“I’ve been looking at cases where marketing hype has managed to create a craze for an at-best mediocre product. This is not to suggest that advertising is predatory; on the contrary, I think it provides a necessary service by providing information and allowing people to make choices. In the everyday business of buying clothes, food and drink, travel, luxury goods and grooming, I think it informs us of the availability of certain brands and the advantages to be gained by buying them. But there are some cases where advertising and cultural hype can create a kind of epistemic bubble where social conformity substitutes for quality judgement. Promoters sometimes draw on FOMO, the fear of missing out, to herd people into products of limited value to them.” ()7/02/26)
“America’s abundance is easy to admire. What’s easier to forget is that prosperity isn’t what made America exceptional. Liberty did. In much of the world, rights are treated as privileges the government grants to its citizens. In the American system, it’s the opposite: Rights are inherent to the individual, and the Constitution exists to dictate what government cannot do to you. It’s an extraordinary concept, and one conservatives have committed to upholding.” [editor’s note: Well, that there’s a spit take moment – TLK] (07/02/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by William L Anderson
“Federal IRS workers at the Chamblee Building are often greeted by rats struggling to free themselves from glue traps set about the workplace. Workers at the Veterans Affairs building in Hilo, Hawaii, are having to deal with dangerous infestations of mold. Federal employees in several places, including the Food and Drug Administration building in Washington, DC, are being exposed to Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease. In Washington, DC, forty percent of the headquarters of the General Services Administration have been declared unsafe, which means the GSA has had to relocate many of its employees. And the list goes on and on.” (07/02/26)
“While it is difficult to generalize, many current and would-be socialist officeholders share several common traits. Most of them represent a relatively small slice of American life. Almost all are urban, with little knowledge of small-town or rural existence. Their world is subways, buses, high-rises, Uber, taxis, and proximity to corporate, academic, and financial institutions—yet often with little understanding of where their food, fuel, water, or everyday goods originate, or where their waste and sewage ultimately go. Their worldview is shaped more by consumption than production, as though goods simply arrive in and depart from cities on autopilot. A disproportionate number of our most prominent radicals are either first- or second-generation immigrants, most originating from failed or illiberal states in what was once called the Third World. They or their parents left their homelands in search of wealthier countries, fairer societies, greater opportunity, and, in many cases, safety and freedom.” (07/02/26)
“Even when the Supreme Court disfavored Trump, it showed its ideological and incoherent colors. Though it allowed him to fire independent agency officials without cause, it made an exception for the Federal Reserve in a separate case. Upsetting consumers is OK apparently, but not Wall Street. And the court should have settled the birthright citizenship case against Trump long ago, as many lower-court judges sought to do. His first-day executive order repealing birthright citizenship plainly violated the Constitution, federal law and court precedent — and yet the justices strung out the case and only this week decided on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship by just a 5-4 vote. A counterreaction to Trump and the Supreme Court is coming, I believe. By laws and lawsuits, Congress must begin taking back its constitutional powers over spending, war-making, appointments and more.” (07/02/26)
“Though relegated to the sidelines thanks to President Donald Trump’s decision to launch an illegal and unjustified war on Iran at the behest of the Israeli warfare state, the war in Ukraine grows more dangerous with each passing day. In fact, recent reports indicate a perilous increase in attacks on energy and civilian infrastructure from both Moscow and Kiev.” (07/02/26)
“As America turns 250 years old, many people say the American Dream is at risk. Last month, an Associated Press-NORC poll found that only one-third of Americans believe the American Dream still exists. A CNBC poll the same month found that a majority of people consider the American Dream out of reach. But most public polling captures what people believe about the accessibility of the American Dream for others. In their own life, they are far more optimistic.” (07/02/26)
“Yes, Thomas Jefferson had read Smith, but before 1776, he could only have read The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and he read it for much the same reason he read all the other Scottish theorists of his day: Because each, in his own way, had illuminated reasons for confidence in the ability of individuals to exercise personal and political self-government. In other words, each had argued that by either convention (e.g. Hume) or nature (e.g. Kames), human beings were apt to use their individual liberty in ways that promoted a prosperous and orderly society, uncoerced by princes or prelates.” (07/02/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Charles A Kupchan
“Internationalists are once more doing battle with America Firsters, cleaving the body politic between two incompatible approaches to global affairs.” (07/02/26)
