Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Galen Carpenter

“French leaders and the French people should be very cautious about embracing extended deterrence obligations. Primary deterrence — threatening nuclear retaliation for an attack on one’s own country — has a high level of credibility, so long as the country has the necessary weaponry to mount a serious counterstrike. Indeed, the main point of the Cold War era’s de facto doctrine of mutual assured destruction was based on that logic. The credibility of courting similar devastation in response to an aggressor’s attack on another country — even a close ally of the defender — has always had much lower credibility.” (03/10/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/france-america-and-the-trap-of-extended-nuclear-deterrence/

Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp

“As humans, we’ve always found ourselves haunted by our past mistakes, both as a personal matter of guilt, shame, or embarrassment and as a communal matter of reputation (up to and including potential ostracism). On the latter front, I’m old enough — and I’m not THAT old — to remember a time when anyone but the most public of public figures could … move to another county and start over, among new neighbors who neither knew of, nor had any reason to suspect, their prior violations of social norms. Clean slates, and if they nailed the ‘sin no more’ part of ‘go and sin no more,’ new and better lives. … That kind of thing can’t really happen today … and for the last 20 years or so we’ve been watching what happens instead.” (03/10/26)

https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20440

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance

“A bill (SB26-097) was introduced in the second regular session of the Colorado General Assembly last month to decriminalize adult commercial sexual activity. … This is a bill that libertarians can unequivocally support. But not because libertarians think that prostitution is wholesome, good, and harmless, or because they don’t think that prostitution is immoral, shameful, and potentially dangerous. Libertarians simply believe that what consenting adults do on their own property, or on the property of others with permission, is none of the government’s business, none of the church’s business, and none of any individual’s business as long as their actions don’t infringe upon the personal or property rights of others. This is still true even if what consenting adults do is immoral, and even if the majority of Americans don’t approve of what they are doing.” (03/10/26)

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/prostitution-should-be-decriminalized/

Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan

“Donald Trump likes exports and foreign investment, and laments imports and trade deficits. Most economists find this a baffling bundle of preferences — and the more they know about international trade, the more baffled they are. Never mind the truism that the whole point of exports is to buy imports. Doesn’t Trump know that getting more foreign investment raises trade deficits by definition? How confused can you get? While I agree that Trump is terribly wrong about international trade, there’s a big difference between being wrong and being confused. While I doubt I’m ready to pass an Ideological Turing Test for Trumpian trade theory, I recently had a weird epiphany on the topic. After said epiphany, I feel capable of articulating roughly what Trump is thinking.” (03/10/26)

https://www.betonit.ai/p/i-think-i-can-explain-trumps-theory