advocates for socialism, communism, Marxism, or Islamic fundamentalism.’ The bill targets people who ‘write, distribute, circulate, print, display, possess, or publish’ material supporting socialism or any of those other ideas.” (04/21/26)
“Plug-in solar panels — sometimes called “balcony solar” — allow people to generate electricity by plugging panels directly into a standard outlet and help cut down on utility bills, without the need for expensive rooftop installations. The relatively cheap technology has taken off in parts of Europe, and a recent Utah law sponsored by [state representative Raymond] Ward has spurred interest across the U.S. … Residential households are only designed to pull power off the grid, through wires to outlets, and into plugged-in devices. Balcony solar does the opposite by creating power and pushing it backward into the outlet and ‘upstream’ through a home’s wires, Ward explained.” (04/21/26)
“Economic models, rooted in assumptions of rational agents maximizing utility under constraints, have long provided elegant frameworks for understanding human behavior in markets and societies. Yet, a persistent friction exists between these idealized portrayals of human beings and the ways humans actually navigate economic choices. People frequently champion policies that contravene basic economic principles, including minimum wages presumed to boost income without increasing unemployment, rent controls expected to enhance housing affordability without reducing supply, or tariffs that run counter to comparative advantage and affordability.” (04/21/26)
“Imagine celebrating the price of corn or wheat hitting a record high. That would make perfect sense if you grew corn or wheat, but it’s hard to see why anyone else would be celebrating. This is the same story with the stock market, even though shareholders are a somewhat larger share of the population than corn or wheat farmers. But the basic principle is the same.” (04/21/26)
“For decades, Americans overwhelmingly aligned with Israel. This was not merely ideological; it was instructional. The public was told – repeatedly – that Israel reflected ‘American values’: democracy, civility, modernity. Palestinians and Arabs, by contrast, were framed as perpetual antagonists, initiators of violence, and ‘obstacles to peace.’ Some Americans embraced this framing on religious or ideological grounds. But for the majority, the pro-Israel position became a default – an inherited conclusion rooted in limited access to alternative information. Israel was ‘good,’ Arabs were ‘bad.’ The narrative was simple, binary, and rarely challenged. With mainstream media as the primary source of information, this perception hardened over time. Support for Palestine, and for broader Arab causes, remained confined to academic spaces and activist circles – often informed by anti-colonial and anti-imperialist frameworks, but numerically marginal and politically contained. The mainstream remained locked in place. But that lock has been broken.” (04/21/26)
“Kevin Warsh is scheduled to testify before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. The vote on his confirmation as Federal Reserve chairman may hinge on the Justice Department’s dropping its inquiry into whether the current chairman, Jerome Powell, testified inaccurately about cost overruns in renovating Fed headquarters. It would be a pity if we have to wait. The U.S. dollar would benefit from new thinking at the Fed. Lawmakers should be much more focused on the damage that Fed policies are inflicting on the soundness of America’s money. It’s also time that Congress, which is charged with ensuring a trustworthy currency, recognized that outsourcing this responsibility to the Fed is a big part of the problem.” (04/20/26)
“Beneath the weather of the daily headlines, slow tectonic shifts are changing America’s political landscape. Demographic developments are moving voters (and congressional seats, and electoral votes) from blue states to red ones. Trust in the traditional media (routinely in the tank for Democrats) has plummeted. And the entire education industry, a key pillar of the leftist establishment, is crumbling, too. The long decline of higher education (the subject of my 2012 book The Higher Education Bubble) has been slowly accelerating for over a decade, driven by sky-high tuition and shrinking employment prospects for recent college grads. When Hampshire College in Massachusetts announced its plans to close last week, it became the latest private college to fall victim to the ruin.” (04/21/26)
Source: The Bleeding Heart Libertarian
by Matt Zwolinski
“If you had asked me in 2015 to describe the core commitments of American libertarianism, I could have done it in about a minute. Free markets, limited government, individual rights, skepticism of state power, free trade, open or liberal immigration, some version of non-interventionism abroad, a strong preference for constitutional constraints on executive authority. There would have been edge cases and internal disputes, sure, but the center of gravity was clear enough that you could gesture at it. Try to do the same today, ten years later, and you run into trouble almost immediately. In the public-facing, movement-adjacent side of libertarianism — the one that reaches audiences through podcasts, YouTube, X, and the tech-intellectual networks of the last few years — the center of gravity has shifted in ways that would have seemed inconceivable a decade ago.” (04/20/26)
“Private electricity grids could be key to opening the energy sector up to testing and innovation—something that is difficult on a ratepayer-supported grid. Due to mountains of regulation, public fear, and high costs, there has been little recent experience in constructing nuclear power plants, as only seven of the 94 operating reactors in the United States were built after 1990. While continued regulatory reforms are absolutely imperative, opening the sector to specialists to gain expertise would be significant.” (04/20/26)
