“‘“Expert failure’ is clearly having a moment. Pollsters, Wall Street analysts, tech futurists … all are facing demands to reckon with getting it wrong. Economics, though, seems to be getting special attention. Lately, this has metastasized into Orweillian skepticism of government data itself. It’s one thing to argue that economists have misread numbers. It’s quite another to claim that the numbers themselves are lies. Believe me, I understand the reflex. If it’s true that the government fails at so many things it sets out to do, why trust its statistics? But this cynicism commits a category error: confusing the government’s inability to solve economic problems with its capacity to solve technical problems.” (10/31/25)
“Remember when even right-wingers got mad at Obama for signing a National Defense Authorization Act that included indefinite detention powers? Remember when right-wingers at least had a part of them that got mad about what the government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge? Suddenly, many of these same people are happy to embrace the idea of federal agents running around arresting disabled American teenagers (yes, this happened) and trying to deport kids with cancer. When the right — ostensibly the faction most inclined to resist federal tyranny — suddenly thinks unleashing federal agents is the key to a better America, we’re definitely heading toward Big Government authoritarianism.” (10/31/25)
“Zohran Kwame Mamdani has arrived. Yellow cabs trundle up the line to pick up passengers while planes circle above us at LaGuardia Airport in Queens. By 9:45 p.m., the day’s torrential onslaught of rain has quieted, upstaged by a cacophony of taxi whistles, car honks, and just plain airport noise. Mamdani, dressed in a crisp-on-the-way-to-soggy black suit and tie, is traveling light tonight: No luggage. No umbrella. What he carries around are the commitments he’s made to make the city affordable for all. ‘We need new people who are going to bring change,’ said Mohammed, the 54-year-old Bangladeshi Uber driver who brought me to the airport and voted early for Mamdani. ‘He cares about the people, the poor people.’ People joke that his main opponent is cooked. But per his campaign’s email around 6 p.m. on October 30, Mamdani is taking nothing for granted.” (10/31/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by Matthew Petti
“The Axis of Resistance, the Iranian-backed bloc in the Middle East, fell apart almost a year ago. The victors have been a loose coalition of Israel, Turkey, and the oil-rich Arab monarchies, all of whom enjoy American backing. And the wars in Sudan and Libya demonstrate what kind of regional order is in the cards. Rather than embracing the vision of peaceful trade and non-interference that U.S. President Donald Trump laid out in Saudi Arabia earlier this year, the victors have been using proxy warfare to grab as much as they can from the burning wreckage of the Middle East and North Africa. The Axis of Resistance has been replaced with an Axis of Rape and Pillage.” (10/31/25)
“We may be sure that the ‘separation of powers’ doctrine is of no interest to the vulgar egotist currently residing in the White House, which happens to be undergoing the most glorious renovation the world has ever known. Or so we hear. But it stands to reason that the doctrine is vital to personal liberty. No imagination is needed to understand what concentrated political power is likely to mean for the individual and society. … If political power must exist, it must be contained, and the way to do that is dispersion among branches and levels.” (10/31/25)
“The United States is engaged in summary executions on the high seas. That bald fact is being obscured by talk of drug interdiction and war powers and whether we’re certain the drugs on those boats were headed for the United States or somewhere else. Let’s be clear. Even if we knew for certain that the boats being destroyed in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific 1) contained illegal drugs; 2) those drugs were headed for our shores; and 3) all on board were criminals, it would still be grossly illegal and immoral to blast them out of the water as we have now done some 14 reported times, killing 61 people. This is not drug enforcement. This is murder.” (10/31/25)
“Electricity prices have moved from the background of daily life to the front lines of politics. What was once a quiet household expense is now a visible burden and a potent symbol of policy failure. Prices are rising not because of corporate greed or runaway markets, but because regulation, politically directed investment, and top-down energy planning have collided with the explosive growth of artificial intelligence. Inflation, supply constraints, and government mandates have turned the grid — once a model of steady reliability — into an arena where economics, technology, and politics now clash.” (10/31/25)
“Even a limited pause in the unspeakable suffering that residents of the Gaza Strip have endured for two years is welcome, and thus it is unsurprising that the deal on Gaza that was reached in early October was widely and mistakenly termed a ‘peace agreement.’ The deal was instead a prisoner exchange and limited ceasefire. It came about because the slaughter and starvation of Gazans had gone so far that Hamas was willing to give up its scant leverage in the form of the remaining Israeli hostages. With their release, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu removed the main immediate domestic source of opposition to his policies, while the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) got a needed break before resuming operations.” (10/31/25)
“The Trump administration’s emphasis on immigration enforcement is sparking protests across the country. It has also caused disagreement among Republicans and, as covered by Reason‘s Autumn Billings, within the executive branch between those who want to target criminals and officials who are more interested in driving up the numbers of deportations. Unfortunately, the hardline faction’s apparent victory could result in more botched arrests, such as that of U.S. citizen Leo Garcia Venegas, who was detained twice and has now filed a federal lawsuit over his mistreatment.” (10/31/25)
“Halloween was the favorite holiday of Russell Kirk, modern American conservatism’s founder. As much as he enjoyed trick-or-treating and other spooky festivities, October 31 meant something even more profound to him. Kirk believed All Hallows’ Eve serves as a reminder of what Edmund Burke called the ‘eternal contract of society’ that exists between the living and the dead. It is altogether fitting and proper, then, that Kirk devoted much of his literary efforts to a classic American genre: the ghost story.” (10/31/25)
