Category: Opinion

Source: Law & Liberty
by Leonidas Zelmanovitz

“Americans are often told our healthcare system is the best in the world, but overregulation and other anti-market interventions make it inefficient.” (01/01/25)

https://lawliberty.org/the-best-medicine-in-the-world/

Source: Antiwar.com
by Ramzy Baroud

“Following a ten-day siege, the Palestinian Authority began, on December 14, a violent raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. The PA security forces used similar tactics as used by the Israeli occupation forces in their routine attacks on the area. … By attacking Jenin, the PA is helping the Israeli army in more than one way: it is killing and detaining anti-Israeli occupation Resistance fighters, consuming the energy and resources of the Resistance, allowing Israel to spare thousands of soldiers so that they may carry on with the genocide in Gaza, and more. For many, especially supporters of Palestine around the world, the PA’s action is confusing, to say the least.” (01/01/25)

https://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2024/12/31/the-west-banks-men-of-the-cia-why-is-the-pa-killing-palestinians-in-jenin/

Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob

“‘Congress has secretly paid out more than $17 million of your money,’ Representative Thomas Massie tweeted last week, ‘to quietly settle charges of harassment (sexual and other forms) in Congressional offices.’ Sounds nasty when he states it like that. He could have said Congress has valiantly kept litigation from disturbing the august workings of the world’s greatest deliberative body! But seriously, Massie tells the truth and offers a challenge: ‘Don’t you think we should release the names of the Representatives? I do.'” (12/31/24)

https://thisiscommonsense.org/2024/12/31/the-august-workings/

Source: Reason
by Nathan Goodman

“The United States is notorious both for mass incarceration and for militarized police forces. The U.S. Border Patrol lends unmanned drones to police around the country, who use them to surveil ordinary citizens. Intergovernmental task forces and fusion centers coordinate cooperation among law enforcement officers at all levels of government. Years after COINTELPRO, the FBI is still spying on dissenters. The United States professes a commitment to liberal values, individual rights, and equal protection, but it combines this rhetoric with a muscular security state. How did we get here? … in his new book, New Deal Law and Order: How the War on Crime Built the Modern Liberal State, historian Anthony Gregory emphasizes how an earlier president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, built up policing, incarceration, and the modern security state. Liberalism, Gregory shows, can be used to build an apparatus of repression.” (01/25)

https://reason.com/2024/12/31/lawlessness-and-liberalism/

Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson

“His reputation will age like Billy Beer, not Bordeaux.” (12/3124)

https://thedispatch.com/article/jimmy-carter-no-saint/

Source: Brownstone Institute
by Josh Stylman

“When Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, announced during Event 201’s pandemic drill in 2019 that they would ‘flood the zone with trusted sources,’ few understood this preview of coordinated narrative control. Within months, we watched it unfold in real time — unified messaging across all platforms, suppression of dissent, and coordinated narrative control that fooled much of the world. But not everyone stayed fooled forever. Some saw through it immediately, questioning every aspect from day one. Others thought it was just incompetent government trying to protect us. Many initially accepted the precautionary principle — better safe than sorry. But as each policy failure pointed in the same direction — toward more control and less human agency — the pattern became impossible to ignore.” (12/31/24)

https://brownstone.org/articles/read-between-the-lies-a-pattern-recognition-guide/

Source: EconLog
by Pierre Lemieux

“A major danger will continue to threaten the future of liberty in 2025. It is not a new threat but one that has become more pressing since the rise of populism in the world over the past three decades, including with the election of Donald Trump. … Populism of the right, which is more prevalent in Europe, is no less dangerous than populism of the left, which has been the main variety in Latin America. But the threat I want to emphasize is not populism as such, which I have treated elsewhere (see notably my Independent Review article ‘The Impossibility of Populism’), but its frequent identification with what journalists often label ‘the libertarian right.'” (12/31/24)

https://www.econlib.org/a-dangerous-pass-in-2025-and-beyond/

Source: Bet On It

“Dear Elon: I’m a big fan. I don’t just appreciate the greater openness you’ve brought to X. I appreciate your open mind and your famous candor. As the author of the New York Times best-selling Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, I’ve watched your recent debates on high-skilled immigration with great interest. My candid assessment: You’re trying to defend two deeply incompatible positions on immigration.” (12/31/24)

https://www.betonit.ai/p/ex0-an-open-letter-to-elon

Source: RealClearPolitics
by Froma Harrop

“Donald Trump had a rough couple of weeks. Members of his own party sunk his attempt to escape a vote on the debt limit for two years. Some of Trump’s picks for top jobs weren’t received with universal applause. A revolt by Republican senators against his choice of Matt Gaetz as attorney general forced the Florida Republican to withdraw from consideration. Then there was, yuck, the Gaetz report. If you were Trump confronted with this unwanted evidence of limited political potency, what would you do? You would throw out some dazzling nonsense to distract the public’s attention from your difficulties. You would make outlandish comments on such matters as buying Greenland and taking back the Panama Canal. You’d suggest that Canada become the 51st state.” (12/31/24)

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/12/31/americans_please_hold_on_tight_to_your_attention_152146.html

Source: The Daily Economy
by Michael Munger

“Productivity means learning to do more work with less labor. The only way to gain jobs is to lose jobs.” (12/31/24)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/want-progress-lose-the-spoon-jobs/