“Trump’s threatened intervention in Nigeria’s internal affairs is not legitimate in any way. The U.S. has no international mandate to act, and it doesn’t have permission from the Nigerian government. Congress certainly hasn’t authorized any mission in Nigeria for any purpose. None of this matters to the lawless president, but it does matter for the interests and reputation of the United States. The president is not an emperor with a responsibility to protect Christians in other lands.” (11/06/25)
“I’ve been seeing a lot of teeth-gnashing among Cuomo supporters and a lot of finger pointing at other folks — at Curtis Sliwa, at the media, etc. — for their guy’s loss. And I just need to say: while Zohran Mamdani deserves the credit for his historic victory, if you are facing the next mayoralty with dread, overwhelmingly the person you should blame is the one you probably voted for: Andrew Cuomo. That’s the case first and foremost because Cuomo ran a disdainful, entitled, fear-mongering campaign that could inspire nobody. In fact, he ran two of them — after losing to a virtual unknown in a ranked-choice primary contest that made it unequivocally clear he lacked majority support in his own party, Cuomo refused to take the hint and tried again in the general election without materially changing his approach to anything.” (11/06/25)
“To the Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow travelers, ‘The Moment’ has arrived. With the victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral election Tuesday night, the DSA has another attractive face to add to its advocates nationwide, someone to complement Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders as socialism marches to its inevitable triumph over the entire United States. As one who believed that the US was on its way to a real revolution of free markets and personal freedom with the election of Ronald Reagan to the US presidency in 1980, and later his sweeping re-election in 1984, I realize that the DSA supporters who presently are giddy and ready to roll will experience the inevitable disappointment just as the free market supporters of Reagan did 40 years ago. However, before that moment arrives — and it will arrive — the socialists are going to do a lot of damage.” (11/06/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Wendy McElroy
“Howard Homan Buffett’s concern about foreign intervention predated the Cold War, however. On March 2, 1944, he contested the wisdom of a bill in the House, which was meant to increase America’s oil reserves through the massive taxpayer funding of an Arabian pipeline. Buffett expressed a theme that would permeate his political career: empire versus freedom …” (11/06/25)
Source: Orange County Register
by Veronique de Rugy
“In Washington today, the word ’emergency’ is a magic key; it unlocks powers Congress never granted, suspends the discipline of regular order and decorates bloated bills with provisions too dubious to pass on their own. What was once meant to be a narrow exception for genuine crises has become a routine pretext for government overreach — a means of inflating executive power and corroding the nation’s fiscal credibility. Start with the most brazen claim, and one now being scrutinized by the Supreme Court: that a president may impose sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act merely by declaring that a half-century of trade deficits constitutes an emergency.” (11/06/25)
“Aging, like time, ticks on, day by hour by day. Then, suddenly, it’s there, mocking our inability to sweep aside, should we even want to, this iron curtain. For seniors, the concept of time itself differs from that of younger people, because the future is in the everyday. But aging in a Trumpian world brings fear and destruction as strand by strand of the safety net is plucked away until it’s shredded. And Donald Trump doesn’t care. Seniors make up an ever larger American demographic that’s being made ever more unsafe in the richest country in the world. Social Security, healthcare, even access to food, not to speak of general well-being are all under threat. Trump doesn’t care. Social Security is a return on what workers have paid into the federal government over many years…. And count on one thing: Trump doesn’t care.” (11/06/25)
“Russia occupies an important place in the history of the libertarian movement — it was precisely in opposition to the Russian Bolshevik’s experiment that the founders of libertarianism built their doctrine and their identity based on principles of methodological individualism, free markets and private property. After all, Ayn Rand, the writer who breathed the soul of ethics and politics into the dry calculation of the Austrian school of economics, was born into a family of Russian Jews in St. Petersburg and lived the first 20 years of her life under the name Alisa Rosenbaum. But there were no any libertarian or at least neoliberal movement or school of thought in Russia until the collapse of USSR.” (11/06/25)
“If you were watching any of the voter-on-the-street interviews Tuesday, you might have been surprised to hear how many Americans are deeply disturbed, furious even, about Donald Trump’s bulldozing of the White House to make way for a garish $330M donor-paid ballroom. It may not be the most egregious offense of the Trump regime (which has kidnapped people off the streets, sent them to foreign hell holes, and cut off SNAP benefits, among other outrages). It is not even the worst case of corruption, given the estimated $5B or so in wealth Trump and his family have hauled in from (among other sources) foreign buyers of crypto. But the ballroom is the most visible, easily explained, and visually disgusting evidence of Trump’s destruction of our democracy and the public’s ownership of our institutions.” (11/06/25)
“In recent years, there has been growing concern with right-wing attacks on liberalism broadly conceived. A ‘post-liberal’ movement came into being, spearheaded by Patrick Deneen’s 2018 book Why Liberalism Failed. While post-liberalism as an organized intellectual movement seems to have petered out, its ethos has lived on and appears to be growing more and more popular among young people who not only question liberalism in the abstract but are alienated from the concrete institutions and ideas that make up our liberal society and see little value in them. … A powerful symbol of this rejection is the embrace among some right-wing populists of the National Socialist political theorist Carl Schmitt and his concept of the ‘friend-enemy distinction.'” (11/06/25)
“The election was like watching a professional football team beat the hell out of a pee-wee team, then throw a parade for itself like they’d just won the Super Bowl. The results were not really in doubt – there were chances and hope, but hope isn’t a strategy and does not impact reality all that much. Democrats won because these were elections in Democratic states and cities; it’s really that simple. But a deeper takeaway exists beyond the obvious results: a lot of Democrats absolutely freaking hate you and are happy to see you die. That might be a little hyperbole, but not much.” (11/06/25)
