IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:
IT IS THE UNIVERSALISM INHERENT IN LIBERTY…:
Making the case for liberalism: Wooldridge’s polemic draws together the disparate traditions of liberal thought and action (Daniel Johnson, 3/31/26, The Critic)
Yet “liberty”, in the sense of political freedom or a civil right, emerged in the crucible of the 17th century battles between king and parliament. The late Larry Siedentop showed that medieval canon lawyers had already developed the prerequisites of liberalism: the apotheosis of the individual (“Renaissance man”), equality before the law and representative government.
Wooldridge singles out Erasmus, Hobbes and Montesquieu as key figures in the transition to liberalism as a coherent political philosophy. One might hazard the view that Erasmus teaches us to beware of polarisation and intolerance, Hobbes to enforce our implicit contract with the sovereign against both anarchy and tyranny, whilst Montesquieu’s doctrine of the separation of powers guards against the usurpation of the state by an overmighty executive branch, or what Lord Hailsham called “elective dictatorship”.
…that distinguishes the liberal from the Left/Right.
ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:
Faster, and a lot cheaper: First all-electric long haul delivery flags new era in Australia trucking (Giles Parkinson, 30 March 2026, Driven)
The electric trucking company New Energy Transport is claiming the Australian first after organising the delivery of a bulk load of Who Gives A Crap toilet paper from Sydney to Canberra, using an electric prime mover and then a fleet of electric last mile delivery trucks to get the merchandise to the final destination.
According to NET’s Daniel Bleakley the energy costs from the 460 kilometres covered by the Chinese-made Windrose prime mover and the last mile delivery vehicles supplied by logistics group ANC last week were 85 per cent below the cost of a diesel truck.
And it was faster, too. The Windrose electric prime mover (which has a 700 kWh battery) covered the trip from Sydney to Canberra in a single charge. And because it can maintain speed up steep hills – unlike diesel trucks – it completed the trip 25 minutes faster than a diesel truck.
WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:
The Value of Physics for Christian Theology (Chandler Collins, March 11, 2026, Center for Faith & Culture)
It is helpful to think about the relationship between physics and theology in this way: first, through studying the doctrine of creation, we learn about God’s creative activity as revealed in the Scriptures. Additionally, by studying physics, we learn about the specific mechanics and laws governing the creation designed by God. Knowledge of these specific laws is not necessary to a doctrine of creation, but the study of physical theories can deepen our understanding of God’s creation. Contrary to the warfare view of the faith-science relationship, physics is not an enemy or a threat to theology.
BEAUTY IS OBJECTIVE:
Political Philology: J. R. R. Tolkien Against the Leftists (Adam F. Bishop, 2/09/26, Public Discourse)
In Tolkien’s deeply Catholic theology, language is the key element of sub-creation, the artist’s ability to form a Secondary World into which the mind can enter. As Tolkien claims in his 1947 essay “On Fairy-stories,” through the “enchanter’s power” of language, “new form is made; Faërie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator.” This use of language is “a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”
God has bestowed on man a remarkable gift: the ability, through words, to abstract universals from the world around him. Tolkien provides the example of perceiving green grass and recognizing that the greenness can be separated from the grass. The “enchanter’s power” then lies in using those universals in an act of sub-creation, being able to consider these words apart from the physical world and to create Fantasy. Through this gift, we imagine what does not physically exist, calling into our minds and the minds of others “ideal creations” that have “the inner consistency of reality.”
Tolkien holds such a high view of the sub-creative power of language that he states, “The maddest castle that ever came out of a giant’s bag in a wild Gaelic story is not only much less ugly than a robot-factory, it is also (to use a very modern phrase) ‘in a very real sense’ a great deal more real.” The sub-creation of the human word reflects God and His Creation in such a way that Fantasy, insofar as it leads one to God, can be more real than the physical objects around us. The robot factory, being an artifice that exists to produce more artificial constructs, separates man from his sub-creative ability; there is no art in the robot factory, but only brute utilitarianism. In the imaginative realm of Fantasy, the art and the artist signify God. As Tolkien states, “[the Christian] may now … fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation.”
Therefore, language is more than just a tool; it is a way in which man resembles God and participates in truth and reality.
“DEAD ON SNOW”:
The Night the Music Died: Searching for the ghost of Buddy Holly in Clear Lake, Iowa. (Michael Hall, February 2009, Texas Monthly)
The other acts on the Winter Dance Party lineup were Ritchie Valens, a 17-year-old kid from the San Fernando Valley who had had a breakout hit with “Come On, Let’s Go”; the Big Bopper, a 28-year-old deejay from Beaumont who had made a splash that year with a novelty hit, “Chantilly Lace”; Dion and the Belmonts, a quartet of teen singers from New York with a few minor hits (“I Wonder Why” may be the most notable); and Frankie Sardo, an Italian kid from New York with another minor hit, “Fake Out.” Holly would be the top draw. At Christmas he returned to Lubbock to put a new band together. Earlier Holly had befriended and recorded a young deejay and singer named Waylon Jennings. Now he told him to learn how to play the bass; Tommy Allsup would play guitar and Carl Bunch drums.
