“I am an admirer of Audie Murphy, the celebrated yet troubled hero who was the most decorated U.S. soldier of World War II but struggled with mental illness and addiction for the rest of his relatively short life before dying at the age of 45. … He was a hell of a soldier, by all accounts. Nobody ever thought he should be secretary of defense. Pete Hegseth is something of a soft echo of Audie Murphy — an Ivy League version for our wan times. Like Murphy, Hegseth served honorably in combat (you will have heard that he was awarded two Bronze Stars), went into the entertainment business (his last job was as one of the hosts of Fox & Friends Weekend), took up drinking, wrecked some marriages (he is on his third), etc. He is today one year younger than Murphy was when he died.” (01/03/25)
“The reality is this: Donald Trump ran the most cravenly cruel and overtly fascist campaign of any major party candidate in modern American history, he was already a known quantity for his first term and for attempting to overturn an election result—and more voters chose him than any other candidate. Trump is a bad choice, an incompetent and evil man who surrounds himself with incompetent and evil men, and yet he was the choice of a plurality of American voters. There is a temptation to argue that under some better institutional arrangement, something closer to True Democracy, voters would never have erred so badly, but that can only take you so far.” (01/03/25)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Men want wives, women want husbands. The price of a wife or a husband is what you have to give up to get her or him. In some societies, but rarely in ours, it takes the form of cash paid as bride price, dowry or dower. While explicit payments of this sort are not a part of our marriage institutions, people who get married do so with some general understanding of the terms they are committing themselves to: how free a hand each will have with the common funds, what duties each is expected to perform, and so on. Think of the terms of this understanding as a price serving the same function as an explicit price in other markets.” (01/03/25)
“Much has been written in the last two months about the new cabinet-level agency [sic], due to self-terminate on July 4, 2026. It is headed by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and a super articulate, successful business executive, Vivek Ramaswamy. Their demonstrated leadership, weeks ago, in helping to reject the incredibly bloated stop-gap spending bill is heartening. These two individuals have boldly claimed that DOGE can cut $2 trillion in waste from the federal government budget. And they will succeed. Why? Because our federal government has the largest budget in the world and has been out of control.” [editor’s note: DOGE will be an “advisory commission” with zero power to cut anything – TLK] (01/04/25)
“It makes sense that the 2008 bailouts inspired a lot of emotion, rhetoric, and hyperbole. Hundreds of billions of dollars had just been lost, the government was rescuing arguably undeserving institutions and their creditors, and the financial system seemed to be wavering on the edge of an abyss. Sixteen years after the panic, though, Todd Sheets manages to stay calm, analytical, and generally convincing in his new book discussing the Great Housing Bubble, its causes, its acceleration, its collapse, and the costly aftermath. 2008: What Really Happened dispassionately reviews the actions of key parts of the US government that were central to creating each stage of the bubble and bust over a decade.” (01/03/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Here is the argument that Trump and his army of Trumpsters use: Even though the vast number of immigrants do not commit violent crimes, a small percentage does. Therefore, to protect Americans from the small percentage of illegal immigrants who commit crimes, they say that it is necessary to have a strict system of immigration controls that vets all immigrants, so that the only the peaceful, law-abiding ones are permitted to enter the United States. Never mind that that has been the system for some 100 years …. Let’s stick with Trump’s reasoning in order to show how ludicrous it is and now destructive of liberty it is. … there are other killers in Texas. … Under Trump’s rationale, why shouldn’t the people of Louisiana be free to impose a system of border controls against the people of Texas?” (01/03/25)
“In the winter issue of Cato Institute’s Regulation, economist Pierre Lemieux acknowledges H.L. Mencken’s famous line — ’Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard’ — and sympathizes with ‘disappointed voters’ following last November’s election. ‘The common person does know what he wants,’ argues Lemieux, explaining that ‘he succeeds so well in his private life.’ Of course, our economic marketplace and our political marketplace are markedly different.” (01/03/25)
“In recent years, Europe has struggled to find the right balance between freedom of expression and the protean security concerns it faces. Plenty of rights watchdogs see a drift toward more censorship. Now Poland is about to challenge that view. On New Year’s Day, the country took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has laid out an agenda under the motto ‘Security, Europe!’ It involves boosting economic competitiveness and food production, defending Ukraine, and finding new solutions to immigration and disinformation. Yet the inaugural gala at the Teatr Wielki, the Polish National Opera, in Warsaw, signaled that Poland’s concept of security has a deeper dimension rooted in creativity and individual liberty. It featured the debut of a work by Radzimir Dębski, a young Polish composer and conductor known for blending classical music with modern genres, particularly hip-hop.” (01/03/25)
“Lysenko — a crackpot with the power of the Soviet state behind him — was the recipient of numerous awards, including, on eight occasions, the Order of Lenin, and on three occasions, the Stalin Prize. Lysenko died of natural causes in 1976. This history of massive state-sponsored scientific fraud is pertinent to Trump’s attempt to install [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] to the highest-ranking healthcare position in the U.S. government. The secretary of health and human services has oversight of everything from food safety to medical research to private health insurance to epidemiology to Medicare and Medicaid and much, much more. Like Lysenko, RFK Jr. has departed from science even as he claims its mantle.” (01/03/25)
“Irecently returned from Spain where I participated in a seminar on The Defeat of the West, the most recent book by the well-known French historian Emmanuel Todd. Whether one agrees with all, part, or none of his thesis — I find myself in the second category — it is a compelling and suggestive read, one that in typical Todd style relies on the innovative mixing of demographic, anthropological, religious, and sociological theories to make its case. One would think that here in what we are constantly told is the beating heart of the West, a book such as this … would be the subject of lively speculation on these shores. But as of yesterday this book, unlike so many of his others, was still unavailable in English, nearly a year after its publication.” (01/03/25)
