The modern Thanksgiving, as a truly national holiday, and for that we have the abolitionist Sarah Josepha Hale to thank for not only making Thanksgiving a truly national holiday after the Civil War, but for popularizing the inclusion of cranberries as a traditional part of that meal. One such dish was a cranberry apple pie.
Protests, riots, uprisings, and even revolutions are nothing new. However, a spate of such occurrences have recently erupted throughout the world on the majority of continents. These have two things in common. The first is that involves, quite heavily, protesters of the “Generation Z” or “Zoomers, as the vanguard.
Recently protests in Mexico have morphed into overt unrest and violence, including the breaching of the National Palace in Mexico City, a veritable uprising.
This is also happening in such varied countries as France, Indonesia, and Madagascar. In Nepal, it turned into a successful revolution that overthrew the Prime Minister.
And the other thing they all had in common? It was “麦わらの一味の海賊旗” (Straw Hat Pirates’ Jolly Roger) from the manga/anime “One Piece”.
“One Piece” is a worldwide hit with over half of a billion volumes of the manga sold and over one thousand episodes of the anime. Even in the United States, where manga is not as culturally widespread as elsewhere, it is one of the better known manga/anime with a large fandom. It is a demonstration that cultural boundaries can be readily crossed, and that America isn’t the only country with global cultural influence. It is also a reminder that, as the late Andrew Breitbart noted, politics is downstream from culture, and a common, if not unifying, cultural influence can move countries, if not potentially the world.
News of the Week for November 23rd, 2025
In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
The welfare state has gone back and forth between being seen as a public benefit for the common good and being seen as a wrecker of society. From Newsweek declaring “We are all socialists” under Obama to the Trump administration floating Trump Tariff checks, the welfare state seems on the wax rather than the wane these days, but thirty years ago the Overton window was such that the reform of that Leviathan was discussed, and even the idea that we should privatize the welfare state was debated by Jerry Brown, Rebecca M. Blank, Josh, C. Goodman, Roy Innis, Robert Shrum, Pierre S. Du Pont, Robert L. Woodson, Sharon Daly and William F. Buckley Jr. in part II of a debate.
Until next Friday.
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Born to die; live to win.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Catholic Bishops have openly stood up against a pro-euthanasia bill introduced in Illinois, SB9:
“Catholic bishops across Illinois are urging the faithful to act quickly as a bill that would legalize assisted suicide could soon be sent to the state Senate for a vote.
“The Catholic Conference of Illinois, the public policy voice of the state’s bishops, issued a strong statement urging Catholics to contact their state senators and voice opposition, warning that the bill, Senate Bill 9, threatens the sanctity of human life.
“‘[L]egalizing assisted suicide goes against the Church’s teachings on the sanctity and dignity of human life,’ the bishops said. ‘It undermines the value of each human person, particularly those who are vulnerable.’”
The bill status as of posting is “ Re-referred to Assignments”.
The free market is nothing more than free individuals freely engaging with other free individuals under the rule of law. Adam Smith understood the wisdom of complex and optimized systems arising, which were often far more beneficial to the actual common good via the invisible hand than the direction of a government fist.
James Lindsay explains the folly of the “common good” canard when it comes to the economic “common good”, which is quoted in full below due to the limitations of Twitter/X embeds.
The conventional wisdom, which is wisdom, is that the main reason you don’t want to expand government power is because of how your political opponents (and even enemies) will use those expansions of power. There’s a deeper reason too, though, which Vance’s arguments for big government power aligned to his values can’t touch.
Incentives are in some sense the ultimate rulers of worldly affairs. Warren Buffet’s investing partner, Charlie Munger, in fact, said, “show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome.” The fact is that government does not have the right incentives to be able to do the kinds of things that create and expand prosperity and abundance.
It isn’t just that the private sector produces and the public sector redistributes. In fact, that’s facile. The government COULD (and HAS) own(ed) and run industries, and it has gone some way in solving the problem of “unleashing the productive forces,” as Lenin would have phrased it.