The tour had no frills. Jennings, Allsup, and Bunch backed up all the stars, who sang through one microphone and whatever primitive public-address system the local promoter had found for the show. Sardo—whom Jennings later called “the worst singer you ever heard in your life”—was on first, then the Bopper, Valens, the Belmonts, and Holly (sometimes the Belmonts played second). There were no set changes; the show was a dance, and the stars played one after the other, the earlier acts doing a handful of songs and the later ones getting more time. Holly played 45 minutes to an hour. He began every performance with the old folk song “Gotta Travel On,” then moved through his hits, as well as “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” which had just been released, and a few covers, such as “Lucille,” “Great Balls of Fire,” and “Salty Dog Blues.” The whole concert was about two hours long.
That winter was brutally cold, and the musicians traveled in a series of cramped, drafty old charter buses that kept breaking down. The first performance was a January 23 show in front of six thousand kids in Milwaukee, where the temperature was 17 below zero. From there the tour crisscrossed between Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. The bands played every night, sometimes driving three or four hundred miles to make shows in tiny towns like Kenosha, Mankato, and Montevideo. After about a week, they were miserable. Valens was sick, and the Bopper was coming down with the flu. There was never any time to do laundry, so besides being cold, the buses began to stink. “We smelled like goats,” Jennings later recalled. On January 30 Holly asked the Fort Dodge, Iowa, promoter about chartering a plane.
SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION:
How the U.S. Constitution protects liberty from the powerful’s dark impulses: In this excerpt from Separation of Powers, Cass Sunstein explains how the U.S. Constitution prevents such a concentration of authority from turning democracy into despotism. (Cass Sunstein, March 5, 2026, Big Think)
On its face, the Constitution aims to forbid the accumulation of all powers in the same hands. Of course, the idea of a king was foremost in the minds of those who fought the American Revolution and devised the founding document. But the separation of powers extends far beyond the rejection of the idea of kings.
Article I, section 1 of the Constitution says this: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Article II, section 1 of the Constitution says this: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Article III, section 1 of the Constitution says this: “The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”
These provisions establish the separation of powers. (So much for Carl Schmidt.) We might want to emphasize the word all in Article I and the word the in Articles II and III. The Constitution seems to contemplate that there is something called the executive power and another called the judicial power, and that they are vested in particular institutions. And if all legislative powers are vested in Congress, then they would seem to be vested nowhere else.
The separation of powers, it is called, but we should immediately be able to see that the term is too broad and undifferentiated. In a way, it is a misnomer. The separation of powers is a they, not an it. It is an umbrella concept, and it seems to include six separations of powers:
The legislature may not exercise the executive power.
The legislature may not exercise the judicial power.
The executive may not exercise the legislative power.
The executive may not exercise the judicial power.
The judiciary may not exercise the legislative power.
The judiciary may not exercise the executive power.
The six separations can be taken to include three sets of prohibitions. There are two things that the legislature cannot do, two things that the executive branch cannot do, and two things that the judiciary cannot do.
IT’S IMPOSSDIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:
Next-generation geothermal power: A commercial readiness assessment (Kenneth Sercy, Jia-Shen Tsai, 3/26/26, Niskanen Center)
With a very large potential market, attractive round-the-clock power generation profile, increased cost competitiveness, and favorable supply chain conditions, NGG is positioned for accelerated growth. However, it faces serious headwinds, including limited large-scale project experience; a lack of capital for project development; broad power-system infrastructure limitations; and challenging regulatory, permitting, and policy environments. Nevertheless, policy reforms could mitigate many of these key risks, creating positive momentum for building more projects and delivering the benefits that come from learning effects.
DONALD WHO?:
Europeans Are Angry at Trump, but Often Forgiving of Americans: A generation ago, foreign fury over the Iraq invasion often blurred into anti-Americanism. Now, some Europeans seem ready to distinguish between the president and the American people. (Jason Horowitz, March 27, 2026, NY Times)
“Trump is beyond the pale,” said Jesús Tello, 75, a conservative voter who diagnosed the U.S. president as a “pathological narcissist” who did not care about the consequences of his actions and only saw enemies. But his dim view of the American president did not, Mr. Tello said, extend to all the Americans who had the “bad luck” of living with Mr. Trump.
“Americans are always welcome,” he said.
This too shall pass.