IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:
THERE IS NO VIABLE ALTERNATIVE TO LIBERALISM:
Postliberalism’s Hungary Gambit Failed (Thomas D. Howes, 4/22/26, Civitas Outlook)
In the debates about postliberalism since Deneen’s book Why Liberalism Failed appeared in 2017, postliberals and their friends (e.g., Kevin Roberts) would that conservatives needed to stop fearing the use of power; some of their close friends in the new right would even echo Carl Schmitt, saying that in politics you need to reward friends and punish enemies; they would ask rhetorically “do you not know what time it is?”; others would dismiss proceduralism as an obstacle to promoting the common good. Among postliberal intellectuals, Adrian Vermeule opposed Madisonian, called for a more powerful and bureaucracy, and said we would be better off; Gladden Pappin bragged about the organizations that were formed to Trump loyalists to fill government positions; Christopher Rufo said these kinds of efforts, which included DOGE (a brainchild of Curtis Yarvin), were an “,” an effort to install a new elite, which echoed the arguments of Patrick Deneen’s book Regime Change. What they learned from Viktor Orbán was that you could decrease the separation of powers and weaken the checks and balances of a government by filling strategic positions with loyalists.
Postliberals also pushed a dubious economic agenda. Power should be used, they argued, to shape the economy; was all the rage, and various forms of right-wing dirigiste strategies were suggested, including 1930s-style corporatism, as it was by Orbán’s employee, Gladden Pappin. Viktor Orbán not only resisted mass immigration (as his replacement, Peter Magyar, does), but he also, they argued, saved Hungarians from the “globalists” who were hollowing out industry with their doctrine of free trade.
So, when Dreher admits Orbán’s loss was about the economy and corruption, postliberal’s conservative critics rightly gasp. Those are precisely the things we warned about—using political power to create advantages for your political party, stifling political speech, rejecting proceduralism for partisan advantage, and misguided economic policies that make countries poorer. The argument was primarily about corruption and poor economic policy. One might argue that more autocratic control is not intrinsically corrupt, but opponents of postliberalism always saw corruption as one of its consequences; and even then, Orban’s autocratic tendencies, his attempts to tip the scales to secure more power for himself and his party, were certainly a good part of what Magyar and his voters opposed.
Postliberals are a minority in American politics, but they punch well above their weight. They are well organized, operate in lockstep, and are loyal to one another—they behave in many ways like the leftists who for decades carried out a strategy of a “long march through the institutions.” Like Joseph de Maistre, one of their intellectual forebears, they believe that social revolutions succeed from the top down, through strategically placed elites. The more transparent their unpopular project, the less successful it will be. They are willing to talk in popular fora about their movement as a populist one, about a fight against the “globalists” and mass immigration, when it is far more about acquiring power for a much less popular social project—this is especially the case for the integralist faction (e.g., Vermeule and Pappin). They want to remove limits on the executive branch’s power, fill the government with loyalists, and form a compliant court, all for someone who shares their comprehensive vision (e.g., Vance).
The fall of the Orbán government not only cut off a huge amount of postliberal funding, but it also exposed their project to further scrutiny. They are leaving Hungary embarrassed and rejected by the Hungarian people. This also leaves them with no political power. Any near-future prospect they have is tied to J.D. Vance, whose power in turn depends on Donald Trump. We have seen many of Vance’s friends already thrown under the bus by Trump, particularly Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. It is unclear whether Trump even likes Vance or will endorse him. The 2028 primaries are a long way away in Trump time.
Donald is going to force JD out and replace him with Marco.
MATERIALISM IS A FAITH:
In the brain, objects seen and imagined follow the same neural path (Jon Hamilton. 4/14/26, NPR: Short Wave)
The result supports earlier studies that used brain imaging to find evidence that the same neural circuits are involved in both seeing and imagining. But technologies like functional MRI can’t show what individual neurons are doing.
