Source: The Daily Economy
by Anthony Gill
“Trust precedes trade. Our natural empathy, our desire to see others do well, cultivates social order and generates the wealth of nations.” (08/06/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/can-a-freely-given-coconut-begin-civilization/
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Occasionally, President Trump takes an anti-capitalist rhetorical turn. He apparently supposes his unleashing of an Inner Mamdani will help him through a political rough patch. Or perhaps he is just momentarily confused. The president recently asserted that oil companies are making too much money right now and ‘ought to give back’ some of it to the public. This, although ‘I’m a big free enterprise guy.’ But oil companies don’t owe buyers anything more than the oil they supply. Nor, when prices are low, do buyers owe oil companies or gas stations more money than what they pay.” (08/06/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/08/06/trump-approved-profits/
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff
“With wildfires again threatening the American West this summer, Utah has become the latest state helping homeowners in high-risk areas to fortify their properties against drought-driven fire. From 2021 to 2024, the state saw the largest percentage increase in home insurance costs – a 59% hike – of any U.S. state. Yet unlike in Colorado and California, both of which recently enacted stricter rules on insurance companies and tough building codes to ‘harden’ a home from fire, Utah’s plan is more partnership than paternalism. It will first nudge homeowners with information on risks and remedies and only threaten a fee for noncompliance with new codes that aim to ensure a ‘defensible space’ from wildfire. ‘Our goal is to empower homeowners, communities, fire departments, and municipalities to act in reducing their vulnerability to wildfire by giving them the necessary tools to identify and understand their wildfire risk,’ states an official Utah website.” (08/05/26)
Source: Gideon’s Substack
by Noah Millman
“There’s nothing weird or exceptional about an organization making a catastrophic mistake and hiring a liar and a fraud, nor is there anything surprising about such failures being in part due to poor or nonexistent vetting. These kinds of people’s particular skill is inspiring extreme credulousness, and then manipulating people to maintain that credulousness in the face of mountains of disconfirming evidence. They might make use of ideological or identity-based affinity to manipulate you—Bernie Madoff famously defrauded numerous Jewish organizations by playing on precisely those kinds of sentiments—but if that’s not an option they’ll use something else. It’s not a unique feature of politics or academia, nor of left-wing spaces. I mean, look who’s president. The unavoidable moment of reckoning for most organizations, though, comes when it becomes clear that their own mission is being damaged.” (08/06/26)
https://gideons.substack.com/p/confidence-men-are-everywhere
Source: Reason
by Damon Root
“On June 8, 1789, James Madison announced the batch of proposed constitutional amendments that would eventually become enshrined as the Bill of Rights. One of Madison’s would-be amendments, however, did not make the final cut, as it failed in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives. Here is what that lost Madisonian amendment to the Constitution would have said: ‘No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases.’ Put differently, Madison wanted several parts of the Bill of Rights to apply equally against the federal government and the states. Why? ‘Because it must be admitted, on all hands,’ Madison said, ‘that the state governments are as liable to attack these invaluable privileges as the general [national] government is, and therefore ought to be as cautiously guarded against.'” (08/06/26)
https://reason.com/2026/08/06/why-james-madison-wanted-greater-limits-on-states-rights/
Source: Town Hall
by Derek Hunter
“Only 25 years after the September 11 attacks on the United States, a major political party has fallen in with people who view that attack as deserved and the attackers as righteous. If it were parody, no one would accept it because good parody is based in truth and the truth is this fall of the Democratic Party is not believable. Sure, they’ve expressed sympathies for enemies of the United States before, but always for political advantage only; now they appear to mean it or are so afraid of it they won’t say anything to the contrary. Democrats have gone from being wrong to being an existential threat to the country. I have not seen a single Democrat candidate for office this election cycle praise the United States or even say anything that could be perceived as positive about it. Seriously, have you?” (08/06/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Jeffery L Degner
“Rio 2016, like many ambitious projects, combined political cronyism and weak market discipline. Ordinary Brazilians are still paying the bill.” (08/06/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Angelo Monaco
“The classic virtue of thrift — once celebrated as a moral cornerstone of self-reliance, discipline, and stewardship — has largely been cast aside by a modern economic system designed to punish it. For centuries, saving was viewed as a quiet duty to one’s family and future, a practice that paired material restraint with ethical responsibility. Today, however, our financial architecture actively undermines this morality. Persistent inflation erodes the purchasing power of uninvested savings, while hyper-financialization and record-low interest rates reduce traditional thrift to a losing strategy. In a culture driven by immediate gratification and an economic engine fueled by perpetual consumer debt, the deliberate act of saving is no longer a protected path to security, but rather a virtue systematically penalized by the very system that once relied on it.” (08/06/26)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/what-is-in-your-wallet-not-very-much/
Source: Jonathan Turley
by Jonathan Turley
“‘Today I am the most famous and talked-about person in the country’. Those words from the diary of Dr. Anthony Fauci will certainly be true today as the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs moves forward with holding him in contempt for refusing to answer over a hundred questions about his past conduct and statements as the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The contempt vote will start a process that is fraught with political and legal challenges. Even putting aside the objections to the direct referral from the Committee to the Justice Department (rather than submit the matter to a full Senate vote), there remain serious questions about whether Fauci can be held in contempt after invoking his right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment.” (08/06/26)
Source: Law & Liberty
by Edwin van de Haar
“Many classical liberals see themselves as myth busters. In particular, they take aim at those myths that erroneously link a big state and collectivist action with welfare and prosperity. No thinker is too prominent or a theory too grand to be undermined by proper and sound classical liberal analysis. And rightly so. Yet many classical liberals are blind to their own myth, which is the idea that trade or commerce fosters, or leads to, peace. Admittedly, they share this misconception with some of the great names in the wider liberal tradition, such as Mill, Cobden, Kant, and Montesquieu. Yet they were erroneous nonetheless.” (08/06/26)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/war-peace-and-free-trade/