Bakunin Vs. Marx

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Here’s the free PDF outline that goes along with this video! It covers the two thinkers, the criticism, the rebuttal, and some bonus questions for deeper thinking!

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Moving forward, my YouTube videos will come with a PDF outline that covers the key definitions, main concepts, and every question I ask in the video. AND, this specific outline includes two bonus questions for deeper thinking.

Marx Thought This Socialism Was Doomed To Fail (utopian Socialism Outline)

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I am testing out what will one day be a membership-perk, so for now, this is free. You can choose to do whatever you wish with the outline, but my goal is to provide supplemental educational material to deepen your understanding of whatever topic I am discussing and engage your critical thinking.

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While these are all worth considering, one of the strongest arguments against socialism is one based on measurement, and then later expanded to include knowledge. It’s called the Economic Calculation Problem, which argues that even if every person is an honest, brilliant, hardworking person, a fully planned economy still has no reliable way to know whether it’s wasting resources. And Hayek takes it a step further, highlighting even a version of socialism that does have prices doesn’t escape the problem.

In this article, we will be diving into the argument. And then I will be following up this article with counters to the points made here.

Mises: The Number Does Not Exist

The economic calculation problem was first systematically argued by Ludwig von Mises. This criticism was on one hand a response to an observed post-World War I enthusiasm for socialism, and on the other a rebuttal to socialist economist Otto Neurath’s pro-central planning argument. Neurath claimed a central planning committee could run the economy “in kind,” meaning they could measure the economy in physical units rather than money; like tons of steel, hours of labor, acres of land.

Mises disagreed, arguing that under socialism, due to the absence of market exchange, rational pricing of the means of production is impossible. And Mises isn’t talking about the price of bread (consumer-facing items). He is talking about the price of the wheat field, the mill, and the truck; the things used to make the bread, because under socialism, those are the means of production, and they are socially owned.

The Smartest Planner Still Isn’t Smart Enough

To break it down further, let me give you a hypothetical:

Let’s say you are a central planner with perfect Godlike knowledge about how to construct a bridge. You know every technical fact, and you are then presented two methods:

• Method A uses 100 tons of steel and 500 hours of labor

• Method B uses 50 tons of steel and 900 hours of labor.

Which is cheaper?

You cannot answer that because you are missing a conversion rate. How many labor hours is a ton of steel worth? Steel and labor are different kinds of things, so you need some type of conversion to make that comparison. In a market, that number exists as a byproduct of people buying and selling. When you own a ton of steel and someone offers you $700 for it, your decision to sell or refuse reveals something: what that steel is worth to you compared to everything else you could do with it. We then multiply that by millions of transactions and we get a working conversion rate between steel and labor and land and everything else.

If we take away separate ownership, then the steel mill and the railway have the same owner (the state). When steel moves from one to the other, nobody negotiated, nobody could have refused, and no one gave anything up. It’s an internal transfer, not a trade. This is why Mises focuses specifically on ownership, rather than human nature. A single owner has nobody to trade with; therefore, a planner who can’t trade can’t generate the necessary numbers to calculate rationally.

As a result, Mises argues that in a socialist economy with central planning, you don’t have the mechanics of prices to tell the central planners what resources should go where. Do we need steel in the Northeast to build a railway, or in the Southwest to build automobiles? Mises points out that under socialism, rational economic calculation is impossible.

Now, a lot of people respond to this by highlighting that this criticism only applies to a specific kind of socialism: state owned socialism. What about a decentralized socialism that relies on a market with collective ownership such as co-ops, rather than individuals? In this case, we would have separate entities with budgets trading with one another, so suddenly Mises’s criticism loses its strength. That’s where Friedrich Hayek comes in.

Hayek: It’s a Knowledge Problem

Friedrich Hayek goes beyond what Mises argued; he says a big issue of socialism is a lack of knowledge.

According to Hayek, socialism struggles because a functioning economy runs on a kind of knowledge that’s scattered across millions of people, most of it local and circumstantial, and much of it in a form that can’t easily be written down or reported to anyone.

This later became known as the “knowledge problem,” which posits that economic activity relies not only on scientific facts, but also circumstantial knowledge embedded in individuals’ actions, and this knowledge is summarized and communicated across the economic system via prices. And it’s impossible to aggregate this knowledge, because much of it only exists in the doing.

Under capitalism, market prices formed through voluntary exchanges in a system of private property serve as signals of relative scarcity and consumer preferences. This allows for rational allocation of resources across different uses because prices reflect dispersed knowledge about production possibilities, regional needs, technological constraints, individual valuations, and much more.

When something gets scarcer, its price increases, and when it is more abundant, the price decreases. These prices tell businesses a plethora of information without having to blatantly announce it at the beginning of each day. I’ll give two examples to help conceptualize it:

1. If a business sees the prices of something increase, it knows the product is likely scarce. Therefore, the price increase is a signal to either make more of it or, if the business isn’t already in that niche market, to pivot into it. This can be applied vice versa; if a business sees prices decrease, that’s a signal of abundance, and then there’s no reason to flood the market with more of a devalued commodity. Pull back or pivot to something else.

2. But maybe the business isn’t selling the item with the price increase, maybe the business is instead dependent on that item to build something it later sells. Like nails for its cabinets. In this case, the price increase isn’t signaling to “make more of it,” it’s signaling to either increase the price of the cabinets or find a substitute for the nails.

Now we are starting to see how prices act as small parcels of information (knowledge) that give businesses and individuals signals for what to do. That, in turn, creates an ever-dynamic economy that meets the needs of individuals and businesses alike.

What About Market Socialism?

Hayek then uses this foundation to counter the common rebuttal of “what about market socialism?”

Market socialism relies on a market, so there are prices, but the means of production are still collectively owned. Two versions matter here. Hayek was addressing the one proposed by economist Oskar Lange, where a central board sets prices by trial and error and adjusts them as shortages and surpluses appear. But when someone says “market socialism” today, they usually mean worker-owned firms trading with each other, and no board involved. That’s the version I’ll be discussing. And while Mises’s argument loses strength under this pivot, Hayek’s objection does not.

Hayek argues that market socialism still struggles with the knowledge problem for one big reason: fewer independent investments in businesses.

We first have to start with the premise this rests upon, which is that prices don’t reach the future. This is true under capitalism and socialism. Prices are in the present, and while we can use them to try predict the future, they still are not the future. Since this premise exists under both capitalism and socialism, how does Hayek argue this is a market socialist-exclusive issue?

We can answer that question by first asking another question: where does the money to start a business come from?

Somebody has an idea, or a passion, or an interest, and they want to turn it into a reality. Maybe they want to own a bakery and sell their delicious cupcakes with a unique twist on batter they picked up from their grandma’s recipe, or maybe they found a new way to stylize a work planner to maximize efficiency and aesthetic preferences…who knows. It can be anything. But the big thing here is that they need money up front to start their business—money for the building, the equipment, salaries, etc.—long before paying customers appear. So where do they get that money?

Under capitalism, there are a lot of ways to get the money. A bank, a rich uncle, venture capitalists, or your own savings. If one says no, you can try somewhere or someone else. There are thousands of separate pools of money controlled by people and entities who disagree with each other about what’s worth funding.

And the next step’s crucial, because that’s where the big divide between capitalism and socialism occurs. Under capitalism, if an individual or entity invests in a business, they then own a portion of that business. Equity. Under market socialism, that’s impossible, because individuals and entities can’t own the means of production. It wouldn’t be socialism otherwise.

Therefore, the money for starting and expanding businesses must be handled collectively, which usually means public banks or public investment funds that pool the money and make joint decisions on where it goes.

While the businesses themselves still compete, and the bakery can set its own prices, the decision about which new businesses get built, and which existing ones get to grow, runs through a public process. And that’s where Hayek argues the problem comes back. Investment isn’t a question concerning what already exists, it’s a bet on what should exist. Should we build more steel mills, or is steel about to be replaced by something nobody’s invented yet? Should this neighborhood have another bakery, or is there something better to do with the empty store front?

Investing in a business is (hopefully, educated) guesswork, whether it be under socialism or capitalism. But under capitalism, thousands of people or entities are guessing simultaneously, with their own money, and trying out many different ideas. Every guess is a test, and whether the investment fails or succeeds, we garner knowledge from it. Knowledge that didn’t exist before the money moved.

Under market socialism, the guessing, and therefore testing, gets consolidated through public funds and banks. Instead of thousands of people deciding separately, the decisions run through a shared process. As a result, we don’t get the same variety of tests we’d get under capitalism, and it’s the variety that produces knowledge. Hayek points to competition at the investment stage as the differentiator between capitalism and market socialism. This competition, in his view, isn’t just a way of sorting winners from losers; it’s how a society discovers what works.

There Is No Villain

What makes this argument worth understanding, whether you find it convincing or not, is that it doesn’t depend on anyone behaving badly. Mises and Hayek both assumed the planners were honest, brilliant, and trying their best. Their claim was that the information those planners would need either doesn’t exist yet or can’t be collected. It’s a different kind of criticism than what we hear in most social media posts or mainstream news soundbites, and that’s why I wanted to take the chance to thoroughly break it down.

And, while there are counters to these criticisms, I am going to save those for the next article. In the meantime, I would love to read your thoughts on the economic calculation problem. Which of the two do you find more convincing? In addition, now’s your chance to beat me to the punch and provide some counters before I detail them in an article later! I’m excited to read them.

And until next time, stay curious!

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The Real Debate: Negative & Positive Liberty

To really break down the freedom debate that’s simmering under the surface of most political arguments, we need to introduce Russian British philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who’s well known for his discussion of negative and positive liberty. These two words, negative liberty and positive liberty, are the meat of this conversation, and it’s what most people are missing from their vocabulary.

Now, quick note before we move forward, in this article I will be treating the word “liberty” and the word “freedom” similarly. While there are differences when you get into the weeds of it, both the general population and most political philosophers use these terms interchangeably. And, for the sake of this article, the difference is not relevant.

Isaiah Berlin highlighted two different kinds of liberty: negative liberty and positive liberty. Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers, or constraints. Nothing outside of yourself is stopping you from doing what you want. Positive liberty, on the other hand, is the possibility of acting in a way where you have control over your life and can realize your fundamental purposes. Negative liberty is often associated with individual agents, whereas positive liberty is associated with collectives.

To break it down further, I’ll give you some examples. This will also perfectly highlight why these definitions are so contentious.

Let’s start with minimum wage laws. Should we have them or not?

From a negative liberty perspective, a minimum wage restricts the freedom of an employer and employee to freely contract at whatever wage they agree to. In this case, the contracting parties are being coerced by the state, which is dictating a term of voluntary exchange. Here, we have a restriction on liberty. True freedom would mean no minimum wage laws so that the employer and potential employee can negotiate to the fullest extent.

