Source: American Greatness
by Victor Davis Hanson

“The distinguished political scientist Graham Allison, author of the 2015 Atlantic article ‘The Thucydides Trap,’ argued that often in history an established power will stage a preventive war against an ascendant adversary — for fear that otherwise it will soon lose its primacy. His title derives from two passages in the first book of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides …. [The US] is the supposed jittery established power — and a rising Communist China is the upstart contender. His theory implies that the US might, like Sparta, take provocative steps to abort an inevitable Chinese-dominated world. There are, however, a number of problems, ancient and modern, with Allison’s intriguing thesis.” (05/21/26)

https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/21/america-is-not-caught-in-a-thucydides-trap/

Source: In These Times
by Delia Ramirez

“Illinoisans know the terror the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can inflict with its unlimited resources and unchecked power. We have been surveilled, threatened, tear-gassed, shot, subjected to warrantless arrest, rammed with vehicles, kidnapped and disappeared. In the time since Donald Trump regained the White House, our communities documented, witnessed and testified to DHS’s abuses. In April, the Illinois Accountability Commission published its final report, which included recommendations that local law enforcement pursue criminal and civil prosecutions against federal agents who used excessive force. One incident highlighted in their report is the violence that occurred on Oct. 3, 2025, in Logan Square at Funston Elementary, when federal agents deployed tear gas close to the recreational area where children were present. The Commission determined what we already knew: Federal agents should be formally investigated for possible violations of agency policy, state and federal criminal laws and individuals’ constitutional rights.” (05/20/26)

https://inthesetimes.com/article/ramirez-delia-ice-special-prosecutor-midway-blitz

Source: Reason
by Tosin Akintola

“Before demanding more money from America’s wealthiest, lawmakers should account for the billions of dollars the federal government wastes each year.” (05/20/26)

https://reason.com/2026/05/20/jeff-bezos-is-right-taxing-billionaires-wont-solve-the-affordability-crisis/

Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Matthew Harwood

“By the time of his death and subsequent desecration, Paine had fallen out of the American pantheon of Founding Fathers, reviled as an alcoholic infidel. But as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of both Common Sense and the American independence his pen sparked, Paine deserves his due and our gratitude. Without the words of Paine, the most modern of the Founding Fathers, there may be no United States of America to even celebrate today.” (05/20/26)

https://www.fire.org/news/thomas-paine-american-historys-winter-soldier

Source: The Daily Economy
by Matt Zwolinski

“The term ‘libertarian’ first emerged in the 1850s as a self-description for a French anarcho-communist who thought private property and the state were two sides of the same coin. By 1913, Charles Sprading was using it to describe a tent that included Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Single-Taxers, Anarchists, and Women’s Rights advocates. By the mid-twentieth century, under the influence of Leonard Read and the Foundation for Economic Education, it had narrowed to mean support for free markets and limited government. By the 1970s, the Nozick-Rand-Rothbard synthesis had narrowed it further still — to a particular form of rationalist, rights-based, free-market absolutism. Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, the label fragmented again. Bleeding-heart libertarians, left-libertarians, paleolibertarians, neoreactionaries — all under the same tent, none in agreement about what the tent contains. The current crackup isn’t an aberration. It’s what libertarianism has always done.” (05/20/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/why-libertarianism-keeps-splintering/