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Inspired by my friend JT

I had coffee with a friend and fellow activist today. My friend was upset, and was surprised by how upset, over Trump renaming the Kennedy Center. She was not so disturbed about the illegality of it, though that certainly bothered her. As we talked, we realized it is the sheer insolence and vulgarity of Trump associating himself with a slain President who, whatever his imperfections, was worthy of the office.

Monuments and memorials like the Kennedy Center honor what a person at his or her or their best stood for. There is nothing admirable or worthy in what Trump represents or aspires to. He puts his name on buildings to aggrandize himself, even though there is nothing about him worth aggrandizing. When he smears his name on sites that stand for ideals of culture or ethics or warranted patriotism, Trump taints those sites with his own venality, bigotry, and misogyny.

People with any sort of ethical sensibility recoil from actions that so clearly evince Trump’s ethical void. They also recoil from the lackeys mindlessly doing his bidding, whether that is installing lettering with his name on the Kennedy Center or ending a diversity green card lottery on a pretext or murdering people on boats in the Pacific and the Caribbean.

As part of its celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence, the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life has published my Provocation, “Government by the Unelected: How it Happened, and How it Might be Tamed.” This full-length essay seeks to assess how the Founders’ principles have fared after 250 years. I argue that government by the consent of the governed has gradually diminished—especially in the 20th and 21st centuries—and has been substantially replaced by the government of a permanent, unelected, and allegedly expert class.

The fuller work traces the history of this development, pointing both to the rise of the Progressives in the latter part of the 19th century and to the role of the federal courts in enabling the Progressive remaking of American government during the 20th century. These phenomena will not be unfamiliar to readers of my scholarly work or that of others in the Claremont Institute’s orbit.

Foreign policy and international relations are not disconnected from domestic politics—they are intimately intertwined. As I previously argued at The American Mind, the downsides of imperial foreign policy involve not only the possibility of being routed abroad, but also corroding social relations between citizens and their representatives at home. Perhaps the clearest recent example of this is the tragic shootings of two National Guardsmen in our nation’s capital by an Afghan national who was resettled in the U.S. after the war in Afghanistan.

Jeremy Carl is surely right that many of our Afghan allies are far from benevolent allies like the British or Canadians, as evidenced by reports from our own soldiers of serial pederasty amongst the Afghan National Police. But we should also analyze the extent to which the shootings can be described as “blowback.” It is reasonable to ask to what extent U.S. policymakers laid the groundwork for these sorts of attacks by our intimate involvement in nation-building in Afghanistan.

Listen to the full conversation on the Perspectives Journal podcast, available to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, and all other major podcast platforms.

The Centre for Future Work was established by the Australia Institute in 2016 to conduct and publish progressive economic research on work, employment, and labour markets.

Supported by the Australian Union movement, the centre produced cutting edge research and led the national conversation on economic issues facing working people: including the future of jobs, wages and income distribution, skills and training, sector and industry policies, globalisation, the role of government, public services, and more.

The Centre will now evolve to a stand-alone centre sitting outside of the Australia Institute.

“The Australia Institute and the Centre for Future Work have been such an important and powerful partnership in advocating for and winning ideas that make the world of work better. We look forward to what this next chapter can bring,” said Michele O’Neil, President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

“We are thrilled to have been able to seed this important initiative and build it to where it is able to stand alone. The Australia Institute will continue to work with the Centre for Future Work to amplify good policy solutions for workplace issues,” said Leanne Minshull, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.

The post Centre For Future Work to evolve into standalone entity appeared first on The Australia Institute.

From starting the Australia Institute Press and The Point, to hosting a sold-out Barrie, Bowers & Friends, to the federal election, to releasing documentaries, and so, so much more!

It’s been an amazing year, and we’ve from everyone here at the Institute, we’d love to say a massive thank you for all your support!

The post 2025 Year in Review appeared first on The Australia Institute.

