Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
On the menu today: Last year, the court-appointed monitor who oversees the internal activities of the United Auto Workers union announced an investigation into workplace misconduct by union president Shawn Fain. The results of the investigation, released last week, paint a picture of a petty man who fabricated accusations of wrongdoing against others to amass … Read more
The best evidence for this is the way so many of the people who scream about Israel’s “apartheid” and “genocide” do not much care about apartheid and genocide elsewhere. China has real apartheid because it practices Han supremacy. Ethnic minorities have fewer rights in China. They are second-class citizens, denied the right to internal migration, … Read more
Trump cannot tolerate the idea that he’s wrong about tariffs (or anything else). As a result, when reality proves him wrong, he will not confess error and embrace free trade. I mean this is the guy who tried to float the idea that the Access Hollywood tape was faked. He’ll say the price increases are … Read more
The ‘gee shucks’ routine was precisely that: a routine. But what excuse did the press have to play along? America’s weirdest governor re-emerged on the national stage last week to re-energize the floundering Democratic Party and help “fill the [leadership] void.” However, rather than galvanize his colleagues, Walz, who waves hello with both hands, mostly … Read more
Handouts to corporations distort the market, breed corruption, and politicize the economy. . . . Industries Driven by Federal Money and Politics “More industries are becoming dependent on the federal government and driven by politics, which is a dangerous move toward central planning in the economy,” adds Edwards. “Cutting corporate welfare would free markets, boost … Read more
States offer steep subsidies to the film industry. But special interest groups extract these concentrated benefits at the cost of jobs in every other field. . . . According to the New York Times, a total of 38 states offered film subsidies in 2024, five of whom started doing so after 2022. While fewer than … Read more
One of the irritating things about DOGE—something that ought to bother conservative DOGE apologists more than it should—is the comprehensive lack of honesty in the thing. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency is not a department, it is really only quasi-government at most, and its aim is not efficiency. It is the right-wing mirror image … Read more
Aspiring officeholders increasingly disguise their obvious lust for power with a transparent sheen of public-spiritedness. If it seems like I’ve been criticizing Pete Buttigieg a lot lately, it’s because his political conduct annoys me. A McKinsey alumnus and the former mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city, Buttigieg has improbably vaulted himself to national prominence through the … Read more
For an eighty-eight-year-old man who has spent only five days in the United States and doesn’t speak English, Pope Francis is a surprisingly partisan observer of American politics. For most of his life he was, like a typical Argentinean, viscerally but vaguely anti-American. By the time he became pope in 2013, he and the Democratic … Read more
It’s taken for granted in commentary about the president’s first three weeks in office that, at some point, he’ll “overreach.” I’m sure I’ve made that claim myself elsewhere. It’s the nature of modern politics: New presidents sweep into office, misread their mandate (assuming any such thing exists), and alienate their soft supporters. The backlash will … Read more
Yes, folks, we’re talking about New Jersey again because we are gathered here today to pour one out for my man Bob Menendez, the rodent-like former Democratic senator who two years ago was caught in a corruption scandal noteworthy even in the annals of the Clam State. He was on the take from Egyptians who, … Read more
One of the advantages of finding myself in recent years without a political home is that I feel no temptation, let alone an obligation, to justify or minimize unsavory behavior from either side of the political aisle. My disenchantment with both the Republican and Democratic camps has its drawbacks, but one advantage is that it … Read more
“It concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks [at] us as a nation of laws.” So said President-elect Joe Biden in 2020, responding to rumors that Donald Trump planned to issue preemptive pardons of himself, members of his family, Bombay Sapphire Nosferatu Rudy … Read more
Yesterday, I celebrated Biden’s exit from Washington. We have 50-plus years of evidence showing he is a corrupt, big-government mediocrity. Good riddance. But Biden being bad does not imply Trump being good. Instead, he’s an incoherent mix. Some of his policies are good and some are bad. In today’s column, I’m going to outline my … Read more
Corporate cronyism is bad all the time. Long before “woke” and “DEI” entered the mainstream political lexicon, I’ve been complaining about businesses tailoring their policies to win favor from Washington and about Washington trying to force ideological priorities on businesses. I started writing my first book to rail against precisely this sort of corporatism. Lander … Read more
Joe Biden is determined to ‘Leave No Washington Sham Behind’ before his presidency ends on January 20. On Saturday, Biden presented Presidential Medals of Freedom to a rogue’s gallery of shysters, donors, bootlickers, as well as some innocent bystanders and dead people. Biden presented failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a Medal of Freedom—perhaps for her … Read more
Politicians want to create jobs, “good-paying union jobs,” in existing industries. But that’s not what markets do. The “destructive” part of creative destruction eliminates jobs in existing industries. In a dynamic economy, innovations in division of labor can create good-paying jobs in new industries, but new industries require entrepreneurs, not politicians. Frederic Bastiat had two … Read more
One of Donald Trump’s closing campaign arguments was that he would deliver a new “golden age” for America. This week, he announced that this Trump-powered golden age has already begun. . . . The U.S. economy is nevertheless the envy of the world. Don’t take my word for it: The cover of a special issue … Read more
American schoolchildren learn about Hitler and, possibly, Stalin, but few know much about Mao. And yet, while Hitler and Stalin were deplorable, Mao murdered far more people than either of his European counterparts—and his tactics have made their way to the United States. Mao Zedong was born in a rural village in 1893, but he … Read more
Kamala Harris is hardly even bothering to campaign in the conventional way against Donald Trump. And why should she? Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020 without running a real campaign against him, either. Trump’s three big problems as a candidate are precisely the same qualities that mitigated the worst of what might have been a … Read more
The following seven principles are a good starting point for understanding what free government is really all about. First, the maxim that power corrupts is an absolute truth. Realizing this, those who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights held one principle sacrosanct: a distrust of all who hold governmental power. As James Madison … Read more
We are governed by imbeciles and thieves and miscreants and degenerates. But we could really use some damn radical candor. Because we are governed by imbeciles and thieves and miscreants and degenerates and people who are willing to put up with all that imbecility and thievery and miscreance and degeneracy if it gets them even … Read more
What would be the state of a society in which a will to stupidity were united with a will to power? When I first decided to study and teach literature as my life’s vocation, I foresaw the work ahead of me—to learn as much as I could about English letters. Was I still unread in … Read more
Donald Trump cheated the shareholders of the banks that lent him money out of millions of dollars in interest payments and fees. One of the irritating recurrent features of the discussion surrounding Donald Trump’s New York fraud trial is the insistence that this was a “victimless crime.” On a recent episode of National Review’s “The … Read more
When Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the “pro-Palestine” propagandists could no longer plausibly refer to it as occupied territory. So they came up with another trope that has become a cliché: Gaza is an “open-air prison.” The jailer in this dubious metaphor is only Israel, (even though Gaza also borders Egypt) and it … Read more