“New and returning students have been flocking to college campuses across the United States this month. And, at several institutions – such as Brandeis University, just outside Boston – they are encountering a higher education reinvention that’s rapidly picking up pace: the concept of ‘applied’ humanities or interdisciplinary and skills-focused liberal arts learning. For Brandeis and similar institutions, changing demographics (fewer college-age students overall) and budget shortfalls are an immediate impetus for this shift. But underlying such pragmatic considerations is also a growing willingness within higher education to better align with the needs of a changing society and economy. And that signals both humility and introspection – qualities integral to the humanities, which prize curiosity and the willingness to change and expand thinking and reasoning. ‘Higher ed shouldn’t be an ivory tower concept,’ according to Sonya Christian, chancellor of the California Community Colleges system, the nation’s largest.” (09/11/26)
“Many on the right think the near-acquittal is an indictment of women or of feminism, even though two of the three male jurors also favored acquittal. As I see it, there are several problems with the take by the right and some libertarians here. First, from the fact that Clancy killed her children, they conclude that it’s obvious she should be found guilty and imprisoned for life. This shows no awareness of the complex nature of criminal trials.” (09/12/26)
“To many Americans, al-Qaeda’s brutality seemed to represent both a wake-up call and a challenge. Because they are used to sitting atop the geopolitical hierarchy, Americans don’t necessarily think all that much about what lies beneath. It turns out that the rest of the world hates us, or so many concluded in the wake of 9/11. From that ostensible insight flowed the challenge: Are they right to hate us? Have we whiffed on our global leadership? Are we the tyrannical oppressors of our age? Across the intervening years, those questions have played out in the American consciousness like a bruising taunt heard in childhood that one can never quite forget.” (09/11/26)
“‘The well-prepared heart has hope during adversity and fear during prosperity’ — Erica McAlpine … Twenty-five years, and the day keeps getting bigger instead of smaller. Three thousand dead in a single morning, then some multiple of that across the wars launched in its wake, then a shifting count out of Gaza that outpaces anyone’s will to keep totaling it. I did not expect grief to go on collecting interest this long. I did not expect to still be bitter, on a date this rehearsed, in a country this practiced at looking away. I have written some version of this before. On some earlier September, I posted this: ‘#NeverForget is bad spiritual advice. Especially, when one has exacted revenge that far exceeds initial loss. To spell it out, honor your dead but remember, too, the 100,000+ Iraqi civilian noncombatants murdered in a vengeful, unjust ‘war’.'” (09/12/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“By now, the evidence overwhelmingly establishes that President Franklin Roosevelt wanted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to take place. He desperately wanted to intervene in the war against Nazi Germany, but he faced a virtually insurmountable obstacle — the American people, most of whom firmly opposed U.S. entry into a second world war. … It would be difficult to say that U.S. officials wanted the 9/11 attacks to happen, given that there is no evidence to support it. But there is also no doubt that U.S. officials persisted in a course of action that they knew was likely to produce a massive terrorist attack on American soil.” (09/11/26)
“The $1,000 seed can grow substantially, but seven-figure wealth requires decades of compounding, continued contributions, and strong market returns.” (09/11/26)
“I have always said that my life began on September 11, 2001. I was three years old at the time, and I was seated in front of the television in my parent’s basement. At this point, I think both towers had been hit. In any case, the news channel played the second plane’s impact over and over again, until my mother, horrified, turned it off. It is my first memory. The attacks that day changed the shape of American life, but only for those who remember them. For those who were too young to know what was happening—or who were not yet born—it is just history. Twenty-five years on, remembrance or nonremembrance is still one of the most useful tools for understanding generational divergence in opinion on the world 9/11 created.” (09/11/26)
“September 11, 2001, is one of those days in American history that ‘will live in infamy’. Just like the Japanese on December 7, 1941, who thought they could strike a mortal blow against the United States by their dastardly attack on Pearl Harbor, Osama bin Laden believed he could so weaken America, with his attack on multiple sites on the East Coast, that the country might never fully recover from it. The Japanese were wrong in 1941 and found out, pretty quickly, that they were wrong. Osama bin Laden was wrong, too. Twenty-five years later, America is still the strongest nation in the world, with the most powerful military that can humble a nation using only a fraction of its power, and an economy that remains the envy of the world. Millions upon millions of people still migrate to America because America is…well, it’s America.” (09/12/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joshua Mawhorter
“Foreign policy Gnosticism is fallacious and is a debating trick, whether done consciously or unconsciously. It is an assertion to avoid logic, argumentation, and evidence disguised as intellectual humility. The opponent wants you to adopt a position of intellectual humility while they enjoy an undeserved sense of certainty based on the informal fallacy of appeal to ignorance. While other evidence certainly may exist in favor of the other side, that has to be demonstrated, and—even if it is later proven to be the case—it still does not erase the fallacy. The existence of inaccessible information does not establish the content, reliability, interpretation, or implications of that information.” (09/11/26)
“Age-verification seems like a simple fix. And it is often driven by a genuine concern for kids’ safety and well-being. But it comes at a cost: age-verification threatens our anonymous speech online. As trendy as age-verification might be, it is worth taking a moment, in the year of America’s 250th anniversary, to remind ourselves of the deep history of anonymous speech in the United States—a speech right that can easily be underestimated or denigrated.” (09/11/26)
