“First published in 1999 and updated in a revised 2006 edition, Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost serves as a stark historical warning at a time when Western politicians and commentators habitually frame global politics as an epic struggle between virtuous democracies and barbarous autocracies. The book shows in forensic detail how one of Europe’s most constitutional monarchies oversaw a regime of forced labor, mutilation, rape, torture and mass death on a scale comparable to the worst atrocities of the twentieth century.” (06/16/26)
“The American president’s ‘Art of the Deal’ reputation is in tatters. But the Israeli prime minister’s attempt to impose a military solution on the region makes him the war’s biggest loser—and Israel isolated and vulnerable.” (06/16/26)
‘Much of the contemporary debate about monetary policy focuses on technical questions: whether reserves should be scarce or abundant, whether fintech companies should have master accounts at the Federal Reserve, whether those accounts should resemble the accounts held by banks, or how far the Fed’s independence should extend. These are not unimportant questions. Yet these questions are secondary to the central issue shaping American monetary policy today: the fiscal needs of the federal government.” (06/16/26)
“The consensus is that this is the year for the Democrats. They have the political winds at their backs. Even with the gerrymandering and the voter suppression and everything Republicans have thrown at the wall, smart money says Democrats take the House and maybe the Senate. And anything that limits the power of this president is good. I’ll grant all of it. Net positive. But what happens after a good cycle or two, if the winners don’t understand what they won? If they don’t see the pain that powered their victories? We don’t have to guess because it already happened in Britain.” (06/16/26)
“George Mason was not the greatest, the most admirable, or the most influential of the Founding Fathers. But he made enormous contributions that are often underrated. And I’m not saying that just because I teach at the university named after him. Mason was the principal drafter of the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, which became a key model for the other state constitutional bills of rights, and eventually for the federal Bill of Rights. Later, he was one of three members of the Constitutional Convention who refused to sign the document. Afterward he opposed ratification. Not all his objections to the Constitution were sound, but several were compelling and prescient.” (for publication 07/26)
“More than three decades after the Cold War ended, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty remains in operation — and Congress is now considering a major increase in its funding. As Americans continue to grapple with rising prices and persistent inflation, Washington DC’s attention has increasingly shifted toward foreign policy priorities rather than domestic economic concerns. When foreign spending does enter the public conversation, it is often through provisions buried deep within legislative text and only briefly summarized in committee reports, with limited public attention.” (06/16/26)
“‘How proud are you to be an American?’ a new NBC News poll asked. ‘At the turn of the century, three quarters of Americans were ‘extremely’ or ‘very proud,’’ Steve Kornacki explained to Meet the Press host Kristen Welker yesterday. ‘That number’s fallen to 56 percent.’ It is a sizable drop, leading Kornacki to inquire, ‘What’s behind this?’ before supplying an answer: ‘it’s partisan.’ Boy, is it. Fully 90 percent of Republicans are ‘extremely’ or ‘very proud’ to be Americans, with just a mere 3 percent ‘only a little’ or ‘not at all’ proud. Compare that to Democrats, less than a third (29%) of whom are ‘extremely’ or ‘very proud’ to be Americans with a whopping 36 percent ‘only a little’ or ‘not at all’ proud.” (06/16/26)
“Anthropic stunned the AI world on Friday by announcing it was revoking access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, the powerful new models it released just three days earlier. The government, Anthropic said, had ‘issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States.’ Because Anthropic doesn’t have a way to limit access to Americans, this amounted to a de facto ban on the technology.” (06/15/26)
“Over the past few weeks, the redistricting battles have revealed something important about the state of American politics: Republican voters are not recoiling from a fight. They are running toward it. Fights that the old Republican establishment would have treated as too aggressive, risky, or impolite have instead unleashed grassroots energy across the country. Why? Because Republican voters are starving for political courage. Republican voters have seen what courage looks like in their states. They want to see it in Washington. For too long, Republican politics was defined by caution masquerading as wisdom. Voters sent Republicans to Washington to stop the left, only to watch too many of them obsess over decorum, consultant-approved messaging, and the approval of people who despised them anyway. Meanwhile, the country they loved was slipping away …” (06/15/26)
Source: The Eternally Radical Idea
by Greg Lukianoff
“I am not a social media utopian. As regular ERI readers and FIRE supporters will know, I co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind with social psychologist Jon Haidt. In that book, we argued that overprotection was making young people more anxious, fragile, and less prepared for adult life. I also happen to think that the phone-based childhood has been a bad bargain for many kids, and that phones should be out of schools entirely. But that does not mean governments should build a national identity-checking system for the internet, give government a foot in the door for controlling artificial intelligence, or create broad new liabilities that pressure platforms to suppress lawful expression in the name of protecting minors.” (06/15/26)