From a positive liberty perspective, a minimum wage law is necessary to reach true freedom, because an individual worker in a loose labor market won’t have the bargaining power to negotiate a living wage. Yes, this worker may have the formal right to negotiate, but that does not mean he or she has the capacity to actually negotiate. In this case, the minimum wage law is reframed as liberty-enabling in that it gives the worker the power to demand a livable wage, thus giving him an income that allows him to exercise freedom elsewhere in his life.

Given how minimum wage laws exist across the United States and in most developed nations, this debate seems a bit moot. So, let’s turn it up a notch and bring in something more contentious: universal healthcare.

From the negative liberty lens, taxation to fund healthcare is a direct restriction on what someone can do with his own money and his own choices. In the most extreme sense, it is a form of theft where the government takes someone’s earned money without his consent and spends it on others.

From the positive liberty lens, someone who can’t afford insulin isn’t free in any meaningful sense. She is one step away from death or bankruptcy, which constrains every other choice she might want to make. Guaranteeing healthcare access is what makes freedom usable, rather than theoretical.

And that’s why defining freedom is so incredibly important. Because at first glance, we are all speaking the same language. But if you dive a bit deeper, you realize that’s not the case. We are completely talking past each other without even knowing it. And it gets worse, because even if you acknowledge the differing definitions, what we are looking at isn’t merely a slight disagreement. In fact, many philosophers argue that negative and positive liberty are rival and incompatible interpretations of the same word. This means the foundation of our political opinions are deeply divided.

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A Path Forward

On the surface, it sounds like we are in deep trouble. And to a degree, we are. If we don’t start educating ourselves in civics, political theory, and philosophy, we are going to continue to talk past each other. And a divided distracted populace is the breeding ground for an abusive government.

But we can fix our situation, and it involves, first, figuring out our own opinion on what freedom means, and second, talking to others about it. Many people or entities want you thinking that those you disagree with are inherently bad actors. That they’re evil, want to destroy your way of life, and don’t care about others. But in reality, most people are genuinely trying to find solutions to problems we all face, and the divergence is rooted in different philosophical foundations, not malice.

What’s important to realize is that both positive and negative liberties have good and bad aspects to them. Positive liberties create a real threat of authoritarianism. Isaiah Berlin himself wrote about the risks of positive liberty, highlighting how the idea of freedom as “self-mastery” or “self-realization” was twisted and distorted by the totalitarian Soviet Union during the Cold War. As for negative liberty—if taken to its extreme, it has no answer for someone who is formally free but starving, and historically it’s been used to tolerate child labor, chattel slavery’s legal architecture, and extreme poverty as the price of non-interference.

If we step back and consider positive and negative liberties unconnected from our deeply held opinions, reality illustrates that the debate is much more complicated than most are comfortable admitting. And maybe the solution here is not to choose one to implement wholesale, but rather to recognize that neither definition is safe to hold alone. That any framework that claims to have fully resolved the tension between these two beliefs is oversimplifying the situation. The harder, less satisfying, but arguably more intellectually honest position is to analyze modern policies against positive and negative liberties, whilst recognizing that perfection will never be reached; trade-offs are necessary concessions made in the pursuit of a just and free society.

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The Gap

If you click on cable news, it’ll tell you what’s going on, but only through the lens of whoever owns the network. Academic journals have the foundational ideas, but they’re written for other academics, wrapped in jargon that functions less like precision and more like a gate keeper.

The result is a massive gap between partisan commentary and high-level academia, and very few people are filling it successfully. I’m a lawyer who became more interested in the philosophy underneath the law than the law itself, and I am working on a solution to this gap.

How to Fill The Gap

Some may argue that filling the gap, in a personal sense, would mean doing more research. Which usually means going online. But they’ll quickly find that once they are online, they’re hit with an onslaught of information with no ability to sift through it all.

In reality, if you try to consume online content without a basic foundational understanding, you will quickly become overwhelmed. This is especially the case because most political content online follows the news cycle, which has a breaking story every twelve hours. It’s almost impossible to keep up with.

But if you step back for a second, you’ll find that most breaking stories follow a pattern that has existed for centuries. By that, I mean that most of the events, most of the debates, and most of the ideas have already happened or have already been discussed. So instead of being jerked around by the 24/7 news cycle, it makes more sense to take a step back and study the foundation of politics. If you do this, you’re equipped to understand what’s actually being debated the next time a breaking news headline hits your phone.

So, what’s the foundation of politics then? Well, it’s philosophy, of course. And the branch most relevant to understanding modern political debates is political theory, which is what we are focusing on.

This Matters Now More Than Ever

Understanding the foundation of modern political debates matters now more than ever in the “information era,” which is quickly turning into the “disinformation era.” What was once the democratization of information via the world wide web, has now become a chaotic mess of opinions, misinformation, propaganda, and occasionally some facts. And while we can all be thankful facts are included on that list, it’s unfortunately increasingly hard to discern truth from falsehoods.

One cannot combat this mess of mis/information by consuming more content. That’s equivalent to drinking from a firehose. The true solution is to educate yourself on the foundational ideas underneath the noise. It’s understanding why people believe what they believe, and why you believe what you believe. The goal is to read a sensationalized headline, pause, and assess the merits of the situation against your political theory knowledge.

Let me give you an example on a very controversial topic. How do you feel about Dobbs overturning Roe v. Wade? According to most political commentators, the question is: should abortion be legal? And while that’s part of the debate, it’s only a small sliver of it.

Because someone who understands political theory would ask:

• Should abortion be a state-determined right?

• How do I think the Constitution should be interpreted?

• Does stare decisis ever enshrine bad law? Is this one of those cases? Why or why not?

• What is a “right?”

And this is my goal for you. To hear a political claim and understand what’s actually being discussed. And then to take this knowledge and engage in educated conversations with those around you. So that we can, collectively, elevate our national political discourse.

The Solution

While I stated a general solution above, I am going to take it one step further. I am going to provide you the solution.

My short-form videos are part of the solution, but I am restricted by the three-minute cap. So, I am announcing my YouTube relaunch, where I’ll be getting into the nitty gritty on some of the most contentious topics of modern times, breaking down the political theory and philosophy essential in understanding politics, and providing educational content that gives you the knowledge to discuss these topics no matter who you’re talking to.

My goal here is not to tell you what to think. It’s to give you the freedom to think for yourself.

My first YouTube video goes live at 2 pm EST today (June 9^th). Subscribe to keep updated on my future videos, which will be coming out every other week.

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Most political debates you witness online aren’t really debates. It’s two people talking past each other using words they’ve never actually defined. Terms like liberal, conservative, libertarian, and leftist get thrown around constantly, often as weapons, by people who can’t explain what those terms mean, what assumptions they rest on, or why a reasonable person might hold them.

So, let’s fix that. Consider this a short course on political ideologies in America, equipping you with the necessary tools to converse within the political realm. And, I am going to finish the article with an opinion I expect some pushback on. But it’s one I hold strongly.

Why Do Ideologies Exist?

The simple answer: they’re useful. The reason why? That’s more interesting.

Human beings are not built to evaluate every single policy question from scratch. Should we raise the minimum wage? Reform immigration? Expand the military? If we genuinely had to reason from first principles on every issue, we’d never leave the house. So, we create ideologies, which are essentially pre-packaged frameworks of values that help us figure out where we stand on new issues quickly. They’re cognitive shortcuts.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done fascinating work on this. His research suggests that our political intuitions usually arrive first via emotions and instincts. We then build our rational justification afterward. This means that political ideologies aren’t primarily logical maps helping us navigate the political world, but are closer to expressions of identity and emotion.

And that’s where things get complicated.

Because once an ideology becomes an identity, it stops being a tool and starts being something you must defend to protect your sense of self. Keep that in mind as we go through these.

Classical Liberalism

Let’s start here, because classical liberalism is one of the ideological grandfathers of the United States, and because it’s probably the most misunderstood term in American politics today.

Classical liberalism emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its intellectual architects include John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. The core idea is straightforward: the individual is the most important unit of society. Individuals have natural rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property. The primary job of the government is to protect those rights without violating them.

Classical liberals are deeply skeptical of concentrated power, whether that’s a king, a church, or a government bureaucracy. They champion free markets, free speech, the rule of law, and a limited government. The underlying conviction is that people, left to their own devices, will generally make better decisions for themselves than any central authority can make for them.

What’s interesting about classical liberalism in today’s landscape is that it doesn’t fit neatly on either side. A classical liberal would be equally skeptical of government overreach coming from the left and the right. Uncomfortable with both economic regulation and social conservatism that tries to legislate personal behavior. It’s a position that resists being weaponized for partisan purposes…which might explain why it isn’t very loud on social media.

Social Liberalism, And How We Got Here

So how did we get from classical liberalism to what Americans now call “liberalism?” This deserves its own article, but I’ll keep it short for now.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, free markets left entirely alone were producing serious consequences — child labor, dangerous working conditions, monopolies, and extreme wealth inequality. Thinkers like John Dewey and Herbert Croly began asking a radical question: if classical liberalism is supposed to protect individual freedom, what good is that freedom to someone who’s unable to access it?

This caused the shift in liberal thinking. True freedom, these thinkers argued, requires more than just the absence of government interference. It requires that people actually have the material conditions to exercise their freedom. These thinkers often point to education, healthcare, a social safety net, and more as the foundation for genuine liberty.

The shift from classical to social liberalism is one of the most important transitions in modern political history, and it’s why the word “liberal” now means something quite different from what it meant 200 years ago.

Social liberals believe in individual rights and an active government role in creating the conditions for people to use those rights. They support regulated markets, social programs, civil rights protections, and a strong public sector. It’s not that they’re anti-market; they just don’t believe markets alone can guarantee a just or free society.

A common criticism here is the redefining of the word “freedom.” If freedom includes the presence of resources, then there’s no principled limit on government expansion because there’s always another material condition someone lacks. This definition change flipped liberal ideology from protecting individuals from the state to making the state the primary vehicle for individual flourishing. Critics view this as dangerous territory.

Social liberals often respond by pointing out they aren’t redefining freedom, but rather being honest about what freedom requires in practice versus in the abstract.

Conservatism

The intellectual father of modern conservatism is usually considered to be Edmund Burke, an 18th-century British statesman who was alarmed by the French Revolution. While he supported freedom, he was deeply skeptical of radical, rapid change. His argument was essentially this: society isn’t a machine you can redesign from scratch using abstract principles. It’s an organic system that has accumulated wisdom over generations. This wisdom is embedded in its institutions, traditions, and customs. When you tear that down to build something new based on an ideological blueprint, you usually get chaos.

