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)

July 2026

Republican Liberty

CREATED:

Who Is God in the Declaration?: He’s far more than the Supreme Secular Rationalist. (Matthew Spalding, April 27, 2026, Modern Age)

God appears several times in the Declaration. Indeed, the first character introduced in the Declaration’s narrative, before “the present King of Great Britain,” is God. We noted earlier that God exercises legislative power (the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God), executive power (as Creator and divine Providence), and judicial power (Supreme Judge of the world) without being a tyrant. All that is true and makes an important point about the danger of unified power in human hands. But this is a view that considers God in primarily human, political terms.

A more sublime view becomes clear when we consider the appearances of God as they develop throughout the whole document. God first appears by virtue of man’s unaided reason—a traditional understanding of the Laws of Nature—in the form of the general revelation of the natural order. This is the God who makes laws for all things, including men and all peoples. Then God appears as the Creator, not just of nature in general but of man in particular. This is the God whose work “we hold” to be self-evident, and who endows man with certain unalienable rights. God then appears as the Supreme Judge of the world, specifically the judge of man—the only rational being on earth. This God is all-knowing and sees the deepest intentions of each person. And God appears finally as divine Providence. This God doesn’t merely create the world and then leave it alone but continues to intervene in the affairs of men and sometimes changes the course of human events.

And notice the parallel: how the human actors become more personal and particular (moving from “one people,” to a corporate “we” who holds truths, to the specific “Representatives of the united States of America,” to the particular “we” who are the signers) at the same time that the references to the deity become more personal and intimate. The theological references move from a general, distant, and unknown God to the creator and endower of man as a species, to a personal God who knows the lives and innermost thoughts of each man, to the benevolent God who intervenes to protect those who rely on divine providence.

Long War

CHILDREN OF HUME VS DESCARTES’S GET:

Revolutions Worlds Apart: Why America Chose Liberty and France Chose Terror: Both the American and French Revolutions promised “power to the people.” One delivered it; the other descended into bloodshed and chaos. Why? (Lawrence W. Reed, July 1, 2026, Daily Economy)

[I]n the decades leading up to 1776, the American colonies were steeped in the moral and religious currents of the Great Awakening, a Christian revival that emphasized self-examination, personal responsibility, and restraint.

Protestant values of self-improvement through hard work, private enterprise, and thrift helped shape early American development. In France, by contrast, the Revolution elevated men who sought power for the purpose of remaking society itself. That self-indulgent impulse to reshape others at any cost did not take root in early America as it did in France. The United States did not empower men with the apparatus of concentrated, legalized force and then expect them to behave modestly with it. Early America did not entertain the notion that society could be perfected through coercion.

Blessedly, after Hume, the Anglosphere could never be seduced by the false god, Reason.

End of History

THE NEXT PRESIDENT HAS SUCH A REAGANESQUE OPPORTUNITY:

The United States at 250: Renewal Is the Real American Tradition (Roy Swan, 07/03/26, NY Observer)

At 250 years old, the United States of America is the most ambitious brand ever conceived. Like every great institution, it lives or dies by how well it practices what it preaches.

Fifteen years ago, leadership scholars Doug Ready and Emily Truelove called the animating spirit of powerful brands “collective ambition” in a seminal Harvard Business Review article. They captured how great leaders inspire divided people to unify for the common good through a seven-element model that stands the test of time: purpose, vision, promise, values, targets, priorities and the daily behavior of the people who carry the name. What makes great companies great can make great nations greater. Alignment endures. Misalignment rots.

Two hundred and fifty years ago in Philadelphia, imperfect men drafted the blueprint for a more perfect Union. They named a promise: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They invoked Nature’s God. They committed to values worth dying for. They admitted the nation was imperfect on day one, yet expected it to achieve the perfection they could not deliver.

Perfecting is a verb, not an adjective. The Founders trusted us to keep building.

The tragedy of Joe Biden was that he did not have much quarrel with most of Trumpism: Identitarianism, protectionism, state capitalism, etc.

