Category: Opinion

Source: The American Spectator
by Caroline Petersen

“The 37th president is finding an unlikely new audience as Gen Z turns ‘Nixonmaxxing’ into an internet sensation.” (07/26/26)

https://spectator.org/nixon-goes-viral/

Source: The Atlantic
by Franklin Foer

“The prime minister, a self-styled expert on the U.S., has shattered his country’s standing.” (07/27/26)

https://archive.is/KfyqM

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith

“As John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail following a congressional vote for independence on July 2, 1776, ‘[This date] ought to be Solemnized with Pomp and Parade with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.’ The future father of the Alien and Sedition Acts was justifiably proud and excited. … for those who took the risk of signing the Declaration, it was the document’s affirmation of the individual over government that became the hill they would die on if necessary. Government was a necessary evil, as Paine wrote, but that wouldn’t stop them from somehow putting the people at the top of the food chain.” (07/27/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/paradise-lost-government-gained

Source: NonZero Newsletter
by Robert Wright

“Last week two seemingly unrelated events, one in the tech world and one in Trump world, together illustrated how unprepared the planet is for the AI revolution—in particular, for its potential to create international turmoil, up to and including nuclear war. (1) OpenAI revealed that two of its models had, while under evaluation, escaped the laboratory and gone rogue in a way that inspired various nightmare scenarios. … (2) The Wall Street Journal, by way of illuminating the strategic logic that had led one of the world’s political leaders to bomb Iran for 11 days in a row, reported the following: According to a senior official in his administration, he is in ‘revenge mode.'” (07/27/26)

https://www.nonzero.org/p/trump-and-the-ai-rational-actor-problem

Source: Foreign Policy
by Agathe Demarais

“Pity Russian savers. In June, the Russian Finance Ministry announced its support for draft legislation to transfer nearly $40 billion in private pension savings into government coffers. Later that month, Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov encouraged President Vladimir Putin to make the most of the almost $1.8 trillion that Russian firms and individuals hold in bank accounts to support state finances. According to Zyuganov’s calculations, ‘that is three state budgets … sitting there and enriching bankers.’ Pondering whether the Russian economy will collapse is in fashion these days—but that may be the wrong question to ask. The better question is which sources of politically affordable money the Kremlin can still tap to finance military expenses while maintaining social stability.” (07/27/26)

https://archive.is/uWJF4

Source: UnHerd
by Wolfgang Munchau

“In the 2002 movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the father of the bride claims that Windex, a US glass cleaning product, can cure all known medical conditions. I was reminded of that scene when I heard Donald Trump prescribe tariffs as a remedy for diarrhea last week. The Center for Disease Control has recently registered more than 4,000 cases of a disease suspected to be cyclosporiasis, an intestinal illness, transmitted through food. The suspect is shredded lettuce, grown in Mexico and exported to Taco Bell fast-food chains across the US. When a reporter asked him about the outbreak, Trump threatened to put a tariff on imported Mexican lettuce to control the spread of the parasite.
The President may not have been serious about the lettuce tariff, but he is serious about tariffs in general.” (07/27/26)

https://archive.is/P0MGL

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Giorgio Cafiero

“The war in Iran is pushing smaller states to diversify their great power partnerships — if Washington will let them.” (07/27/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/china-oman/

Source: Common Dreams
by Abby Zimet

“To date, ‘Emperor Commodus of Covfefe’s’ illegal, disastrous, dim-witted Iran ‘excursion,’ a mangling of ‘incursion’ and global clusterfuck with no clear mission, strategy, end goal or clue, has killed over 3,500 Iranians, many of them women and children, wounded over 26,500, and razed much of that country’s infrastructure, including fresh water sources. At least 18 U.S. troops have been killed, with up to 500 wounded. A quarter of the world’s oil is held hostage across two vital straits, at least 70% of Americans oppose the war, recession-level prices here loom, and rage, especially among Muslim nations, is palpable …” (07/26/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/further/you-sirs-are-the-duplicitous-murderous-failures

Source: Libertarian Institute
by José Niño

“Western strategists tend to read foreign powers through their own reflection. Having watched Britain, France, Germany, and their own country climb the ladder of empire through conquest and colonies, they assume any ascendant state will reach for the same rungs. Yet imputing European motives to an Asian civilization mistakes a particular history for a universal instinct. China’s rise unfolds inside a geography and a culture that make the sort of quick, broad conquest campaigns that defined European great powers extraordinarily hard to carry out.” (07/27/26)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/reading-a-rising-china-through-the-wrong-ancient-script

Source: Niskanen Center
by Mark Lerner

“For over a decade, the FBI had been immersed in a vast, costly, but indisputably critical effort to build a modern digital case-management system. The bureau well understood the importance of information: gathering, organizing, sharing, assessing, and putting it to use to fight crime and protect national security. Yet what followed were countless missteps and misjudgments, more than $1 billion of public money squandered, and the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. And it still took more than 10 years to get it right.” (07/27/26)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-the-fbi-blew-1-billion-on-an-efficiency-project/