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Stein Berre and Asani Sarkar

On this episode of After America, Antoun Issa joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the prospects for a deal that did not include Palestinians in the negotiating process. They also discuss the role of the United States in the Middle East, how power works in foreign policy, and opening up space for a bigger discussion about foreign policy here in Australia.

This episode was recorded on Friday 3 October.

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

Guest: Antoun Issa, Founder, DeepCut // @antounissa

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

Show notes:

Beyond the Two-State Solution: Policy responses to the Destruction of Palestine and the Insecurity of Israel, the Australia Institute (February 2025)

Australians overwhelmingly back sanctions on Israel, new poll finds by Alex McKinnon, DeepCut (October 2025)

Some years back during a conversation with Charles Murray about his justly praised book Coming Apart, Bill Kristol made perhaps the single most outrageous statement he has ever uttered in public. Murray’s book chronicled the decline in the traditional work ethic and other foundational values in the American lower classes, and Kristol suggested a solution. If the indigenous American lower classes are increasingly “decadent, lazy [and] spoiled,” Kristol said, “don’t you want to get new Americans in?”

The idea of replacing legacy Americans with immigrants is as distant from conservatism as one can get. The Americans described in Murray’s book are far more connected to American culture than any “new Americans” Kristol would like to see take their places. Given that, however, it is undeniable that there are significant problems with the white lower classes that need to be resolved.

Last week, the federal government “shut down” because the Senate could not get the required 60 votes to invoke cloture and pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. The CR had passed the House, was supported by a majority of the Senate, and would have been signed into law by President Trump. It was defeated, however, by a minority of senators (mostly Democrats) who refused to fund the government unless the Republicans would make concessions on some other matters.

This raises an oft-debated question: Should the Senate further limit the use of the filibuster, which per Senate rules requires a supermajority of 60 votes to proceed to a vote on most legislative items? The Senate has already disallowed filibusters in the case of presidential nominations to executive or judicial office. However, some have suggested going even further and eliminating the filibuster altogether.

These calls to remove the filibuster have typically come from Democrats. They have made this argument when they’ve controlled the Senate and have been frustrated by Republicans using the filibuster to impede their agenda. They’ve noted how some Southern senators sought to thwart the enactment of federal civil rights legislation through the use of the filibuster. More generally, they have emphasized the non-democratic character of the filibuster, which empowers a minority in the Senate to defeat legislation supported by the chamber’s majority.

At Wired, Laura Bullard writes that “Among the relatively few people associated with National Conservatism who do cite Schmitt openly in their own work are Thiel and Michael Anton, the essayist and sometime Trump administration official.”

We may leave to one side the extent to which I am “associated” with National Conservatism. I did not attend its last two conferences, having been invited and then disinvited in 2024 and not invited at all in 2025. I did sign its manifesto, an act I have come to regret for reasons Charles Kesler explains here.

But that is a quibble compared to the real whopper in the sentence quoted above. I have never, to the best of my knowledge—and I assume that I know my own oeuvre better than Bullard does—“cited” Carl Schmitt. A citation is a very specific thing: a quote or an idea attributed to an author that is typically accompanied by a footnote pointing to an exact source. Moreover, one may cite to signify approval or disapproval, or just to show that one is aware of the thing being cited. Bullard implies that my nonexistent citations of Schmitt signify approval. If she can show one instance of that in any of my writings, I promise to send her a set of steak knives. But I’m certain she can’t.

In Santa Fe, I have helped start a Speakers’ Corner project. We held our first session this past Saturday. Reprinted below, from the Indivisible Santa Fe website, is my diary. But first, click the image below for footage showing a sampling of speakers from the day.

In his opening salvo, the esteemed Scott Yenor righteously scrutinizes the travesty of single-sex education at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). Yenor lays bare the deleterious effects that forced sex integration has had on honor, cohesion, and the society into which graduates of the school march. What he emphasizes less, however, is how the Supreme Court’s decision in US v. Virginia fundamentally changed the nature of VMI’s military character, and the essential path to reclaiming same-sex spaces for military officer formation.

The most important part of Yenor’s essay is his proposal to create more VMIs that can force a legal and cultural reconsideration of issues involving sex in education and the military. This is a compelling recommendation, because responsibility lies with committed red state governors who have the authority to make bold moves to challenge existing institutions and create alternative ones.

The governor of West Virginia could establish a military academy with higher education credentials and, like VMI does today, endow a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program at the school to serve as a pipeline into the military’s officer ranks. The character of this new service academy must be ironclad, inculcate a warrior ethos, and be set apart from the civil society that its graduates will pledge their lives to defend.

The Royal Commission into Robodebt recommended making cabinet documents easier to access under FOI laws, finding the current system thwarted investigations into the scheme.

The Prime Minister himself described Robodebt as a “gross betrayal and human tragedy”, yet his government plans to make cabinet documents harder to access.

This is in direct defiance of the Robodebt Royal Commission’s recommendation to make cabinet documents available for public scrutiny.

“If cabinet documents had been public, the unlawful and cruel Robodebt scheme could have been exposed and prevented. For that reason, the Robodebt Royal Commission recommended making cabinet documents available under FOI,” said Bill Browne, Director of the Australia Institute’s Democracy & Accountability Program.

“The Albanese government wants to make documents even harder to access, in defiance of the Royal Commission, increasing the risk the next Robodebt will happen in secret.”

“The over-use of the cabinet document exemption and other problems with the FOI system are critical reasons why Robodebt was allowed to continue with impunity for so long,” said Maria O’Sullivan, Associate Professor at Deakin Law School.

“The proposed changes to the FOI Act will actually expand the cabinet exemption even further.”

The new research also reveals that it is government inefficiency, not the number of requests, behind the growing cost of the FOI system.