At its core, conservatism isn’t really about any specific policy position. It’s a disposition — a preference for gradual change over radical change, for proven institutions over untested experiments, and for order and continuity over disruption.

In the American context, this Burkean skepticism has historically combined with classical liberal economics alongside an emphasis on social and cultural tradition, including religion, family structure, and national identity. This creates an interesting philosophical blend, and American conservatives debate its tensions constantly.

The most common criticism of conservatism targets the appeal to tradition directly: many of the institutions that “survived” only did so because they benefited people already in power. For example, most traditional social structures subordinated women and benefited men, thus supporting the argument that longevity does not equate to legitimacy. Conservatives often acknowledge this and typically respond that their argument is about method, not perseverance for perseverance’s sake. In other words, conservatives want gradual reform using legitimate institutions.

Libertarianism (If Classical Liberalism Were an Extreme Sport)

Libertarianism takes the classical liberal commitment to individual liberty and turns the dial all the way up.

If classical liberals believe in limited government, libertarians believe in very limited government — sometimes barely any at all. The organizing principle is the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP): no one, including the government, has the right to initiate force against another person or their property. You can do whatever you want with your own life, body, and property, as long as you don’t harm anyone else.

In practice, this makes libertarians a genuinely unusual presence in American politics. They tend to support drug legalization, same-sex marriage, and freedom from government surveillance. All positions generally associated with the left. But they also oppose taxes, regulations, and most government programs. All positions generally associated with the right.

The critique leveled at libertarianism mirrors the one leveled at classical liberalism: what does freedom actually mean for someone born into poverty with no access to education or healthcare? Is that person really free? Libertarians typically respond that a truly free market would generate more prosperity and opportunity than government programs ever could.

Leftism

“Leftism” is the broadest umbrella of the group, covering a spectrum that runs from social democrats who want a robust welfare state operating within capitalism, to democratic socialists who want to move beyond capitalism toward collective ownership, to various forms of Marxism and anarchism.

While these traditions are very different in many regards, they all share a structural critique of capitalism. That poverty, racial inequality, and other social failures aren’t primarily the result of individual bad choices or government overreach, but of how economic power is distributed and entrenched in the system itself.

Let’s break down some examples of the ideologies that fall under leftism.

We have social democrats, who align with Scandinavian-style politics or Bernie Sanders, who want to keep capitalism but regulate it heavily. The goal is to redistribute wealth through taxation and build a comprehensive welfare state.

Then we have democratic socialists, who go a step further. They argue that as long as private ownership of the economy remains intact, wealth and political power will always concentrate at the top, and reforms will always be vulnerable to reversal. They push for structural changes in who owns and controls the economy, but they want this to happen through democratic means, not revolution.

The conservative and libertarian critique of leftism is that centralized economic control tends to produce inefficiency, corruption, and the erosion of individual freedom, even if well-intended. Leftists typically respond that historical examples of this involved authoritarian implementations of socialist ideas, not democratic ones.

Why I’m Skeptical of Staking a Claim

Here’s where I expect some disagreement.

I think most people don’t actually fit cleanly into any of these categories. And I think the pressure to pick one and commit to it is making us worse at thinking about politics and communicating with our neighbors.

When I look across these ideologies, I see genuine insights in all of them. The classical liberal is right to worry about concentrated power. The conservative is right that institutions accumulate wisdom and rapid change carries real risks. The libertarian is right that government can cause serious harm in the name of helping people. The social liberal brings up an important question about our definition of freedom. And the leftist points to structural inequalities that markets often don’t solve.

These are all arguments worth discussing.

But when people pick a team, they feel they must adopt the full package while also treating every insight from the other teams as either naïve or malicious. It turns into a sports rivalry rather than an intellectual analysis.

And there’s a psychological term for this. Dan Kahan calls it identity-protective cognition, which is the tendency to unconsciously dismiss evidence that conflicts with the beliefs predominant in your group. Once your ideology fuses with your identity, you stop evaluating information for truth and start evaluating it for tribal alignment. And political ideology, as anyone paying attention knows, is one of the most powerful identity-builders we have.

I’m not arguing that ideologies are useless; understanding them is important. Categories are useful tools. But they must stay tools, not become substitutes for thinking.

The goal should be to use these frameworks as lenses: the libertarian is right about this, the social liberal is right about that, and I’m genuinely uncertain about the rest.

While this means we must live in tension, I believe it is the most intellectually honest way to live. Our constant striving for comfort is leading both to intellectual stagnation and excessive polarization, and I believe it’s our duty to combat both.

So, I’ll leave a couple of questions for you to ponder. Did any of these ideologies resonate with you? And if so, did you notice yourself wanting to dismiss the others?

And do you think it’s possible to engage with politics without an ideological home base? Or should we pick an ideology, but make sure we adhere to it only loosely?

Let me know what you think.

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David Gletty is a retired private detective, author of the book Undercover Nazi, and formerly an FBI confidential human source who infiltrated neo-Nazi and other extremist groups in the late 1990s into the early 2000s.

Mr. Gletty admits to doing “a lot of illegal things to get legal results,” and defends his actions by saying, “[s]ometimes, good people have to do bad things with bad people to keep bad people from doing bad things to good people.” Or, as he puts it more bluntly: “You’ll never go pig hunting without getting mud on you.”

And Mr. Gletty’s opinion is warranted. When it comes to the world of paid informants, morality turns into varying shades of grey. They, and their handlers, exist within an “Ethically Ambiguous Zone.” A zone every American is now aware of due to the DOJ’s recent federal indictment, suggesting that the Southern Poverty Law Center incited the very hate it claimed to combat by paying informants operating within extremist groups.

While this indictment and the following trial are important to understand, we cannot formulate an opinion on it until we assess the underlying ethical dilemma that now sits before us.

And to do that, we need the bigger picture. So, let’s dive in.

The SPLC is Manufacturing Racism?

In the indictment, the DOJ alleges that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC channeled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America, and the Aryan Nations. On April 21, 2026, a Grand Jury returned the indictment charging SPLC with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The indictment also alleges that the SPLC defrauded its donors by claiming it was dismantling extremist groups when it was actually using that donated money to fund said extremist groups.

According to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” FBI Director Kash Patel piled on, stating that “[they] paid the leaders of these very extremist groups - even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes.”

As expected, the internet lit up with activity after this, with many people highlighting the allegation that the SPLC was paying the very organizations it deemed were a danger to society, essentially generating the hate it publicly proclaimed to fight.

The SPLC & FBI Worked Together

The SPLC has a long and impressive history to back its public proclamation of fighting extremist and hate-based organizations.

It was founded in 1971 as a civil rights law firm in Montgomery, Alabama, that focused on fighting poverty, racial discrimination, and the death penalty. In 1979, the SPLC began filing civil lawsuits for monetary damages against the KKK and other similar organizations on behalf of victims. This litigation strategy was so successful that it eventually bankrupted the KKK.

To gather evidence for these civil lawsuits, the SPLC took a page from the FBI’s playbook and began paying informants to infiltrate the KKK, which was a highly secretive organization that had strong ties with local law enforcement, making traditional investigation incredibly difficult.

From the 1970s until 2014, the FBI and SPLC worked together, and information gathered from SPLC informants aided the FBI in a variety of its projects. But, in 2014, under the Obama administration, the FBI scaled back its association after the SPLC’s objectivity was called into question. Then, in 2025, Kash Patel declared the group “unfit for any FBI partnership.”

The SPLC’s Paid Informants Were (allegedly) in Deep

Despite the weakening relationship between the FBI and the SPLC, according to the indictment, the SPLC continued to use paid informants, or, as the indictment called them, field sources (the Fs). According to the indictment, F-37 helped plan the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was paid more than $260,000 between 2015 and 2023. F-6 served the SPLC for 20 years, and made more than 1 million dollars from the SPLC, and F-unknown was the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.

This, of course, drew a lot of criticism. The SPLC is using donor funds to pay the very organizations it claimed to fight? And it isn’t just paying random no-name members to dig up dirt; it was paying individuals relatively high up in organizations associated with atrocious events.

The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Virginia, which F-37 helped plan, had the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen in attendance. It was the rally where a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd, killing one person and injuring 35 others.

In addition, F-unknown was an Imperial Wizard for the United Klans of America, which is linked to the 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing in Alabama that killed four girls, the murder of Viola Liuzzo, and the lynching of Michael Donald.

These allegations made many people accuse the SPLC of generating the very hate it purports to combat.

Entering the Ethically Ambiguous Zone

Here’s where (one of) the ethical dilemmas rears its head.

The SPLC’s interim CEO, Bryan Fair, defended the organization, claiming the payments went to informants to monitor the threat of violence and that the information helped save lives. The discretion around where donor funds went wasn’t due to deception, but rather necessity.

And while we can pontificate on whether he speaks truthfully, I want us to pivot the conversation to something else. I want us to ask: how deep should an informant go to uncover information? Where is the ethical line drawn?

Mr. Gletty lied, cheated, stole, sold drugs, and recorded illegally for the FBI, and he makes no apologies for his actions. He claims his work helped take down drug dealers, rapists, robbers, and deadly terrorists. So why should he apologize? As he said, sometimes good people have to do bad things to protect good people from bad people.

In addition, Mr. Gletty was not a random, unnamed member of the organizations the FBI had him involved in. He was well known in Central Florida as “Gator Gletty” for wrestling with alligators. This fame made it easy for him to cozy up with neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other potential criminals. Given his popularity, the FBI eventually asked him to organize an event in Orlando on behalf of the National Socialist Movement, which was a group founded by another FBI informant. This event rocketed him into infamy after images of him were plastered across newspapers and televisions as the “face of hate.”

So here we are, looking at the FBI, a government entity, employing similar tactics that the SPLC is accused of employing, to infiltrate extremist organizations and combat criminal activity. And on top of this, the FBI has historically worked with the SPLC in this arena; it’s not like the SPLC was doing this under the FBI’s nose. For all intents and purposes, the FBI sanctioned this activity.

So, what gives? Well, let’s dive deeper.

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The Questions Worth Asking

One question we must ask is: Is there a difference between the FBI having paid informants and the SPLC having paid informants?

The FBI operates under a national mission with clear guidelines, whereas the SPLC is a private nonprofit organization that does not have the policies and guidelines the FBI (arguably) has. In addition, the SPLC is not working on behalf of the American public, whereas the FBI is.

That being said…is the FBI following policies and guidelines? According to Mr. Gletty, that might not be the case. Nonetheless, one could argue that there is more transparency with the FBI than with the SPLC. And either way, the question still stands: do we treat the FBI and the SPLC similarly? It’s important to recognize there is a difference between governmental entities and private entities, and that some actions should be held exclusive to the government. Whether paying informants is one of those actions is up to you to decide.

