March 19, 2026

FALSE FLAGGING:

March 19, 2026

The deafening silence of Hezbollah in Latin America (Mike LaSusa, Mar 19, 2026, Responsible Statecraft)

Concerns about Iran’s activities in Latin America stretch back to the early 1990s, when U.S., Israeli and Argentine authorities blamed the Iran-backed, Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah for a pair of bombings in Buenos Aires.

The first bombing, in 1992, targeted the Israeli embassy in Argentina’s capital, killing 29 people and injuring 250 others. The second bombing, in 1994, targeted the headquarters of a Jewish community organization known as AMIA, killing 85 people and injuring more than 200 others.

In both cases, the evidence of Iranian and Hezbollah involvement was largely circumstantial. The 1992 bombing allegedly came as retaliation for Israel’s assassination of a Hezbollah leader named Abbas Musawi, and the 1994 bombing purportedly responded to Israel’s bombing of a Hezbollah training camp.

Compelling alternative theories suggested that agents of the Syrian government or Argentine neo-Nazis may have carried out the attacks. But American and Israeli authorities helped their Argentine counterparts build up the Iran theory, even though some officials acknowledged in diplomatic cables that the evidence was thin and the Argentine investigation shoddy.

Painting Iran as a rogue nation sponsoring terrorist attacks in the U.S. backyard bolstered arguments in favor of aggressively constraining the country’s military ambitions and nuclear program to ensure the United States and Israel could maintain the advantage against one of their primary global adversaries.

End of History One Economy to Rule Them All

THUS eNDED hISTORY:

March 19, 2026

Adam Smith’s Moral Authority (Daniel Klein, 3/09/26, Law & Liberty)

Shortly after The Wealth of Nations appeared, the rate of economic growth and living standards in the Western world shot up dramatically. In charts of per capita wealth or GDP, spanning hundreds of years, we see a long history of flatness and then a striking acceleration beginning around the time of Smith’s death, as though his work caused the change. Economist Deirdre McCloskey calls it “The Great Enrichment.” The shape of the curve has been called “the hockey stick,” with the blade of the hockey stick representing the past 250 years of remarkable enrichment. […]

First, Smith taught that when someone honestly pursues income, his activity most likely contributes to the good of society. Thus, Smith morally authorized the pursuit of honest income. Smith told people, in effect, that when you get up early and work hard in the quest for honest income, God approves. The same notion was rising in sermons of clerics and in other writers, but The Wealth of Nations expounded the notion in a remarkably impressive and even imposing way.

You are morally authorized to take care of your part of society because that is where your efforts are most effective in advancing the good of the whole.

Smith’s book of 1776 taught that, in pursuing honest income, you are not only innocent but even presumptively virtuous. The moral authorization of the pursuit of honest income lent vigor to economic life. Not only did people get up early and work hard in their calling, but it also invigorated innovation. One way to earn an honest income is to come up with new goods and services, and new ways of producing goods and services. Because honest income was morally authorized, people were emboldened to step out of traditional occupational grooves, to innovate in whatever way, provided that it was honest.

By giving the green light to honest income, Smith invigorated innovation, and that is essential for The Great Enrichment.

The second great moral authorization was directed to the policymakers. Smith morally authorized them to support policies that allow people to pursue honest income.

Smith morally authorized a presumption in favor of “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way.” That would mean not restricting ownership rights and the freedom of association or contract. It would mean liberalizing restrictions.

Religion

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

March 19, 2026

King Kong Died for Our Sins: Why Unexpected Christ Figures Matter (Mike Schramm, 3/11/26, Christ & Culture)

No, Kong was not the heroic Christ figure one expected, but that is what made him a thought-provoking one.

Fiction—whether in novel, TV, or movie form—is filled with similarly unexpected, almost scandalous, Christ figures. Fans of Breaking Bad may have noticed Walter White’s cruciform pose that followed the death that saved his downtrodden former partner. While the bear-man Beorn from The Hobbit fights for good in the end, his chaotic unpredictability coupled with his hypostatic union of bear and human natures point to Christ’s unpredictable actions throughout the Gospels.

One final example from fiction I remember: Having to write a paper on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in high school, I was struck by one prompt proposing Randall McMurphy as a Christ figure. He is an outsider to the mental health facility who operates beyond the level of the inhabitants. He continually upends the status quo and frustrates the established authorities. He seeks to emotionally free the imprisoned and it is his death that contextualizes Chief Bromden’s escape (being the narrator, he is also a stand-in for us, so it is our freedom that is instantiated too).

One would like to think we were the prompt.

FALSE FLAGGING:

THUS eNDED hISTORY:

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

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