One of the most striking features of the Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy is not merely what it argues, but how it argues. This is not accidental. Michael Anton, one of its chief architects, is not a technocrat or a committee scribe. He is a political theorist in the classical mold, deeply aware that ideas endure not merely because they may be correct in the abstract, but because they are memorable, vivid, and intelligible to the moral imagination.

Political philosophy is rarely remembered for syllogisms alone. Plato’s Republic is canonized because it shows justice. We remember the image of the just man likened to a well-bred dog, fierce toward his enemies yet gentle toward those he knows. Plato compressed an entire moral psychology into a single, unforgettable metaphor. We remember the cave not because it proves an epistemological claim step by step, but because it dramatizes the human condition in a way no abstract argument ever could.

Ladies and gentlemen: it is a great pleasure to be with you tonight in the People’s Republic of New York. Two days ago the voters in their wisdom elected as mayor by a comfortable margin Zohran Mamdani—a socialist, an immigrant, a critic of Israel and of Zionism, son of a movie director and a Columbia professor of postcolonialism, the holder of a degree in “Africana Studies,” a 34-year-old whose experience extends to co-founding the Bowdoin College chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and being a backbench New York State assemblyman for the last five years, with stints as a rap producer and tenant organizer. Except for being a member of Democratic Socialists of America rather than the Democratic Party, Mr. Mamdani is in every respect a worthy successor of Barack Hussein Obama as a modern-day progressive statesman.

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.

Now It Can Be Told | The Roundtable Ep. 298

Australia has suffered its deadliest mass shooting in decades, allegedly perpetrated by father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram, on the first night of Hannukah. Meanwhile in Germany, (yet another) planned attack at a Christmas market was foiled. This week, Spencer and Mike discuss problems that have finally gotten too overwhelming for even the BBC and the New York Times to ignore, from mass migration to the DEI crusade against young white men. Plus: Christmas recommendations!

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

While Palestine has always represented a contradiction in the Western-established world order, the genocide in Gaza has brought the issue to the forefront of the world’s conscience — and moreover, may signal the end of an era marked by U.S. hegemony. As today’s guest Dylan Saba, host of the Turbulence podcast, puts it, the genocide is

“the capstone of the War on Terror, [with] Israel as the greatest representation of U.S. overextension…What’s happened is all of those forces, all of those colonial forces that had been amassing over over generations really exploded on October 7th, and catalyzed the most dramatic imperial overreaction that we’ve seen to date.”

Conservative jurisprudence has been casting about for over 40 years, trying to find an anchoring ground or even a stable definition of “originalism.” But with the advent of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), overruling Roe v. Wade (1973), the tagline for conservative jurisprudence might now be, “Conservative Jurisprudence: Seeking Justice by Changing the Subject.” And the mission statement: “We carefully, and steadily, steer around those questions of moral substance that stand at the heart of our gravest cases.”

In the Dobbs case, Kavanaugh took his bearings by noting that the country was deeply divided on this contentious matter. One notable sign, he said, was that “many pro-life advocates forcefully argue that a fetus is a human life”—”forcefully argue,” as though there is no long-settled, empirical truth on this matter, found in all of the textbooks of embryology, as though there never could be a truth of the matter. In other words, in this mode of conservative jurisprudence, the judges must affect not to know the plainest objective truth that bears on the practical judgment here.

First off, thank you.

Everyone knew 2025 was going to be rough. But it is one thing to anticipate hard times and another to live through them. The highlight of my 2025 was engaging with my readers: here as this newsletter grew and on tour for The Last American Road Trip.

I have a box of letters, cards, and homemade gifts from readers. When I’m feeling down and useless, I look through it, and I am heartened that the human connection forged through writing remains strong.

The Last American Road Trip reads differently than when I wrote it in 2023 and 2024. I am glad I preserved that time: who I was, who my children were, and what it was like to travel through the United States as a mother of two from 2016 to 2024.

Sometimes I imagine if there were a diary by a mom who hitched up her carriage and took her kids to every territory of the collapsing Roman Empire; or a travelogue by a mother who road-tripped with her children through every republic of the Soviet Union in the 1980s — would I read it? Yes, yes, I would!

