Brothers Judd Blog

If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)

April 1, 2026

Identitarianism It's a RICO case

MITCH CHOSE CONSERVATIVES, NOT TRUMPISTS:

The Long Odds of Undoing Birthright Citizenship (Ruth Marcus, April 1, 2026, The New Yorker)

The legal website Just Security maintains a “litigation tracker,” chronicling all the lawsuits filed against the second Trump Administration. On Wednesday morning, that tally stood at a hefty seven hundred and thirty-four, with cases ranging from the President’s immigration policies to his dismantling of disfavored agencies to his effort to punish law firms to his ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports. Each of these is important in its own way, but none more so than the challenge taken up on Wednesday by the Supreme Court, to the legality of Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” Issued in the first hours of his first day back in office, the order is Donald Trump’s bid to abolish the long-standing rule that, with narrow exceptions, citizenship attaches automatically to those born on U.S. soil. By executive fiat, Trump would eliminate the guarantee of birthright citizenship for children whose parents are in the country without legal authorization or on a temporary basis—a position once considered so fringe that he shied away from it during his first term. His edict contravenes the language of the Constitution, the high court’s own rulings, legislation passed by Congress, and the consistent practice of previous Presidents. As Trump himself seems to recognize, it is difficult to imagine that the Supreme Court—even this Supreme Court, with its conservative super-majority—will let this order stand, and the tenor of the two-hour-plus oral argument seemed to bear that out. If the questions from the conservative Justices offer a reliable guide to their thinking, the mystery is not so much whether Trump will lose but how resoundingly.

Sex

THE TALKING CURE:

Justices Reject Colorado Law Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’ for L.G.B.T.Q. Minors (Ann E. Marimow, March 31, 2026, NY Times)

“Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote for justices from across the ideological spectrum. “But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

Two of the court’s liberal justices — Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — sided with the majority. […]

A lawyer for Mrs. Chiles, Jim Campbell of the Alliance Defending Freedom, called the decision a significant win for free speech and common sense.

“States cannot silence voluntary conversations that help young people seeking to grow comfortable with their bodies,” he said in a statement.

In her court filings, Mrs. Chiles said she was not seeking to “cure” clients of same-sex attractions or to “change” their sexual orientation, but rather to help patients with their own stated goals, which sometimes include “seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions.”

Identitarianism

TRUMPISM DOESN’T WORK:

Orbán Will Lose Hungary’s Election in Two Weeks—If It’s Clean (H. David Baer, March 30, 2026, The Bulwark)

But Hungary is hardly a democracy at all. It’s an autocratic, kleptocratic mafia state, where all the levers of power are controlled behind the scenes by a single man. Since returning to power in 2010, Orbán has rewritten the constitution and amended it fifteen times, changed the electoral laws to give his party structural advantages, captured the top layer of the judiciary, occupied the chief prosecutor’s office to protect his cronies and prosecute his enemies, weaponized the tax authority, commandeered the media, installed spy software on the phones of journalists and opposition figures, harassed and restricted the rights of NGOs, revoked the rights of religious communities unwilling to collaborate with his regime, forced the country’s most prestigious university to move to Austria, harassed opposition political parties, denied them resources and spied on them illegally, nationalized and reprivatized banks and businesses to reshape and dominate the economy, steered his country into an alliance with Russia, Hungary’s historic enemy, and enriched his family and friends beyond their wildest dreams.

Given these overwhelming structural advantages, many observers of Hungary—myself included—had concluded that Orbán could never be removed from office through democratic means; that the end of his regime would come through crisis and collapse. The fact that Orbán is not only likely to lose a national election but could easily get creamed is nothing short of utterly amazing.

His kryptonite has proven to be Péter Magyar. A former Fidesz insider, Magyar understands the regime he is fighting against and has proven remarkably adept at anticipating and countering its tactics. Bestowed with seemingly superhuman levels of energy, he has barnstormed the country since he burst on the scene suddenly two years ago, demonstrating that with enough conviction, determination, and will, persuasion is possible even in a soft autocratic regime. And unlike the liberal opposition he replaced, Magyar understands the importance of national symbols and patriotism. This has allowed him to steal Fidesz’s nationalist brand and highlight the regime’s enormous hypocrisy and betrayal of the country.

Neoconomics Uncategorized

ONLY TAX CONSUMPTION:

Consumption Tax on the Horizon (Mitch Daniels, 3/31/26, Law & Liberty)

Those socially conscious Europeans, whatever fiscal messes they have created for themselves, have had no qualms about taxing their whole populations. The primary vehicle is sales taxation, in the form of value-added taxes, which accumulate along a product’s value chain and are ultimately paid by the consumer. VATs extract roughly 9 percent to 10 percent of middle-class incomes across the euro zone and can result in middle-income citizens paying for nearly half of all VAT revenue. Every country in the 38-member Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development except the United States has one.

When the promises of Social Security and Medicare can no longer be kept, millions of Americans will have to be reintroduced to the reality that the lunch is never free.

That’s a major reason the US, frequent misrepresentations to the contrary, has the most progressive tax system among the most developed countries. Here, the top 10 percent pay about 70 percent of US income taxes, and more than half the total US taxes even when payroll taxes are included. The dreaded 1 percent pick up more than a quarter of the entire federal tab.

The tax-to-income ratio is the highest anywhere, and the reason that glib calls to simply tax the rich more can’t come close to solving the country’s biggest domestic (and, increasingly, a national security) problem.

Make it transparent and adjust it to cover expenditures.

Anglospherics

LIBERALISM IS HISTORICAL, NOT IDEOLOGICAL:

Becca Rothfeld’s Fanciful Demands of Liberalism (Peter Berkowitz, March 29, 2026, Real Clear Politics)

For postliberals and postmodern progressives, the fatal flaw in conception and the baleful defect in implementation spring from liberalism’s abandonment of the good life. Liberalism’s focus on freedom and toleration, they say, betrays at best a deplorable indifference to citizens’ well-being, spiritual and material. To counter liberalism’s concentration on the formalities of rights, institutions, and laws, postliberals envisage a government that unabashedly molds citizens’ souls. To correct liberalism’s acceptance in the name of liberty of social and economic inequalities, postmodern progressives want the state to aggressively regulate commerce and industry, redistribute wealth, and allocate benefits and burdens based on group membership. Neither postliberals nor postmodern progressives give much attention to the bleak historical record attesting to government’s woeful lack of competence to care for souls and to centrally plan social and economic life.

Postliberals and postmodern progressives wrongly suppose that by its very nature a limited government devoted to securing political and economic freedom must demote moral and intellectual virtue, subvert community, and repudiate faith. The American founders saw matters differently. For them, a government that safeguards individual rights keeps cultivation of the virtues, care of the soul, and religious obligation where they belong – in the hands of individuals, families, houses of worship, and civil society’s myriad voluntary associations.

Neither Left nor Right can accept that Man is Fallen. They believe putting them in control would perfect us.

You Missed

Deflation

…AND CHEAPER…:

Sex

BIOLOGY IS A STUBBORN THING:

End of History

MORALITY CAN NOT BE DERIVED RATIONALLY:

Identitarianism

WHO’S YOUR DADDY?:

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