Another question to ask, which is broader, is: Should hidden actors working for institutions shape major events? And to what extent? And if violence occurs, who is held accountable?

This is really the crux of the issue here. We have to determine whether we are comfortable with paid informants being involved in major events, and we need to decide where we draw the line between “acceptable” and “unacceptable.”

Or, alternatively, if we are uncomfortable with the moral ambiguity paired with these decisions, we could trust those in power to know where the line should be drawn.

In the age of the internet, we have unprecedented access to actions done and conversations had that were once behind closed doors. We now must decide what we want to do with the additional information that’s calling into question our moral standing.

And the final question is: Are the charges against the SPLC politically motivated?

It is widely known that the SPLC shifted from traditional civil rights work toward fighting right-wing extremism, and in doing so, expanded its definition of what right-wing extremism is.

The SPLC has placed various mainstream conservative organizations on its “hate map” or “extremist watch list,” including Turning Point USA, PragerU, and Moms for Liberty. In addition, in 2023, a leaked document from the FBI discussed an FBI warning about “radical traditionalist” Catholics posing an extremist threat. Included in the memo was a list of Catholic organizations the SPLC defined as hate groups.

Many conservatives have begun speaking up against this, arguing it is fueling the divide in America and encouraging violence against the right.

Under this backdrop, it’s necessary to consider whether charging the SPLC with allegations of defrauding donors and accusing them of generating the hate they combat is a targeted response to its recent actions against portions of the conservative movement. While we explore our ethical stance on paid informants, it’s worth determining the DOJ’s ethical stance on the matter as well.

I’m Taking Notes

When events like the Grand Jury indictment of the SPLC hit the news, everyone is quick to broadcast their opinion, but few are willing to slow down and assess the situation. To generate a strong and balanced opinion, one must often dive into the history of the topic and those involved, dig through the nuanced angles of the situation, and then compare it against one’s own ethics.

To reach true autonomy, we need to slow down and analyze events rather than basing our opinions on an emotional response. If we don’t, we will continue to be used as pawns in someone else’s game.

I am interested in seeing this case go to trial and weighing the evidence put forth by both the prosecution and the defense. While my opinion may be leaning in one direction, I refuse to stake a claim until I get more information and until I consider my ethical stance on the matter more generally.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic, so feel free to drop a comment.

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Joe Rogan picked up his phone, shot off a text to President Trump about medical research into psychedelics, and got a quick response: “Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let’s do it.” It was “literally that quick,” said Rogan himself.

This was, apparently, the catalyst that led to President Trump enthusiastically signing a psychedelics-related Executive Order in the Oval Office on April 18, 2026, flanked by RFK Jr., American TV star and physician Dr. Oz, retired Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, and Joe Rogan, a podcast host.

The EO makes certain psychedelic drugs more available to treat mental health conditions and directs $50 million in federal funds to make it more accessible. It also directs the FDA to fast-track the review of drugs such as psilocybin and ibogaine, both psychedelics.

As expected, and almost immediately, those on the internet found their battle positions and turned it into a binary political feud. “A podcast host is running drug policy” vs. “the president is giving a voice to the people.”

But this situation brings up a debate that’s been occurring for centuries, one that a journalist and philosopher were at odds over, and one that recently ramped up during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, when many Americans felt at odds with their governmental representatives.

In the wake of this raging debate between the people and the experts, it leads me to wonder what the future of America looks like in this realm, and also ask my readers what they think the path forward looks like.

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Psychedelics Are Bipartisan

But, before we run with the narrative of “Rogan runs the government,” we need to break down what happened leading up to the Saturday Executive Order.

According to Joe Rogan, he texted Trump, got a quick response, and it’s assumed this triggered the resulting Executive Order. While that may sound like policy made in haste, the groundwork for this move predates Rogan significantly.

There is bipartisan congressional support for psychedelic research, and there have been countless studies that have found that various psychedelic drugs improve symptoms of traumatic brain injury, PTSD, depression, and anxiety. In addition, Republican lawmaker Dan Crenshaw has been championing federal psychedelic research for veterans for a while now, and former Texas Governor Rick Perry championed a $50 million ibogaine research law that Governor Greg Abbott signed into place.

So, in other words, Rogan’s interest in psychedelic research is supported by decades of work. And given Rogan’s huge audience, he used himself as the megaphone for an existing movement. Nonetheless, there are examples of the media twisting the situation to seem as if Joe Rogan is running the White House from his Austin-based podcast studio.

That being said, and I want to say this clearly: I do not think the concern for this situation is ill-founded. There is legitimate concern to be discussed here, and it’s why I am writing this article. But there has been a lack of nuance in a lot of the articles and online content I have read, and I think that’s an issue in and of itself worth mentioning.

The Concerns You Need to Know

As hinted above, I do think there is a strong foundation for a few of the concerns mentioned. So, let’s break them down.

Critics have pointed out that the process by which a policy is enacted matters, not just the outcome. In other words, maybe a text message from a podcast host to the President of the United States, which results in an Executive Order within days, isn’t a process we want to normalize in America. Even if the outcome is bipartisan.

There is also a potential political motivation that has alerted critical eyes. Rogan and other conservative podcast hosts have publicly criticized Trump over the Iran war for weeks now, but Trump has reserved his brutal responses to the likes of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, and Megyn Kelly, with Joe Rogan intriguingly absent from the list despite saying things just as harsh.

This observation has been met with a theory that Trump is afraid of Rogan, given Rogan’s endorsement in the 2024 election and his more apolitical audience. Maybe Trump feels he needs to do Rogan a favor or two to keep Rogan’s audience on Trump’s side as the midterms approach. And if that’s the case, do we want a podcast host’s audience to be of such concern that the president issues an EO to keep them in line? Does Rogan have too much power? But on the flip side, how is this any different from celebrities and corporations using their influence to affect domestic politics and policies?

And finally, we must discuss the deeper structural concern, which is simply normalizing something that we may not want to normalize. In this instance, one could argue that the average American agrees with the Executive Order. In addition, we know that Rogan’s opinion was both bipartisan and scientific. But what happens next time a popular podcaster without credentialed expertise shoots Trump a text? A good outcome doesn’t retroactively justify a flawed process.

While these points are interesting and worth considering, we haven’t even arrived at the big debate here. So, let’s move along, because this entire drama brings up a deeper discussion.

The Real Question: Expert Authority vs. Democratic Voice

The tension we are experiencing—who should guide policy, credentialed experts or ordinary citizens—is older than Rogan by about a century and was debated by two men named Walter Lippmann and John Dewey in what’s now known as the Lippmann-Dewey Debate.

Walter Lippmann argued that modern society had grown too complex for ordinary citizens to meaningfully guide policy, and that expert intermediaries were a democratic necessity. More specifically, he worried that public opinion was based on citizens’ mental constructs, termed pseudo-environments, that were molded by the media and stereotypes. (And that’s not an asinine worry if you’ve ever read the comments on some of my Reels, but I digress.) As a result, Lippmann concluded that the public was a poor arbiter of good decision-making and that we must place faith in experts to advise public officials.

John Dewey, while acknowledging Lippmann’s worry as legitimate, strongly disagreed and argued that the solution was reframing democracy. Dewey believed that democracy should not solely be a political system, but rather an interconnected organism where the citizenry can participate; something that is both a form of social cooperation and an ethical ideal. Dewey criticized Lippmann’s worries, concerned that Lippmann’s beliefs would push society towards manufacturing consent by managing public opinion using a technocratic elite. Rather than relying on experts as an intermediary between the public and politicians, Dewey argued for cultivating thoughtful and empowered citizens who worked with politicians through a more direct channel.

And is this not the debate going on right now? Has this not been the prominent debate since 2020? Or, depending on your circle, maybe it’s been a common conversation at the dining room table your entire life.

We have two recognized issues here, and the average person will wholeheartedly acknowledge one while dismissing the other. But reality is always more complex than that, and we need to fight against our instinct to slide into binary thinking in order to find a true solution to what we are currently debating.

The first issue is a credentialism problem. “Trust the experts” sounds reasonable until you examine the expert class’s own track record. An easy yet harrowing example is the opioid crisis, which was signed off on by credentialed professionals at every level. In addition, experts, while learned, can still be manipulated, silenced, bought off, threatened, and so on.

On the flip side, we have a populism problem. Popular reach isn’t a substitute for rigor, and eleven million listeners is not a peer review process. We all struggle with cognitive biases, and when our favorite podcaster is confirming our preconceived beliefs, we are unlikely to fact-check him. A compelling voice with a massive platform can move policy purely based on enthusiasm rather than evidence, and that’s a legitimate risk.

This Isn’t New; Social Media Gives Us a Front Seat

MSNBC brought something up in its article that gave me pause. Here’s the quote:

“In normal, modern administrations, the pipeline flows in the opposite direction. One ordinarily expects to see the White House come up with ideas, at which point presidential aides reach out to allies to help get the word out and advance the message. In 2026, however, it’s become increasingly common to see the reverse: the influencers are helping steer the federal government, including the White House.”

I immediately wondered: has the pipeline actually reversed, or is it that the pipeline is finally transparent?

Let’s take a walk through history to answer this question.

Did you know that Ronald Reagan had an astrologist on retainer whom he consulted with to aid in his actions while in the White House? It’s debated how much sway the astrologist had, with some saying she simply helped set dates and times for summit meetings, presidential debates, and other events so there was proper astrological alignment. But Reagan’s former Chief of Staff, Donald Regan, didn’t mince words about it:

“Virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House Chief of Staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favorable alignment for the enterprise.”

This statement was supported by the astrologist herself, who said she played a key role in getting Reagan to open negotiations with the Soviet Union.

What?

Yes, you read that right.

And it doesn’t stop there; I’ll give you another example.

Bono, from U2, lobbied the Clinton administration to secure $435 million in debt relief for the developing world. And when a lawmaker pushed back and tried to make a deal for a $200 million debt relief, Bono responded with a threat:

“If ‘certain people’ fight it, tell them U2 will come to their districts, get 50,000 kids in a stadium and put their photo on 30-ft. screens with the caption, ‘This guy killed African women and children.’”

Bono’s lobbying was successful; the Clinton administration did exactly as he asked, and, in Clinton’s speech, he gave multiple shoutouts to Bono.

If that’s not a celebrity using their power to directly influence policy, including threatening politicians, then I don’t know what is.

That being said, it’s important to note there are some differences between the Bono situation and the Rogan situation. Bono spent a lot of time lobbying the government; it was not a simple text to the president.

