In the Tradition of Liberty.
In the Tradition of Liberty.
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FUSION’s archive of commentary.
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“Gambling is inevitable. No matter what is said or done by advocates or opponents of gambling in all its various forms, it is an activity that is practiced, or tacitly endorsed, by a substantial majority of Americans.” So begins a 1976 report from the congressionally convened Commission on the Review of National Policy Toward Gambling. American history offers ample evidence of this inevitability. The nation’s past is as full of gamblers, con men, and speculators as it is yeomen, puritans, and meritocrats. No amount of legislation, and no amount of…
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It was surely one of the Super Bowl’s funniest commercials. Eli Manning, former quarterback of the New York Giants, rode atop a parade float shaped like an enormous blue foot. His brother Peyton laboriously pulled it from the front while their father, Archie Manning, stood among the cheering crowds. The gag was set up weeks in advance through a run of commercials: all three Mannings are retired NFL quarterbacks, but in childhood Eli ostensibly wanted to kick field goals. On the morning of the Super Bowl, his dream was fulfilled…
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There are at least two ways that women can dominate the Academy Awards, which are being bestowed this weekend for the 97th time. Titanic (1997) represents one possibility. It was a pastiche of grand melodrama by a macho, technology-obsessed writer-producer-director James Cameron that nevertheless appealed to young women across America and across the world. Titanic quickly became the highest-grossing movie ever made and then won eleven Oscars. It gave the world a new star, Leonardo Di Caprio, and took from those of us who were boys amazed by Terminator any…
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Americans talk a lot about freedom. In his new book, Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License, Brad Littlejohn asks whether the modern understanding of freedom has drifted too far from its theological origins. Although his argument is directed at Christians, Littlejohn raises broader questions about the purposes and limits of government in a “secular age“. What do you mean when you say that Christians are called to freedom? This title comes from a verse in the book of Galatians, which is probably the book…
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Perhaps the universe was sending us all a sign by coupling Daniel Penny’s acquittal and the capture of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson’s alleged murderer within a short time. Or maybe the rift in moral reasoning that responses to the two events revealed simply opened in early December as never before. The rift is most clearly expressed in Americans’ shockingly variant answers to fundamental questions that strike at the heart of our shared existence. When is homicide justifiable? What counts as self-defense? What counts as a threat that deserves…
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In fall of 2024, the Constructive Dialogue Institute published a report to assist university leaders with navigating campus protests “in an era of polarized activism.” The report was a response to the spring semester uprising whereas students, predominantly at elite universities, tested the boundaries of incivility by means of blocking building access with makeshift barricades, establishing unlawful encampments, engaging in hate speech, and even inflicting damage and destruction to school property. Some students not only continued their activist antics into the fall term, but even ramped up their efforts. For example, Cornell’s…
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As I write this, Republican Senator Mike Lee is calling for Ron Paul to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk thinks this is an “amazing” idea. Musk has even shared Paul’s content regularly with his over 217 million X followers. Paul, the former Republican congressman, presidential candidate and most famous libertarian icon of the last half century, has long called for abolishing the Federal Reserve, blaming the institution for manipulating the currency, devaluing the dollar and causing inflation. …
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In his perceptive review of Christine Rosen’s important new book, The Extinction of Experience, Robert Bellafiore puts his finger on the fundamental challenge of tech criticism in an age of techno-euphoria: is it doomed only ever to preach to the already converted? “If you know that vlogging your morning makeup routine or fleeing to the Metaverse is no way to go through life, you know. And if you don’t know—if you, like Johnson’s philosophical adversary, have fooled yourself into thinking the unthinkable—you probably can’t be helped.” Rosen, he thinks, is trapped on the…
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Words have a way of coming back to haunt us. If in doubt, just ask Sam Altman. He once dismissed startups with only $10 million as “totally hopeless.” They could never compete with industry titans like OpenAI, or so he thought. With just $5.6 million in funding, DeepSeek proved him wrong. The Chinese AI startup made headlines by developing a powerful large language model (LLM), DeepSeek-V3. But this is no ordinary model; it rivals those built by U.S. tech giants backed by billions. And just as Altman and his tech…
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Writing in 1948, the caustic left-wing historian AJP Taylor sounded a rare hopeful note in the final chapter of The Habsburg Monarchy 1809-1918, his book on the autumn of one of Europe’s great dynasties: Over 75 years later, this passage reads as wishful thinking on the part of a Tito-sympathizing academic. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the “Counter-Revolutionary dynasticism” of the Habsburgs amassed a considerably better—or at least longer—record than Yugoslavia’s revolutionary socialism. Tito’s regime lasted from 1945 to 1989. The Habsburg Dynasty endured from the Middle…