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)

Identitarianism

“HONEY, THE CHICKENS ARE HOME!”:

What Charlie Kirk sowed: He pushed the conspiracism that haunts his death (Richard Hanania, Sep 10 2026, UnHerd)

Tucker Carlson, after all, was a regular guest at TPUSA events. Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for TPUSA, relayed a hadith from the recently murdered Kirk: “Honestly, people telling me not to have Tucker makes me want to have Tucker” at the organization’s conferences. After Kirk’s death, Carlson guest-hosted an episode of the show alongside Neff and Kolvet, who would both later be hounded by conspiracy theorists. This was only two days before Carlson blamed “hummus eaters” for the assassination. Already at that point, Carlson had for years been pushing pro-Kremlin narratives and conspiracy theories like the claim that the Pentagon was operating secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine and the idea that Jan. 6 had been a false flag incited by federal agents.

Then, too, Kirk himself was a key promoter of the most significant political conspiracy theory of our generation: the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump. Unlike the conspiracy involving his own death, the #StoptheSteal nonsense Kirk promoted led to actual political violence and a coup attempt that could have proved catastrophic for US democracy had not a brave few — most notably, then-Vice President Mike Pence — acted against it.

In December 2020, Kirk condemned then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for congratulating Joe Biden on his victory, comparing it to congratulating someone who had just robbed a bank. In the topsy-turvy fantasy world Kirk had created for his followers, Biden had obviously stolen the 2020 election.

Two days before Jan. 6, Kirk announced that Turning Point Action was “honored” to be “sending 80-plus buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president.” This tweet was later deleted. He also told his audience at the time there was “an almost guaranteed way Donald Trump serves four more years.” All it would take was for Pence to refuse to certify the results in the swing states that Trump had lost. As for those who might object on constitutional grounds, Kirk’s answer was to “make them sue.”

When called before the Jan. 6 committee to discuss his role in challenging the 2020 election results, Charlie Kirk invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. And it wasn’t simply election denial; under Kirk, TPUSA events and shows became gathering points for every kind of crank the Right produced, including anti-vaxxers like RFK Jr. In May 2021, TPUSA gave a show to Jack Posobiec, a man best known for having pushed Pizzagate — the theory that Hillary Clinton and her associates operated a child-sex-trafficking ring centered on a Washington, DC, pizza restaurant.

Kirk could at times be just as conspiratorial as Carlson or Owens, with the main difference being that his theories always had a reliable partisan tilt. He claimed that Biden had deliberately allowed the Afghan government to collapse in order to import more Democratic voters. He thus compressed the peaceful transition of power or the closing of a two-decade war into MAGA-friendly conspiracy theories.

Charlie Kirk spread election denial and other kinds of conspiracy theories for the same reasons that Owens and Carlson would later spread conspiracy theories about his death: money, relevance, and playing to the audience. It was only when his family and the remnants of TPUSA became the targets of the forces Kirk had helped unleash, that those left behind began denouncing others for taking advantage of the ignorant and the misinformed.

Uncategorized

hISTORY eNDS EVERYWHERE:

How ‘egalitarian’ Sweden became more comfortable with wealth (Håkan Johansson & Axel Vikström, September 8, 2026, The Conversation)

While for a long time Sweden was a country with some of the world’s highest taxes, this no longer applies to capital taxation. For instance, it no longer has a wealth tax, an inheritance tax or a property tax. The ideal of egalitarianism doesn’t seem to align with patterns of wealth accumulation, especially at the very top. […]


We used Forbes and UN data and found that in 2025 Sweden ranked fourth globally, with 4.7 dollar billionaires per million people. When excluding micro-states (fewer than one million people), Sweden is outnumbered only by Singapore (9.9), Hong Kong (9.1) and Cyprus (7.3), but before Switzerland (4.6) in fifth place. It ranks much higher than some of the world’s largest economies like the US (2.7), Germany (2.1), Canada (2.0) and the UK (0.8).

It is difficult to say for sure whether changes in regulation and wealth concentration have altered cultural norms, but there are clear indicators. Younger generations are now expressing strong materialistic values. When they rank what matters in life, earning money comes second to being with friends and far more important than being with family or getting an education.

Young Swedes and adults alike dream of building a “money machine” by investing in stocks so they can exit the labour market long before retirement. This might be surprising to some, since Sweden has long been shaped by a strong work ethic, both politically and culturally.

Health

MIND CONTROL:

The surprising science of how focusing your attention may fight inflammation (Richard Sima, 9/08/26, Washington Post)

The study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, suggests that our brain and attention may change how our immune system responds to inflammation. When people tried to distract themselves from an itch, it caused the inflammation — as measured by redness and swelling of the skin — to grow larger in size and last longer than if they focused their attention on it.

The research adds to growing evidence that the brain and the immune system — long thought to be relatively separate and distinct from each other — actually have an intimate relationship. Dysfunctional immune activity and inflammation have been linked to several psychiatric and neurological disorders, including schizophrenia, depression, long covid and dementia. In fact, recent research has found that our brains may trigger an immune response even from seeing someone who looks as though they might have an infectious condition.