Nonetheless, this makes me wonder if the pipeline has truly reversed, or if, thanks to social media, we are just seeing the pipeline for what it always has been. While experts are consulted, non-experts with money and star power are equally influential.

What We Should Be Asking

The outrage at Rogan sidesteps the harder civic question we all need to be asking: what should the relationship between popular voices and policy look like in a republic?

As you may have guessed, if you are familiar with my work, I lean towards Dewey’s argument. My content aims to educate the masses and give us citizens the power to make informed decisions. That being said, Dewey himself found Lippmann’s concern to be legitimate, and so do I. There has been an erosion of trust in experts across this country, and I suspect the answer isn’t choosing between Lippmann and Dewey—it’s doing the hard work of building citizens educated enough to tell the difference between a credentialed fool and an informed outsider.

So, I’ll leave you with one remaining question: Is a podcaster texting the president to pass policy further democratizing the political process, handing the wheel to a public that Lippmann warned us about, or creating a new form of elite influence by a different name?

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Three research papers published in the last year shattered the fragile illusion of security that every nation-state, business, governmental organization, and person relied on to feel safe.

When someone mentions “quantum computing,” the average person checks out (I know I used to). That’s something for the big-brained people to deal with. I’m not a mathematician; how is this relevant to me in any way?

But quantum computing is relevant to you. It’s relevant to our national security, to the safety of your business, the protection of your bank, and your individual liberties. And once you understand the risk, you’ll wonder why nobody is talking about it.

In this article, we are going to do a brief introduction to quantum computing, what the three research papers changed, why it matters at the national level, and why it matters to you personally.

The Technology Behind the Threat

What is quantum computing?

To put it simply, quantum computing is a type of computing that uses quantum mechanics to process information. When compared to classical computers, like what you may be reading this on right now, it can solve certain complex problems exponentially faster. The creation of quantum computing means a lot of different things, but in relation to encryption, it means something very dangerous.

Okay, so what’s encryption?

Encryption is the process of converting readable data into an unreadable format using algorithms and keys. The goal is to ensure only authorized parties can decode it. It’s often what keeps your digital information private when it is stored or during transmission.

So, do you use Signal to communicate? It uses encryption to keep your messages secure. Do you do online banking? The bank uses encryption to make sure all your stored information is private.

How does quantum computing threaten encryption?

Well, it all goes back to 1994, when a man named Peter Shor created an algorithm (Shor’s Algorithm) that breaks the mathematical foundation of the public-key encryption protecting most internet communications. Sounds like a security risk, right? Except that running this algorithm required a machine that nobody could build. So, in 1994, this was a future issue. But now it’s the future, and we must deal with it.

This is where the three research papers come in. Previously, it took an insurmountable amount of time, money, and energy to break standard encryption. Specifically, it was estimated that 20 million qubits were needed to break standard encryption. A qubit is a basic unit of quantum information, and unlike a classical computer bit, which is either a 0 or a 1, a qubit can be both at the same time, which is what gives quantum computers the ability to process certain problems exponentially faster. At the time of the 20 million qubits finding, nobody was even close to hitting that number.

To put this into perspective, Caltech set a record when it created a 6,100-qubit system—a critical step towards a functional quantum computer, though full computation requires additional steps Caltech has not reached.

Let’s pause for a second to make sure this solidifies. We needed 20 million qubits to break standard encryption, and we have only created a 6,100-qubit system so far. Now you see how far off we were. To turn this into years, experts predicted that we were roughly 15-30 years away from breaking standard encryption.

But that all changed in the last year when three separate research papers found they could create new algorithms that dramatically reduced the number of qubits needed to break standard encryption. The most startling paper estimates that breaking RSA-2048, a widely used encryption method, could be achieved in under a week using fewer than one million qubits. Another paper posits it would only take 100,000 qubits, but this would require a different and more complex architecture that has not been demonstrated on physical hardware yet—only in simulation. As a result, the one-million-qubit paper is a more technically sound finding.

The result of this is that we have decreased the time, energy, and resources by so much that resource-strong nation states and big tech companies are now within striking distance of creating a quantum computer that could decrypt standard encryption.

And what’s even more dangerous is the fact that even though we have not reached the 1 million qubit threshold yet, all data protected by encryption is at risk right now because of a practice coined “harvest now, decrypt later,” where actors can harvest your encrypted data now and keep it stored until they create a quantum computer to decrypt it.

So, this is not a future issue; this is a current issue.

China, the U.S., and a Lesser-known Arms Race

China has been openly investing in quantum computing for some time now and is widely believed to already be operating harvest now, decrypt later strategies against U.S. data. This has become a national security problem for the U.S., because government databases and classified communications that intelligence agencies have been using for decades are now prime targets. And, just to reiterate, it doesn’t matter that China can’t decrypt the data now; all they have to do is access it and store it for a later date.

Thankfully, the U.S. understands that this is a grave risk and has taken multiple steps towards protecting its data. For example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a U.S. agency that is leading a coordinated global effort to prepare for this risk to encryption. In 2024, after an eight-year evaluation process, it finalized its first post-quantum cryptography standards. Among other things, NIST recommends governmental bodies transfer all their data to quantum-safe security systems (which exist, thankfully).

The issue is, they need to do this ASAP, because the race isn’t against a quantum computer that can decrypt, it’s against the harvesting of our encrypted data. So, while agencies, executive orders, and legislation addressing this threat and providing instructions and requirements for combating it are fine and dandy, we know entities are notoriously slow-moving. Especially if they don’t perceive the risk as particularly great. With something as complex and unsexy as quantum computing and encryption, I fear preventative action will remain on the back burner.

And that’s just in relation to governmental entities. What about small businesses, hospitals, local governments, and consumer apps? Because, as I said, this is more than a national security risk—it’s also a risk to your liberties. And the threat to your liberties isn’t only coming from foreign adversaries…it’s coming from your own government via a sneaky piece of legislation passed in 2008.

The Threat From Your Own Government

So, we’ve talked about foreign adversaries practicing harvest now, decrypt later, and we’ve discussed nation-states racing to build a quantum computer, but that’s not where the threat ends.

One would want to assume that if the United States had quantum computing capabilities to decrypt encryption, it wouldn’t use it on us. That this quantum arms race is between nation-states, and if the U.S. were to win, we’d be safe. But I fear that’s not true.

In 2008, the U.S. government passed the FISA Amendments Act, which added Section 702 to an existing surveillance law—and it is Section 702 that puts our liberties at risk.

Section 702 allows the government to conduct mass, warrantless surveillance of foreigners’ online communications if it believes they possess “foreign intelligence information”—a purposefully broad term, and one that does not have to include national security issues.

Where this overlaps with U.S. citizens is that if you are in contact with a foreigner abroad, and the U.S. government considers those communications “foreign intelligence information,” then your communications and information are swept up in that collection. And once collected, it’s all stored in a database for years at a time, where FBI and NSA officials routinely search through this information. These searches are called “backdoor searches,” and guess what? The information they find can be used to prosecute and imprison you, even for crimes that have nothing to do with national security or the initial “foreign intelligence information.”

This was all implemented under the guise of counterterrorism and keeping Americans safe, except that it has repeatedly been abused to surveil activists, government critics, and minority communities. For example, the FBI used Section 702 to conduct warrantless searches on Black Lives Matter protesters, January 6 suspects, journalists, members of Congress, and 19,000 political donors.

In addition, there were 3.4 million warrantless searches of Americans’ data by the FBI in 2021, 278,000 FBI searches violated their permissive internal rules in a single year, and testimony from the Brennan Center’s Elizabeth Goitein confirmed at a congressional hearing that anyone with an email account or cell phone is potentially vulnerable to backdoor searches.

Following public outcry, the FBI voluntarily reduced these searches, but the legal authority to conduct them was never removed. To make matters worse, these actions are not subject to meaningful judicial oversight or independent review. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court does not review the government’s individual targets, but rather reviews broad procedures, attempts to minimize the information about Americans that is collected, and signs off on them. Then, in 2025, President Trump fired the Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), the independent body specifically designed to provide oversight of surveillance programs, including Section 702, and left the board with one part-time member.

So, what does this have to do with quantum computing and encryption?

Well, I am glad you asked, because it has a lot to do with quantum computing and encryption.

A significant portion of the NSA’s interception and searching of Americans’ international Internet communications involves what’s called “Upstream surveillance” (shoutout to Edward Snowden for this revelation). And according to the ACLU, if you email friends abroad, message family members internationally, or even browse websites hosted outside of the U.S., the NSA “has most certainly searched through the contents of your communications.”

The government mass copies and content-searches Americans’ international Internet communications while those communications are in transit. The transmission of these communications, and this surveillance, occurs on what’s called the Internet “backbone,” which is a network of high-capacity cables, switches, and routers that carry Internet communications.

In addition, the NSA is not just looking for communications between Americans and foreigners but is also looking for any communications that simply mention a target. Here’s how the ACLU put it: Imagine the NSA sent agents to a USPS processing center, they opened all international mail, read each letter, and then kept a copy of any letter that mentioned specific items of interest. It’s like that, but for Internet communications.

Here’s where encrypted communications protected us—apps like Signal, iMessage, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger—all have strong end-to-end encryption, and since the government can’t decrypt these messages, your communications were safe. And a note for my nuance-minded readers: Signal is the most secure of these apps, whereas the others have privacy flaws for a variety of reasons. So, my use of the term “safe” should be read loosely. In addition, Signal has taken action to protect users’ communications in a post-quantum world, although they have not fully solved every quantum vulnerability. You can read more about this here.

Nonetheless, it is important to recognize that this encryption previously limited the government’s surveillance and provided us a bit of security, but with quantum computing and harvest now, decrypt later, our communications and data are at risk. And if the history of governmental actions tells us anything, it tells us that the gap between acquiring a capability and abusing it is very short.

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A Reason for Optimism—with a Caveat

I’ll end this on a positive note, because I hate criticism without a solution.

We know that NIST, a governmental organization, finalized the first post-quantum cryptography standards and is leading the charge internationally to prepare for this new world. The U.S. government has also mandated that national security systems be quantum-safe by 2027.

Nonetheless, the transition to quantum-safe encryption will take years, and it will be uneven. Large institutions with resources will move faster than hospitals, small businesses, local governments, and many consumer apps people use every day. That gap is where ordinary people are more exposed, and that gap will exist for a long time.

We are also facing the harvest now, decrypt later problem, which no future upgrade fully solves. The data that has been collected is already gone.

What this means, practically, is that the most important work isn’t just technical, but also legal and personal. From the legal perspective, the rules that govern what powerful actors can do with quantum decryption capability matter most before the capability fully arrives. Once it exists and is deployed, the window to establish meaningful guardrails will close faster than most people realize.

