“The Democratic Party is trying to get born again. For forty years it didn’t want to be. Since Reagan, the Democrats stopped fighting the world he built and started managing it. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and sent the factories south. He signed the crime bill Joe Biden wrote and helped fill the prisons. He ended welfare and called it reform. He tore down the wall between the banks and your money, and a few years later the banks lost your money and got bailed out for it. Obama bailed them out, let the houses go, deported people by the millions, and kept the drone war and the surveillance state running without missing a step. On the things that decide who holds power, money and war and the police and the spying, our party and theirs were one party. That was never where they fought.” (06/25/26)
“A shifted focus to maintenance and care can’t address that need for what’s better. No matter how much time I spend in the garage lovingly tending to a classic car, it’s not going to get the gas millage or safety features of a current model hybrid. Yes, of course, we also buy junk. You’re better off investing more in, and caring for, a great pair of boots or jeans than buying another piece of fast fashion that’ll fall apart in a year or less. Probably. Maintenance is a good approach to some goods, but it fails as a systemic model for areas of rapid technological, environmental, or societal advancement. But the point is that most of the products out there now are, in meaningful ways, better than what came before. That’s growth, in the second sense, not an obsession with growth in the first.” (06/24/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Matthew Blackburn
“Prudence has been replaced by confidence that conflict can be precisely managed. Nowhere is that more evident than in the European approach to Russia.” (06/25/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“One of the puzzling things about certain political and cultural conflicts is how strongly people feel about them. I can understand why some people would prefer that homosexuals not be permitted to marry, find it harder to understand why they care so much about it. Similarly for same sex couples adopting. Similarly for polygamy. And similarly — I think the most interesting case — for attitudes towards transsexuals, individuals who have undergone a sex change operation. In each case, the question is why A cares so much about what B, or B and C, or even B, C, D, and E are doing. I have a conjecture about part of the answer. The world is a complicated place. One way in which we deal with that complication, in law and thought, is by representing a complicated reality with a much simpler model.” (06/25/26)
Source: Freedom and Flourishing
by Dr. Edward W Younkins
“Randy E. Barnett is one of our most important contemporary defenders of a free society. Trained as a legal scholar but working at the intersection of law, political philosophy, constitutional theory, and economics, Barnett has developed a comprehensive moral and institutional justification for liberty that draws upon natural law, natural rights, individual sovereignty, and the evolutionary benefits of social order. Unlike many economists who defend capitalism primarily on grounds of efficiency, or philosophers who rely exclusively on consequentialist arguments, Barnett seeks to demonstrate that a free society is both morally justified and practically necessary because it provides the legal and institutional framework within which persons can pursue flourishing lives according to their own judgments.” (06/25/26)
“Half the problem with Trumpism is Trumpism. And the other half of the problem with Trumpism is Trump. Trump will always betray those who trust him. And he will always force his underlings to go out in public and defend indefensibly stupid things. Ask Larry Kudlow or Kevin Hassett. And, contra National Review’s social-media intern, Trump will reliably make everything he gets his hands on ugly: His Caligula-by-way-of-Liberace aesthetic is not only—or even mainly—the result of bad taste but the result of bad character. There is a reason vanity is numbered among the seven deadly sins. To assume that the reflecting pool work would be done incompetently and corruptly is far from absurd. If you happen to be among those who believe that character is destiny, then it is, at the very least, a reasonable assumption even if it is something short of an existential certainty.” (06/25/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Marcos Giansante
“Long before economics became a discipline—before universities, statistical models, or debates over monetary policy—a more fundamental question emerged on the shores of the Aegean Sea: Why does order exist at all? The question did not arise in a royal court, a military academy, or a government bureau. It emerged among merchants, sailors, craftsmen, and philosophers living in the bustling Greek cities of Ionia.” (06/25/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Alvaro Vargas Llosa
“After spending time in Singapore, I am more convinced than ever that what has given this island the world’s second– or third-highest per capita gross domestic product (in purchasing power parity) is not its ‘state-managed,’ ‘politically engineered’ socioeconomic model nor its authoritarian politics, but its economic freedom. However, its social cohesion, multi-ethnic peace, and well-being, which are significantly linked to government interventionism, continue to challenge us classical liberals, who would like freedom to be the founding principle not just of prosperity but also of other desirable social outcomes.” (06/24/26)
“Not long ago, new kinds of jobs appeared: app-based gig work. They include jobs like dog walking on Rover, Taskrabbit work, DoorDash food delivery, Uber and Lyft driving, and many more. Lots of people like gig work. It’s flexible; you work when you want to work. But ‘workers’ rights’ activists and governing socialists don’t like that. Gig workers rarely join unions. They don’t get a minimum wage. ‘Uber and Lyft exploit their workers.’ is a headline at MS NOW. ‘We can’t ignore it.’ The democratic socialists said they had a solution. Seattle’s City Council imposed a $26 delivery-driver minimum wage. What could go wrong? Two years later, we know the answer: Gig workers make no more money, but prices go up. Apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats added a $5 fee for consumers ‘to help cover the costs of these … regulations.’ Now Seattle residents complain about prices.” (06/24/26)