DEPARTING THE ANGLOSPHERE:
What Went Wrong in Israel? A Genocide Scholar Examines ‘What Zionism Became’: In his new book, Omer Bartov tracks how a liberatory strand of Zionism transformed into an extremist ideology that he sees as responsible for genocide in Gaza (Aaron Gell, 4/21/26, The Guardian)
Much of What Went Wrong? focuses on what Bartov frames as the original sin of Israel’s founding, the resistance to granting meaningful legal weight to the lofty words contained in the nation’s declaration of independence, coupled with the founders’ subsequent failure to adopt a national constitution and bill of rights. Had Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, pushed for either approach, Bartov argues, the nascent state might well have grown into the kind of liberal democracy it has, however speciously, long proclaimed itself to be.
Despite his condemnation of present-day Israeli society, Bartov does see a narrow path toward the nation’s peaceful coexistence with its neighbors. A section of the book is devoted to the confederation plan championed by a group of Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals called A Land for All – a version of which was originally considered by the United Nations in 1947. Under this scheme, sovereign and independent Palestinian and Jewish states would exist side by side, divided roughly along pre-1967 borders. Citizens of both entities would be allowed to live and travel freely throughout the combined territory, but would vote only in their own national elections – not unlike the way an Italian, for example, can live and work anywhere in the EU while voting in Italy.
Bartov acknowledged that the idea seems far-fetched as corpses are still being dug from the rubble of Gaza and Israel is prosecuting yet another bloody war. But what he sees as the nation’s preference for military confrontation over diplomacy depends entirely on American support, he pointed out, and that patronage is now being tested as never before. As a result of the Gaza genocide, a clear majority of Democratic voters now have a negative view of Israel. More recently, the ill-conceived US-Israeli aggression against Iran has significantly eroded GOP support. “Maga is becoming anti-Israel,” Bartov said, due to “Netanyahu completely leading Trump by the nose into a completely idiotic war”.
Despite some alarming strains of ethnic bias underlying the perception of wealthy and powerful Jewish interests manipulating the US government, pointing out antisemitism has lost effectiveness, in part because the influence of pro-Israel donors on US politics – and Israel’s campaign to convince the US to wage war on Iran – is undeniable. Additionally, the charge of antisemitism has grown hollow, Bartov said, due to its flagrant “weaponization” as “a tool to shut people up” as the state wreaks destruction on its neighbors. “Having claimed to be the definitive answer to antisemitism,” he writes in What Went Wrong?, “Israel is now the best excuse for antisemites everywhere, a nation whose addiction to violence and oppression, reliance on great powers and financial clout, and constant harping on the horrors of the Holocaust as an excuse for untethered violence against Palestinians are making even some of its erstwhile supporters shrink from it in discomfort, or horror and disgust.”
As a result, America’s indulgence of its longstanding Middle East ally may at last be reaching its limits. Should the United States withhold military support – as is advocated by growing numbers of Democratic policymakers – “Israel will have to go through a process of coming to terms with itself,” Bartov predicted. Under such circumstances, the country would have no choice but to pursue diplomacy. Ironically, that might be the so-called Jewish state’s best hope for a peaceful and prosperous future.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
IT’S A HOMOCENTRIC UNIVERSE:
The Pentagon released its UFO videos – so I went to the US to chase aliens. This is what I found
What is behind the surge in ufology? The recent spike can be traced to the top of the US government, which inspired me to start investigating … (Daniel Lavelle, 22 Apr 2026, The Guardian)
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I fantasised about having a Woodward and Bernstein moment on my trip. In a dusty diner in the American south-west, a source would hand me a brown envelope containing indisputable proof of the alien invasion. However, none of the major players in the disclosure movement – those who have been lobbying the government to declassify the UFO evidence – replied to my emails or calls. These include Elizondo and the Blink‑182 frontman Tom DeLonge, who has an entertainment company devoted to uncovering alien life.
The radio silence prompted me to dig a little deeper into the stories of whistleblowers such as Elizondo and Grusch. It didn’t take much excavating to realise that the alien invasion wasn’t all that it seemed. […]
In 2008, Bigelow’s company was the only bidder for a $22m government contract to research the technical aspects of the putative advanced aerospace weapon systems of the programme’s title. It did not mention that it wanted intel on monsters, apparitions, orbs, portals, werewolves or dinosaurs, but that is exactly where the taxpayers’ money went.