Political Economy is a broad church. This aspect makes it challenging to teach.  One wants to engage all students in the classroom, but the range of students’ interests can vary considerably. Moreover, they demand more in terms of engagement and practicality. It is not enough to recite material for rote learning. How does one fulfill the demand while maintaining integrity of the unit in terms of breadth and depth of theory and method? Political Economy at the University of Sydney has an additional challenge in that students and staff approach facets of the economy – a system of social provisioning, more generally – from different disciplines. Disciplines represented by staff include economics, political science, sociology, and history, among others.

Yes, one can flip the units so that the examples provided to support theory act to stimulate thinking about possible explanations. Then, one can proceed to discuss the relevant theories to solidify students’ understanding. This is a good start for engagement, but beyond flipping what can one do?

Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard

U.S. trade policy remains in flux. Nevertheless, important elements of the new policy regime are apparent in data through July. What stands out are the large differences in realized tariff rates by trading partner, ranging from less than 5 percent for Canada and Mexico to 15 percent for Japan and to 40 percent for China. This post shows that the bulk of cross-country differences in tariff rates is explained by two factors:  the U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement and differing sales shares in tariff-exempt categories.  

An image went mega-viral on multiple platforms last week, of a very young man with this text superimposed: “The lion does not concern himself with his noticeable memory loss, brain fog and slight cognitive decline.” The original Tiktok garnered 1.4 million likes over the course of the next several days, and a screenshot of the Tiktok reposted on X (formerly twitter) has so far been liked 287k times.

A sampling of comments:

“slight?”

“ok genuinely what is the cause of this why is it happening to everyone Help”

“what could this be? I have this and I’m 19-20”

“the brain fog’s so bad, the lion can’t even bring himself to care about anything”

“Angelo.” With no surname necessary, the mere mention put Washington’s late-Cold War intelligence establishment on edge. Their tormenter was but a thirtysomething staffer on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Contrarily, to the Cold Warriors sacrificing their all to defend the nation from Communist subversion and nuclear-missile threats, that single name, like a messenger from heaven, brought comfort and joy.

Angelo Codevilla knew and understood that the country that took him in as a boy would preserve itself and its Founding principles by having the most capable intelligence and counterintelligence services the world had ever seen. “Most capable” didn’t mean the largest, or the most lavishly funded, or supplied with the most high-tech gear. It meant having the most creative, most principled, most virtuous, and wisest people doing the job.

Angelo watched the United States’ intelligence apparatus deteriorate. Visiting CIA headquarters over the years, he passed the stone inscription that the late and great CIA director Allen Dulles placed as what he intended as a permanent greeting: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”—the Gospel According to John. In the last year of his life, Angelo saw the videos of CIA corridors festooned with mind-numbing murals and telescreens about diversity, equity, and inclusion. To Angelo Codevilla, who spoke Latin, DEI meant “of God.” A new god, a false one, possesses the American intelligence community today.

Freedom of speech on university campuses has collapsed. Left-leaning college administrators, faculty, and students have been silencing conservative voices, and conservative students are increasingly adopting the Left’s errant ways. The Trump Administration has launched a strong counterattack that also seems poised to suppress speech.

The First Amendment’s free speech guarantees are at the core of our liberties. As Justice Louis Brandeis explained in Whitney v. California (1927), “If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” Though set out in a concurring opinion, Justice Brandeis’s counter-speech doctrine has become the bedrock of free speech jurisprudence. In the milestone First Amendment case of United States v. Alvarez (2012), Justice Anthony Kennedy cited Justice Brandeis, opining, “The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth.”

Someone did, however, in that very same talkback segment. Phyllis rang in to say she did want to complain, because she wanted to retire and downsize, but property prices were growing so fast that she was worried about buying and selling in the same market – even if it was a smaller property.

Howard told her she was wrong.

“You’re not actually complaining. What you’re really saying is the value of a house hasn’t gone up enough,” he said.

Phyllis was having none of it: “No, no, no. I disagree. I think that it is ridiculous that the inflation of the housing prices … what about our grandchildren?”

Phyllis was right. Because while she complained, in late 2003, about people having to spend “$500,000 … on some broken-down old dump”, the median house price for her grandchildren – assuming they live in Queensland – is now $977,300.

The government knew house prices were a problem then, and it knows they are a problem now.

And just like Howard, who was told by the Productivity Commission in 2004 – in a briefing prepared for his cabinet – that an urgent review of his capital gains tax changes was needed to arrest the jumps in the housing market, every single government has only made short-term changes that ultimately make the situation worse, rather than get to the root cause. And they are STILL doing it.

In 2003 Howard blamed low interest rates for rising house prices, as people could afford to borrow more.

ATO data reveals:

• Santos Limited has racked up a 10th straight year of zero corporate tax payments from a total of nearly $47 billion in sales.
• Darwin’s Ichthys LNG Pty Ltd paid zero corporate tax for the 6th year running, from a total of $43 billion in sales.
• Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) revenue has hit a 3-year low, down to $1.5 billion from a peak of $2.0 billion in 2021-22.

“The new tax data shows, yet again, that big gas is taking the piss out of Australians,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.

“It beggars belief that a company like Santos can spend a decade selling almost $50 billion worth of gas and not pay a cent of tax on it.

“Japanese ambassadors and executives see fit to lecture Australia on energy and tax policy, while Japanese entities like Ichthys pay zero company tax and zero PRRT.

“PRRT revenue was lower in the latest year of data (2023-24) even though production and prices were high and a Labor government had been in power for over a year.

“Australia Institute research shows that over the 10 years to 2023-24, nurses paid $7 billion more in tax than did the oil and gas companies. How’s that fair?