“How does anything get built? What are the political precursors to development? Michael Munger has an interesting, and at times persuasive, argument that self-interest combines with particular institutional designs, such as public hearings, to create a prisoner’s dilemma where everyone knows that development is in aggregate desirable but wants that development to be in the next town over. This is, in many ways, the conventional story of NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) politics. That story isn’t wrong per se, but it’s missing a critical component: culture. … I argue that three cultural practices (growth orientation, property rights norms, and positive-sum attitudes) act essentially as gates. If a place fails on any one of them, it is very likely to underbuild. Development will thus, over time, gravitate toward places that can pass all three of these cultural tests.” (09/23/26)
“‘Civilization’ has been an anchor for a host of moral panics, outbursts of violence, and dubious state-aggrandizing schemes. Liberalism’s enemies may say that we can’t have it. And yet we must, and we will. Liberalism isn’t just compatible with civilization. Liberalism offers an understanding of civilization that’s worth wanting and defending.” (09/23/26)
“On a chilly Thursday evening last December, citizens in Dorr, Michigan, a small community about a half-hour south of Grand Rapids, attended a town hall meeting to discuss the possible construction of a data center on the north end of town. Some of the attendees came from families who had lived in Dorr for generations and, worried about the disruptions posed by a new data center, came ready to defend their town. Instead, to their dismay, they discovered the township supervisor had, without a public hearing, already signed an agreement. Microsoft, never bothering to send a representative to meet the public, now held the deed to more than 250 acres of prime farmland, an arrangement citizens knew nothing about until everything was signed and sealed. With the land already sold and the ink dry, the citizens’ impotence turned to repressed rage.” (09/23/26)
“Many of us are gearing up with columns previewing the Court’s October term and have highlighted the upcoming arguments over bans on AR-15s and semiautomatic weapons out of the Seventh Circuit in Chicago (Viramontes v. Cook County) and the Second Circuit in New York (Grant v. Higgins). In a recent column, Professor Rory Little suggests that these cases will strike at what he considers a glaring flaw in the Heller decision that recognized the individual right under the Second Amendment. Professor Little repeats a common claim about Heller that some of us have challenged. I wanted to briefly address that controversy again.The column appeared in Scotusblog, a respected site that offers tracking and commentary on pending Supreme Court cases.” (09/23/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Of course, things like a bad home life, sexual abuse, and other things must always be considered possible factors when it comes to suicide among young people. But what no mainstream press reporter or commentator will ever acknowledge is another potential factor in teenage suicide — the fact that government officials indoctrinate young people into living lives based on lies and delusions. The fact that most young people are unaware of the false reality that they are living makes their situation significantly worse.” (09/23/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“I strongly disagree with the idea that it’s unhelpful to bully celebrities about their position on Palestine. On the contrary, I think we should bully them more. We tend to underestimate the consequences of the fact that all the most amplified voices in our society are millionaires. Under capitalism the people with the largest platforms and the biggest audiences are all wealthy enough to have a vested interest in preserving the status quo, so they’re reluctant to rock the boat politically in any major way. When all the most influential voices in our society are creating the illusion that the system is more or less fine the way it is by what they say and what they don’t say, it cannot help but significantly influence public political opinion. In this way celebrities function as a kind of goalkeeper preventing dissident thought from reaching the minds of the masses.” (09/23/26)
“I’ve written literally thousands of words about breadwinner jobs. I’ve explained why they are destroying family formation, family stability, and the fertility rate. I’ve pontificated about how this deficit explains so much of American politics. I’ve stated that we’re probably not going to fix anything politically until candidates focus on fixing this. Despite this, I’ve yet to really define the term. And I think my experience can help illuminate what a ‘breadwinner job’ is and why I think it matters so much. If I had to sum it up, I’d say a job is a breadwinner job if it makes a woman feel safe enough to get pregnant. Or get sick. Or otherwise become unwilling or unable to work outside the home.” (09/23/26)
“While one might assume that the most enthusiastic proponents of extending the federal government’s assistance programs would also be the most ardent fraud hunters — since fraud weakens the system they promote — one would be wrong. When individual assistance and healthcare fraud actually receive effective scrutiny, socialists and progressives can reliably found among the chief protesters. This is something to watch for, especially in light of what Vice President J. D. Vance announced yesterday — that the federal government has removed hundreds of thousands of Obamacare enrollments created for people who either do not meet eligibility requirements or … don’t exist.” (09/23/26)
“One of this year’s world-shaping elections has been largely hidden from the world. Since July, the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council have held three secret straw polls to select the U.N.’s next secretary-general by January. No clear front-runner has emerged. But here is the headline so far: Two of the top three candidates are women. In the U.N.’s 81 years, only men have been chosen as its top executive. Typically, a secretary-general ends up serving two five-year terms. What’s more, the two women leading the informal balloting are from Latin America. The last U.N. secretary-general from that region left 35 years ago. The Security Council’s choice this time will certainly reflect the usual backroom horse-trading among the body’s three major veto-wielding nations: Russia, China, and the United States. … The 193-member Assembly has the final say on the choice.” (09/22/26)
