Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Sarah McLaughlin
“A recent records request revealed that a Canadian government department is working up a potential new federal strategy on misinformation. But the section explaining what ‘legal action’ would be taken against misinformation, and either the users posting it or the platforms hosting it, is obscured by a large black bar.” (07/10/26)
“Mary Beard meditates on her own life and some of her favorite tales or artifacts from the ancient world to justify an irreverent approach to the classics.” (07/10/26)
“In 1509, while traveling from Italy to England, the famed Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus composed one of the strangest and most enduring works of the Renaissance. In Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium) was written partly for amusement, perhaps out of a self-deprecating boredom to break up the neurasthenia that was synonymous with long-distance travel in the early sixteenth century. As a work, it was dedicated to his friend Thomas More, who would later become Chancellor of England and gain renown and martyrdom through his interactions with the Tudor monarch Henry VIII. The title itself is in homage to More, embedded in the meaning of the Greek word moria, meaning ‘folly.’ Despite its age—over five centuries at this point—its insights are as fresh and as biting today as they were in the pre-modern world.” (07/10/26)
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson
“[T]he model of ‘liberal socialism’ developed in this study is not a fusion of liberalism and socialism, or a splitting of the difference between them. My purpose here, rather, is to defend the value of many of the principles historically associated with the liberal ideology, completely independent of that ideology as a package deal, and to advocate for their integration into any socialist model worthy of the name.” (07/10/26)
“Well, it’s plain to those who know history and the eternal truths which God established to guide and direct man on this earth. The short answer is, humans have largely ignored many of those eternal truths, and when they do, ‘whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap’. There are rules that lead to individual and national greatness, and there are rules that end in personal and collective destruction. No person or country follows either set of rules 100 percent, but whichever set a person/nation is primarily devoted to will determine his/its ultimate fate. That fate is not inevitable if the person/nation changes course, but that doesn’t currently appear to be imminent in America. And that is very sad to see.” (07/12/26)
“It was another lecture, another ordinary morning in the life of a medical intern. Upstairs, patients were being examined. Nurses were changing shifts. Families were arriving to visit loved ones. The hospital pulsed with the familiar rhythm of medicine. None of us questioned whether the building around us would still be standing at the end of the day. Hospitals are places where lives begin, where lives are saved, and where physicians are trained. We instinctively believe they are among the safest places in any city. Then the ground began to move. … Our instructor told us to stay where we were. I have never blamed him. He was trying to do what he believed was right. But there are moments when instinct speaks more loudly than authority.” (07/10/26)
“In ‘Diversity Through Freedom,’ author Adrian Bejan argues that diversity emerges naturally from freedom and decentralized action, while imposed institutional systems distort its benefits.” (07/10/26)
“Forcing a hard wedge against the country’s Shia is exactly what Israel wants, but it could imperil a wide range of US interests in the Middle East.” (07/10/26)