I both love and hate this analogy. I’d rather The Last American Road Trip endure as a chronicle of adventure in turbulent times than as a record of the end of the American experiment. I do not believe we the people are over: if the book has a lesson, it is that love endures above all. It is a good read for those who seek to preserve the best of our country while defying the worst of it. Scroll to the end for photos of our journey!

Christianity has a long history of shaping public policy in Canada. Historically, Christian groups such as the Social Gospel movement have served to reform and create effective social policy as a moral project of collective responsibility. The 1933 Regina Manifesto, the founding program of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, was profoundly influenced by the Social Gospel and called for the nationalization of transportation, communications, electrical power and other services. The Social Gospel movement also proposed social service programs such as publicly funded health care that would be seen as deeply aligned with progressive objectives.

Despite the progress Christian social movements have delivered onto Canadian society, other conservative movements have also held back these achievements by suppressing the gains made on women’s rights, reproductive autonomy, and the human rights of LGBTQIA2+ communities. Christianity as a political movement was also used as a tool of colonization that led to the genocidal residential school system and the intergenerational trauma of Indigenous communities. In the contemporary context, the increasing power of Christian nationalism and the Canadian far-right cannot be ignored in today’s public policy discussion. 

Kristian S. Blickle and Cecilia Parlatore

2025 was a year of many milestones and achievements for our small but mighty team.

In 2026 Per Capita plans to:
• Expand our team to enable us to work on more projects
• Expand our work on diversity to enhance social cohesion
• Ramp up our tax reform advocacy
• Explore new avenues in affordable housing, worker’s rights and safe technology

We’re a small team but we have influence where it counts – with our government
and policy makers. But we can’t do it without funding. Please consider making a
tax deductible donation to to help us to continue this work.

2025-EOY-Impact-Report

The post Impact Report 2025 appeared first on Per Capita.

Dig into bold ideas for a fairer, more productive Australia. Long summer days are perfect for catching up on the books, podcasts, and deep-dive content that challenge us to imagine a better economic future. Whether you’re by the beach, on the train, or hiding from the heat indoors, here’s a curated list of Georgist-friendly reads, […]

The Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) provides a rare official statement on the main threats facing the United States, as well as lays out strategies to address them. Typically released once per presidential term, this administration’s NSS focuses on how the U.S. can reestablish its military and economic might in a world that’s clearly moved well beyond the post-Cold War era. As stated in its introduction, the document aims to be a “roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth.”  

Part of advocating a foreign policy of “principled realism” is pointing out how Europe, an important U.S. partner going back centuries, has been actively rejecting its historic ways of life.

The Trump NSS details several serious challenges the continent faces, including economic stagnation. However, that issue is overshadowed by the impact of mass immigration, which is transforming Europe by “creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.” The NSS forecasts that if current trends persist, Europe may become unrecognizable within two decades, as it is at risk of “civilizational erasure.”

Northwestern University recently struck a deal with the United States Department of Education (ED). The university will pay a $75 million fine and guarantee there will be no more Jew-hating on the quad and no race discrimination in the admissions office or on faculty hiring committees. Then, federal money will start to flow again. But can Northwestern be trusted to honor its end of the bargain?

Buy my new book “A Genocide Foretold"

It is honestly amazing to be noticed, even if negatively, by someone of the eminence of Steven Pinker. I respect Pinker because (among other reasons) Steve Sailer, whom I also respect, respects him and has explained in terms I can understand why Pinker’s work is worthy of respect.

Pinker and I have one major disagreement (and I assume many others), which is brought out in his tweet: I have a foreboding sense of apprehension about the future; Pinker by contrast wrote two whole books arguing that now is the greatest time to be alive. What I recall of them is that Pinker’s case centers around, first, a decline in violence. Which I don’t doubt is true in many respects, though as Sailer points out, it can be made easier or harder to argue the world is less violent than it used to be depending on when you start the clock. Second, Pinker enthuses about various advances of science and technology, much of which I would have to concede, especially since I am a beneficiary and consumer of so much of it.