Author: nick

I WANT FREE MINDS AND FREE MARKETS! Help Reason push back with more of the fact-based reporting we do best. Your support means more reporters, more investigations, and more coverage. Make a donation today! No thanks I WANT TO FUND FREE MINDS AND FREE MARKETS Every dollar I give helps to fund more journalists, more videos, and more amazing stories that celebrate liberty. Yes! I want to put my money where your mouth is! Not interested SUPPORT HONEST JOURNALISM So much of the media tries telling you what to think. Support journalism that helps you to think for yourself. I’ll…

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The “end of history,” as Fukuyama should have foreseen, could lead to only one destination: enslavement. Only the colonial arrogance of the West could imagine that others would submit to such a fate. Gaza rubble, 2023-2025. (Jaber Jehad Badwan / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0) By Jonathan CookJonathan-Cook.net I am old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the wave of excitement it unleashed. With the Soviet Union consigned to the history books, the world was going to become a better, safer place. Liberals crowed that the West’s superior, democratic values had won out. Intellectuals like Francis…

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Image by Markus Spiske. The phrase “competitive authoritarianism” has become a common go-to way for liberal and leftish academics, pundits, journalists, and “activists” to foolishly avoid using the scary “F-word” – fascism – to describe the exterminist Trump regime, movement, and party. Here is a summary of the phrase’s meaning and inception from National “Public” Radio’s All Things Considered last month: “Some experts say the United States is no longer a liberal democracy[1], but operating under a system called ‘competitive authoritarianism’… Competitive authoritarian countries have democratic rules and hold competitive elections, but the party in charge uses various tactics to tilt the electoral playing…

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On May 14, 2026, we published an article on RealClearPolitics, “A Call to Arms Against the SEC’s Spy Games,” urging all investing Americans to voice outrage with the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), a creature of powerful, unelected bureaucrats in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who track in real time the trillions of transactions that investors make on U.S. exchanges. Disregarding the absence of any suspicion whatsoever, and rather than fulfill its duty to protect investors, through the CAT, the SEC tramples the civil liberties guaranteed to Americans in the Constitution, grabs power from Congress, and imperils the hard-earned savings…

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June 12, 2026 Eric Draitser CounterPunch explores the upcoming UFC White House spectacle and the Hollywood, DC, and Gulf power brokers at the nexus of US politics, sports and entertainment. Host Eric Draitser welcomes veteran combat sports journalist Nate Wilcox, Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw, to the show to discuss the White House event, the mythology around Trump’s relationship with the UFC and Dana White, the role of Ari Emanuel and TKO Group in monopolizing combat sports and playing all sides of the power structure, the Gulf monarchies and their projection of soft power, the overlap between entertainment, finance, and…

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From Johnny Appleseed to apple cider, apples have long been part of the country’s culinary tradition. No one has ever declared anything “as American as peach pie.” So while no official ranking exists, it’s safe to say that apples are the most patriotic fruit. It is fitting, therefore, that America’s first president, George Washington, made—and presumably consumed—his own apple brandy. Much of the apple brandy found on liquor store shelves today is cheap grape brandy that’s been quickly flavored and in some cases sweetened. But Washington’s apple brandy was an aged, brown, unsweetened spirit distilled directly from apples, almost like…

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They promised to “Drain the Swamp” and end the “Forever Wars,” but from cabinet picks to new military interventions, the MAGA movement has been successfully co-opted by the neoconservative uniparty, with the help of a spineless influencer class that convinced the base to love the boot simply because it was painted red. The official narrative spoon-fed to the masses is that the MAGA movement is a grassroots, anti-establishment rebellion aimed at dismantling the uniparty, ending forever wars, and draining the swamp. We are told day in and day out that the system is terrified of this populist uprising, but when…

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