December 7, 2025

BASED FRANKLIN:

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

PREY MORALITY:

Posted at 1:37 pm by Ed Driscoll

DAN HANNAN: Not all immigrants are equal.

Minnesota may be the single largest source of funds for the Somali terrorist organization al Shabaab. An investigation by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo of the Manhattan Institute found that schemes established in the state to provide healthcare, children’s services, and food distribution have been subjected to such gargantuan fraud that Minnesotan taxpayers may, in effect, be simultaneously funding several sides in Somalia’s civil war.

This is a reminder that not all cultures are equal. Minnesota‘s political structures were designed for Scandinavians, who are famously industrious, with a high level of social trust that has allowed them to sustain ambitious welfare programs with little abuse.

In the New World, as in the Old, they designed institutions that reflected their character. Minnesota’s Housing Stabilization Services program, which was supposed to provide housing for seniors, disabled people, and drug addicts, is a good example. With its client groups in mind, it was deliberately built to have “low barriers to entry” and “minimal requirements for reimbursement.”

It turns out that Somalis do not respond to such schemes in the way that Swedes do. Instead of simply over-claiming, as your unambitious American fraudster might, locals set up bogus companies to make fictitious claims running into hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of the money went on cars and holidays, but a chunk found its way to al Qaeda-aligned Islamists in Somalia, where remittances from overseas amount to a larger sum than the state budget.

As Kevin Williamson once wrote of Bernie Sanders, “Sanders is particularly taken with the case of Finland, which he holds up as a model of what a long-term commitment to democratic socialism can produce…A critic once asked Milton Friedman what he thought about the fact that Sweden has basically no poverty, and Friedman answered: We don’t have many poor Swedes in America, either.”

But perhaps we do have some in power who failed to project into the future where mass importation might lead:

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

WORSE, THEY ACTIVELY HARM IT:

Posted at 9:34 am by Stephen Green

CHANGE: The Giant Awakes: The Worldwide Left Is Losing Its Grip. “Our future, as (legal) voters catch on to the disaster that is our drift into collectivism, is now no longer a longish line of five -year plans dictated and mismanaged by the leftist elite. Invariably those wet dreams were shown by experience to be almost universally destabilizing, to the point where I have often wondered in my writings if that destabilization was the only goal. The voters, who for the last 100 years or so have been far more conservative than anything either American party has coughed up, recognized the real problem long before those party establishments did.”

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

WATCH ME VIA ZOOM:  You can register here to watch my talk–“Why We Walk on Eggshells”– at Cornell University via Zoom.  The talk–which will be live and in person at Cornell’s Statler Hall in Ithaca, New York–takes place tomorrow–Monday at 5:30 p.m.  If you’re in the area, please come.

I checked out Ithaca’s weather this morning.  The expected low on Monday is just 8 degrees (though the high is expected to be a balmy 25).  I’ve been searching my bureau here in San Diego for a pair of woolen socks.  I’m not sure I’ve owned any since I lived in Chicago in the 1980s.

Posted at 7:44 am by Gail Heriot

OH, YEAH, AND IF YOU MISSED LAST NIGHT’S VERY LATE SHORT:  A Light In Time.

Posted at 7:28 am by Sarah Hoyt

“ELECTED.”

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

FROM BLAKE SMITH:   A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle.

In a kingdom of secrets and silk, one girl must choose between duty and her heart.

Zara has spent eleven blissful years in the sun-drenched kingdom of Garia, where she rides free across a vast grassland, shoots her bow beneath starlit skies, and calls her foster family’s castle home. But when a royal summons arrives, her golden world shatters like spun glass.

Thrust into the cold, formal courts of the East Morlans—a realm of rigid etiquette and deadly politics—Zara must navigate an arranged marriage to a stranger, reconnect with a family she barely remembers, and survive the unforgiving world of noble society.

Gone are the warm winds and open skies of her beloved home. In this land of marble halls and suffocating tradition, every word is measured, every gesture scrutinized, and falling in love might be the most rebellious act of all.

As court intrigue swirls around her and threats close in from every side, Zara must discover who she can trust—and what she’s willing to sacrifice—to reclaim the freedom she left behind in the endless plains of Garia.

Some cages are gilded. Some prisons are palatial. But Zara’s heart belongs to the steppe.

Perfect for fans of court intrigue, swoon-worthy romance, and heroines who fight for their own destiny.

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt