Source: The Dispatch
by Jonah Goldberg

“‘Trump’s Second Term Has Ended the Conservative Era.’ That’s the headline to a column by Ross Douthat that’s been widely discussed in my corner of the world (indeed, we talked about it on The Dispatch Podcast yesterday, and Ramesh Ponnuru has a typically good column obliquely responding to it today). … I am the last person to hold columnists fully accountable to their headlines, because we usually don’t write them. But I should say the title doesn’t really match the essay. That doesn’t mean the headline is wrong or that Ross disagrees with it. But his column is more about how Trump might be remembered. The key word there is ‘might,’ because Ross admits he doesn’t know.” (01/21/26)

https://archive.is/oLik7

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger

“The common mindset among most Americans is that the United States could never become a totalitarian-like country — that is, one in which freedom of speech is sharply curtailed, protests and demonstrations are violently suppressed, people are kidnapped on the streets and quickly incarcerated in secret prisons without trial or due process, prisoners are tortured, no one dares to criticize what is occurring, deep fear exists within the citizenry, the powers of the president and the national-security establishment are omnipotent, elections are temporarily suspended, and people have convinced themselves that all this totalitarian tyranny is necessary because some national-security emergency requires it. Yet, there is one big problem with that mindset: U.S. officials have demonstrated that they favor that way of life, at least in foreign countries.” (01/21/26)

https://www.fff.org/2026/01/21/it-could-never-happen-here-2/

Source: Eunomia
by Daniel Larison

“The U.S. has never needed to own Greenland to secure North America, and there is nothing to negotiate. Greenland is not ‘our territory,’ it never has been, and it never will be if the people of Greenland have anything to say about it. The president is a deranged revisionist who wants to ‘reclaim’ territory that has never belonged to our country. The president’s claim that his expansionist mania has something to do with security is a lie. Trump’s fixation on Greenland is akin to Smeagol’s desire for the Ring. ‘We wants it’ is the sole motivation behind this. The president is driven by nothing but gnawing greed. Trump said that he won’t use force to steal Greenland. No one should believe him when he says that, but it is no consolation when he is willing to use coercion and threats to intimidate the people of Greenland and Denmark.” (01/21/26)