#TaxPolicy – “The Biden administration’s $60 billion expansion of the IRS has netted $1 billion in new revenue so far.” We believe in good government and were skeptical of conservative opposition to the Biden administration’s efforts to expand the IRS. It looks like they had a point. Good government matters, and another important principle is that increasing a government body’s budget doesn’t automatically make it more effective–sometimes the opposite. More.

#Life – EPPC’s Ryan Anderson on the changes to the official Republican platform.

#NGOBlob – The tax-exempt economy has become gigantic: it is now $3.3 trillion, more than the GDP of France. This represents a tremendous amount of public subsidy. Is it all well spent? The Tax Foundation has more.

#Homelessness – The great journalist Marvin Olasky, also a fellow at the Diversity Institute, which has an important and welcome homelessness initiative, writes about local efforts to solve homelessness, but through “community first”, and not “housing first.

#DEI – Christopher Rufo is probably the most successful anti-DEI activist in America. As part of this crusade, which has involved American universiteis, he and other reporters have been exposing academic plagiarism and fraud, which turns out to be widespread. It turns out that the plagiarists they have exposed have disproportionately been black women, leading to allegations of “racial profiling.” But, as Rufo points out in City Journal, there is no reason to expect an even distribution of academic dishonesty.

#FinReg – Cato: “The SEC will not settle a regulatory investigation with someone unless that person agrees to never deny the SEC’s accusations. This ‘no-admit-no-deny’ policy has come to be known as the SEC Gag Rule. Since its inception in 1972, this Gag Rule has prohibited hundreds of companies and their employees from denying SEC accusations, under the threat of renewed investigation and prosecution. Merely ‘creating the impression’ that the SEC’s charges lacked merit violates the Gag Rule.” This seems un-American, as well as capricious. However, in Powell v. SEC, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is asked to find the Gag Rule unconstitutional. More.

#AI #Healthcare – AEI’s Scott Gottlieb, one of the smartest healthcare thinkers on the right, has an article in JAMA about how to approach regulation of medical AI.

#ElectionIntegrity – “All 47 Senate Democrats were silent when asked by The Daily Signal whether they support a pending bill to compel proof of citizenship for voters in federal elections.” Stunning. More.

#WomensRights – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: “Texas has successfully blocked Biden’s Department of Education from destroying Title IX protections for women and forcing radical ‘transgender’ ideology on Texas schools. Biden’s rule would have forced our schools to accommodate biological men on women’s sports teams and in female bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms, and required students and teachers to use incorrect pronouns. A federal judge has halted Biden’s rule pending a final ruling. It’s an honor to defend our State from Biden’s unlawful subversion of Title IX.” The various legal battles around the new Title IX rule continue… Via

As per usual, here are your Friday Essays, links to the most interesting essays of the week:

We already highlighted it, and without shame, we’re going to do it again. Oren Cass’s essay this week in the New York Times about American elites’ social and economic disconnection from their fellow citizens is a must-read.

You may have already seen it, but this essay by Philippe Lemoine is the best explainer to read on the current, strange, chaotic, unprecedented political situation in France.

At Esquire, Andrew Schenker explores the sudden revival of the sports novel. “Originally designed for preteen boys, the genre is now enjoying a renaissance with adult readers.”

For Providence Magazine, the astute Micah Meadowcroft writes about Michel Houellebecq and what his prophetic novels teach us about modernity.

Some people look back fondly on the 1990s as a kind of civilizational peak, with peace, broadly-shared prosperity, and relative racial comity. As Katrina Gulliver reminds us in Law & Liberty, however, the Nineties were completely Nutty.

In ways both large and small, the health care system today seems almost designed to undermine attention to the human Other, writes Kyle Karches for Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal.

At Law & Liberty, Dylan Pahman reviews Moderan, a book of science fiction short stories by David R. Bunch, all centered on the future dystopia of Moderan, “where people think they have finally transcended all the flaws of the natural world.” Interesting!

Modern Age has republished online an old essay by none other than Russell Kirk on the “three pillars of order,” as best exemplified by Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, and Adam Smith.

At Chronicles Magazine, Alexander Riley compares and contrasts Christianity and Buddhism, “objectively.” Quite the tall order.

Chart of the Day

China’s exports to the Global South exceed exports to all developed markets, and account for almost all of China’s export growth during the past five years. (Via David P. Goldman)

Meme of the Day