“While out of power, the American right was unified in complaining about the left’s speech policing. Now that Republicans control the White House and Congress, free-speech rights and values are dividing the coalition. One camp thinks Republicans should refrain from policing speech; the other favors policing the left’s speech. The second camp seems ascendant, unfortunately, while the first has failed to turn its beliefs into policy. … the idea that ‘turnabout is fair play’ is the best policy to protect speech, let alone the only way to spare the right from future abuse, is nonsense. The best method to secure free speech, for all Americans, is to pass laws that safeguard expressive rights — both now, under Trump, and in the future, regardless of who inhabits the White House. If Republicans are serious about protecting speech, they could pass such laws. And all of the Democrats who have criticized Carr’s comments as an attack on speech could help.” (09/25/25)
“In the popular imagination, Trump is a successful businessman who wants the ‘pro-business’ policies of lower taxes and less regulation, and he and his supporters continue to use the threat of ‘socialism’ as an all-purpose bogeyman. Even Trump’s authoritarianism seems like a selling point to some of these supporters, who are tempted by the idea that he can impose free-market policies that lack sufficient public support to get through Congress. This is one of the great illusions of authoritarianism. The supporters of a strongman see him as the battering ram to push through their long-stymied ideological agenda. They give him unchecked power so he can do the things they want him to do. But once he has that power, he does the things he wants to do. There is an inexorable logic in authoritarianism that always turns strongmen against economic freedom and free markets.” (09/24/25)
“When I delved into the empirical growth literature, I was surprised to learn that macroeconomists struggle to detect much effect of education on growth. In most data sets, the national education premium is a small fraction of the private education premium. I also discovered a handful of papers testing for reverse causation from GDP to education, suggesting that the economic benefits of education are even smaller than they look. I was glad the reverse causation papers existed, but they were only moderately convincing. I’d hardly call them a smoking gun. During my trip to Qatar this summer, however, I saw the smoking gun in all its glory. The gun’s name is Education City.” (09/24/25)
“At the Arizona memorial service for Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated two weeks ago, President Donald Trump acknowledged Kirk’s character, saying, ‘he did not hate his opponents; he wanted the best for them.’ And then he added, ‘That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents. And I don’t want the best for them.’ It was an honest moment if an awkward comment to make at a memorial service for a man murdered (to all appearances) by a political opponent. Like too much of the political class across the ideological spectrum, Trump is prone to despising those he disagrees with. It raises questions about why people should ever submit to the governance of those who hate them — and whether politicians realize that they’re a big part of what brought us to this unfortunate moment.” (09/24/25)
“Disney-owned ABC late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel did not apologize for offending much of the nation when he returned to his show after a one-week suspension. So much for the left-wing narrative that President Donald Trump ripped up the First Amendment and tossed Kimmel off the air. The controversy began the Monday after Charlie Kirk’s assassination by a Trump- and Kirk-hating left-winger. Kimmel, however, said, ‘The MAGA gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything to they can to score political points from it.’ In Kimmel’s returning monologue, he was not just unapologetic, he was defiant. He flat-out denied any intention ‘to blame any specific group’ for Kirk’s assassination. Kimmel said, ‘It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.'” (09/25/25)
“I spent the past decade watching conservatives complain about ‘cancel culture’ and government attacks on free speech. And then, last week, I watched them enact these very things on a grander scale: Social media mobs hounding random nobodies out of their jobs; the government pushing companies to censor speech. … This weapons-grade hypocrisy was the work of a small number of conservatives, but it was supported online by many more. If anyone called out the hypocrisy, conservatives responded that this was different: This was celebrating murder. Or they pointed toward progressive social media and said, ‘You want to see hypocrisy? Try looking over there.’ … However silly progressives look, at least they are now pointed in the right direction, while conservatives are headed in the wrong one.” (09/24/25)
“One Tuesday night in July 2023, Ron Luessen got contacted by a late-shift worker on the support team for Elcon, a construction firm in the Pacific Northwest. Luessen, an equipment manager, was off the clock, but he was the main point of contact, and the worker was puzzled. ‘We’re supposed to be working tonight, and this place is closed,’ Luessen recalled the message. ‘What do you want us to do?’ There wasn’t any reason for the building to be closed. Elcon was steadily busy, recently picking up business in Billings, Montana, beyond its base of operations in Seattle. The company had even just updated the kitchens. But the next day, around 120 Elcon employees got the official word: Don’t come in. After 42 years building bridges, highways, rail lines, airports, and basic infrastructure Americans use every day, Elcon was history.” (09/24/25)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“It starts, like the argument on the other side, with the belief that it is on the whole better for people to believe what is true. The question is what mechanism gets you there. To put it differently, what mechanism for filtering speech does the best job of letting truth through while blocking falsehood? The ideal mechanism would be an omniscient censor committed to truth, someone who always knows whether a statement is true or false and only blocks the false ones, but we don’t have any of those.” (09/24/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Ryan McMaken
“One of the most memorable passages in the memoir of the escaped slave Frederick Douglass is where he describes how one group of slaves would argue with another group of slaves over whose master was richer or stronger. Exhibiting a mixture of Stockholm syndrome with delusions of grandeur, these slaves, according to Douglass, ‘seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves.’ … Americans think themselves quite privileged to be dominated and exploited by the current American ruling oligarchy. Why? It is often because these victims of the regime judge their masters to be less awful than some other masters. But, not content with concluding one set of overlords to be merely less bad than another, these willing serfs then go a step further and attribute to their masters great virtue and kindness.” (09/24/25)