Long War

YOU GO, GIRL!:

C.I.A. SUBSIDIZED FESTIVAL TRIPS; Hundreds of Students Were Sent to World Gatherings (NY Times, Feb. 21, 1967)


A New York freelance writer disclosed yesterday that the Central Intelligence Agency had supported a foundation that sent hundreds of Americans to World Youth Festivals in Vienna in 1959 and Helsinki, Finland, in 1962.

Gloria Steinem, a 30-year-old graduate of Smith College, said the C.I.A. has been a major source of funds for the foundation, the Independence Research Service, since its formation in 1958. Almost all of the young persons who received aid from the foundation did not know about the relationship with the intelligence agency, Miss Steinem said.

Ironically, she said, many of the students who attended the festivals have been criticized as leftists. The festivals are supposed to be financed by contributions from national student unions, but are, in fact, largely supported by the Soviet Union. Miss Steinem said she had become convinced that American students should participate in the World Youth Festivals after she spent two years in India.

“I came home in 1958 full of idealism and activism, to discover that very little was being done,” she said. “Students were not taken seriously here before the civil rights movement, and private money receded at the mention of a Communist youth festival.”

Miss Steinem said she had talked to some former officers of the National Student Association, who told her C.I.A. money might be available to finance American participation in the seventh postwar festival, scheduled for Vienna in the summer of 1959. The former association officers had had ties with the C.I.A. while serving the association, which last week conceded it had taken money from the intelligence agency since 1952.

“Far from being shocked by this involvement I was happy to find some liberals in government in those days who were far-sighted and cared enough to get Americans of all political views to the festival,” Miss Steinem said.

I’m generally a fan of Robert Harris, but there’s an incredibly silly bit in his thinly veiled Tony Blair novel: The Ghost. [Spoiler alert] The big “scandal” at the heart of the novel is that the former PM’s wife had worked for the CIA . Like that wouldn’t make her even cooler….

One Economy to Rule Them All

WE FILTHY RICH:

Reflections on Americans’ Net Worth (Bryan Caplan, Sep 02, 2026, Bet on It)

  1. Economists have long known that inequality is relatively low for consumption, medium for income, and high for wealth. What they rarely emphasize, however, is how much wealth depends on age. The richest Americans aged 65-69 are worth about 30x as much as the richest Americans aged 18-24.
  2. Net worth is very high in absolute terms. The median is over six figures by the mid-30s. Americans at the 75th percentile are millionaires by their mid-50s. Americans at the 90th percentile are millionaires by around 40. Claims about middle-class, middle-aged Americans who “can’t afford” eggs or gas or beef are nonsense.
  3. The most sensible argument for worrying about trade deficits is that we’re “living beyond our means.” Trade deficits represent borrowing, and we can’t keep borrowing forever. But given Americans’ extraordinary net worth, the most sensible argument for worrying is still senseless. After 50 years of unbroken trade deficits, we’re wealthier than ever.
  4. Americans of staggering net wealth are all around us. If you walk around an American mall on a weekend, you probably cross paths with several decamillionaires. But except for being older, you probably couldn’t pick them out of a crowd. Even their cars rarely scream extreme wealth.
  5. Whatever your complaints about American capitalism, you’ve got to admit that a large share of Americans use the system to become staggeringly wealthy by the time they retire. Not 1% or 5%, but 25%.
  6. Americans with low or negative net wealth are also all around us. But who ever thought otherwise? In my 20s, I had very low net worth, and so did all my friends. And that fact contains a lesson: Almost all low-wealth Americans are young. If you have a regular job and age a couple decades, you’re rarely poor anymore.
  7. If you’re old and your wealth is still low, your financial situation is basically hopeless. You can still be happy, but it would take a miracle (like winning the lottery) for your finances to dramatically improve. Every other American, however, is already rich, or could become rich with durably cautious budgeting. The math behind “Skip a $5 coffee every day from the age of 18, invest the savings in the stock market, and you’ll have hundreds of thousands of extra inflation-adjusted dollars when you retire” is sound.
  8. Earning regular high income is the easiest way to end up with high wealth. But it’s neither necessary nor sufficient. A high-skilled worker who blows his whole paycheck week after week ends up with a net worth of roughly zero. A Costco cashier with a high savings rate ends up a millionaire. That’s not just a freak anecdote. It’s math.
  9. Wealth peaks around age 70, roughly what you’d expect given the permanent income hypothesis. What’s surprising is how slowly wealth declines from this peak! Americans over 80 are still loaded, generally having higher net worth than they had 30 years earlier. And despite this wealth, Social Security checks keep rolling in.
  10. Given their current net wealth, a solid majority of Americans can comfortably retire without Social Security. The federal government could cut them off completely and they’d still do fine. The best rationale for the status quo is paternalism, but most Americans are well-prepared for their futures even ignoring Social Security.
One Economy to Rule Them All

WE COULD USE A CHALLENGE:

The $40 Trillion Question: Can America Turn Debt Into Renewal?: History suggests that fiscal crises need not destroy nations — and America may be uniquely equipped to emerge stronger. (Lewis M. Andrews, September 5, 2026, American Spectator)

But it should also be remembered that a sovereign debt crisis is not a national death sentence. As Ray Dalio, founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, notes in his 2018 study of Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises, there are many cases throughout history when the reforms needed to rescue a fiscally troubled country were not only enacted in time but actually produced significant economic and social improvements.

