“Antony Beevor is a British historian, and a good one. He has written several histories, mostly military history, and he tends to be very objective in his writing, which too many historians today are not. If you enjoy reading history, especially military history, I recommend Beevor’s books. One of his books is simply entitled Russia, where he examines the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Bolshevik takeover of that country. The book, as you would expect, contains much information about the ideas of Vladimir Lenin, the first dictator of ‘the new Russia’ (eventually USSR), and Beevor’s analysis of Lenin is excellent. Let me share with you three quotes from Beevor’s book about Lenin (about Lenin’s leftist, communist philosophy), and you compare any parallels between Lenin and today’s American Democratic Party.” (10/23/25)
“While Texas survived another scorching summer, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s double-digit lead in the U.S. Senate primary evaporated into a statistical tie with incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R). With a torrent of self-inflicted, election-defining scandals about his personal and financial affairs, Paxton’s senatorial bid now resembles an ice sculpture: impressive at first, but melting away until only a puddle remains. That’s why he’s the Democrats’ favorite Republican — the weakened, injured opponent they can use to take back power in the midterms.” (10/23/25)
Source: Orange County Register
by Veronique de Rugy
“When House Speaker Mike Johnson lashed out at last weekend’s ‘No Kings’ rallies soon to arrive on Washington’s National Mall, he reached for an old conservative refrain: ‘They hate capitalism. They hate our free enterprise system.’ I am sure he’s correct about some of the protesters. But the message rings hollow coming from a party leader that stands by as President Donald Trump does precisely what Johnson rightly decries: substituting political control for market choice and ruling by executive order. Indeed, what began as a populist revolt against so-called elites has become a program of state ownership, price fixing and top-down industrial control. Take a look.” (10/23/25)
“It’s been more than nine months now since my friend, famed cartoonist Jules Feiffer, died, a week before his 96th birthday after continually warning me that the evil spirit that had descended on this country was leaving him frightened and dispirited. He was glad, he told me, that he was old and close to the end in an era he considered more dangerous than the Civil War and more treacherous than the Reconstruction era. He had, he insisted, lost both heart and hope. I found that difficult to take too seriously. After all, hadn’t he survived the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the McCarthy-era Red Scare, the nightmare of Vietnam, and the ‘Hard Year’ of 1968, while being dubbed the greatest political satirist of his time?” (10/23/25)
Source: Freedom and Flourishing
by Dr. Edward W Younkins
“The pursuit of human flourishing — what Aristotle termed eudaimonia — stands as a central concern of both philosophical inquiry and economic science. At first glance, the Austrian economic tradition, with its emphasis on subjective value and methodological individualism, might appear incompatible with neo-Aristotelian philosophies like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism and Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl’s ‘individualistic perfectionism,’ which assert the objectivity of human values. Yet, upon deeper examination, these traditions reveal profound compatibilities and complementary insights that provide a more robust framework for understanding human freedom, social cooperation, and the conditions for prosperity.” (10/23/25)
“The basic facts of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1944 decision in Korematsu v. United States, which upheld President Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime internment of Japanese-Americans, are well-known but still worth a sketch. That is because the case serves as an all-too-timely warning about how judicial deference to executive power has warped American law.” (10/23/25)
“According to a recent study of American AI users, 25% report using an AI chatbot to get news, though most do so only sporadically. But these services have grown so massive that even a modest percentage of users makes AI chatbots a significant, and growing, source of news. Further, AI companies are pushing the public to use AI tools as the starting point for all their information needs. … One of the systemic problems with AI chatbots is that they are overly confident. Increasingly, AI chatbots are unwilling to acknowledge that they do not know the answer to a question. Instead, they make stuff up.” (10/23/25)
“More than three weeks into the federal government shutdown, Democratic and Republican leaders still refuse to talk to each other about how to end it. That impasse is reflected in a recent poll that found 2 out of 3 Americans do not trust the U.S. political system to solve the country’s divisions. Despite that popular view, many people are still finding ways to work together, exercising local agency to address pressing community issues. One example is the case of Three Rivers, Michigan, where Monitor staff writer Scott Baldauf found that shared concerns over contaminated water are helping dissolve partisan distrust. Similar ‘kitchen-table pragmatism,’ as one source described it, is evident through much of small-town and rural America. Now, several mainstream philanthropies are supporting such efforts with the hope of creating new civic models.” (10/22/25)