The People’s Republic of China, a Communist state-run command economy running a Fascist-Communist (Stakeholder) hybrid command-economy model, for example, clearly produces and wields its economy for its own national interests. Yeah, they’re super tyrannical too, but maybe it’s worth it, some think?
The real and better argument is deeper and more important. It’s that governments do not have the right incentive structures to produce abundance and prosperity. Period.
The development of scientific techniques of combining cells, chromosomes, and other genetic modifications continues to accelerate and an increasing rate, despite moral concerns to the contrary. Now, scientist have been able to turn skin cells into embryos post-fertilization with sperm.
“Researchers have created human embryos by taking nuclei from ordinary skin cells, placing them into donated eggs, and fertilizing them with sperm. The work is a laboratory demonstration that shows what might eventually be possible for people who cannot produce viable eggs, though substantial scientific hurdles remain.
“The team at Oregon Health & Science University used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, where a skin cell’s nucleus is placed into a donated egg that has had its own genetic material removed. After fertilization with sperm, these reconstructed cells produced embryos that developed for several days.”
This is, however very experimental and there is still much to understand, though some interesting chromosome sorting has been seen:
“When eggs form naturally, matching chromosomes from your mother and father pair up, line up together, and separate in an organized way. One goes to the egg, one gets discarded. It’s precise and orderly. In these reconstructed cells, chromosomes just scattered randomly. Some cells kept both copies of certain chromosomes while completely losing others.
“…
“One chromosome behaved oddly. Chromosome 8 consistently sent the mother’s copy to one location and the father’s copy to another, rather than choosing randomly. Why this happened remains a mystery.
“…
“Single-cell analysis revealed varied chromosome compositions. Some embryos were uniform, with all cells containing the same mix of sperm and skin cell chromosomes. Others were mosaic, with different cells carrying different chromosome combinations. Nearly all embryos contained the complete set of 23 sperm chromosomes”.
The combination of modified designer chromosomes and select sorting thereof without even needing an egg donor opens up the possibility of creating genetically engineered catgirls suitable for domestic adoption via mass production in artificial wombs!
The increased isolationist sentiment in the Republican Party and an open derisioin of “NeoCons” by many within the current Administration, one may think that authoritarian dictators such as Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela would be feeling safer now, to do things like order the arrest of Argentinian President Javier Milei, even when the United States formally recognizes Venezuela’s opposition candidate as the president-elect of Venezuela. But such thinking may turn out to be optimistic on Maduro’s part.
The United States certainly has justifications it can trot out, as thin as a fig leaf some may consider it to be, from refusing to accept Venezuelans deported from the U.S. to the continuing “war on drugs”, even though there are other countries that contribute to one and/or the other far more greatly. Many within the Trump Administration are supporting regime change (to make it great again, assuredly), including Secretary of State Marco Rubio; even Congress is refusing to tell Trump “no”. This is not to say that there aren’t loud voices, like Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who are in opposition or that there are concerns about the United States’ capability for a potentially long war.
American warships are being sent to the area and troops are training in rain forests. A variety of options are open to the United States, including, ironically enough, seizing the Venezuelan oil fields—the apotheosis of the “NeoCon” stereotype.
News of the Week for November 16th, 2025
In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
The welfare state has gone back and forth between being seen as a public benefit for the common good and being seen as a wrecker of society. From Newsweek declaring “We are all socialists” under Obama to the Trump administration floating Trump Tariff checks, the welfare state seems on the wax rather than the wane these days, but thirty years ago the Overton window was such that the reform of that Leviathan was discussed, and even the idea that we should privatize the welfare state was debated by Jerry Brown, Rebecca M. Blank, Joch, C. Goodman, Roy Innis, Robert Shrum, Pierre S. Du Pont, Robert L. Woodson, Sharon Daly and William F. Buckley Jr. in part I of a debate.
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