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In 1989, Justice Antonin Scalia cast the deciding vote to overturn the conviction of Gregory Lee Johnson, who was arrested and found guilty of violating a Texas statute after he burned the American flag outside the Republican National Convention. The author of the Court’s 5-4 opinion was Justice William Brennan, the leading liberal and advocate for the “living Constitution” on the Supreme Court. For conservatives, it was one of the two most widely criticized votes of Justice Scalia’s illustrious career (the other being his vote refusing to recognize that parents have a natural, constitutionally protected right to direct the upbringing of their children).

But the opinion by Justice Brennan, which Justice Scalia joined, is not as absolute as it has subsequently been portrayed.

It specifically held that Texas violated the First Amendment by prosecuting Johnson “in these circumstances”—that is, expressive conduct or symbolic speech as part of a political protest that was not designed to incite a crowd (nor did it have that effect). It also held that the “government generally has a freer hand in restricting expressive conduct than it has in restricting the written or spoken word.” Only laws directed at restricting the communicative nature of expressive conduct implicate the First Amendment, and even then they can be upheld for a valid governmental interest.

When Pauline Hanson declared in her infamous maiden speech in the 1990s, “I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate,” it was a statement driven by fear and division. I remember the impact it had—not just on public discourse, but on the lived experience of Asian communities.

The response was not defiance, but caution. People stuck together for safety, retreating into familiar cultural spaces. Ironically, this reaction reinforced the very stereotype she invoked: communities appearing insular, not out of unwillingness to integrate, but out of a need for protection.

This past weekend offered a powerful contrast between two visions of Australia. On one hand, the Premier’s Multicultural Gala Dinner was a vibrant celebration of diversity. Hundreds of people from across ethnic communities came together to share meals, dance, and connect. The evening began with a moving Welcome to Country from Uncle Shane Charles, grounding the event in respect for First Nations people.

It was a reminder that the success of multiculturalism in Australia is not by accident—it is the result of decades of deliberate effort, relationship-building, and trust. It is a project built by communities, advocates, and policymakers who believed in a more inclusive society.

There can be a new era of democratic innovation for the federal NDP as it rebuilds from the ruin of the 2025 general election. Its upcoming federal leadership race, moreover, presents this chance to model the democratic transformation that the party ostensibly values. Nearly a decade ago, the combined federal and provincial NDP riding association that I was once a part of put forward my policy resolution to support “participatory budgeting;” a democratic process whereby citizens decide how to spend portions of a budget on capital and operational projects. These organizing efforts never became a policy priority for the party. Today, the federal NDP has an opportunity to use the leadership race to support in-person regional participatory assemblies and open-source digital platforms, such as pol.is or decidim, to amplify the voices of citizens. Democratic renewal of institutions like political parties, therefore, involves democratizing election platform development and internal party decision making structures. 

I see Gabe Schoenfeld has attacked me again. I usually try to let these things go, but sometimes a little context is demanded.

The piece is, as usual, filled with bile and unrelieved nastiness. What Gabe leaves out is that we used to be friends, or at least friendly acquaintances. We met through Manhattan conservative circles, where we had many friends in common, including the late, great Fred Siegel (whom I am confident would be distressed at what Gabe has become).

Gabe snidely writes that one should not pity me. On this we agree. I do not need or deserve any pity. My life has gone and is going quite well.

Not so for Gabe. His first disappointment (that I know of) came when he finished a PhD in Soviet studies…just as the Berlin Wall fell. Like many disappointed academics, he bounced around the nonprofit sector until landing as an editor at Commentary. This was the Neil Kozodoy Commentary, when the magazine was good. I wrote for them back in the day. Gabe did not edit me; Gary Rosen did. But even then, Gabe and I were friendly enough.

Jaison R. Abel, Richard Deitz, Natalia Emanuel, Ben Hyman, and Nick Montalbano

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Matt and Elinor discuss the Australia’s latest economic growth data, Trump’s threat to hit countries with digital taxes with extra tariffs, and this week’s political fight over aged care.

Early bird tickets for our Revenue Summit at Parliament House in Canberra – Hon. Steven Miles MP, Senator David Pocock, Kate Chaney MP, Greg Jericho and more – are available now.  You can buy tickets for the early bird price of $99 – available for a limited time only.

Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available to pre-order now via the Australia Institute website.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 4 September 2025.

Host: Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist, the Australia Institute // @mattgrudnoff

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek

Show notes:

At this moment in history, we face a choice: Will America’s second 250 years be greater than its first 250 years?

If we have the courage, the discipline, and the vision, I believe this generation can lay a foundation of renewal so deep that our descendants will look back on us with gratitude, just as we look back on the Founders. And the most important choice we can make together to ensure that the next 250 years of America are greater is to focus—through our laws, our labors, our loves—on making the family the centerpiece of everything we do.

No nation in human history has entrusted so much of its future to the virtue and vitality of its families as America. The great empires of Europe—France, Spain, and England—placed their hopes in armies and palaces. The stability of their regimes rested on the health of a king’s bloodline and the strength of his throne.

But America bet her future on something humbler, yet infinitely stronger: not the pomp of royalty, not the machinery of a permanent bureaucracy, not the shifting will of mobs. We staked it all on what G.K. Chesterton called “the most extraordinary thing in the world”: an ordinary man and an ordinary woman, bound in covenant love, passing on their faith and virtue to their ordinary children.

We staked it all on the American family.

My colleague and friend Andrew Beck has written a useful and provocative essay about a subject that has been simmering in American politics for decades. The dual accelerants of events and ideology brought that simmer to a boil in 2020. The disputed question remains open: What is an American? It’s impossible to answer that question without its predicate: What is America? If we answer those questions, we are led to the primordial question of politics, which concerns justice: Are America and her institutions good?

These are the fundamental queries at the heart of the assimilation debate. What are we assimilating new Americans to—and why? The Right remains divided on these issues, as it has in different and shifting ways in the postwar era. Until the Left moderates on the topics of citizenship, assimilation, and civilizational stability, it will be up to the American Right (and its fellow travelers across the Atlantic) to have a rational argument about the preservation of American and Western civilization.

Creedal Mutations

Copenhagen Business School, 11-12 September


More “Announcement
Finance and Society conference 2025”

By the grace of God, I was carried out of Somalia’s darkness and into the light of freedom. When I became an American citizen, I did so knowing exactly what it meant. I understood that renouncing one citizenship for another isn’t an exchange of passports, but a solemn vow to live by the principles my new country strives to uphold.

So when I am asked where I am from, I answer without hesitation: America. We are not defined by where we begin, but by where we choose to stand and belong. And from that belonging—rooted in my past, yet spoken as an American—I say Senator Ted Cruz is right about Somaliland. When he calls for U.S. recognition, he isn’t indulging in nostalgia or sentiment. He’s stating a fact.

For 34 years, Somaliland has governed itself. It holds elections that matter and maintains an army that defends its borders. It collects taxes and delivers services, and it issues passports that are used across the world. By every measure of sovereignty, Somaliland is a state. What it lacks isn’t legitimacy, but acknowledgment. And the time for acknowledgement is now.

I know this not as an abstract argument, but as lived experience.

Beverly Hirtle and Matthew Plosser 

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

A Grade of AI | The Roundtable Ep. 283

On money and banking Ted Trainer Much of the last ERA Review was on money and the banking system, but I do not think that…

As a Palestinian scientist and ecologist deeply rooted in Palestine’s landscapes and communities, I bear witness to a catastrophic unfolding—a systematic assault on our ecosystems, livelihoods, and survival. This assault is not collateral damage in conflict; it is ecocide.

“Ecocide” refers to severe, widespread, and long-term environmental destruction that undermines the ability of inhabitants to enjoy and sustain life. Although Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute recognizes wartime environmental harm as a war crime, this threshold has rarely been met or invoked in practice. Advocates now call for ecocide recognition as the “fifth international crime against peace,” to hold perpetrators to account in both war and peace contexts. In Palestine, environmental degradation is not incidental—it is intentional, protracted, and aimed at breaking the eco-sumud (ecological steadfastness) of the Palestinian people.

Since October 2023, Gaza’s environment has suffered nearly unimaginable devastation:

On this episode of Follow the Money, Clive Marshall, former CEO of the Press Association (UK), and Emma Cowdroy, Acting CEO of Australian Associated Press, join Australia Institute Executive Director Richard Denniss to discuss artificial intelligence and the news.

Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via the Australia Institute website.

Keep up with everything that’s happening at the Australia Institute by subscribing to our newsletter.

Guest: Clive Marshall, former Chief Executive Officer, The Press Association (UK)

Guest: Emma Cowdroy, Acting CEO, Australian Associated Press

Host: Richard Denniss, Executive Director, the Australia Institute // @richarddenniss

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett

Show notes:

Media and Democracy, the Australia Institute

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

“I've witnessed a lot of war and in that there is nothing that compares to the level of destruction, the level of [dis]proportionality, the absolute disregard for Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law and considerations of the laws of armed conflict. [Nowhere] in my career… have I witnessed anything close to the absolute escalation of violence and [unnecessary] force I witnessed in Gaza.”

Jacob Kim-Sherman and Lee Seltzer

What makes Modern Monetary Theory different? Jim Byrne It is the methodological approach that makes Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) different. It is this approach that…

During a debate with his political nemesis Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln noted that “public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” The centrality of persuasion, which Lincoln correctly identified as the fundamental mechanism of statecraft in a democratic society, is the reason the Right is ascendant in America today. The Left has been telling its story for a long time, but the chasm between their claims and reality finally grew too large for most voters not to notice.

This opened the door for Donald Trump, a figure whose defining quality is a penchant for pointing out the failures of America’s political class—and it turned out that a majority of Americans agreed with his assessment.

The president’s achievement, properly understood, is reorienting conservatism toward using power well—what used to be called statesmanship—across four key categories: ideology, elections, policy, and competency. Each of these should be understood as a particular relationship with power. Ideology is alignment with the nation, the proper source of power. Elections are about persuading citizens to confer power. Policy is the design of a program for the use of power. Competency is the apt use and execution of power.

After decades of deepening economic integration, the world economy is increasingly challenged by rising geopolitical and geoeconomic rivalry, notably, but not only, between the United States and China. Around the world, trade and investment barriers are rising, leading to the fracturing and rerouting of value chains. Strains are also beginning to appear in the international monetary and financial systems. Global governance institutions are gridlocked and increasingly dysfunctional, even as the global problems they are purportedly designed to address are intensifying. For many states and societies, including Australia, the fracturing of economic globalisation presents acute new challenges, even as new opportunities are also emerging to attract trade, investment and development finance. The world is clearly standing at a historic inflection point, but where are we heading?

The 16^th AIPEN Workshop is inviting papers, panels or roundtable submissions that seek to interrogate these and similar themes. As always, AIPEN 2026 is also inviting submissions related to any area in the international political economy broadly understood, including policy-related issues, reflecting the breadth and depth of the study of political economy in Australia and beyond.

The 16^th AIPEN Workshop will take place at the University of Queensland, 5-6 February 2026.

Modern Monetary Theory and taxation Gregory John Olsen (ERA FB Discussion Group) The Federal Treasurer’s Economic Reform Round Table has missed the most important fact…

The Economist’s latest piece on tipping points is a wake-up call for policymakers and CFOs Scott Kelly The article in The Economist – “Earth’s climate…

“The working stiff doesn’t get as much attention as before, or respect, and if any party works overtime to win their vote, it’s the Conservatives,” John Ibbitson wrote in the Globe and Mail on January 11^th, 2024. “They would never have won that vote on Ed Broadbent’s watch.” Broadbent, who passed away at the age of 87 on the day Ibbitson’s article was published, had been elected leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada amid the first great crisis of post-war social democracy in the 1970s. The origins of that crisis, as he understood it, ran deep in the contention between capitalism and democracy: slower economic growth, rising oil prices, demographic change as populations aged, and a shifting industrial landscape that produced new employment patterns. The combination of these social and economic pressures precipitated a fiscal crisis that was seized upon by those who sought to subordinate society to the dictates of the market. 

Things we should own together Artificial Intelligence John Alt If we project the logical trajectory of artificial intelligence (AI) it seems to be unavoidable that…

China’s greening steel industry signals an economic reality check for Australia Christoph Nedopil Australia has flourished as an export powerhouse for decades. Much of this…

DeLong steps in it The efficient market hypothesis Peter Radford This is a second stab at a question that vexes me … I have been…

Ultra-fast fashion could be taxed to oblivion in France – Could Australia follow suit? Rowena Maguire For centuries, clothes were hard to produce and expensive.…

August was not a pleasant month for me.

