“The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) is a mixed bag. Despite the Monroe Doctrine being declared in 1823, the Western Hemisphere, the geographically closest area to the United States, has been neglected in post-war U.S. foreign policy in order to undertake American interventions in regions perceived to be more important. Since 1945, the top priorities of U.S. policy have been in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. Thus, the new Trump NSS laudably puts more emphasis on the Western Hemisphere. However, in the document, the ‘Trump Doctrine’ appears to primarily rediscover the coercive aspects of the Monroe Doctrine, aimed at keeping foreign influence out of the hemisphere. Yet the first chapter of such coercive U.S. policy, from the 1898 Spanish-American War to the late 1920s, did not go that well.” (12/09/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Thorsten Polleit
“At the US-Saudi Investment Forum on November 19, 2025, entrepreneurial titan Elon Musk shared with his audience his vision of the future shaped by advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Among other things, Musk said: ‘And my guess is, if you go out long enough — assuming there’s a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely — money will stop being relevant.’ A future in which money no longer plays a role? Is that really possible, or at least probable? To answer these questions, let us first recall why people have demanded money for thousands of years.” (12/09/25)
“As newly ordained rabbi Louisa Solomon crunched the numbers on her new Jewish education project, she encountered a good problem: Too many people wanted to attend. ‘People just started coming up to me right and left, in the streets, at the capital, on the Manhattan Bridge, and saying, ‘Will you start an anti-Zionist shul? There’s nowhere else to go, for me!” she remembers. People told her stories of being kicked out of their synagogues or their family table for their opposition to the war and the political project of Zionism. If they were going to stay Jewish, they needed somewhere to do it. And they needed someone to show them how.” (12/09/25)
“Friday, December 12, marks twenty-five years since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore, which decided the outcome of Florida’s presidential election and, ultimately, America’s choice for its forty-third president. The date doesn’t pop up on the calendar as do other moments in the republic’s history, either celebratory (July 4) or tragic (September 11). But what transpired a quarter of a century ago matters thus: reverse the decision and it’s quite possibly a very different America.” (12/09/25)
“States in general, and the EU in particular, have a lot in common with the users of social media platforms: Both want to decide how those platforms get used. States in general, and the EU in particular, also have a lot in common with the owners of social media platforms: Both want to make money on those platforms. Those commonalities make for an alliance of convenience between users and owners versus states. Owners make their money by pleasing users; states make their money by demanding bribes … er, ‘fines’ … from owners, often as punishment for refusing to cooperate in state censorship of user-created content. … So why doesn’t [Elon Musk] start his own country, with a state fashioned after his own liking, base his social media platform there, do business exclusively there, and tell the other states to go pound sand when they demand control and/or a piece of the financial action?” (12/09/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“It’s easy to assume that with its drug-war killings in the Caribbean, the Pentagon is sending a message only to Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro: ‘We can kill your citizens with impunity and there is nothing that you or anyone else can do about it.’ In actuality, however, the Pentagon is sending the same message to the American people: ‘We can kill anyone we want, including American citizens, and there is nothing that you or anyone else can do about it.'” (12/09/25)
“The Trump administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS) last week. There is limited value in trying to make sense of Trump’s foreign policy by looking at strategy documents when the president largely just makes things up as he goes and often makes policy decisions for arbitrary and irrational reasons. The only real value that the NSS has this year is that it tells us how the administration is justifying the president’s ad hoc interventions around the world. For the Western Hemisphere, this means dressing up the president’s militarism and meddling as the ‘Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.'” (12/09/25)
“Nationalism doesn’t just historically correlate with bigotry — it consistently drives antisemitism and other racial and ethnic prejudices. Indeed, nationalism intensifies preexisting antisemitic impulses. To the degree that today’s conservatives decide to embrace — or even just make peace with — nationalism and dispense with the universalist liberal principles of the American Founding, they will find it difficult to impossible to stem the spread of antisemitism in their midst.” (12/09/25)
“If there is one theme that has shaped recent American politics, it is the steady concentration of power in the presidency. Congress — under both parties — has repeatedly delegated authority that was never meant to rest in a single office. The consequences are now impossible to ignore. The actions of President Donald Trump reveal how fragile our liberties become when one person holds too much power.” (12/08/25)
“Over the weekend, tens of thousands of Brazilian women participated in rallies calling for stronger action to tackle violence against women, which remains intolerably high. A few weeks earlier, several thousand South African women participated in ‘lie-downs’ across the country to call attention to the same issue. ‘Just as women many years ago protested … for the changes that we are privileged to experience today,’ said a South African participant in her 20s, ‘we also need to be the generation that steps up.’ Coinciding with the global ’16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence’ campaign, these events underscore how much remains to be done to uphold the safety and dignity of women and girls the world over. As well as laws and enforcement, the process requires confronting deep-rooted traditions and cultural notions that constrain the full participation and vigorous contributions of half the world’s population.” (12/08/25)