Fortunately for the U.S., some measures that could help trim federal spending have wide popular support. These include work requirements for Medicaid (estimated to save $32.6 billion per year), tighter screening of all entitlements for fraud ($233 to $521 billion per year), and a 10 percent across-the-board cut to all non-defense and non-entitlement discretionary spending ($73 billion per year).

Many left-wing groups are predictably fighting to preserve these expenditures, accusing reformers of everything from racism to greed. But as it becomes increasingly clear to voters that something must be sacrificed to keep the country solvent, they will clearly back the cuts most already accept.

Equally fortunate for the U.S. is that while its government added $29.8 trillion to the national debt after the financial crisis of 2007, the total value of all the country’s assets, public and private, simultaneously skyrocketed from $195 trillion to $513 trillion. In other words, America is currently worth nearly 13 times what it owes its lenders. Which means its credit is good enough that needed spending reductions can be stretched out to be less painful and even trimmed as an improving economy yields higher tax revenues.

But the country’s biggest advantage going into a financial crisis is that it is a remarkably diverse and technologically sophisticated society, which means that many spending cutbacks, while hard in the short run, will likely surface cheaper and even more beneficial alternatives. Something we read about all the time in business but is by no means unknown in the public sector.

Israel/Palestine

IT’S NOT ABOUT HAMAS:

It’s Not Just the West Bank Settlers. It’s Israel. (Mairav Zonszein, 9/06/26, NY Times)

But the settler militias terrorizing Qusra and other villages across the West Bank could not continue to act as they are without state and military cover. These are not isolated extremists or hooligans, as Mr. Huckabee, Mr. Netanyahu and other leaders have said.

Nor is this simply settler violence. In the West Bank, Palestinians live in daily fear for their lives. Mr. Ridi is not the only homeowner at risk. Even as the U.S. flag waved over his home, there was another settler attack against a different Palestinian home in Qusra on Aug. 29. Israeli settlers arrived in white pickup trucks, their faces masked, throwing stones. Despite a statement by Mr. Netanyahu condemning the act and assuring that authorities would take action, there has been only one reported arrest related to the attacks in Qusra and a handful of arrests related to other settler-based violence in the area. These moves may not result in much: Even when arrests are made, only 3 percent of settlers are convicted.

In other words, what’s happened in Qusra is a feature, not a bug, of Israeli policy, which has expanded and deepened its control over the occupied territory over the last four years. This has been accomplished through intensifying economic strangulation, restrictions on freedom of movement, transferring governing powers from military to civilian control and, most egregiously, the emboldening of settler militias. Such groups already existed when the current government was formed in late 2022. But in the past three years, these militias have been largely given free rein to intimidate, harass and make Palestinian life in the West Bank unbearable. Since 2023, thousands of Palestinians have been displaced by a combination of settler attacks, military operations and restrictions on access and movement. On Sept. 2, Israeli forces demolished homes and structures in the Palestinian village of Khirbet al Tabban in the southern West Bank, rendering the village’s 70 residents homeless.

Folks might have taken the hint when they changed the constitution to declare it an ethnostate.

Sport

NO, THANKS:

Deep in the Grand Canyon, the rain left them nowhere to go: Hikers thought they’d prepared for the reality of a flash flood, but they never imagined that they’d be trapped in the deepest, narrowest part of the canyon. (Brianna Sacks, N. Kirkpatrick and Dylan Moriarty, September 2, 2026, Washington Post)

Buscher, a 40-year-old preschool teacher from Sherwood, Oregon, was on a long-planned trip at the iconic national park with her younger sister and their friend, when a flash flood swept through, killing at least two people. They were among dozens who were rescued throughout the weekend, as walls of water and debris rushed through canyons and down steep terrain.

Buscher, who loves the outdoors and camps frequently, hadn’t done a big adventure since having kids. But game for anything, and wanting to spend time with her younger sister, she agreed to take on the Grand Canyon’s Rim to Rim, a strenuous 24-mile excursion that usually starts on the park’s North Rim. The route drops 6,000 feet over 14.3 miles to the Colorado River and heart of the canyon, then snakes back up the Bright Angel Trail to the South Rim, a nearly 10-mile climb with 4,500 feet of elevation gain.

The Rim to Rim path, part of the Kaibab trail, sits in the center of the Grand Canyon, and was only recently re-opened after a year of repairs after a large wildfire had burned the trailhead.

But about halfway in, a torrent of water rushed toward them, coming up over the trail that was supposed to lead them away from it. The sisters’ friend had disappeared around the corner; the last thing they heard her yell was “You need to hold on to something!”

They thought they’d prepared for the reality of a flash flood, but they never imagined that they’d be trapped in the deepest, narrowest part of the canyon, enclosed in what the National Park Service calls “one of the most notorious sections.”

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