From the personal perspective, we are in a window of time where we can start raising awareness to this risk, demand that our liberties are protected, and transition to apps that are preparing for this post-quantum cryptography world.

And finally, I’ll leave you with a question I keep coming back to: when the tool that can read everything becomes available—to governments, tech firms, and whoever wins the arms race—who decides what the rules are? And more importantly, are you paying enough attention to have a say in the answer?

Because if history tells us anything, it’s that the people who aren’t paying attention don’t have a say.

As always, leave a comment and let me know what you think. I read everything, and love discussing these topics. And in the meantime, stay curious.

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I must start this article with a confession: the subtitle really undersells reality. Psychological warfare is not coming to a screen near you. It’s on a screen sitting between your two hands right now.

What I am referencing is called “slopaganda,” which is AI-generated propaganda, and it is more insidious than any form of propaganda we have experienced before. And to add a cherry on top? We aren’t prepared for it thanks to the years of brain-numbing, addictive social media consumption we have all subjected ourselves to.

Unfortunately, this article is not a warm and fuzzy one, but it is essential in our understanding of media literacy and critical thinking, because whether we know about it or not, it’s here, so we might as well get acquainted with it. Plus, there is a way to combat it. Did you really think I wasn’t going to at least try to end this article on a positive note?

Okay, let’s dive in.

LEGOs, Rap Music, & Psychological Warfare

Let’s first look at Iran, which has come out swinging in the arms race of slopaganda by trolling President Donald Trump in a video that mocks the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

In the video, the Islamic regime depicts Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Lego figurines looking over a Jeffrey Epstein File folder while a Devil-like character stands behind them. This video is an obvious play at a popular accusation that Trump orchestrated the conflict in the Middle East to distract from the Epstein files (AKA, he’s wagging the dog, which is an underused term we really need to bring back).

This specific video is one of a long line of LEGO slopaganda set against rap music meant to mock Trump and Netanyahu while swaying the opinions of viewers. What’s concerning is that despite it being obvious slopaganda coming from a brutal authoritarian regime that’s killed tens of thousands of its citizens, the videos have garnered millions of views across multiple platforms. And what’s even scarier is the psychological impact of these kinds of videos, but we will get to that a bit later…

And Iran isn’t the only country producing slopaganda; many are. But more specific to this article, the United States itself is fully engaged in a slopaganda proxy war aimed at its own citizens. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, which is part of DHS, has created large amounts of AI-generated content to bolster support for its deportation policies. For example, they have posted videos celebrating “Christmas after mass deportations,” have referenced Bible verses, and mentioned Christ’s birth. At the time, these posts had the appearance of being at least somewhat AI-generated, but a new document reveals that DHS is using Google and Adobe AI video to make content they then push to the public.

So, we have countries around the world producing slopaganda en masse across every digital platform imaginable to both their own citizens and citizens of other countries. It’s now worth asking: Is this the same propaganda we have experienced in the past (think, Vietnam War posters), or is it different?

This Isn’t Your Grandpa’s Propaganda

It’s both different and much worse than the propaganda the human mind has battled for centuries. Slopaganda differs from traditional propaganda on three dimensions: scale, scope, and speed.

First, scale. AI has made it possible to produce massive volumes of content quickly and at near-zero cost. This sentence says two things: more people are subjected to propaganda, but also, propaganda creation has been democratized. While the former result may seem obvious, the latter result is not.

The democratization of propaganda means that anyone with a laptop can now produce content at a volume that previously required an entire media organization. To put it into perspective, News Corp Australia spits out 3,000 AI-generated “local” news stories per week.

And the scale aspect of slopaganda has another dimension—repetition, which is something our brains are loath to resist. Our brains will believe anything so long as it’s repeated enough, something called the Illusory Truth Effect. Slopaganda’s mass creation creates repetition that capitalizes on this cognitive vulnerability.

Second, scope. Traditional propaganda was universal in that News Company A, for example, would generate a single newspaper that its entire audience would read. In other words, the newspaper I read was the same as the newspaper you read. Yes, there were differences between companies and regions, but there was still a uniformity that no longer exists. We now have “mass personalization,” which is the ability to run a customized influence operation on millions of individuals simultaneously. Everything you see is curated to your interests, beliefs, personality, and preferences—all backed by personal data social media companies have been harvesting and selling for years.

Third, speed. Slopaganda moves faster than any debunking operation can respond. And this is where Brandolini’s Law comes into play, or as others call it, the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. It was originally a facetious tweet, but it is now taken very seriously: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

Debunking something is infinitely harder and more time-consuming than fabricating an unsubstantiated claim and blowing it up online. And now the entity fabricating unsubstantiated claims online works at warp speed.

You combine these three things, which AI-generated content does, and you have modern propaganda that is magnitudes more manipulative, convincing, and dangerous than traditional propaganda. And research backs this.

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Why Knowing Isn’t Enough

Our brains are not set up to handle this, and I am not saying that because we have literally trained our brains to be passive consumers of entertainment online. Even when we know the content we are consuming is fake, it still affects us. Which means even labels that warn us the content we are watching is AI-generated don’t fully fix the problem.

We would expect people to discount the content of a video they know is fake, but a recent study suggests otherwise. Researchers ran three separate experiments with a combined 673 participants. They showed subjects a deepfake video of someone appearing to confess to either a crime or a moral transgression. Before showing the video, some subjects were explicitly warned that the video was a deepfake, whereas others were not. Then, everyone was asked questions about the person’s guilt.

Researchers found that the deepfake influenced the participants’ beliefs about the person’s guilt, which is not surprising. But what is surprising, and concerning, is that the participants who knew the video was a deepfake in advance still had their beliefs about the person’s guilt influenced by it. Meaning, the explicit warning wasn’t enough, and the deepfake still affected their thinking.

Here’s the issue: our brains process emotional content and logical information through different systems, and the communication between these two systems isn’t always efficient. When we watch a realistic video of someone confessing to something, the emotional and visual centers of our brain react first. Our rational brain sprints to catch up, but we already experienced the emotional response before our rational brain slapped the “fake” label on it. That emotional imprint gets stored, and it then affects our thinking.

This is related to what’s called the Continued Influence Effect. When the brain processes information, even if it knows the information is false, it creates a neural representation. Even if that information is corrected, the original print on your brain is not fully erased. Since it remains, the brain is still influenced by it as new information gets processed.

Now, the science-backed result of slopaganda on our individual brain is concerning, but what’s also problematic is what will happen after this initial onslaught of slopaganda. As it pours into the internet, we become over-stimulated as a population; we simply are unable to cognitively handle all this content. So, exhaustion sets in, and we completely disengage. Now our minds are pliable, and we consume without care, because caring feels fruitless. Our brains are now a blank canvas for any manipulative bad actor to exploit.

So, what do we do then?

You Can’t Opt Out

Some may argue we should just all go analog. Get off our phones, never open social media again, and avoid the slopaganda. I wish that were the solution, but I think it’s a bit too simple.

If a portion of the population goes analog, I guarantee you, another portion won’t. And my guess is that the portion that doesn’t go analog will be the larger portion of the population. Not only is social media addictive, but our society is built around it. A coffee shop without an Instagram account will be competing against a coffee shop with an Instagram account. That means a large percentage of the population, maybe the majority, will still be voting with a brain that’s fed slopaganda on the regular. And their votes will impact the rights of those who went analog. So complete disengagement is likely not the answer, because slopaganda will impact us whether we consume it or not.

That being said, I don’t want to completely wipe analog off the table, because it’s important. I think a movement away from social media and technology is necessary. Decreasing our reliance on it for entertainment is crucial, but we will still need to rely on it to a degree.

That means we need to start treating technology for what it is: a powerful tool that has consequences when misused. We can no longer finish our workday and doom scroll on TikTok for two hours while our brain is on autopilot because we are too tired to use it. That’s a recipe for manipulation.

Here’s what I have been doing, and you are welcome to copy it, reform it, or ignore it. First, purpose. I no longer open social media out of boredom or habit. When I pick up my phone, I try to know why before I unlock it. Am I looking for a recipe? Checking in on what’s happening in a specific part of the world? Catching up with friends? The goal is simple: keep my brain in the driver’s seat so it isn’t unintentionally influenced by slopaganda.

Second, I don’t let short-form content be my primary news source. If something catches my attention, I follow it somewhere—an article, a study, an opposing perspective. Social media may pique my interest, but I make sure I back it with research.

Third, and most importantly: I question everything. And if I am too tired to question what I see online, I set my phone down and go cuddle my cat. I cannot say this enough: the internet is no longer a place for entertainment and leisure. Do not treat it as such.

I wish I had a perfect solution for what the internet has turned into, but it seems the era of a democratized, transparent internet (the Wild Wild West Internet, as I call it) is over. We now have propaganda on the largest scale it has ever been. And while it would be convenient to just throw our phones out the window, I fear that’s not possible. So, we must work with what we’ve got, and this is how I am currently working.

I would love to hear what you think, so drop a comment. And in the meantime, stay vigilant; your brain’s the target.

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Violent crime in the United States has dropped dramatically over the past thirty years by almost every measure, yet polling consistently shows Americans believe crime is getting worse. In other words, public sentiment is vastly disconnected from reality. It’s worth asking: what could be creating this odd phenomenon?

Many would blame the media—it’s obvious they run on an “if it bleeds it leads” model, which takes advantage of our interest in gory and sensationalized stories. But it goes deeper than that, because this phenomenon is related to two interconnected cognitive biases that our brain is naturally predisposed towards. And speaking of cognitive biases…these are not the only two in existence. There are hundreds of biases our brain defaults to, and if we aren’t aware of them and actively countering them, our thinking is vulnerable to being preyed on by professional manipulators.

Politicians, commentators, advertising companies, and the media all take advantage of these vulnerabilities daily. And they do it on purpose, because they are playing a game you aren’t even aware you’re a part of. But there’s good news, because you can exit the game, and I’m going to give you the first step to do this at the end of this article.

Below, I will break down the top five cognitive biases being used against you so that you can spot them – including the crime rate phenomenon hinted at above, which I’ll save for last because it deserves its own special introduction. Consider this a mini guide to your own brain.

Bias #1: The Illusory Truth Effect

Repeat something enough times, and it starts to feel true — regardless of whether it is.

“Most people believe humans only use 10% of their brains.” You have probably heard this thousands of times at this point. Teachers, motivational speakers, self-help books, and films parrot this with conviction.

