“General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Donald Trump that an attack on Iran would provoke its closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Every president contemplating war in the Middle East has known this and therefore avoided a full regional war. But Trump said he knew better and plunged into war. Of course, Trump was wrong — monumentally, predictably, and inexcusably wrong. Now, the Strait is mined and closed, the war rages out of control, oil prices have spiked, and the economy is teetering.” (03/16/26)
“When inflation was rising rapidly in 2022, it was predicted that a sustained period of high unemployment would be required to bring inflation back to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Such predictions are closely aligned with the findings of the classic Phillips curve, which hypothesizes a trade-off between inflation and unemployment. These predictions were strongly rooted in the sacrifice ratio — the rise in unemployment typically required to reduce inflation by one percentage point. Historical experience suggested that the sacrifice ratio would be substantial, but inflation declined significantly without a notable rise in unemployment. It remained low, fluctuating between 3.6% and 3.9% through 2021 and 2022. The sacrifice ratio turned out to be close to zero. The big question that these events raise is whether the economists overestimated the persistence of supply-side shocks and the sensitivity of inflation to unemployment.” (03/16/26)
“After four separate terrorist attacks in the last two weeks on US soil, Americans are on edge. It’s taken me back to 2003 and a barren outpost in Khost, Afghanistan, where I interrogated a high-value target while serving with the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team. ‘You’ll go back to your country. But this struggle will follow you there,’ the detainee pronounced, through an interpreter. ‘We can be patient. You Americans certainly are not. We will wait you out. And the fight will continue.’ He was right. On March 1, a radical Islamist and naturalized citizen from Senegal shot up a bar in Austin, Texas, murdering three. On March 7, two teenaged jihadi wannabes from Pennsylvania (children of naturalized citizens from Afghanistan and Turkey) tossed homemade bombs at cops and protesters outside Gracie Mansion in New York City.” (03/15/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Andrew Bernstein
“There are two extraordinary truths about the Brooklyn Bridge. The first is that its creation was one of the heroic feats of 19th-century American capitalism; the second is that it was the personal epic of John Roebling and his family. The bridge’s construction was akin to Cyrus Fields’s laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable, to Thomas Edison’s harnessing of electrical power, to James J. Hill’s privately funded construction of the Great Northern Railroad, and to numerous other notable achievements.” (03/16/26)
“What’s the difference between a 15-year-old and a transgender adult? The 15-year-old can drive legally in Kansas. It sounds like a joke, but it’s a cruel reality. As of Feb. 26, Kansas has invalidated the driver’s licenses of the approximately 1,700 trans Kansans whose licenses reflected their gender rather than their birth-assigned sex. Unlike states that never allowed changes to gender markers, Kansas’[s] move is a striking reversal of its prior permissive policy. This law, one of hundreds of pieces of anti-trans legislation across the country senselessly targets the small minority of people who happen to be trans.” (03/16/26)
“The anarchist as a figure in crime is distinct. His goals are not financial, and the terrorist acts committed under the heading of anarchism have ranged from assassinations of public figures to bombings of random civilians. He has also slid far enough into history to seem quaint, or vaguely romantic, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century.” (03/16/26)
“The Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, is holding its annual summit in New York City this week. The ironically-named ‘summit on hate’ features far-right MAGA pastors and politicians, billionaire CEOs, and conservative journalists among its speakers. No longer putting on the pretense of opposing all forms of bigotry, the ADL has shown it’s perfectly comfortable with Trump-era racism. In the year since the last summit, the ADL has withdrawn its criticism of white supremacist groups, denounced antiracist education as ‘radical,’ continued to loudly back Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and cheered on Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations of students and other noncitizens who have criticized Israel’s violence and stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In fact, the ADL endorsed the executive order issued by President Donald Trump in 2025 targeting critics of Israel and threatening those who aren’t US citizens with deportation for protesting in support of Palestinian human rights.” (03/16/26)
“The New York Times recently ran an article about efforts to pass medical freedom legislation in states across the nation. The article mischaracterized not only what health freedom advocates like myself seek, but also portrayed medical freedom as unpopular with the electorate. The article, and the fake polls it cited, was one of the reasons that my organization, Health Freedom Defense Fund, and Brownstone Institute collaborated to commission our own poll – an honest, objective survey which revealed staggering supermajority support for medical freedom, informed consent, transparency, and accountability.” (03/16/26)
“In the technology arms race between the United States and China for dominance in artificial intelligence (AI), we are often told that the decisive factor will be computational power: who can build more data centers, secure more advanced chips, and train larger models more cheaply. Those are not irrelevant, but nor are they the crux of the competition. The true contest is one of political culture.” (03/16/26)
“My son spent last week training in defensive pistol use at Gunsite Academy, in Arizona. The scheduling couldn’t have been timelier given the double terrorist attacks on Thursday. Both incidents were stopped by people at the scene who were willing and able to end the threat without waiting for police to arrive. It’s not something most of us want to think about. But if somebody decides to take out their grievances on innocents, any of us could become default defensive details for ourselves and the people around us.” (03/16/26)