Our next president can renew the promise of the nation by undoing the damage.

Soccer

THE GOAT:

Shep Messing and the 1972 Olympic soccer adventure that turned into tragedy (Michael Lewis, 6 Oct 2015, The Guardian)

A non-conformist who spoke his mind, Messing walked to the beat of his own drum, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

“I had no money, so I hitch-hiked from New York to St Louis,” he said. “I was not told anything by the coaches. I had scrounged up the money for a flight to get back, but I had not money for a hotel room. I was literally sleeping at the airport at the gate. I woke up and picked up a Sunday newspaper and saw that I had made the team.

“From zero to a hundred and then it’s off to qualifying. Concacaf was not really not that much different then, in terms of how difficult it is to play in Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador. Those way games were probably just as difficult as they are today. That qualifying process was long and tough. We had no expectations.”

There was no grand master plan in US soccer back then.

“It is so hard to compare eras and generations for US soccer,” Messing said. “You’re not talking about guys who were playing in a stable, professional league. This was really amateurs. So to go to play at Azteca against Mexico and to Jamaica and Trinidad and the Central American countries, we did not have that body of experience. Our experience was, in my case, Harvard-Yale or Harvard against Columbia. We had no preparation, nothing to prepare. It was brutal. But we didn’t have any pressure. We were a bunch of college bandits.”

Robotics/AI

MAC MAKE BIG MAC:

Generative artificial intelligence creates delicious, sustainable, and nutritious burgers (Vahidullah Tac, Christopher D. Gardner & Ellen Kuhl, 2026, Science of Food)

Using burgers as a model system, the generative AI rediscovers the classic Big Mac without explicit supervision and generates novel burgers optimized for deliciousness, sustainability, or nutrition. Compared to the Big Mac, its delicious burgers score the same or better in overall liking, flavor, and texture in a blinded sensory evaluation conducted in a restaurant setting with 101 participants; its mushroom burger achieves an environmental impact score more than an order of magnitude lower; and its bean burger attains nearly twice the nutritional score. Together, these results establish generative AI as a quantitative framework for learning human taste and navigating complex trade-offs in principled food design.

Soccer

ONLY DONALD…:

The World Cup Is Undressing the Myth of Trump’s American Homogeneity (Andrew Lawrence, 7/02/26, The Guardian)

The same countries that see immigration as an existential threat are bearing witness to a World Cup that makes the opposite plain – underscoring not only the short-sightedness of exclusionary political movements, but the dereliction of leadership within Fifa itself. If the governing body wasn’t so busy kowtowing to authoritarian regimes and fleecing workaday fans, it could be the greatest force for global good since, well, the advent of international flight.

This tournament has proven that soccer, when politics and cultural posturing are set aside, can indeed be the great unifier – turning Japanese fans on to the wonders of chips and salsa, sparking a bromance between the people of Scotland and the city of Boston, and keeping Brazil’s supporter mob in a mood to party with New York Knicks fans. It’s kept the nation’s big box stores and fast food joints humming. At an Oakland watch party for Cape Verde, Jill Tucker – who taught English in the country as a Peace Corps volunteer – was stunned to find one of her old students among the cheering section. Together, the connections are a stark reminder that sharing a flag doesn’t mean sharing a worldview, least of all one imposed from on high.

Therein lies the frustration for this administration: even as it seeks to rewrite the rules on who can and can’t be an American, diversity remains inseparable from national identity. In a country that owes so much of its cultural and economic strength to diversity, equity and inclusion – from Einstein to Oprah – soccer is no different. European and Latin-American newcomers established the game in industrial hubs and mill towns in the US midwest and southeast. Sustained immigration over the better part of a century turned soccer into a national pastime – one with staggering participation, impressive TV ratings and seemingly limitless potential for growth. The fact that US viewership for this year’s World Cup is as robust on Telemundo as it is on Fox speaks to the millions of American soccer fans who have long been comfortable following the game in Spanish.

…could make a World Cup more unifying than the 4th.

