“The easiest mistake in war is to confuse the ability to strike again with proof that the previous strike worked. Donald Trump is making that mistake in Iran. The latest U.S. attacks may destroy more military assets and infrastructure, but they do not answer the political question that has haunted this war from the beginning: what outcome is all this destruction supposed to produce?” (07/13/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“Senator Graham spent 23 years expanding government surveillance and funding foreign wars. Voters must now demand leaders who protect individual freedom and reject intervention.” (07/12/26)
“This week kicks off a 14-day sprint to choose the Democratic nominee in Maine, a race that could decide the U.S. Senate. When it became clear that Graham Platner wasn’t going to remain the nominee, I wrote that keeping the record number of Mainers who turned out for last month’s primary engaged and energized required a process that would allow them to participate, rather than a backroom affair. The Maine Democratic Party came up with something that I’m sure I can quibble with at the edges, but which recognizes that imperative and creates an organizing opportunity for the grassroots volunteers who really built the new kind of politics in the state. It’s a credit to state party chair Charlie Dingman, who so far has navigated a treacherous path pretty well.” (07/13/26)
“Sen. Lindsey Graham, the arch-warmonger from South Carolina, has died. He leaves behind a legacy of death, destruction, and massive human suffering. Graham cheered on every foreign war and every sanctions regime for at least the last thirty years, and he was among the loudest advocates for the criminal attack on Iran. He finally got that one last evil war that he wanted before the end. In a city full of bloodthirsty militarists, Graham distinguished himself as one of the worst.” (07/12/26)
“On June 9, Graham Platner won the Democratic Party’s nomination for US Senate from Maine with 72.1% of the primary vote. On July 10, Platner withdrew from the race, presumably due to popular demand by the same voters who nominated him. I’m tempted to a bit of schadenfreude toward those voters. This was not a case of ‘seems like a really good guy, very consistent, upright citizen … oh my God, I had no idea!’ Platner’s entire short political career — his whole adult life, in fact — resembles a locomotive, on fire, pulling boxcars stuffed full of dynamite, accelerating down tracks that terminate at a children’s playground.” (07/12/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Ella Dawson
“Can economic systems really be moral or immoral? The end of all economic systems, according to one interpretation of Plato’s Republic, is justice. ‘Plato’s starting point is that the organization of society depends ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence,’ John Dewey, the father of modern education, writes: ‘If we do not know its end we shall be at the mercy of accident and caprice. Unless we know the end, the good, we shall have no criterion for rationally deciding what the possibilities are which should be promoted, nor how social arrangements are to be ordered’ Dewey is correct, that without a certain end, we shall be at the mercy of accident and ‘caprice’—meaning unpredictable and sudden changes. But Dewey is wrong (and potentially Plato as well) both about approaching economics from a collective angle, and implying that social arrangements even need to be artificially ordered.” (07/10/26)
“I stand by my assertion that the Soviet Union’s demise cast a long pall over the word ‘socialism’” — at least for those who had not already recoiled from the purges, famines and censorship. I grew up on the Upper West Side, one of the remaining redoubts of socialism in the Reagan era, and watched as the toppling of the Berlin Wall crushed the last hopes that central planning could work. Encountering a socialist holdout in the 1990s was as quaint as finding someone who still believed in alchemy. This makes the current renaissance all the more remarkable. Yet what’s also striking is how little the movement resembles the socialists I remember from my youth.” (07/12/26)
“Pro-Israel foundations fund Think Tanks and media organizations that set the parameters of acceptable debate before a single word is written. Social media algorithms suppress Palestinian postings while amplifying Israeli military statements as authoritative fact. TikTok became a ‘Chinese security risk’ the moment it fell outside their algorithmic control. American Zionists pressured Congress to force its sale, ensuring the last major social media platform joined every other American social media outlet under the thumb of Israel-first ownership. Zionist influence over social media is not a conspiracy theory; it is an openly declared strategy. … Israel’s bullying of American activists critical of Israel and media outlets is not about defamation or even prevailing in court. It is a deterrence strategy by making the financial cost of covering Israeli war crimes high enough that editors think twice before approving the next investigation.” (07/10/26)