But it’s completely false. Brain imaging shows virtually all brain regions are active, and damaging even small areas produces significant consequences. This would not be the case if 90% of it were sitting idle. This nauseatingly repeated claim has no credible origin and no scientific support. But ironically, your brain doesn’t care about this because repetition beats scientific studies every time.

What I am explaining is the illusory truth effect: the tendency to believe something is true simply because you have heard it repeatedly. The brain takes cognitive shortcuts to process the volume of information we encounter daily, and one of those shortcuts equates familiarity with truth. Familiarity feels like knowledge, and knowledge feels like fact. This means repetition alone can manufacture belief without a single piece of evidence to support it.

Now, let’s zoom out; if this mechanism works on something as benign as brain usage statistics, ask yourself what it does in the hands of people deliberately repeating claims for political or financial gain. Most political messages are not designed to make well-reasoned arguments—they’re designed to coin a phrase. The goal is to create a phrase that gets repeated so many times it stops being a claim and starts being an assumed fact. Keep it short, repeatable, and emotionally resonant, and you have a winner. It’s all about repetition.

Bias #2: Negativity Bias

Your brain disproportionately weighs bad news over good news.

In 2020, most Americans started their mornings the same way: checking the COVID death toll, whether voluntarily or not. Cable news rammed it down our throats with a live ticker of the dead 24/7 at the bottom of the screen.

But what was not on the ticker is just as important as what was on the ticker…it didn’t include recovery rates, which were significantly higher than the death rates, or the large percentage of cases that were mild or asymptomatic. In addition, positive stories about communities and institutions working together and dipping into their human resolve to adapt, function, and fight their way through those dark days were rarely discussed. In other words, positivity flew out the window.

The death toll ticker was a choice, not an editorial oversight. The media industry was responding rationally to a known feature of human psychology: we are neurologically wired to pay more attention to negative information than positive. Threat-based content captures and holds attention more effectively than reassuring content. Negative news drives engagement, engagement drives ratings, ratings drive revenue…and the cycle that created the death toll ticker continued.

Negativity bias is one of the most well-documented phenomena in psychology, and its evolutionary logic is intuitive. Our ancestors who paid close attention to threats survived longer than those who didn’t. The brain learned to treat negative information as a high priority, to weigh it more heavily than equivalent positive information, and to remember it more vividly.

In the modern context, it’s a vulnerability that the current political environment exploits. For example, research has found that political attack ads are more memorable than positive ads. In addition, attack ads generate more political discussion. These findings are largely because negative content sticks in our brains more than positive content does.

A similar situation occurs with fear-based messaging, which is rampant in our modern society. Negative content, whether based in fear or hatred, hits an evolutionary creation that was meant for a completely different purpose. When our negativity bias is triggered, critical evaluation goes out the window, and the manipulator gets exactly what they were after.

Both parties capitalize on this. Negativity is a reliable currency in political communications regardless of ideology. Being aware of when a politician is using this to their advantage is helpful in combatting your brain’s natural response.

Bias #3: In-Group / Out-Group Bias

Modern politics: a debate or a team sport?

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the opioid crisis was insidiously growing in rural and working-class communities across the nation, largely impacting America’s white population. Historians and those versed in the history of the United States’ drug policies pointed out a stark difference between how policymakers responded to this crisis when compared to the crack-cocaine crisis that occurred in the 1980s and 90s.

Whereas the opioid epidemic was met with a focus on rehabilitation, the crack-cocaine epidemic was met with criminalization and punitive measures. While a few reasons for this are evident, a main one is that the community negatively impacted by the opioid epidemic was white and, eventually, middle class, whereas the community affected by the crack-cocaine epidemic was largely black and lower class. In other words, the victims impacted by opioids reflected most of the legislators passing the laws to combat the issue.

Once the demographics of the victims matched those of legislators, donors, and media figures who shaped policy, there was a shift in conversation to treatment-focused solutions rather than punitive ones. The language around addiction changed as well, moving from calling it a moral failing to a disease.

The key, as you have probably already realized, was not that addiction changed, but who the victims were changed. This is because of the in-group/out-group bias, which is one of the oldest features of human social psychology, rooted in our tribalistic instincts.

For most of human history, the group you belonged to would determine whether you ate, whether you were protected, and thus whether you survived. Helpful, and sometimes pesky, evolution created a human brain that learned to sort the world into us vs. them quickly and automatically. This categorization often influences behavior, attitudes, perceptions, and even legislation, leading to favoritism towards in-group members and a bias against out-group members.

While the opioid vs. crack-cocaine response is an example of this bias, it’s not always related to complex legislation and nationwide crises. In-group/out-group bias is exploited in the modern political environment constantly, and most people fall into this trap. When you get attached to a political party, you immediately categorize your political party as the in-group and the other political party as the out-group, and this categorization operates subconsciously. Without thinking, we automatically evaluate our party’s behavior more charitably than the other party, and this favoritism impacts our actions.

Political and media operatives cultivate this deliberately because a tribally activated audience is a loyal, emotionally engaged, and largely uncritical one. If you want to test your ability to remove yourself from tribalistic tendencies, check whether you are consistently applying your standards across political parties. If you find yourself defending behavior from your preferred political tribe that you would condemn from the opposing one, you are not evaluating their behavior; you are defending your team.

Bias #4: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The less you know, the more confident you are. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.

There is a phenomenon that anyone who has ever turned on a T.V. recognizes immediately: the people most confident in their opinions are frequently the least informed, whereas the genuine experts tend to be the most hesitant.

This is not a random occurrence; it’s a documented cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect, identified by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. Their research found that people with limited knowledge in a given area consistently overestimate their own competence. Researchers attribute this to a lack of metacognition, which is the ability to analyze one’s own thoughts or performance.

And this bias affects everyone. Most people have weak points where this bias takes over, and researchers have found it even applies to individuals with a strong knowledge base (specifically, individuals as high as the 80^th percentile for a skill). It’s theorized that this may occur because gaining a small amount of knowledge where someone was previously ignorant may make them feel disproportionately intelligent, and thus, they overestimate their knowledge.

But with this overconfidence comes a flip side—as expertise develops, confidence tends to decrease. Once someone explores a topic more, they realize how much they don’t actually know. Socrates understood this long before psychology caught up when he said, “I know that I know nothing.” This is what real expertise feels like.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is exploited in the political and media environment constantly and deliberately. The architecture of cable news and social media actively rewards confident, simple, declarative statements and punishes nuance, qualification, and uncertainty. A pundit who says, “it depends,” doesn’t get asked back, but a pundit who says “here’s exactly what’s going to happen” gets a pay raise. And our short attention span, combined with a 24/7 news cycle, forgets to check in to see if that pundit was even correct in his or her prediction.

You combine this incentive structure with the Dunning-Kruger effect, and most of what we see on T.V. or social media is speakers (and politicians) making confident, and often incorrect, statements.

The antidote, as Socrates suggested, is to treat your own certainty as a warning sign rather than a virtue. The moment you find yourself completely sure about a complex issue is precisely when the Dunning-Kruger effect may be driving the show. Real knowledge is almost always accompanied by an awareness of its own limits.

Bias #5: The Availability Heuristic + Base Rate Neglect

Two biases working together—the answer to the crime disconnect in America.

These two biases are doing real damage individually, but their combined effect is where things get interesting.

The availability heuristic is the tendency to judge how common or likely something is based on how easily an example comes to mind. If vivid examples come quickly, the brain treats that as evidence that the thing is common. If examples are hard to retrieve, the brain treats them as rare. The problem is that ease of recall has almost nothing to do with actual frequency and everything to do with how much attention that thing received.

Base rate neglect is the tendency to ignore statistical frequency when presented with a vivid, specific example. When you hear a compelling individual story, the brain deprioritizes the aggregate data and latches on to the story. The anecdote overwhelms the statistic because we are more emotionally activated.

But what happens when these two biases are combined? Let’s take a look…

A local news station leads with a violent crime story. It’s vivid, specific, involves real people with real names and faces, and it is highly disturbing. Your brain automatically files it as a cognitively available example of crime in your community. Then you turn on the national news, and another tragic story is being discussed. You flip to another channel, and you’re watching a lawyer analyze a murder trial. All of these stories are real, and your brain soaks them up.

At some point, you listen to a podcast, and it’s mentioned that violent crime has declined by almost 50% since its peak in the early 1990s, and that 2025 is suspected to have had the lowest instances of violent crime on record in America’s history. But this statistical fact generates no emotional response, and therefore, it is ignored when held against the four murder stories you’ve heard about in the last few months.

You have a brain that is full of vivid, easily retrievable examples of violent crime, which the availability heuristic converts into an impression of high frequency, competing with a basic statistic, which the base rate neglect deprioritizes. What’s the result? Well, a population that thinks violent crime is at an all-time high despite statistics proving otherwise.

My nerdy self calls this a “double brain punch;” two biases are working simultaneously, amplifying each other, and producing a public perception completely disconnected from reality. You are given accurate individual data points and aggregate statistics, and your brain automatically decides which it finds more important, and which drives your personal opinion on the state of crime in America.

And really quick, because I am sure you are thinking this, yes, there are other biases, including some I discussed above, that lead to this mismatched public opinion. But I wanted to touch on two that were a little less obvious.

What To Do With This Information

Recognizing these biases is a small step, but we need to do more. What builds actual resistance is a practiced habit of interrogating your own reactions and the claims causing those reactions, before forming an opinion.

That is what my free Anti-Manipulation: A Citizen’s Field Guide is designed to help you do. I provide you with six questions drawn from classical logic that you can apply to any argument or claim to figure out what is actually being said, why it’s being said, and where you stand when you strip the manipulation away.

Download it for free HERE and let me know what you think. Fair warning: mental expansion is imminent.

If this resonated with you, share it with one person who would find it useful. Comments are open — I read everything. And remember, stay curious! :)

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Imagine this: a law is passed that makes it illegal to post content online that “dehumanizes, degrades, or incites hatred against people based on their religion, race, or sex.”

Now conduct a mental exercise. Imagine this law being implemented under the party you disagree with. Do you still think this law is a good idea?

This hypothetical is meant to illustrate a trap most people, including seasoned legislators, fall into. It’s a combination of three cognitive biases that our brain employs by default, and it’s why it’s our civic duty to avoid passive thinking.

These biases result in a dangerous implicit assumption: that when we support laws, they will always be enforced by a sympathetic government. In other words, we assume the law we passed today will only ever be wielded by a government that agrees with our goals and adheres to our worldview. That is both an incorrect assumption and a dangerous trap.

Your Brain Is Working Against You

You are probably now wondering… wait, our brains have built-in cognitive biases that set up dangerous traps?

