“Maybe Donald Trump really will be an anti-war president in his second term. Trump donor and adviser Elon Musk reportedly meeting Iranian officials with the aim of defusing tensions could be a sign that the once and future president may truly buck the neocons and interventionists who have dogged Republican and Democratic efforts to engage Iran and kept the U.S. bogged down in conflicts in the Middle East for a generation. However, the efforts to stop such diplomacy from happening will be fierce.” (11/19/24)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Some libertarians are over-excited about Republican Donald Trump’s appointments of two liberal Democrats-turned-Trumpsters to his cabinet: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. They are also excited about Trump’s appointment of Republicans Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to Trump’s new federal Department of Government Efficiency. Amidst all the excitement over Donald Trump’s election, however, we libertarians must never lose sight of our goal: the achievement of a free society. A genuinely free society does not entail putting ‘better’ or ‘different’ people in charge of running the welfare-warfare state departments and agencies that have destroyed our freedom and produced our serfdom. Genuine freedom necessarily entails the abolition of all departments and agencies that infringe on freedom.” (11/19/24)
“Like a chronic disease, Rahm Emanuel has flared up once again in the Democratic Party. Last week, self-acknowledged ‘hack’ David Axelrod suggested that the former House member, Obama chief of staff, and Chicago mayor should pioneer the party’s future as chair of the Democratic National Committee. Unsurprisingly, the idea has started to pick up momentum, as we have seen many times before when Rahm is desperately seeking a job. But before we get there, Emanuel, currently the U.S. ambassador to Japan, will have to answer for some of his personal financial maneuvers while serving in a government job.” (11/19/24)
“A recent Washington Post headline read ‘Democrats face a reckoning and a long rebuilding. There’s no quick fix.’ The criticism is universal and deserved. But other factors influenced the outcome of this election: a press that normalized Trumps behavior; biased news organizations, especially Fox who admittedly lied to viewers, and an unregulated digital media, which spread mountains of misinformation and disinformation. One crucial factor that frequently escapes notice is the role that religion plays in modern politics. It cannot be overlooked. To fully appreciate its impact, it is helpful to view our political divide as a struggle between rational thought and fairly widespread Christian belief.” [editor’s note: Being wrong isn’t unusual. Being wrong that many times in only two paragraphs is notable – TLK] (11/19/24)
“One of the most encouraging and promising things President-elect Trump said in his post-election acceptance speech was, ‘I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars …’ We all understand that campaign promises often have a short shelf life after the election is over, but the Trump campaign’s repeated talk of peace over war at least demonstrates that he finds it a winning point to make to American voters. Will that talk of peace turn into action in the second Trump presidency, especially with the hawks he has named to senior foreign policy positions in his incoming Administration? It is hard to say, but last week’s report that he sent Elon Musk to meet with the Iranian Ambassador to the UN would be a good sign if true.” (11/19/24)
“This summer, Senators Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the Unemployment Insurance Integrity and Accessibility Act, a bill aimed at elevating aspects of unemployment insurance (UI) administration. The proposed legislation includes reforms that enable greater pursuit of benefit fraud, provide states greater flexibility to waive non-fraudulent pandemic overpayments, and codify accessibility requirements into federal law. Most importantly, the bill includes provisions to ensure that states fully utilize all available national data verification systems.” (11/18/24)
“President-elect Donald Trump is exactly right to remove the federal government from our educational system. This is one giant step toward restoring parental authority and excellence in our schools. America’s founders never intended for us to have a national Department of Education, and they specifically did not want the government intruding into education. They knew such overreach would lead to the destruction of our schools and our nation, and now we have modern proof that they were right. Thank God, Trump seeks to dismantle the national Department of Education. It’s a constitutional move, and it cannot come soon enough! Since our founders made clear that federal intrusion into education is destructive, how did we end up with a national Department of Education and massive federal influence over our schools?” (11/19/24)
“While we have hand-wringing conversations about ‘echo chambers’ when it comes to social media, we don’t tend to have them about other spaces. If you belong to a church, chances are everyone in that community shares a common set of religious beliefs — and we don’t argue that the lack of strong atheist or Muslim representation in a Catholic congregation makes it an echo chamber. If you work at a non-profit advancing abortion rights, you probably haven’t hired many people who oppose reproductive freedom, but that doesn’t make your workplace an echo chamber — or at least not the kind of echo chamber we raise the above five concerns about. … Why the difference? Because we recognize that people belong to different communities, and communities are build around shared values and interests.” (11/18/24)
“Few principles of American government are more foundational than the idea that the U.S. military should not be used against Americans, except in the most dire of circumstances. But even fewer foundational principles are so loosely grounded in the law. The Constitution itself does not bar the domestic use of the military; instead, it vests authority over such deployments in Congress. Congress has in turn limited some such uses while authorizing many others, often through open-ended language that gives the president substantial discretion in determining when and for how long he may use soldiers domestically. … with former President Donald Trump — who repeatedly sought to make domestic use of the military in the past and suggested in the final days of his campaign it should be used against ‘the enemy from within’ — these norms may not hold.” (11/18/24)
“In The Theory of Political Spectrum, I presented three critical factors that influence the polarization of political ideologies: attitudes toward private property rights, the state of consciousness, and the degree of wealth redistribution. The article demonstrates that an assault on private property, the collectivization of consciousness, or widespread and involuntary wealth redistribution — either individually or collectively — are methods of making society more oriented to socialism. The last factor, wealth redistribution, has a close relationship with private property rights but is often ignored by mainstream academics and policy analysts. They have become so accustomed to extensive social programs and progressive taxation as normal conditions of a modern state that they fail to recognize the underlying economic and moral flaws. Neglecting this factor overlooks the central role it played in the gradual adoption of evolutionary socialism in the United States.” (11/18/24)
