“Because politicians win by working their base into a lather, there currently exist within American politics no incentives to be wrong with decency. Every opponent must be an enemy, every disagreement a threat. I helped in my small way to create that mess; I’m resolved to help in a similarly small way to fix it. This doesn’t mean no longer speaking to what I believe to be good policy even on questions where bad policy is non-catastrophic to our republic. It does mean not strategically catastrophizing them, and not vilifying their adherents. … the only way to get incentives pushing back in that right direction is for enough people to decide they don’t care about differences on policy when those differences do not radically reshape the world.” (04/28/26)
“The United Arab Emirates (UAE) shocked the world on Tuesday when it announced that it’d be leaving the world’s largest oil cartel this week. While there’s no immediate impact for the US, in the long run it’ll mean lower gasoline prices and much-needed relief for American consumers. For decades, the UAE has been part of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which has artificially limited global oil supplies and thereby put upward pressure on prices. … The idea behind the cartel was simple: gather all the major oil-producing countries into a room and agree to act like a monopoly, thereby maximizing profits at the expense of the rest of the world. But as other nations began discovering and pumping more oil of their own, it became increasingly difficult for a dozen or so countries to control global prices.” (04/29/26)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“In the wake of the reported assassination attempt on President Trump, the Trump administration has wasted no time advancing a dangerous narrative: that criticism of the president — especially criticism labeling him authoritarian or fascist — is not just wrong, but responsible for violence. The implication is as chilling as it is unconstitutional: if you criticize the government too harshly, you may be to blame for what happens next. Taken to its logical conclusion, the government’s argument is this: criticism fuels anger, and anger leads to violence against the Trump administration. Which means the solution, in the government’s eyes, is simple: silence the criticism — but only when it is leveled at the Trump administration.” (04/28/26)
“The Right keeps waiting for the Weather Underground to shoot at President Trump. Not literally, not the specific organization — Bill Ayers is a comfortably retired professor in his 80s — but the type: the black-masked antifa supersoldier; the DSA chapter secretary with a tote bag full of Marx, oat milk, and bolt cutters; the blue-haired radical with a ‘Fuck ICE’ bicep tattoo; the leader of a trans gun club called ‘Trigger Warning.’ But we keep getting a very different type of would-be assassin: not the antifa militant from central casting, nor even the Proud Boy thug — but the deranged centrist. … ‘Centrist terrorism’ is, of course, not a serious analytical category. Yet neither, in these cases, is the bogeyman trumpeted on the Right as ‘radical leftist terrorism.'” (04/28/26)
“‘Debate’ almost never corresponds to mappable arguments. The simplest ‘solve debate’ proposal is the argument map. Some technology helps people decompose arguments into premises and conclusions, then lets skeptics point out where the premises are wrong, or where the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise. But almost no real argument works that way. Even in the best-case scenario, where an argument almost works that way, it doesn’t really work that way. Suppose you’re having an argument about COVID lockdowns. Someone says ‘lockdowns hurt the economy.’ Now you’re stuck in a giant fight about whether that claim is true (answer: compared to the counterfactual, certain kinds of lockdown measures hurt certain economic indicators in certain situations). But even if it is true, so what? What conclusion can you draw from that premise?” (04/28/26)
“German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently said that America is being ‘humiliated’ by Iran: ‘The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,’ he said. The only issue with this argument is that Donald Trump is such an erratic lunatic that arguably no real negotiation has ever taken place and may not actually be possible. Principally what Trump has done is post random nonsense online. Among Tuesday’s posts was one in which he claimed that ‘Iran has just informed us that they are in a ‘State of Collapse.’ They want us to ‘Open the Hormuz Strait,’ as soon as possible.’ This did not happen. It is what it is, and it’s not going to get better so long as Trump remains president.” (04/29/26)
“Last weekend my Institute for Peace and Prosperity hosted another conference here on the Texas Gulf Coast. Not only did we have a full house attending the conference – which is in a way the most important thing – but in this era of profound disappointment and disillusionment, we struck a note of optimism thankfully due to our wonderful line-up of speakers. The main topic of the conference, titled ‘War is Back on the Menu,’ was of course the disastrous decision by the Trump Administration to launch an unprovoked war against Iran – both last June and again on February 28th.” (04/28/26)
“‘Gun control’ had chance after chance after chance to prove it could thwart Allen’s plans. And. It. Didn’t. Whoa … violent criminals don’t obey ‘gun control’ laws and private venue gun rules any more than they obey other kinds of laws and rules? Whodathunkit? It’s not that the laws and rules aren’t adequately enforced. The only way to reliably prevent Allen from traveling from LA to DC with guns would have been to force him to travel on foot and buck naked … after which he’d have almost certainly been able to buy a gun on the street if he wanted one.” (04/28/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Wanjiru Njoya
“Supreme Court rulings are significant not only for their decision on who wins, but also for their reasoning. A victory for common sense may sometimes be pyrrhic if it benefits the party who wins the dispute but relies on reasoning that erodes individual liberty in the longer term. In that context, while the outcome in the recent case of Chiles v. Salazar, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (decided March 31, 2026) was welcomed, the emphasis it placed on ‘viewpoint discrimination’ is unfortunate. It is one more step down the road to conceptualizing free speech as an application of the non-discrimination principle, rather than as an emanation of individual liberty.” (04/28/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Wendy McElroy
“When an entire country is called racist, the accusation has at least two parts: one, racism is built into the foundational structure or institutions of the nation, and, two, it is a defining belief of the population.” (04/28/26)
