Source: Niskanen Center
by Alexandra B Klass & Matthew Appel
“For the first time in decades, electricity demand in the United States is increasing, driven by A.I., new data centers, electric vehicle growth, new manufacturing hubs, and transportation electrification. At the same time, coal-fired power plants have been closing in response to competition from lower-cost natural gas and renewable energy. Clean energy is being rapidly deployed to replace those plants, but this is not happening fast enough to address concerns about demand growth and grid reliability. Specifically, recent electricity market data show that there is a growing imbalance between supply and demand in many regions of the country that threatens to increase electricity prices, delay coal plant retirements, and undermine the clean energy transition in the face of climate-driven increases in extreme weather.” (03/24/25)
“China’s government might well be running a trade surplus as a matter of policy. It may even be doing so with the aim of strengthening itself relative to geopolitical rivals like the United States. But if, as Roberts argues, it has tried this before, that same history indicates that the prospects for the government in Beijing are not good. Little good it did the Qing dynasty and little good will it do the Communist Party.” (03/24/25)
“In 1791, Russian leaders invited Jews to live in what came to be known as the Pale of Settlement, under terms that were regularly made more restrictive and often led to pogroms. It did not end well. When you find yourself love-bombed by your enemies for entirely opportunistic reasons, it seldom ends well either. Today, the menace of antisemitism is being used to restrict academic freedom at a heavily Jewish university (Columbia) and will be further used to assault the liberal professions that have historically been hospitable to American Jews. This bizarre twist is the work of an alliance of convenience between Trump, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, all of whom find it expedient to define any criticism of Israel’s brutal actions in Gaza as antisemitism. Right-wing extremists with no love of Jews relish this ploy.” (03/25/25)
“‘An unconstitutional judicial decision is no more binding than an unconstitutional legislative act.’ That was Lysander Spooner, utterly rejecting the doctrine of judicial supremacy – the dangerous notion that a judicial opinion becomes law simply because judges say so. Spooner offered a series of powerful insights and warnings – many of which echoed the words of the Founders themselves. These principles once formed the bedrock of American constitutional understanding. But today, they’ve been almost entirely forgotten – or worse, ignored. Ultimately, Spooner’s message was clear: judicial supremacy isn’t just unconstitutional – it’s tyranny.” (03/24/25)
“The failure to think clearly about government is one of the greatest sources of tyranny. The history of liberties lost is the history of patterns of abuses ignored and inductions not made. People talk about the importance of ideas in politics. Often, it is merely the impact of a pretense of ideas. In Washington, fashionable ideas are the intellectual equivalent of lapel pins of the American flag. As long as politicians recite the latest phrase, they are credited with incarnating some grand idea or lofty principle. Washingtonians become vested in Leviathan the same way that residents of other big cities become vested in their local NFL franchise. Washington logic begins and ends with deference. People genuflect to power and then rationalize their kowtowing by screening out evidence of abuses.” (03/24/25)
“From the founding period and before, the American ruling class has understood that a strong, centralized, active U.S. government is the key to creating modern commercial power. If this seems counterintuitive, it is only because our political discourse has lately become invested in the deeply naive and ahistorical idea that the state is there to limit the power of private capital. No idea in our politics is more misguided and unmoored from the historical and empirical record. The folk belief that the American state serves as a real counterbalance to corporate interests is a shallow misconception contradicted by centuries of historical evidence.” (03/24/25)
“If you yearn for equality in your immediate neighborhood, move to a highly equal neighborhood. (Indeed, you could even try to join a fully egalitarian commune). If you yearn for equality in your state, move to a highly equal state. If you yearn for equality in your country, move to a highly equal country. Last step: Notice that virtually zero people actually relocate based on inequality. People routinely relocate for higher income, cheaper housing, lower crime, and closeness to family. But have you ever heard anyone — even the most fanatical leftist — claim to be ‘moving for equality?’ Indeed, how many fanatical leftists are even aware that the most equal states in the USA are Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Alaska?” (03/24/25)
“The economist Milton Friedman wrote that nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. It’s true that once an agency is funded and fills its cubicles with bureaucrats, advocates treat its existence as a necessity and any challenge to its continued existence as heresy no matter how well the world carried on prior to its establishment or how poorly it has performed. But we see a challenge to the usual rule in President Donald Trump’s executive order to wind down the federal Department of Education. Fully eliminating the useless 45-year-old bureaucracy will require an act of Congress, but there’s good reason to believe the president has room to maneuver until then.” (03/24/25)
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen
“Recent attempts at silencing dissent in the U.S. are frightening. They are not surprising; history has a way of repeating itself, especially when its a swinging pendulum. In the 1980s, many colleges instituted speech codes ostensibly meant to protect minorities on their campuses from hateful speech. Soon enough, those codes were used to punish minorities when they spoke against majority students. … Fortunately, those speech codes were mostly removed after they were judged unconstitutional and thus impermissible on campuses of state schools. The more recent but parallel story is the rise of ‘woke’ … students (and some professors) shouting down speakers. As in the earlier case, this too was soon turned upside down. Now we have government entities doing more than shouting. The federal government is seeking to deport college students that dissent from its approved views and to punish colleges that allow such dissent.” (03/24/25)
“While the media and the new Democrat Party grow hysterical over the Trump counter-revolution, they are missing some of the most revolutionary and insidious changes in American society of the last century. Much has been written about the collapse of the old orthodox Democratic Party, along with the growing irrelevance and dysfunction of the legacy media, elite universities, and state and federal agencies. But their growing unattractiveness is all related and was not just the result of top-down development. Rather, current Democrat Party radicalism, street theater, and violence were merely reflections of its own preexisting cultural antipathy toward the middle class.” (03/24/25)
