“At moderate schools, those where the average student is close to the middle politically, a lot of issues are difficult for both sides to discuss. At hyper-liberal schools, those where the average student is strongly liberal, every issue is easy for liberal students to discuss — except for one: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict. … One generally assumes people are more comfortable sharing their views when surrounded by others who think the same way. So then why are liberal students at very liberal schools scared to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?” (03/16/26)
“With thousands of supporters behind them, roughly 100 faith leaders sang, ’Before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail — everybody’s got a right to live,’ as they blocked a key road to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. It was an act of civil disobedience against federal immigration agents outside the busy Terminal 1 drop-off. Some of the faith leaders held signs showing photos of abducted members of Unite Here Local 17, which represents food service workers at the airport. It was late morning on January 23, and the crowd — including striking workers and union members, some of whom work at the airport — stayed outside in subzero temperatures to cheer on the faith leaders. Supporters passed around hand warmers and snacks to help sustain the crowd.’ (03/16/26)
“The great German political philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, died last week at the age of 96, at home in Starnberg, Bavaria. Born in 1929, he lived through one of Germany’s most tumultuous eras. He was a member of the Hitler Youth as a boy and was sent, as a 15-year-old, to the western front to man anti-aircraft defences in the final months of the Second World War. After the war, he became a left-wing student firebrand while studying philosophy at the universities of Göttingen, Zurich and Bonn – from the last of which, he earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1954.” (03/16/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Thiago VS Coelho
‘Humanitarian intervention’ sells itself as a moral shortcut: bypass the messy politics, send in the troops, stop the monster. Many libertarians respond with a familiar reply: non-intervention, because aggression against another nation is wrong. In his essay on Aggression Abroad, Jason Lee Byas’s point is that this reply often rests on a category mistake. If you take libertarianism seriously — if you really mean that only individuals have rights and only individuals can be wronged — then you can’t smuggle in a moral right called national sovereignty and treat states as if they’re rights-bearing persons. … So far, so interventionist: if sovereignty is a fiction, why not invade to stop atrocities? Because the same individualism that dissolves the sovereignty myth also destroys the interventionist fantasy of ‘surgical’ war.” (03/16/26)
“The notion of a short and decisive war has always been a temptation for politicians. This notion holds a promise of quick victories, low costs, and clear triumphs. However, the course of history over the last few decades has indicated that wars do not always follow this pattern. The current conflict between the United States and Iran seems to be a clear manifestation of this reality, as the early indications of a quick victory are not supported by the fundamental realities of the conflict.” (03/16/26)
“Jesus, how do you write an obit of someone you hired? It is with a heavy heart but many, many fond memories and intense gratitude that I write about my colleague Brian Doherty, found dead unexpectedly on Friday at the age of 57. I joined Reason in the fall of 1993. He was hired later in 1994 and then left the staff for a while around the end of the decade. When I became editor in chief of the magazine and website in 2000, he was the first person I called. Come back, I said, Reason needs you. What I liked most about Brian was his abiding interest in things happening on the margins of American culture, politics, and thought, and his deep appreciation for the prodigious bounty that markets deliver reliably and without moralizing.” (03/16/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Sheridan Macy
“Gail Nazarene, an elected school board member in New Jersey, thought she was performing her duties as a public servant and participating in the democratic process when she asked her constituents about tax increases on Facebook. This simple act led to an ethics complaint by another school board member because, unlike most other states, New Jersey interprets its school ethics rules to potentially cover any speech that’s merely about schools, supposedly because community members are likely to attribute any such statement from a board member as being on behalf of the board. But the First Amendment forbids the government from punishing school board members for speaking their minds on public issues. That’s why FIRE is suing New Jersey on Nazarene’s behalf.” (03/16/26)
“In the first chapter of his 1874 novel The Gilded Age, Mark Twain offered a telling observation about the connection between past and present: ‘History never repeats itself, but the… present often seems to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.’ Among the ‘antique legends’ most helpful in understanding the likely outcome of the current U.S. intervention in Iran is the Suez Crisis of 1956, which I describe in my new book Cold War on Five Continents. After Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956, a joint British-French armada of six aircraft carriers destroyed Egypt’s air force, while Israeli troops smashed Egyptian tanks in the sands of the Sinai Peninsula. Within less than a week of war, Nasser had lost his strategic forces and Egypt seemed helpless before the overwhelming might of that massive imperial juggernaut.” (03/15/26)