I went into a weeks-long crash, unable to do much of anything but lie in bed with my migraine cap on, reflecting on what I wish had gone differently over the last several years. Sometimes I think about the week I caught the virus, but more often I think about life before the pandemic entirely. A world with no virus, I imagine. Some random combination of events strings together differently, back there in the fall of 2019. It all works out the way it didn’t. SARS-COV-2 never infects a human, or never makes it to this side of the Pacific. What would life be like?

I recently wrote about how much time I spend wandering around in my memories, revisiting friends, concerts, parties, bars, even jobs and trips to the gym. It’s strange though; even old photos have an air of doom about them. Like there’s a ticking clock over my head. 18 months until everything changes, I think. I didn’t know.

The latest FOI annual report from the government shows that:

• During the first two years of the Albanese government, there were about 21,000 requests determined per year – the lowest since the Gillard government (20,000 requests in 2010–11).
• But in 2010–11, the total cost of administering the FOI system was $36 million – compared to $70 million in 2022–23 and $86 million in 2023–24.
• Determining half again as many FOI requests (34,000) only cost the Howard Government $25 million to administer in 2006–07.

Australia Institute research into freedom of information laws found:

• There were considerable delays with the FOI system, both in the processing of requests and the review of FOI complaints.
• The FOI system did not meet community expectations.
• Government ministers and officials were delaying and obfuscating releasing FOI information.

Polling research from the first term of the Albanese government found that:

Why it’s important that young unemployed Australians get a good job instead of just ‘any’ job Brendan Churchill We often hear young people need to…

“Trust, it is constantly observed, is hard-earned and easily dissipated. It is valuable social capital and not to be squandered.

“If there are no guarantees to be had, we need to place trust with care. This can be hard. The little shepherd boy who shouted ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ eventually lost his sheep, but we note not before his false alarms had deceived others time and again. Deception and betrayal often work.

“Traitors and terrorists, embezzlers and con artists, forgers and plagiarists, false promisers and free riders cultivate then breach others’ trust. They often get away with it. Breach of trust has been around since the Garden of Eden – although it did not quite work out there.

“Now it is more varied and more ingenious, and often successful.”

Modern politics has created the perfect storm for a lack of trust in government and, by association, fractures in our society and the “social cohesion” our politicians hold up as reason, excuse and driver.

One of the ways they destroy trust is through secrecy and half-truths.

The Labor government has still not released the National Climate Risk Assessment analysis, which has been described by those who have seen it as “dire and “extremely confronting” as it continues to obfuscate on setting its 2035 climate target.

Believe it or not, in 2025, with Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions from transport at a near-record high, the Productivity Commission is more worried about subsidies for electric vehicles that account for just 1 per cent of the cars on our roads than it is about subsidies for the enormous 4WDs that have come to dominate our suburban streets in the past decade.

At the same time that the commission insists productivity in the housing market requires cutting back “red tape”, it is recommending a climate resilience code that would add regulation to the same industry. Pick a lane, commission people.

Let’s start with cars. The commission has suggested incentives for electric vehicles, such as the fringe benefits tax exemption, should be phased out on the basis that they “distort the market”.

That makes as much sense as arguing we should impose the GST on fresh food because it distorts the market – when distorting the market was the whole point of the tax break.

Economics 101 says we should tax things we want less of and subsidise things we want more of.

If the commission doesn’t think we should have more EVs on the roads, it should say so. But arguing that we should remove subsidies for EVs because they are working as intended is simply absurd.

But the real problem with the PC’s pogrom against EV subsidies is its lack of consistency.

On this episode of After America, Professor Elizabeth Saunders from Columbia University joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the extreme volatility of this administration’s foreign policy and how Trump is breaking down the guardrails of American democracy.

This episode was recorded on Thursday 28 August.

You can sign our petition calling on the Australian Government to launch a parliamentary inquiry into AUKUS.

Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Elizabeth N Saunders, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University // @profsaunders

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Show notes:

‘Imperial President at Home, Emperor Abroad’ by Elizabeth Saunders, Foreign Affairs (June 2025)