In the Tradition of Liberty.
In the Tradition of Liberty.
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FUSION’s archive of commentary.
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How can a student of public land history and policy respond to Walter Donway’s essay, “Challenging 50 Years of Environmentalist Public Land Policy”? He starts with a bill introduced by Senator Mike Lee (R, UT) in June 2025 that would have required the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service to dispose of between 2.2 and 3.3 million acres of land. But he doesn’t seem particularly interested in the details of the bill or even detailed analysis of the problems with federal public land ownership and management. (This…
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When Abraham Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving proclamation in 1863, he offered the previously regional holiday as a feast of national gratitude in counterpoint to the ongoing horrors of the Civil War. Celebrating the vast resources and opportunities of the United States, Lincoln declared that those boons “should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.” Today’s indulgence in resentment risks drowning out what should be a season of gratitude. In testament to the divides of contemporary American politics, the Thanksgiving table has…
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Yesterday marked William F. Buckley, Jr.’s centennial. We should celebrate the anniversary because many owe him a debt of gratitude—Buckley was far the most politically influential conservative from the mid-century onward. Such anniversaries offer us a much-needed opportunity to recur to origins. We should look back to Buckley for two reasons. First, he founded National Review, one of the few important publications of the conservative movement. We should be thinking about foundations at this moment, so that we learn to see opportunities where the consensus holds there is only a cultural…
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It is a common tic for foreign policy commentators to make confident assertions about what dictators are like at the negotiating table. There are apparently “Ten Simple Rules” in such negotiations, including “dictators are dictators for a reason” and “a dictatorship’s core goal is merely to perpetuate itself.” Some advise that negotiators “show [dictators] how the deal could advance their interests” rather than engage in moral preening. Others suggest “when a dictator believes they are winning, that is precisely when they begin to lose.” It is similarly common for grand…
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Two weeks ago, Rod Dreher claimed that “I am told by someone in a position to know that something like 30 to 40 percent of DC GOP staffers under the age of 30 are Groypers.” Michelle Goldberg seized upon Rod’s claim in her New York Times column anointing Fuentes the successor to Charlie Kirk. It’s enough to make you think about a Benedict Option, or alternatively a “Beckerman option” in which Jews pursue communal solidarity over mainstream acceptance. It’s not clear how seriously we should take Dreher’s specific figure. It’s even less clear how we would test it. You can’t poll staffers on their Groyperism, at least not if you expect a straight response. There’s no question, however, that antisemitism and other hateful ideologies are…
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The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give. — Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Mr. Donway has responded to the Senate’s recent failure to facilitate the selling-off of federal lands, by…
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The philosopher John Searle passed away a few weeks ago. For years he was considered one of the leading lights of American philosophy, especially during the period when the subfield called philosophy of mind was at its peak of prominence and prestige. Searle also made signal contributions in the philosophy of language and in social philosophy. Near the end of his life, he lost his emeritus status at the University of California at Berkeley, where he had been a professor for sixty years, “canceled” in particular due to accusations about…
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The 4th of September 2025 was the 1,100th anniversary of King Æthelstan’s coronation. At the coronation, the Anglo-Saxon monarch promised to rule with justice and mercy and also stated that he was not above the law. A couple of years later, in 927, Æthelstan proceeded to conquer the remaining parts of the Viking kingdom in the North of England. This conquest thereby created a unified nation, known as the “kingdom of the English”. Æthelstan thus became the first King of England. In 2027, then, were could reasonably celebrate the 1,100th…
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It seems appropriate that the messaging platform that Tyler Robinson, the assassin of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, appears to have lived on is called Discord. His action, it seems, was born in part from a deep discord in public life. Unfortunately, Kirk’s killing will likely exacerbate it. The way we perceive political expression deepens this discord in our society. Not only did the killer indicate that it was the expression of “hate” that he objected to, but the tragedy has sparked rounds of controversy over “free expression.” Even as many…
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The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded for explaining innovation-driven economic growth. Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt were pioneers in endogenous growth theory and many would assume that they missed their moment when Paul Romer won in 2018. Now their seminal contributions in growth theory have been paired with Joel Mokyr’s insights into the historical process of economic growth and innovation. It is Mokyr’s work that I want to focus on here. Mokyr’s earliest work (including a formal model published in Explorations in Economic History in 1976) was focused on issues of economic…