Thursday Night Links

• He was at this point the leftist New Statesman correspondent in Paris, in which capacity his finest hour was to commit the almost unprecedented impudence of interrupting General de Gaulle at one of his carefully prepared press conferences. When de Gaulle proclaimed his support of a Europe of fatherlands (“Europe des patries”), he said that he wanted to build the Europe of Dante, Goethe, and Châteaubriand. The young English representative of the New Statesman, under a mighty profusion of unkempt red hair spoke up: “Et de Shakespeare, mon general”—more an assertion than a question. As Paul recalled, the majestic founder of the Free French and of the Fifth Republic, little accustomed to being interrupted, or to being addressed in such comradely terms by the disheveled representative of a leftist British intellectual magazine, said with an epic Gallic shrug, “Oui, aurons Shakespeare” (“Yes, we will have Shakespeare”). Even the most opinionated journalists on the French Left never presumed to interrupt de Gaulle, and Paul was lionized by the Paris press corps. [Conrad Black]
  
• Trump’s movement has been around for a decade now, and in all that time it has built absolutely nothing. There is no Trump Youth League. There are no Trump community centers or neighborhood Trump associations or Trump business clubs. Nor are Trump supporters flocking to traditional religion; Christianity has stopped declining since the pandemic, but both Christian affiliation and church attendance remain well below their levels at the turn of the century. Republicans still have more children than Democrats, but births in red states have fallen too. [Noah Smith]
• Trump’s disapproval ratings are creeping up and economic expectations are headed down, as more and more Americans realize they got a bum deal. But in general, the idea that short-term pain is necessary for long-term economic gain is not always inconceivable. For example, when Paul Volcker raised interest rates and causes two recessions in the early 80s, the resulting conquest of inflation probably paved the way for decades of good economic performance. Trump and his true believers probably really do think that cutting America off from the global economy will cause a bunch of new businesses to sprout up from the ground like mushrooms after a rainstorm, creating mass employment and economic equality and everything good that they dimly remember America having back in the 19th century. But when I say that that possibility can’t be ruled out, I mean it in only the most technical sense. [Noah Smith]
  
• Because again I think when you think about our business with kind of 6% free cash flow yield plus or minus and then 6%-plus growth rates and some of these high IRR acquisitions were kind of a mid-teens returning business. So, it's hard to find asset acquisitions that measure up against what our business is doing right now. So, again that's probably more of what we'll see over the next year. [PrairieSky Royalty Ltd.]
• Trump’s political strategy has never made much sense relative to his stated priorities. From the beginning, his best potential political allies in Congress were the members who leaned libertarian—not because libertarians agree with him on everything (we certainly don’t) but because libertarians are more willing than anyone to support the boldest measures to reshape and reduce government. But from the beginning he made libertarians, including me, his top targets for disparagement and harassment. He tried to blow up the initially libertarian-leaning House Freedom Caucus. His first major effort to oust someone from Congress was Mark Sanford, one of the most libertarian members. We libertarians are the ones who could have helped him slash federal spending, stop the endless wars, and defeat the surveillance state. Even though his actions suggest otherwise, I’m taking him at his word here that these are things he wants to do. Trump’s advocates insist they are, so it’s fair to assess him accordingly. Instead of siding with those who could have helped him, Trump has repeatedly backed, promoted, and endorsed big-government, establishment stooges who privately detest him but playact as admirers. These people keep giving us more spending, more wars, and more unconstitutional surveillance. Now, he’s trying to oust one of the best members of Congress ever, Thomas Massie. Why? Massie has an actual strategy to advance significant parts of Trump’s stated agenda. What has Trump gotten from allying himself with Lindsey Graham & Co. other than more of the status quo? He doesn’t gain by making enemies of libertarians; it only undermines his administration. In these big battles, Trump should instead be putting pressure on members—like those in congressional leadership—who have a long history of enabling waste, fraud, and abuse in government. I hope, for the health and well-being of America, that he rethinks the strategy he’s employed up to now. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s important to say. So much is at stake. [Justin Amash]