“For over two decades now, Amazon has been seen as a one-stop shop to buy virtually anything, and get it delivered in no time flat. It’s been estimated that the platform has over 310 million active users, and just in the U.S. during 2023, sold over 4.5 billion items. Amazon claims to be guided by four principles: ‘customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking’. Certainly there is a very large quantity of retail items for sale on the platform, even if their quality or identity may be questionable. But in another much more obscure part of the business, Amazon’s supposed obsession with its customers and ‘commitment to operational excellence’ falls flat. Amazon Business, an operation under the umbrella of Amazon’s services, has grown as a popular procurement tool for businesses and organizations over the past few years.” (12/17/25)
“We here at TPOL generally like Whoopi Goldberg … as an actress when she played Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was a long time ago. But the good will from her appearances has long since evaporated, except for what she gets that we provide to any human being. Regardless of their faults. Including what we are tempted to say one of Goldberg’s greater ones: an inability to understand simple English declarative statements, combined with a firm belief that her political enemies are all monsters. So we are placed in a quandry: for once we agree with her. Whoopi Goldberg is recently reported as saying, ‘I’m not gonna let Secretary Kennedy tell me what vaccines to take.’ Amen … we here at TPOL are totally agreement with Whoopi Goldberg. The government should not be telling us what we can put into our bodies.” (12/16/25)
“I could probably name 50 entertainers whose political positions I find odious … if I bother to notice those political positions. I mostly go out of my way NOT to. Is there any compelling reason to deprive ourselves of great films or great performances from Oliver Stone, Jon Voit, Jane Fonda, Sean Penn, James Woods, Susan Sarandon, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Leonardo DiCaprio … just to indulge our political disagreements with them and maybe cost them a buck or two in box office sales, TV residuals, etc.? The idea smacks of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. As for speaking ill of the dead, even dancing on their graves … well, I’m not against it in the case of particularly unsavory characters. But over political disagreements? No. Tom Smothers wasn’t Charles Manson and Pete Seeger wasn’t Joseph Stalin. They enriched our lives whether we liked their politics or not.” (12/16/25)
“The tactics that ICE and CBP are using seem far more appropriate for a police state than a democratic republic. As with so many other recent highlighted civil liberties abuses, though, the problem did not begin when Donald Trump became president. Instead, previous administrations set a number of troubling precedents. Unsavory practices to enforce U.S. immigration laws, including holding detainees without due process for extended periods in overcrowded conditions, certainly are nothing new. Even accosting suspects at their place of employment or on the streets is not unprecedented. One historical episode that bears an especially troubling similarity to the current conduct of ICE and CBP was the so-called Palmer Raids during Woodrow Wilson’s administration.” (12/16/25)
“Language matters. Words have not only technical meanings; they also summon particular attitudes and impressions. And sometimes these attitudes and impressions differ significantly from the words’ technical meanings. In no domain of economic policy is the confusion created by the divergence of words’ technical meanings from the attitudes and impressions conveyed by those words greater than in the domain of trade policy.” (12/16/25)
“Defending the rights of students and faculty to speak freely has been part and parcel of FIRE’s mission for 26 years. We’ve seen universities try all sorts of ways to restrict expression, from free speech zones and excessive security fees to extensive pre-approval requirements for events. But one technique is particularly disturbing — using ostensibly pro-free speech policies to chill student and faculty expression. As my colleague Graham Piro recently wrote, colleges and universities regularly claim to embrace ‘institutional neutrality’ — an institution’s commitment to refrain from speaking out on the issues of the day — only to silence speech in the principle’s name. Under a genuine policy of institutional neutrality, students and faculty are empowered to debate such issues, without feeling as if the school administration has declared the matter settled.” (12/16/25)
“Every two years, Americans spend an average of $15 billion on campaign advertising trying to fend off the wolves attacking them. But we just end up changing which wolves are briefly ascendant. Maybe we could fend off those wolves once and for all—if we could just get our foot out of that dang trap. But what’s the trap? The trap is an electoral system that has been captured by party processes gone wrong. We’ve had decades of changes — some of them well-intentioned, some about accruing power — to how our political parties operate. They have left us in a place where most members of Congress are elected by only 5 to 8 percent of the electorate in their districts. … Every year, our two parties get better at claiming ever more power for a continuously shrinking membership base.” (12/16/25)
“If a new poll is any indication, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party should be worried about the youth vote in the 2026 midterm elections. According to polling from the University of Chicago, about 60% of Gen Z and millennial voters are dissatisfied with both political parties. This includes 25% of Republican voters ages 18-42 who have an unfavorable view of the GOP, as well as 36% of Democrats in that age range who have an unfavorable view of their party. None of this is really surprising, given that polling across age ranges has shown that voters are unhappy with both political parties. What might surprise party leaders, however, are the specific issues that Generation Z and millennials are worried about.” (12/16/25)
“Postliberals certainly agree that serious political, economic, and cultural missteps have happened under liberal regimes. But their critique runs much deeper than that. They believe liberalism itself is fatally flawed. Although postliberals come in many varieties, a common thread is that liberalism is intrinsically defective — that it inexorably leads to social atomization, cultural degradation, and oppression and inequality. Perhaps the best known purveyor of this view is Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen …. Deneen’s analysis suffers from three basic problems: he misrepresents liberalism’s fundamental principles; he presents a warped history of liberalism that dismisses its achievements and exaggerates its weaknesses; and he offers nothing in place of the liberal-democratic framework he wants to destroy.” (12/16/25)
“Most people would know that totalitarianism is not a desirable social or political set of circumstances. Even the word sounds ominous, but that is probably only to those who already know what it denotes. I have written on it before, in different contexts, but it is now more relevant than ever. We should remind ourselves what Orwell wrote in that uncannily premonitory novel.” (12/16/25)
