KEY ISSUES IN THE 2026 U.S. MIDTERM ELECTIONS "There are two ways of looking at the midterms, now less than three weeks away." "One is as a simple referendum on the issues and politicians of the day. The other involves a far deeper conflict of visions (as Thomas Sowell puts it): socialism versus capitalism, intrusive versus limited government, and the destruction of time-honored institutions and traditions versus their preservation and renewal." "Rarely in American history have the two parties been so far apart or the choice between them so stark. In brief, Islamist-sympathizing socialism is on the ballot against free-market capitalism and American exceptionalism." — @VDHanson ISSUES: Hanson's analysis of some of the issues involved, ranging from the war with Iran to lawfare makes it required reading. LAWFARE: Democrats plan to devote the next two years to impeaching, investigating, and hounding Trump, his administration, and his family in order to block Republican legislation and paralyze the rest of his presidency. THE IRAN WAR: The Left treats the low-cost U.S. campaign that has degraded Iran’s nuclear, military, and economic infrastructure as a lost war and would withdraw leaving them free to threaten the Gulf states, Israel, with its terrorist proxies.⁠ ENERGY: Democrats have repeatedly blocked oil and gas leases and pipelines while subsidizing costly solar and wind power and have vowed to phase out natural gas, diesel, and gasoline production as quickly as possible, following the path that has damaged the British and German economies. IMMIGRATION: The Left seeks to dismantle border enforcement and the wall so that illegal entries return to Biden-era levels of 10,000-plus per day, because it will not shift to fully legal, merit-based immigration that would cut off a supply of future constituents.⁠ FRAUD: Aggregate federal-program fraud approaches $500 billion a year, with widespread welfare and social-services fraud concentrated in high-benefit blue states where it receives little scrutiny because it helps attract voters.⁠ DEI: The contemporary Left treats race, gender, and sexual preference as essential to identity, so a return to power would nullify legal bans on racial preferences, restore race-based admissions and hiring, and revive demands for reparations against those who never practiced slavery. ISLAMISM: Only a quarter-century after 9/11, the Democratic Party has adopted a philo-Islamist view that treats theocratic Islamism as a legitimate alternative to democratic Israel and Western values, equating Iran with Israel and portraying Hamas as an innocent victim, an alliance whose results are already visible in a burning Paris and earlier in the fall of the Shah. *** Trump's version of economy is a "hybrid", as free market policies are applied to only some areas of the economy —notably energy, but still, Trump's version is far superior to that of the anti-capitalist Democrats.

"The nationalists, at heart, were socialists. The socialists, at heart, were nationalists." — LEONARD PEIKOFF @OminousParallel

“And what did they make of these children?" “Monsters." “Why monsters? “To rule.”

WHY NAZISM WAS SOCIALISM "The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany APPEARED to be left in private hands." "What Ludwig Von Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in NAME only under the Nazis and that the ACTUAL substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the NOMINAL private owners that exercised all of the SUBSTANTIVE powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive." — @GGReisman

Ominous Parallels.