The modern state is often described as an institution that coordinates social life. It provides legal, educational, financial, security, healthcare, and countless other services. The question is not whether these functions exist, but who has the final authority to define, regulate, and enforce them. Agustín Toptschij’s recent analysis of the state begins precisely at this point. He argues that the distinctive problem of the modern state is not merely its size but its claim to be the ultimate source of law.

In an era of chronic federal deficits, monetary inflation, and increasing centralization, states searching for a viable alternative to Washington’s fiscal disorder should examine Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis. While far from a pure free market society, Florida has demonstrated how lower taxation, spending restraint, stronger property rights, and sound money policies can produce economic growth while limiting the burden of government.

When it comes to legendary cluelessness, France’s House of Bourbon and its émigrés had nothing on the current ruling class of America. Twenty-five years after 9/11 it somehow self-righteously declares itself a victim and survivor while simultaneously perpetrating the same type of atrocities (e.g., bombing girls schools in Minab and wedding parties in Sirik) that led to that fateful and horrible day twenty-five years ago when 2,977 Americans, including over 400 first responders, were needlessly killed because of at least 52 previous years of American meddling in the Middle East.

[The Ethics of Social Democracy: Justice Meets Capitalism by Richard D. Miller (Oxford University Press, 2026; xii + 392 pp.)]

Very early in the history of Christianity, within the first and second centuries, there arose one of the greatest philosophical-theological challenges to early Christianity in the form of proto-Gnosticism or Gnosticism. Evidence of Christianity’s interaction with proto-Gnosticism can be seen in the New Testament itself (e.g., Colossians, 1 John, etc.) and also in the ante-Nicene Fathers.

Bond yields are ripping today, with the 10-year climbing above 4.9% and at the highest level since 2007. Meanwhile, the 30-year yield has risen above 5.3 percent, the highest level seen since 2002. 

Daniel Bessner’s Imperialist Realism: Politics and Culture at the End of the American Century begins with a provocative question: Why do Americans find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the American empire?

Rainer Zitelmann has built a career making the case for capitalism against its cultured despisers, and in this book he turns that project skyward. The argument is straightforward and, once stated, almost obvious: space is not primarily a government achievement that private enterprise has recently colonized, it is the other way around. The state involvement of the Cold War—from Sputnik to Apollo—was an historical anomaly.