Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“I still find myself fuming at the way ostensibly well-informed individuals can stand right in the heart of the empire denouncing its targets, as we saw in the open letter that a group of left-wing western individuals addressed ‘to Iran’s political prisoners’ framing Iran as a ‘source of oppression’ equal to the US and its allies. It’s crazy this even needs to be said, but if you are a westerner your ONLY job is to oppose the abuses of the western empire. Not Iran. Not China. Not Russia, Cuba or North Korea. If you live in the US or one of its allied nations, then you live under the single most tyrannical and murderous power structure on earth, and that’s where your focus belongs.” [editor’s note: She seems to be admitting that those other regimes DO commit abuses. That’s progress, I guess. And my job is whatever I damn well decide it is – TLK] (08/24/26)
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen
“In K-12 education, students are—and perhaps should be—only beginning to think seriously. Especially in earlier years, they do not have enough knowledge or experience to know what they are really interested in. Hence, teachers must just encourage them to explore what they are curious about. By the time they reach college, though, students should have at least some sense of what they are curious about. I don’t think most college students today do (I don’t think they have for the last several decades—that is, I don’t think it was true in CBUs or ETCUs and I doubt it was true in GMUs). If students are encouraged to let their curiosity wander in K-12, this would likely change. Still, I will say something about what to do if they do not come to college with some idea about what they want to study.” (08/24/26)
“Robert Alexander Nisbet first made a splash in academia—and the conservative intellectual movement such as it was—in 1953 with the publication of his first and most famous book, The Quest for Community. Much of what he has to say there and in the rest of his oeuvre proved to be prescient in various ways. Nisbet predicted the rise of loneliness and the decline of the family, the growth of the bureaucracy at the expense of civil society, and the use of the language of democracy and equality to aggrandize the intrusions of political power.” (08/24/26)
“For a long time, the liberal response to institutional mistrust was a mix of condescension and bafflement. If the public did not trust the experts, the assumption was that people were either misinformed or manipulated by bad actors. We lived through a decade of trying to fact-check our way out of a legitimacy crisis. But the tone has started to shift. Across public health agencies, local police departments, housing authorities, and financial institutions, people have watched institutions fail visibly and repeatedly, often without meaningful accountability afterward. In that context, skepticism is not necessarily irrational. It can be a reasonable response to systems that appear distant, unresponsive, or insulated from the consequences of their own mistakes.” (08/24/26)
“Nixon promised jobs, stable prices, and protection for the dollar. His ‘fixes’ helped usher in a new era of inflation, debt, and monetary instability.” (08/24/26)
“I was born and raised in California, where avocados weren’t just another item on the grocery list, they were a staple of my everyday diet. Today, not much has changed. My family loves avocados, my daughter asks for them constantly, and as someone who loves to cook, I incorporate them into just about every recipe I can. But as a mom who believes deeply in the Make America Healthy Again movement, I’ve started thinking differently about the food I put on my family’s table. MAHA has encouraged millions of Americans to look more closely at ingredient labels, additives and how our food is produced. But I believe the conversation should go one step further: Where does our food come from? Who grows it? Are our agricultural supply chains safe and transparent? And are our purchases supporting American farmers?” (08/24/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“Apple builds and sells iPhones. I happen to own one of the older models, for the same reason I own a last-legs older model car. What if Apple could skip the build part and sell only the phone? The money saved would be an enormous boost to its bottom line. And if Apple passed the savings onto customers I could conceivably afford to upgrade. Where would the phones come from? From a bookkeeping entry, of course. Unfortunately, Apple’s customers are very demanding and want the real things, so the build operations will have to stay. Perhaps their executives looked upon another business and envied their ability to sell loans without drawing down their savings. Customer with good credit wants a loan? Create the amount with a few taps on a keyboard and send him on his way.” (08/24/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Abigail R Hall & Michael Coon
“Excitement abounds as college students prepare to return to campus. Some students will begin their college experience. Others will begin the countdown to graduation. But for international students, fall is likely to bring significant anxiety. On Sept. 15, new rules for student visas will place them in a bind, harm universities and impose high costs on one of the country’s strongest service exports: education.” (08/24/26)
“Last week was the 28th anniversary of the U.S. government’s bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. Scott Horton, director of the Libertarian Institute, observed last week that that wanton assault by the Clinton administration ‘helped make a folk hero out of bin Laden, drove up recruitment for Al Qaeda and made it more difficult for the Taliban to give him up.’ Operation Infinite Reach was a farce of the first order—and may have helped pave the way to the September 11 attacks. That carnage resulted in a federal court ruling that practically gave presidents a license to kill any time that they claimed to have good intentions.” (08/24/26)
“Last week, Trump announced that the U.S. will, for 90 days, admit up to 300,000 metric tons of ground-beef product without the normal out-of-quota tariff, and that he has obtained a ‘commitment’ that the beef will be sold 25% below current market prices. This comes on top of February’s much smaller measure allocating an extra 80,000 metric tons of tariff-free lean beef specifically to Argentina. … My immediate reaction to this was, ‘That sounds like some Third World shit.’ A little research would bear this intuition out: this is something like a practice of developing nations. For example, Nigeria during the oil boom of the 1970s.” (08/24/26)
