Source: Independent Institute
by Scott Beyer

“An oddly divergent narrative has taken hold in the commentary class. On one hand, many argue that America’s declining birthrate is the predictable result of too much prosperity. As societies grow wealthier, more educated, and more urban, they tend to have fewer children — a pattern across nearly every developed nation. Meanwhile a competing view holds that Americans are not having children because they are not wealthy enough — that the prime childbearing generations are facing stagnant wages, rising costs, and downward mobility. These two explanations seem contradictory, yet both contain elements of truth — and even work in tandem.” (04/04/26)

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/04/04/why-is-america-experiencing-a-lower-birthrate/

Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff

“Over the past 100 years of wars, one incentive for peace has been a shared interest in preventing or ending famines – by opening humanitarian corridors. Adversaries would pause hostilities to allow food-related products to reach blameless, hungry civilians. Such a moment of goodwill sometimes opened a diplomatic window for a war to end. A similar tenderness toward the innocent is now being expressed during the Iran war. A number of countries including Italy, as well as the United Nations, are probing a diplomatic deal in which Iran would allow ships to sail through the Strait of Hormuz carrying raw materials for agricultural fertilizer made in Gulf Arab countries. Until the current war with Iran started Feb. 28, about a third of the world’s supplies of petroleum-based synthetic fertilizer products passed through the maritime choke point.” (04/03/26)

https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0403/A-seed-of-peace-in-the-Iran-war

Source: The UnPopulist
by Tom G Palmer

“Ideas really do have consequences. That claim may seem obvious to many, but its rejection is a core component of Mearsheimer’s brand of realism, and central to one of the most glaringly erroneous accounts of why Russia attacked Ukraine. Many realists — Mearsheimer chief among them — repeatedly insist that Russia is the victim of bullying by liberal democracies. They claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a defensive response rather than an act of imperialist aggression and have rushed to ‘explain’ Russia to the rest of us. That blame-Ukraine narrative not only naively mirrors Kremlin propaganda; it is wholly at odds with reality.” (04/04/26)

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-leading-realist-theorist-ignores

Source: Persuasion
by Quico Toro

“How to keep a consensus while pretending to break it.” (04/03/26)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/chiles-hard-right-isnt-as-trumpy

Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman

“In theory, criminal conviction in the US legal system is by the unanimous vote of a jury. In practice, the overwhelming majority of felony convictions are due to plea bargaining, the defendant pleading guilty in exchange for reduced charges or an agreement by the prosecutor to ask for a lower sentence. I have criticized the system in the past, mostly on the grounds that a prosecutor can make it in the interest of an innocent defendant to plead guilty by charging him with additional offenses, not because the prosecutor believes he is guilty of them and can be convicted but to persuade him to plead guilty of the lesser offense whether or not he committed it. It recently occurred to me that, while there are serious problems with plea bargaining as it now exists, there could be uses for it.” (04/04/26)

https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-plea-bargaining

Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone

“The New York Times has printed an article with the headline ‘A North American Treaty Organization Without America?,’ apparently having spent the entire Ukraine war completely unaware that NATO stands for North ATLANTIC Treaty Organization. At the same time, CNN ran a segment on an American bomber whose plane was shot down over Iran in which analyst Amy McGrath suggested that the Iranians might help the pilot because they’re ‘happy’ he’s bombing their country, saying the pilot would be worried because they don’t know ‘if you’re gonna be picked by somebody who is going to turn you over to the Iranian forces that are gonna use you and capture you, or is the population happy that you’re there?’ Really illustrates how fucked western journalism is, doesn’t it?” (04/04/26)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/04/04/the-mass-media-are-evil-but-theyre-also-really-dumb-and-other-notes/

Source: Expression
by Sean Stevens

“What postwar data reveals about the evolution of campus culture.” (04/03/26)

https://expression.fire.org/p/how-campus-deplatforming-has-evolved

Source: Reason
by Gene Healy

“There are far too few checks left on executive power.” (for publication 05/26)

https://reason.com/2026/04/04/who-can-stop-the-president/