“This past week has shown that you can’t leave something as important as resisting the government up to the opposition party. Democrats in Congress, like the majority of the country, are incensed about the murder of Renee Good, the subsequent wounding and maiming of others, and the seeming improbability of forthcoming accountability for any of this. To use the most salient example, federal investigators have commandeered the Good case, are withholding evidence from the state of Minnesota, and have turned the probe into a smear job against her and whatever activism she and her wife were engaged in. Justice Department prosecutors have resigned in protest. While state and local prosecutors try to keep the Good case alive, ICE agents are unquestionably violating their own written policies and the constitutional rights of citizens expressing their opposition through free speech and peaceable assembly.” (01/16/25)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Francisco Rodriguez
“‘We’re going to run the country,’ President Trump said regarding Venezuela at a press conference just hours after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s capture in a U.S. military raid in Caracas. To do so, the Trump administration has begun taking charge of Venezuelan oil shipments and selling them directly in international oil markets. The U.S. plans to make sure that these revenues are used only to buy imports from American companies. Whether this will at some point transform into a net benefit for the Venezuelan people depends on the granular details of the plan, which currently we know little about. The broader outlines of the vision are of course enough to make the blood of any Latin American nationalist boil.” (01/16/26)
“President Donald Trump’s push to seize Greenland might be the least popular idea in American political history. Is that hyperbole? If so, that’s only because reliable and fast public polling is a relatively recent development within our 250-year experiment in self-governance. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday found a staggering 4 percent of Americans favor the idea of seizing Greenland with military force. Among Republicans, the idea is actually twice as popular: 8 percent say taking the island is a ‘good idea.’ … do you know how hard it is to get such a minuscule percentage on a public opinion survey? Secondly, there’s the Lizardman’s Constant. That’s a term coined by Scott Alexander in 2013 to describe the surprisingly consistent finding that 4 percent of people will say they believe utterly outlandish things when polled — things like ‘human-sized lizards wearing skin suits control the world.'” (01/15/26)
“The US Constitution assigns the power to declare war to Congress, not to the president. If the president attacks another country without such a declaration, it’s not a war, it’s just a crime — a ‘high crime’ legally meriting and ethically requiring that president’s impeachment and removal from office. Unfortunately, presidents have been getting away with such crimes on a routine basis since the end of World War 2. The list is too long to fit in an op-ed, but a few high points include Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Those conflicts weren’t wars, at least so far as US law was concerned. They were criminal acts carried out by lawless presidents with the acquiescence — and often co-conspiracy — of Congress.” (01/15/26)
“Wars don’t usually start with someone deciding to unleash chaos. They start with confidence—a belief that risks are manageable, responses predictable, consequences containable. History tells a different story. The most destructive conflicts emerge not from clear intent but from quiet assurance that this time will be different. Today’s danger isn’t a conscious rush toward war. It’s the growing faith in strategic assumptions that underestimate how quickly force escapes control.” (01/15/26)
“Money is often described as neutral, technical, or merely instrumental — a passive medium facilitating exchange within an otherwise political society. This view is not only mistaken; it is profoundly misleading. Money is the hidden constitution of every political order. It determines which actions are possible, which institutions survive, which risks are rewarded, and which failures are forgiven. While constitutions proclaim rights and legislatures debate policy, money silently governs outcomes. For this reason, the structure of a monetary system is never merely economic. It is moral, political, and civilizational.” (01/15/26)
“Remember the outrage from the left when Elon Musk and the DOGE crew uncovered all the fraud in the USAID program? Billions of our tax dollars going to leftist causes after being laundered through so-called non-profits. These were ‘charities’ in the most basic and legal sense, but they were really partisan organizations using our tax dollars to advance a progressive agenda around the world. While USAID spread money overseas, much the same scam is happening in the domestic ‘charity’ world, too. When I started at the Heritage Foundation in 2001, one of the first things I was told was that I was NOT to do anything even remotely political on their computers or during work hours. In the Clinton administration, Heritage had been audited nearly every year by the IRS – surely just a coincidence and NOT the early stages of Democrats weaponizing government, right?” (01/15/25)
“Liberalism has always had its critics. But in 2018, Patrick Deneen went a step further: he declared liberalism a failed project — and explained how in Why Liberalism Failed. Since then, multiple obituaries for liberalism have been written, and Postliberalism, which calls for a replacement of the liberal order that shapes the West, has become a formidable movement on the right. Nevertheless, as if it had never heard a report of its own demise, liberalism endures today as a political order, political philosophy, and a way of life. Yet Deneen is not the first to give a failing grade to liberalism.” (01/15/26)
“Gresham’s Law isn’t about greed or bad behavior. It describes rational decision-making under fixed rules. When people are given the option to spend weaker money or save stronger money, they do what makes sense. The outcome isn’t a flaw in character — it’s a predictable response to incentives built into the system.” (01/15/26)