Health

ENTIRELY UNSURPRISING:

When It Comes to Back Pain, Maybe You Should be Your Own Doctor (Jake Currie, July 1, 2026, Nautilus)

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Minnesota recruited more than 1,000 adults already suffering from acute or subacute lower back pain that had a moderate to high risk of turning into chronic back pain. They separated the participants into four groups. The first received supported self-management, featuring pain education, exercises, relaxation techniques, and strategies for reframing negative thought patterns (supervised by a physical therapist or chiropractor). The second group got a more hands-on treatment—spinal manipulation therapy from a physical therapist or chiropractor. The third group received both programs, and the fourth received treatments from physicians, which included pain relievers and muscle relaxants.

Interestingly, the supported self-management group reported the most improvement.

Republican Liberty

AUTHORITY DEPENDS ON LIBERTY:

How Britain drove America to independence (Jack Blackburn, July 01 2026, Times uk)

Parliament repealed the Stamp Act and the story might have ended there, but the British government now had a point to prove. It passed the Declaratory Act, which made clear that parliament had the same authority in America as it did in Britain. As far as they were concerned, the principle of parliamentary authority was the cornerstone of the British constitution and needed defending. Meanwhile, revenue still needed to be drummed up. It was not long before these twin objectives reopened the wounds in the Anglo-American relationship.

Our rights as Englishmen required participatory governance and equal treatment under law.

One Economy to Rule Them All

OLD MONEY:

The Mismeasure of Europe’s Economy (Sami Mahroum, 7/01/26, Project Syndicate)

Europe is indeed less productive than the US, and the gap has widened by constant-price measures. But Europe is also richer than it was a decade ago: output per capita has risen, and the European Union’s employment rate reached a record 76.1% in 2025. Moreover, Europe does not feel poorer, since much of its wealth is embodied in its cities, institutions, and reputation.

What has slowed, then, is not wealth accumulation itself but the rate at which it is renewed. Slower renewal, rather than decline, is the defining feature of what might be called a “stock economy,” in contrast to America’s “flow economy.” […]

The productivity gap, in other words, reflects not only varying levels of dynamism but also the extent to which output comes from inherited assets rather than new wealth creation. A study of the economic impact of UNESCO World Heritage designations in Italy found that listed localities experienced faster growth in both resident populations and the share of high-income taxpayers, fueling demand for luxury housing. Strip away those passive legacy rents, and Europe’s dynamic core might look thinner than either Krugman or Aghion acknowledges. Viewed this way, Europe is less an economy in decline than one living comfortably off a remarkable inheritance while struggling to convert it into new growth.

Nowhere is the distinction clearer than in each economy’s signature industries. Europe’s defining global industry is luxury: a stock-based sector in which heritage and reputation become more valuable with time. America’s economic flagships are software and, increasingly, AI, where value depends on pushing the technological frontier.

The limits of the stock economy become apparent when firms try to scale. While Europe is home to more than 35,000 startups and many world-class companies, scaling is fundamentally a flow process. Europe’s capital is abundant but rooted, its talent is embedded in existing institutions, and its markets remain fragmented.

As a result, European savings are largely invested abroad. According to the European Parliament, roughly €300 billion ($343 billion) in savings leave the EU each year, much of it funding American innovation. In his 2024 report on European competitiveness, former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi reached a similar conclusion: Europe struggles to translate its scientific excellence, vast savings, and industrial depth into rapidly scaling firms.

Energy

THAT WAS EASY:

US fusion startup makes history by converting plasma energy directly into electricity (Aman Tripathi, Jul 01, 2026, Interesting Engineering)


An experimental fusion reactor in Madison, Wisconsin, has achieved a technical milestone by converting plasma energy directly into usable electricity for the first time in the private sector. The successful trial used the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror, a research device operated alongside the University of Wisconsin-Madison. […]

Kieran Furlong, the chief executive officer of Realta Fusion, noted that while the concept has long been a subject of theoretical discussion in the industry, this test represents the initial practical application of the method on an operational fusion device by a private firm.

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