PUT NOT THY FAITH IN JUDGES: In an awful 7-2 decision today, the Supreme Court failed to uphold one of the most important constraints on executive power and okayed the bizarre funding mechanism of the CFPB (it gets its money on request from the Federal Reserve.) As I said in response, “Sadly, the Court has given the green light to Congress to abrogate its own power of the purse. We can expect future Congresses to come up with ever more inventive ways to allow the executive branch to fund its whims. The only hope for responsible government is for Congress to rediscover its own prerogatives and repeal unusual funding mechanisms for executive agencies that exercise more power over American citizens than the Post Office – starting with the CFPB.” Justices Alito and Gorsuch got the point exactly right in their dissent – there’s a reason England had a Civil War over this question.

MISS AMERICA RUES MISSED OPPORTUNITY: Last year’s Miss America, Grace Marie Stanke, writes on how America needs to invest in nuclear energy.

THE LEFT’S INTELLECTUAL CASE IS CRUMBLING, ONE STUDY AT A TIME: A key piece of the literature supporting ESG policy turns out to be irreplicable, or, to put it another way, bollocks.

BUT IT WILL COME FOR HOLLYWOOD: AI disruption will happen, but it won’t be as quick as many think.

DISSOLUTE OR DISSOLUSION?: Over at Law & Liberty, Helen Dale suggests that the universities might go the same way as England’s monasteries in the 16th century – from massively wealthy institutions to non-existent within a few years. She notes that one of the similarities is that both believed in obviously superstitious nonsense:

Claudine Gay, Elizabeth Magill, and Sally Kornbluth didn’t turn up trying to sell Elise Stefanik a piece of the True Cross or an ampoule of San Gennaro’s blood, but they may as well have. They believe things—as their testimony and behaviour both before and since shows—that are vacuous nonsense, rooted in emotionally incontinent wibble. They’ve adopted a tendentious definition of racism that blinds people to injustices against any group seen as dominant. They’ve divided the world into simplistic categories of oppressors and oppressed, of whites and people of colour, of colonisers and colonised. They’ve concluded discrimination is justified on behalf of the marginalised. They think “my truth” can be substituted for “the truth.”

RTWT.

THE DENATIONALIZATION OF MONEY IN ACTION: Javier Milei in Argentina has got off to a roaring start (see this summary from Tyler Cowen.) One of his more under-the-radar reforms is to allow debts to only be paid in the currency denominated in the contract. Hayek would surely approve.

So Mr Milei in Argentina has done away with the concept of legal tender for his country. Debts now only need to be paid in the currency agreed in the contract.

Henceforth, currencies will compete. Who knows which ones will win – USD, BTC?

But CBDCs will surely lose. pic.twitter.com/yc9jVUf85D

— Andrew Montford (@aDissentient) December 22, 2023

NOT AN OVERSTATEMENT: Thank God for single-use plastic bags.

TANSTAAFL: The UK’s “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme where the government paid half of restaurant-goers meal tickets has been a success by its own lights, coaxing people to go out to eat again and even – mirabile dictu – being the rare example of a temporary government program that actually ended and came in under budget. However, the bill now has to be paid and the government is contemplating doubling corporation tax. Matt Kilcoyne explains why the program worked and how There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

AN AMERICA LAST POLICY: In a new video, my friend and colleague Mario Loyola lays out just how the Jones Act damages American industry and shipping, protects foreign competitors, and needs to be repealed to help in the economic recovery from the pandemic. More detail in Mario’s study on the topic here.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT SOCIALISM: In my interviews about The Socialist Temptation I am frequently asked whether Scandinavian countries are socialist. I cover this in the book, but I have added a few points about AOC’s assertions on the subject here at OpenMarket.

THERE’S A REASON WE CALL IT ALARMISM: In December, The Harris Poll found the thing that worried people the most was climate change. In its new poll it barely registers. The pollster is upset.