Elizondo disputes the Pentagon’s statement that he never led AATIP. In 2021, he filed an official complaint, accusing his former employer of campaigning to discredit him. That year, a book co-authored by Lacatski cataloguing AAWSAP’s research claimed that AATIP was “an unclassified nickname” used for a “completely separate, small” initiative to study UFOs encountered by people in the military.
What is clear is that the full story of Elizondo’s background was not apparent in the initial reports around his whistleblowing. In his 2024 memoir, Imminent, he wrote about possessing psychic powers. He also claimed he had met “remote viewers” – people who believe they can see things that their eyes can’t, sometimes thousands of miles away. Elizondo claimed he managed on one occasion to pay a psychic visit to a jailed terrorist. If these details had been publicly available when he blew the whistle on the Pentagon, his story may not have taken off in the same way.
Elizondo did not respond to my many requests to interview him, but I seized an opportunity to meet him in Washington DC in May 2025, at a UFO hearing he was chairing. The meeting was organised by the UAP Disclosure Fund, “a nonpartisan nonprofit supporting UAP legislation, protecting whistleblowers, and raising public awareness for greater transparency”. We spoke briefly before his opening speech and he promised me time later. I then took my seat and watched him put forward the views he has been sharing for close to a decade: that UFOs are thumbing their noses at physics while posing threats to national security.At one point during the three‑hour-long event, Elizondo held up a photo of what appeared to be a large, white floating disc casting a shadow on what looked like agricultural land. Elizondo described the object as “lenticular” and “anywhere between 600 and 1,000ft in diameter”. Elizondo claimed he received the image from a civilian pilot. However, internet sleuths were quick to point out that Elizondo’s lenticular object was almost certainly two irrigation circles, one white and the other black, creating the illusion of a flying disc.
Seven months earlier, at an event in Philadelphia, he had presented a slide purporting to show a giant light emerging from clouds in Romania. He said it looked like “the mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. The image, which ended up online, was believed by many other observers to show a window reflecting a ceiling light. Indeed, if you look closely, you can see the outline of what appears to be a head of hair, presumably that of the photographer.
Then there were those videos recorded by the US navy. Mick West, a UFO video analyst, deduced that the object of the video that made an officer go: “Oh gosh,” was likely glare from a nearby heat source – probably a jet plane’s exhaust.
YOU CAN’T BE BOTH CHRISTIAN AND MAGA:
Trump, Leo, and the Death of Integralism (Stephen Daisley, April 20, 2026, First Things)
Wait until the quixotic utopianism of the Catholic integralists encounters the final boss of postliberal politics: immigration. While many faithful American integralists will submit to the pope’s instruction, the Catholic Church’s pronouncements on immigration attack concepts as fundamental to Republican politics today as freedom and enterprise were in the Reagan and Bush years.
Even if some accommodation could be reached between Catholic social teaching and either Republican postliberalism or Democratic economic justice, such an arrangement would be agonizingly fragile in a polity where executive power can change every four years and legislative power every two. Orbán’s illiberal democracy, which he has spent the past sixteen years embedding in the institutions and culture of Hungarian national life, looks set to be dissolved by a successor keen to embrace all the European Union diktats Orbán’s ascendancy was predicated on opposing. On how a postliberal order can be developed into a society organized around material and spiritual virtue, integralism has few convincing answers. On how such an order would be maintained against the vicissitudes of democracy, it has no answers.
Integralists will not like hearing it, but there is already a means by which to live faithfully, extol the doctrines of the Church, and contribute to the forging of a common good society. Their old enemy, liberalism, properly understood, gives the Catholic holder of public office the freedom to live a life integrated to the eternal verities and ordered to virtue, while exercising temporal power under the law with ex officio neutrality, and promoting a culture conducive to religious devotion in which the faithful are secure from coercive state secularism. It is an imperfect model, it does not always deliver victory, and its concepts and mechanisms have been directed to un-Christian and anti-Christian ends and will be again. That is all the more reason to fight for the proper understanding and application of liberalism, and thus the right and ability of the faith to flourish in “enemy” territory, rather than taking the political Catholic tradition out of the mainstream and into the coercive, authoritarian fringe.
ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:
The end of oil? As fuel shocks cascade, 53 nations gather to plan a fossil fuel phaseout (The Conversation, April 21, 2026)
US President Donald Trump is a longtime climate denier and oil industry ally, who sums up his own energy policy as “drill, baby, drill”. Yet he is doing more than almost anyone to speed up the global shift from fossil fuels to clean energy and electric vehicles (EVs).
After the US and Israel struck Iran in late February, Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz and triggered the largest disruption of oil supply in history.
Ironically for Trump and his oil industry donors, this crisis may be an irreversible tipping point for clean energy.
Darwinists believe an awful lot of Malthusian nonsense, but their Peak Oil obsession was particulary amusing.
MUCH ADO:
The NYT and the ‘Shadow Papers’: Thoughts on the reporting (Jack Goldsmith, Apr 20, 2026, Executive Function)
[I] simply want to flag what I view as unfortunately tendentious reporting about the memoranda, especially but not exclusively about the Chief Justice.
Without any support in the documents, Kantor and Liptak say the Chief Justice seemed “angry” and “irritated” in the memos and they portray him as an almost bad-faith actor.
I also do not think “the papers show” that the Chief Justice “acted as a bulldozer in pushing to stop Mr. Obama’s plan to address the global climate crisis.” It was the Chief Justice’s responsibility to write the initial memo with his views and his prerogative to note disagreements with others. But he had no power to “bulldoze” anyone into voting any particular way—especially Justice Kennedy, “the court’s ideological fulcrum,” who cast the deciding fifth vote for a reason not offered by the Chief Justice.
Kantor and Liptak frame the order as part of a larger personal battle between the Chief Justice and President Obama, even though the Chief Justice wrote two opinions that saved Obamacare and also voted to uphold a different Obama EPA initiative. (Kantor and Liptak note that the Chief Justice voted to uphold one of the Obamacare cases but say “that was approved by Congress.” But of course the Chief Justice thought the CPP was not authorized by Congress.)
Kantor and Liptak say the Chief Justice “and the other conservative justices have repeatedly empowered the president through their shadow docket rulings” without mentioning the very consequential rulings against Trump on the shadow docket (such as this, this, and this), or the fact that every interim order Trump has won came to the Court preselected by the solicitor general based on likelihood of success.
They mention that the Chief Justice’s legal analysis for the order rested in part on the major questions doctrine that “in the years since . . . has played an increasingly important role in the court’s work.” Since their central message is that the conservative majority led by the Chief Justice is unprincipled and outcome-driven, they might have mentioned that two months ago he wrote an opinion for three conservative justices that invoked major questions to strike down President Trump’s signature tariff policy. (Three liberal justices joined the tariff invalidation but did not rely on the major questions doctrine.)
I also have a hard time understanding why Kantor and Liptak called out and went into biographical detail about the law clerks who worked on and initialed the memos for the Chief Justice and Justice Alito but failed to mention or say anything about the law clerk who apparently initialed the Breyer memo.
YOUR LYIN’ EYES:
How the ‘Moneyball’ Oakland A’s Reinvented Baseball and Beyond: The team showed the sport—and plenty of other businesses—a new way to build a successful team (Jared Diamond, April 16, 2026, WSJ)
Yet for as long as America’s love affair with baseball has lasted, the sport’s practitioners knew shockingly little about how the game was truly played for most of that time. Teams built their rosters while relying on rudimentary statistics like batting average and runs batted in for hitters and win-loss record for pitchers. They deployed strategies like the sacrifice bunt and stolen base with remarkable frequency despite lacking real evidence to justify such usage.
These were simple concepts to understand, but unbeknown to almost everybody for generations, they might have been flawed. Batting average counts every type of hit as equal, even though home runs are clearly worth more than singles. A starter’s record fails to take into account the quality of the teammates around him. Bunting means willingly giving up one of your 27 outs, the most precious resource that exists in the game.
The problem was that until recently, nobody realized that everything they thought they understood about baseball might be wrong.
Analytics removes emotion.