“The stunning U.S. raid on Venezuela that removed President and socialist thug Nicolás Maduro from power to face trial in the U.S. raises questions: What’s next for long-suffering but hopeful Venezuelans, what is the legal basis for snatching a country’s head of state without congressional authorization, and where do Americans stand on the Trump administration’s nation-building project? We’ll have to wait and see on the first point, and the answer to the second is that there is no legal basis for unilateral presidential missions to depose foreign leaders. But while the public will need some time to digest these events, we know Americans — especially young ones — are increasingly dubious about foreign adventures.” (01/05/26)
“Let’s be clear about the claims made. The president is asserting that the U.S. can detain a sitting foreign president and his spouse under U.S. criminal law, that the U.S. can administer another sovereign country without an international mandate. That Venezuela’s political future can be decided from Washington. That control over oil and ‘rebuilding’ is a legitimate byproduct of intervention. That all of this can happen without congressional authorization and without evidence of imminent threat. We have heard this language before.” (01/05/26)
“Seven years ago, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard wrote in 2019 on Twitter: ‘The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t allow other countries to choose our leaders, so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.’ Now as director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration, Tulsi Gabbard is a key part of the US overthrow of the Venezuelan government and the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president and his wife and the deaths of at least 40 persons in Venezuela. During her 2018 Congressional reelection campaign, she warned of ‘regime change wars’: ‘Every dollar spent on interventionist regime change wars is a dollar not spent on education, healthcare, infrastructure, and a myriad of other needs desperately needed right here at home,’ Gabbard said in 2018.” (01/05/25)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“So, we have a known risk. The flu is here, and this version of it packs a punch. The critical question now — the one that separates a libertarian perspective from the standard ‘public health’ view — is: Who is responsible for managing that risk? Thankfully, we haven’t heard too many serious suggestions that the government force flu vaccines onto the citizenry, it remains voluntary at this juncture. The prevailing narrative in modern public health often leans heavily on centralized collectivism.” (01/05/26)
“After nearly every U.S. military intervention since World War II, public opinion has followed the same trajectory: overwhelming support when the bombs first fall, then waning approval once casualties mount and victory proves elusive. … One reason for this cyclical amnesia is the way politicians package wars as risk‑free. In 2003 the Bush administration promised a short campaign financed by Iraqi oil, just as the Kennedy and Johnson administrations predicted a quick victory in Vietnam. Today President Trump suggests the Venezuelan operation will be swift, with no U.S. casualties. History suggests otherwise.” (01/05/26)
“By now you have seen the reports about alleged widespread welfare and social services fraud in Minnesota. And by now, you have seen the right fixate on the state’s Somali community. The most prominent example of fraud took place via a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future, which bilked taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of federal COVID dollars as it falsely claimed to distribute meals. The founder of the organization, a white American named Aimee Bock, was convicted of her crimes. … If there’s blame to go around, it seems first aimed at the individual wrongdoers themselves. And then, as a systemic critique, the reckless throwing around of public funds. But, what do you know, MAGA world has chosen to make this not about the need to hold individuals liable for their actions or the need to better manage taxpayer funds. Instead, they made it about Somalis for being Somali.” (01/04/26)
“‘How dare you?’ Remember that fiery 2019 United Nations speech, when a 16-year-old Greta Thunberg stared down world leaders and accused the adults in the room of stealing her future by ignoring climate change? The moment catapulted the perpetually pinch-faced teen towards unfathomable stardom as a self-anointed champion for human rights and the planet’s survival. But fast-forward to today, and Greta is falling quite short of that promise. She’s not a savior — in fact, she’s a malignant force trying to erase the horrors inflicted on some of the world’s most vulnerable, the victims of Hamas’[s] Oct. 7 massacre. How can someone who built her life around securing youth a future be so hell-bent on obliterating the past, silencing Jewish voices and denying the suffering of children burned alive, women raped and families slaughtered? Let’s look at her latest escapades.” (01/05/25)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“George Orwell got some things right; unlike most political partisans, he saw the problems with the position he supported. He also got quite a lot of things wrong. … The problem is that Orwell, like many of his contemporaries (and ours), did not understand economics and thought he did. Since he wrote we have had extensive experience with free competition, if not as free as Hayek would have wanted, and the result has not been the nightmare that Orwell expected.” (01/04/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Karthik Sankaran
“Within hours of U.S. military strikes on Venezuela and the capture of its leader, Nicolas Maduro, President Trump proclaimed that ‘very large United States oil companies would go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money for the country.’ Indeed, at no point during this exercise has there been any attempt to deny that control of Venezuela’s oil (or ‘our oil’ as Trump once described it) is a major force motivating administration actions. One irony here is that even as the White House is proudly embracing fossil-fuel imperialism in global oil, the markets are vastly different.” (01/04/26)
“Agorism is a political philosophy developed by a little-known libertarian burn-out named Samuel Edward Konkin III that advocates destroying the government by engaging in modes of counter-economics that essentially make every market a black market by replacing state facilitated capitalism with an unregulated ecosystem of barter, subsistence production and mutual aid which simultaneously make communities like mine more autonomous and virtually untaxable. Panarchy is a system of governance proposing an infinite constellation of diverse, co-existing, and largely non-territorial governments that individuals can chose to join or leave at will the same way they would a church or a cellphone provider, creating a network of overlapping tribal nations not unlike those once indigenous to the pre-Christian world. With those philosophies in mind, I have developed a loose long-term goal to liberate my people, the rural Queer subaltern betrayed by Pride inc., that builds on the baby steps I have begun taking this year.” (01/04/26)
