Source: The Reframe
by AR Moxon
“Reparation, rehabilitation, redemption, reconciliation, restoration. A necessary taxonomy of healing in an age of unnecessary conversations.” (03/01/26)
https://www.the-reframe.com/culture-of-healing/?ref=the-reframe-newsletter
Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle
“If you’re in an industry ripe for disruption by artificial intelligence, thinking about what’s coming inspires strong emotions. Like panic. And outrage. If you’re a college-educated professional, the economy has worked well for you over the past few decades. As with anything that has lasted for a long time, this seems like the natural order of things — an entitlement, not chronological luck. … Now a machine might steal what you earned. This doesn’t just feel bad. It feels like a violation.” (03/01/26)
Source: Coyote Blog
by Warren Meyer
“The US is really good at getting rid of leaders like this, and if anything is getting better. I won’t go further back than my lifetime, but the Diem coup (and execution) in South Vietnam, the lukewarm (at best) support for the Shah of Iran that contributed to his ouster, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Afghanistan invasion, Gaddafi in Libya, Maduro in Venezuela, Noriega in Panama — the list goes on. But in many or most of these cases, what followed the US-led decapitation was as bad or worse than what came before.” (03/01/26)
https://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2026/03/the-problem-in-iran.html
Source: New York Post
by Victor Davis Hanson
“How do destructive ideas and bouts of collective madness so quickly become policy, law, and the status quo? After all, most have little public support — and are not Western nations supposedly rationally governed? There is usually a multi-step process on the road to these self-destructive fits of society-wide insanity. The suicidal impulse so often begins with left-leaning researchers in elite universities (that is, the tenured in search of a novel, grant-getting theory). They begin insisting that a new existential threat requires immediate government intervention, novel legislation, ample funding and public awareness of the impending danger. So out of nowhere, the public is warned that the scorching planet will be inundated by rising seas in a mere decade.” (03/01/26)
Source: Liberal Currents
by Joseph Stieb
“The case against the current war with Iran is so overwhelming as to hardly need articulation. The war is illegal, unprovoked, unethical, strategically blinkered, and likely to further destabilize the region. … Nonetheless, many Democrats and liberal commentators have adopted a feckless, procedural critique of Trump’s aggression. … These criticisms (if they even merit that term) are narrow, tactical, and counter-productive. They imagine that a reasonable, justifiable war with Iran exists somewhere in space, waiting to be articulated. They entertain the fantasy that there’s a reasonable version of Trump capable of thinking through such an operation. Finally, they cede the rhetorical ground to Trump by admitting that one could wage unprovoked war on Iran ‘the right way’ with better planning, multi-lateral support, and a smarter communications strategy. Check these boxes, the critics imply, and Trump’s war might be justified.” (03/01/26)
Source: Reason
by Katherine Mangu-Ward
“In 1988, Peng Peiyun was assigned to China’s State Family Planning Commission. Her job was to implement the relatively new one-child policy. The Communist Party was sure that it knew how many people should be in the Chinese population to prevent famine and overcrowding — so sure, in fact, that it was willing to require abortions and sterilization under threat of violence. … Today, China’s population is shrinking, births are collapsing, and the same government that once punished pregnancy is now begging for it with subsidies, propaganda, and social pressure, all of which have so far failed to reverse the trend. Even after decades of highly directive engineering and violent enforcement, the ‘right’ number of people remains stubbornly out of reach. The same category error animates today’s immigration crackdowns in the United States. Population control is technocratic arrogance at its most intimate and brutal.” (for publication 04/26)
https://reason.com/2026/03/01/no-one-knows-the-right-number-of-people/
Source: The UnPopulist
by Ilya Somin
“On the night of Feb. 28, the U.S. and Israel initiated a large-scale military attack on Iran. Bypassing congressional authorization, President Donald Trump acted with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike top Iranian leadership and a variety of other targets. This action is blatantly unconstitutional. Its wisdom and morality are more debatable.” [editor’s note: The reverse, actually. There’s no doubt that the war is stupid and evil. As for “authorization,” most of the people whining about that NOW still pretend that something other than an actual declaration of war would suffice, which starts the debate down a false path immediately – TLK] (03/01/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumps-unauthorized-strikes-on-iran
Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman
“The rise of generative AI has led to alternating waves of hype and fear. One day the S&P 500 is soaring, led by AI-adjacent companies. A few months later the S&P is falling due to fears that too much money is being spent on datacenters and that AI will undermine business models. It’s still difficult to predict what AI will actually do, and I have no special insights on that front. But while AI is an unprecedented technology, hype and fear about the impacts of new technology — together with hard thinking about the issue — are anything but new. In fact, concerns about the effects of new technology and attempts to model those effects go back more than two centuries, to the early days of the Industrial Revolution and the dawn of economics as an intellectual field.” (03/01/26)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-economics-of-technological-change
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Rachel Chiu
“Earlier this month, US District Judge Alan Albright granted an injunction against Texas Senate Bill 13 (‘SB 13’), a state law aimed at curbing ‘woke capitalism’ and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices. Over the past few years, these practices have taken the form of regulations, reporting requirements, and credit metrics on areas including environmental impact and diversity. Conservatives have pushed back on ESG, believing that these initiatives have enabled progressive ideology and values to undermine business investments. … Lawmakers have good reason to be skeptical of ESG principles and their effects on investment. However, Judge Albright’s ruling is a potent reminder that overly expansive legislative fixes can skirt too close to civil liberties and ultimately fail to achieve their intended objectives.” (03/01/26)
Source: Downsize DC
by Jim Babka
“In 1996, Harry answered the call to run for president. I discovered Harry and libertarianism as he won and accepted the Libertarian Party nomination. I read his first campaign book, Why Government Doesn’t Work. As a result of that campaign, I became a party member, almost immediately a county chair, then quickly a state chair. That could’ve been the end of the story, and Harry Browne still would’ve made an indelible impression on my life. But then I was hired to be his 2000 campaign press secretary.” (03/01/26)
https://downsizedc.org/remembering-harry-browne-20-years-later/