NEW FRONTS IN THE CULTURE WAR: If you’ve read The Socialist Temptation and enjoyed it (or are alarmed by it and want to know more about the threats), you might be interested in a new book by rising British star of the right, Marc Sidwell.

In The Long March: How the left won the culture war and what to do about it, Marc looks at the tangled history of the left’s long march through the institutions (see Chapter 38 of The Socialist Temptation,) in which active subversion runs alongside unintended consequences and missed opportunities, to uncover new possibilities for fighting back. Here’s Marc reading the first chapter on the New Culture Forum’s Youtube channel.

LEARNING FROM SWEDEN: But not in the way Bernie seems to believe – Allister Heath compares Sweden’s refusal to lock down compared with Britain’s rush to do so. Registration may be required to read.

THE POLITICS OF ENVY: Dan Mitchell asks what would happen if America introduced a wealth tax. I suspect you know the answer, but Dan has the analysis.

DO YOU PRONOUNCE IT KEYNES OR KEYNES?: Sam Gregg has an excellent review of a new book about John Maynard Keynes and his awful legacy. Key point at the end:

[W]hile good economics and good economic policy are important, they are not enough. The vision-thing matters. Keynes understood the importance of this and, I would argue, comprehensively outmatched his free market opponents in this area. As progressives understand better than most people, if you win the vision game, you likely win everything else. This is the lesson that Keynes offers to market liberals in our time. The bigger question is how many are willing to learn.

This echoes one of the main themes of The Socialist Temptation. RTWT.

THE “S” WORD: As I’ve mentioned before (once or twice), I have a new book out called The Socialist Temptation. Here’s an interview with me about it in The Epoch Times, an excerpt at National Review’s new Capital Matters site, and a webinar on the book with Kevin Williamson.

CANCEL CULTURE IS COMING FOR YOUR PICK-UP: Wall Street Journal news reporter has a close call with a pick-up truck in a parking lot, while another decides they are “deliberately designed to intimidate and kill pedestrians,” and demands (of course) European-style regulations. [Post edited for clarity]

I REJECT YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE MY OWN: There’s a petition at Chapman University to remove the busts of free-market heroes like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Milton Friedman. The only reason given for removing Friedman is that he “inferred [sic] that Free Market Conservatism would solve racism.” Who would they put in their place? “Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Harvey Milk, Nelson Mandela, Princess Diana, John Lewis, Cesar Chavez, James Baldwin and Dolores Huerta.”

MAO-MAO’ED: I have a column up at Townhall on socialism and the current cultural revolution. It echoes many of the points I make in my new book, The Socialist Temptation. I’ll also be appearing on a CEI webinar at noon Eastern tomorrow talking about the book with Kevin Williamson. You can sign up for that here if you’d like.

LIEUTENANT KIJE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Woke academia was heartbroken recently when the ASU LGBTQ Native American Anthropology professor who posted on Twitter as @sciencing_bi supposedly died of COVID, after being forced by her university to teach in person. ASU, however, has been unable to identify any such professor. Questions abound.

CANCELED: Loyola University has removed the name of Flannery O’Connor, the disabled Catholic woman writer of Southern Gothic stories, from a hall named after her because of a petition complaining about “recent letters and postcards” written by her that employed racist language.

Flannery O’Connor died in 1964.

INFLAMMATORY NORWEGIAN VEXILLOLOGY: The owners of a Michigan bed-and-breakfast have removed a flag after receiving hate mail that they were Confederate sympathizers. It was the Norwegian flag.

THE WOKE WAR ON RELIGION: Sam Gregg of the Acton Institute details the actual attacks on places of worship and symbols of Christian and Jewish faith in the Spectator US. This parallels what I say about socialism and religion in The Socialist Temptation.

SOCIALISM AND FAITH – THEY DON’T GET ON: As I mentioned earlier my new book The Socialist Temptation is out today. If you’d like to try before you buy, The Christian Post was kind enough to excerpt a section from the chapter on socialism and the divine. Spoiler alert: socialism doesn’t like religious faith.