On Monday, the State Department released a report entitled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.”

The report alleges that Cuba is the epicenter of communism today, that Fidel Castro is the father of ideological third worldism, and that Cuba is the “connective tissue” between Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran (and Hamas) against the United States.

I find the report hyperbolic. It overstates the real threat of physical invasion and ideological subversion from Cuba. This over-emphasis on foreign threats has a long tradition in American foreign policy, from ironically the Spanish-American War to today.

The greatest threats to the American way of life are right here at home. Cuba doesn’t tax a third of American’s wealth every year. Cuba didn’t lock me in my home in 2020 under penalty of law. Cuba didn’t implement the vaccine mandate. Cuba didn’t pass the Civil Rights Act or pour trillions of dollars into far-left American universities. 

The report misstates the origin of third worldism as well. From the beginning, the communists aimed for planetary revolution by the oppressed. This always had a racial dimension. Ho Chi Minh, for instance, was calling for racial revolution by the “brown” and “yellow” races against their white imperial masters in 1924, decades before the communists took over Cuba. 

Lenin himself called for decolonization. But that also misses the bigger picture: FDR, as President, made anti-racism and decolonization a cornerstone of WWII policy! The US gave meaningful political, military, and economic aid to Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh during the war. 

While I respect much of the work that the Trump administration is doing at the State Department—there are many patriots employed there—it is nonetheless true that an accurate accounting of the rise of the global left must place the United States at the center of that project. 

Had it not been for American aid to the communists in the 1940s there would almost certainly have been no Cold War. Shadowy networks of Cubans are the not the reason the New Deal liberals undid the Constitution, launched a massive global crusade against “oppression” (while aiding the bloodthirsty Marxists in Moscow, Hanoi, and Yenan), and transformed the American way of life in the process. 

The purpose of the State Department’s report is to justify war and regime change in Cuba. This has more to do with the personal priorities of the Cuba lobby—Latin American expats in the United States—than with the real good of the American people. 

As always, I understand that good as the defense of American’s person and property. Every problem caused by Cuban spying and subversion in America can be solved through tougher immigration policies and ordinary law enforcement. 

I will go further, if the United States wants to blunt the potency of communism in Cuba today then we should normalize trade relations immediately. We should also repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966. Higher economic growth will lessen the pressure on Cubans to migrate. This would be good for the US. 

I cover all this and more in this episode of Lippincott Talk.

The ongoing freakout over AI upending society and taking all the jobs is, I believe, rooted in deeply flawed premises about human life. I think these arguments will lead to the justification of tyrannical “expert” rule in the manner of COVID. In this episode I address the essay by Gregory Conti in Compact Magazine entitled “The AI Apocalypse is Already Here.”

The state-granted public utilities in Michigan are a disaster. The legally-enforced formulas the big monopolies—DTE and Consumer’s Energy—use to justify rate increases to the Michigan Public Service Commission do not prioritize maintenance for lines like tree trimming. The result is constant outages during even relatively minor storms. 

The regulatory framework is the problem. It should be abolished. A free market in energy in Michigan would be massively cheaper and more efficient than what we have right now. The enshittification of American life is a choice and one we can resist.

I think we need to put this legal loss in the proper context. Yes, SCOTUS voted to affirm birthright citizenship for illegals but it also was a close decision. Going forward, the most important task is to hone the fundamental argument and maintain a clear vision of what victory looks like.

In my view, we need to return to the core principle of the consent of the governed as the basis of individual citizenship. The test acts and loyalty oaths during the American Revolution provide a good starting point for understanding what this could look like. 

250 years later, it is time to once again save the Republic. Never a better time to start than the present.

I think citizenship should be built on explicit consent. We need to abandon the concept of birthright citizenship entirely.

The text of the coming Iran deal has not been released but I support it regardless. In my view, diplomacy is better than war. Iran getting access to foreign investment is fine. It doesn’t mean we were “defeated” nor does it mean Iran “won.” I don’t think that framing is particularly useful here because the war isn’t that important.

The best thing that could happen is for the conflict to end and relations to go back to normal.

In the latter half of the episode I talk about what loyalty to Trump and MAGA means in practice. I discuss why it is the case so many on the right have lost their minds over the conflict and why I think this is unfortunate.

The pessimists constantly warn of “brittle” supply chains, our “vulnerable” economy, and fears of China’s industrial “dominance.”

In reality, the American economy has never been more resilient than it is right now. The Strait of Hormuz closure has witnessed markets soaring to all time highs and the price of oil mildly spiking before declining. 

This is not what I expected. But three months into the Iran conflict, my view is clarifying: the American economy is very, very resilient. Producers and consumers are far more flexible than I anticipated. 

This doesn’t mean that the Iran War is a good idea. It is not. It does not mean that it hasn’t come at a price. It has. I merely want to make sense of the reality I see around me. 

The COVID lockdowns, Russo-Ukraine War, and now the Iran War have all led to doomers predicting economic collapse, but it hasn’t happened. My conclusion: it is simply the case that the productive forces in the American economy consistently outweigh the parasitic ones. 

Our lives would, of course, be far better, richer, and freer if there were no extractive forces at work. Ironically, however, our very productivity makes this hard to see.

Spanking children is fine. In fact, it is more effective at deterring bad behavior than time-outs, deprivation, or lecturing—the tools of the so-called “gentle parents.”

The simple reality is that every parent who ever physically restrains a child who is out of control, in imminent danger, or to return them to the “time out place” etc. is already using corporal punishment. They are using restraint (which is painful) against the child’s body (corporal comes from the Latin word for body). 

My argument is that it is much better to make the pain a child feels sharp, decisive, and complete rather than diffuse, drawn out, and incomplete.

Spanking is not abusive. It is disciplinary and responsive. Hitting, by contrast, is initiated violence with no or insufficient corrective purpose. Spanking does not aim at harming the child’s body. 

At heart, the core point is that a parent has the right to use corporal discipline in order to protect a child’s body and to ensure the child is raised to reason and freedom. 

For that to happen the parent must give the child needed resources and the child must obey the reason and guidance of the parent. This lasts until maturity and goes no further. 

In this episode, I dive deeper into the topic in a way that I hope will clarify the issues at stake, not only for the family but for society at large.

Forcing members of Congress to vote legislation up or down is the best way for Republicans to make gains among voters. Keeping promises is a good electoral strategy. Trump’s ongoing popularity is a function of his success on immigration and law and order.

Democrats, by contrast, have the opposite problem. The more they implement their agenda, the worse they suffer at the hands of voters. The procedural limitation of the filibuster is a boon to the Left and bad for the Right. It should be abolished.

Property taxes raise the cost of housing for renters, new buyers, and present owners. Local governments that are funded by these levies are some of the most profligate and incompetent government entities in the country. Property taxes should be repealed.