Sounds counterintuitive, but yes, it does. Many. And if we want to be active participants in society, it’s our job to recognize and combat them. I won’t get into the minutiae here (if interested, Thinking, Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman does), but instead I will discuss three specific biases that combine to create a dangerous mindset I witness people falling victim to daily.

First, we have Present Bias, or as I like to call it, “present tense thinking.” This is a bit of a nebulous bias because it doesn’t have a formal definition. It refers to short-term impatience, procrastination, self-control problems, and giving more weight to outcomes nearer in time compared to farther off in time, even if the latter outcome is more beneficial. In other words, we are really bad at planning into the future, and the further we go out, the worse we are at it.

Second, we have Egocentric Bias, or as I like to describe it: it’s my world, and you’re just living in it. But all jokes aside, this is a serious cognitive bias where people rely too heavily on their own point of view when examining events or attempting to see things from other people’s perspectives. The result is problematic; you either underestimate how different other people’s viewpoints are from your own, or you ignore their viewpoints outright.

And finally, we have Optimism Bias, or as most people define it: having rose-tinted glasses. We tend to overestimate the likelihood of positive events occurring, and, in turn, underestimate the chances of negative events occurring. And yes, this is a problem because we are then unprepared for potentially catastrophic situations, or if we want to be less hyperbolic, we simply are unable to properly plan for the future (see, we suck at future planning).

So, what does this all add up to, and how is it related to legislation…or more concretely, how is it related to me?

Real-Life Application

When we combine these biases and apply them to legislation, the result is three compounding failures: an inability to predict how the law plays out in the future, the assumption that future actors will use it as intended, and the belief that only positive outcomes will follow. And I am not being hyperbolic here—this actually can be catastrophic.

Let’s go back to our free speech hypothetical. Someone sees online hate speech, they know hate speech has external consequences (backed by studies), and so they want to protect victims by limiting hate speech. This is an understandable want.

The issue is, they assume the law will only ever be used against people who incite what they define as hatred, and they assume the enforcers will always agree on who the victim is. That’s the Egocentric Bias at play. Within this context, it’s the belief that everyone defines hate speech the same way and that everyone categorizes victims similarly. Note, I am not saying the enforcers are bad actors; I am saying they have a different worldview.

But that leads us to the next issue, which is that they assume the enforcers will never be bad actors. This is one step past different worldviews and moves into blatant government abuse. This is where we see Optimism Bias pop up—the idea that their proposed law would never be used for ill purposes by ill-intended people.

And throughout this, we see Present Bias. At the outset, the individual is focused on a solution here and now. There are bad guys, and there are real victims; let’s find an immediate solution. But in their excitement to solve a problem, they are forgetting to forecast the solution into the future, something our brains already struggle with.

While I am applying this amalgamation of biases to legislation, it can be applied to many things, such as judicial decisions (creation of precedent) and our opinions in general. Simply ask yourself: If I hold this opinion, what happens if someone with a different worldview also holds this opinion?

When these biases work together, they can create a legislator, a judge, or a citizen who is completely blind to the risk they’re creating.

And I want to pause here and remind you—I am not arguing for or against hate speech regulation online. That is not what this article’s aim is. I am using a current topic to point out the inherent risk of adding restrictions. Your government will not always be in power (thankfully, we aren’t a dictatorship). As a result, we must create laws (or, dare I say, not create laws) with the focus of avoiding unintended consequences that harm individual rights.

Now you must be wondering: how do we do this?

There’s No Easy Fix, But There Is a Fix

While I wish I could give you an easy one-size-fits-all solution to the fact that laws create unintended consequences, often caused by political parties twisting them to their advantage…I can’t because one doesn’t exist. Life is a bit too complicated and messy for that.

Laws outlast the people who write them. Precedents outlast the cases that create them. The administration that enforces your preferred policy today will not be the administration that enforces it in ten years.

Your brain is not naturally hardwired to handle these issues, and that’s both an individual and a societal problem.

The good news, though, is that your brain is a muscle—in other words, it’s not a stagnant, rigid structure. You can train it and thus combat your cognitive biases. So, there is an individual solution that could lead to a societal benefit. And that’s where I’m going next, so stay tuned…

If you just thought of a belief you’ve never stress-tested, share this with someone who’d push back on it. And as always, comments are open—I love to hear your thoughts on my work.

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People don’t change their minds anymore. And there are two reasons for this: first, people are no longer exposed to well-constructed arguments that may convince them to change their minds, and second, most people refuse to change their minds even when presented with well-constructed arguments.

Can you think of the last time you changed your mind on something important? Can you think of a time you saw someone else change their mind on something important?

If you are struggling to remember, you are not alone. And I do not think this is purely a personal failing, even though one can take personal actions to avoid this trap (more on that another time). In reality, this issue begins the second we are of thinking age. It’s the entirely predictable result of our modern over-worked education system combined with a leisure-centered, dopamine-addicted society.

This article focuses on the first issue—our modern education system—because it creates the foundation that primes us to be consumers in a leisurely world, thus setting us up for intellectual stagnation from the get-go. To put it succinctly, our modern education system leans into our natural tendencies of cognitive shortcuts by teaching students what to think rather than how to think.

And I have diverse experience in the world of academics. I moved around a lot as a kid, attending many different schools. I went to medium-sized public schools, large private schools, small private schools, and then entered higher academia, where I experienced both a large public university and a small private graduate school. In addition, my parents were active participants in my education, filling in the holes the modern system left in its wake. So, to say that I have seen a lot of different education styles is to put it lightly.

As an adult who studied political theory in undergrad and then went to law school, I was introduced to a way of thinking that I recognize as essential in producing a civil, educated, and productive society…yet I wasn’t introduced to it until I was an adult, and only because I chose to pursue specific academic fields.

Given my experience, I have concluded that the current education system has failed at producing adults who can think critically, largely because they were not introduced to the same form of thinking that political scientists and lawyers use on a daily basis.

This strikes me as not only an educational failure but a civic one, as we need thinking individuals to create a productive and just society.

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What We Lost and When

Classical Greek and Roman educators had a completely different academic goal than we have now, and it’s because they understood something we have largely forgotten: content knowledge without reasoning skills produces education without wisdom.

A student who knows every date in European history but cannot construct a coherent argument has not really been educated—they have been passively filled with useless knowledge. Well, maybe not totally useless…they could win a Trivia night at a local bar, but that’s about it.

So, what’s different about this education style?

Well, the roots are classical Greek and Roman, but medieval universities formalized these ideas into a learning model called the Trivium—three foundational disciplines that had to be mastered before any other serious study could begin. Those disciplines were Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric.

At the Grammar stage (usually grades K-5), children absorb the raw material of knowledge—like facts, stories, vocabulary, and the basic structure of how the world works. The mind at this age is uniquely suited for absorption, and it’s our job to feed it well.

At the Logic stage (usually grades 6-9), children learn to interrogate what they absorb. Why is this true? What follows from it? What contradicts it? This is where curiosity becomes a disciplined habit.

At the Rhetoric stage (usually grades 10-12), children learn to express what they now understand with clarity, persuasion, and intellectual honesty. It’s not just about having a view, but whether you can defend it.

Each stage depends entirely on the one before it, making education something that grows with the student. You cannot question knowledge you never absorbed. You cannot persuasively express ideas you never learned to analyze. The three steps of the Trivium mirror how the mind develops.

This kind of education is not a professional skillset reserved for lawyers and academics. Rather, it is the foundation of what it means to be an educated human being capable of self-governance. The goal here is life success, not just academic success.

Okay… so why don’t we do this anymore, then?

The shift away from this model happened gradually and for reasons that seemed sensible at the time. Industrial-era education needed to produce workers who could follow instructions reliably, not citizens who questioned premises. Standardized testing rewarded content recall over analytical depth. Teacher training moved away from the Socratic method, an ancient practice of teaching through disciplined questioning, and toward direct instruction and measurable outcomes.

The result of this change, several generations later, is a population that is in many ways extraordinarily well-informed and remarkably bad at reasoning about what it knows.

The Symptoms Are Everywhere

You can see this playing out in public life daily, and I suspect it is why many of you follow this publication in the first place.

Political debates that consist entirely of competing assertions, with neither side engaging in the other’s actual argument. Watching modern “debates” is like witnessing two ships passing in the night.

Social media discourse where the strongest rhetorical move is not a better argument but a louder condemnation. How can I capitalize on the audience’s tribalistic tendencies and need to feel morally or intellectually superior?

Voters who evaluate policy proposals based on how they feel rather than what the evidence suggests about their likely outcomes. Politicians continue to feed our fried nervous systems, rather than authentically analyze policy proposals.

Many see this as a failure of intelligence, but I would argue otherwise. First, most people employing these tactics are doing so purposefully; they’re actually quite intelligent and are strategically manipulating the audience’s shortcomings.

And second, regarding the audience, they were never taught what a valid argument looks like. Nobody put them in a room and made them defend a position they disagreed with until they understood it well enough to dismantle it. Nobody required them to read a document written in 1787 and explain, in their own words, what problem it was trying to solve and whether it solved it.

So, how does this play out in our current society? Why is this dangerous?

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The Civic Emergency

I want to be precise here because I think this point gets muddied, especially in our current society.

The problem is not that people hold the wrong opinions. Reasonable people can look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions, and a healthy self-governing society depends on that disagreement being aired and argued about. The problem is that we have lost the tools for arguing productively and honestly.

When Aristotle wrote about rhetoric, he distinguished between genuine persuasion — which works by appealing to reason and evidence — and mere manipulation, which works by exploiting psychological vulnerabilities, triggering emotional responses, and bypassing the rational faculties entirely. Does this sound familiar? Have you been on social media lately?

His concern was that a democracy populated by people who could not differentiate between genuine persuasion and manipulation would eventually be ungovernable. Citizens would be unable to evaluate an argument and therefore could not hold their representatives accountable. Is the government of the people, by the people, and for the people if the people are unable to comprehend what’s going on?

I think Aristotle was dead on with his analysis. And I think we are living in the civic consequences of several generations of education that never taught this distinction.

Many argue that the most dangerous person in a democracy (or constitutional republic, in America’s case) is the one who holds the most extreme view. But I disagree. It’s actually the one who holds any view without knowing why they hold that view. If you understand your own opinion, and you understand the extreme opinion, you can eloquently dismantle it. But if you don’t even know why you believe what you believe, how are you to combat extreme views?

An inadequate understanding of your own opinion is the fuel that makes extreme views dangerous, not the extreme views themselves.

What Actually Works

Here is what the research on reasoning development — and my own experience in academics and the law — suggests on how to teach people to think.

First, students need to ask questions, and they need to answer questions. Hard questions. People should not take information or arguments at face value. As I said earlier, the people peddling a lot of these views are purposefully manipulating their audience. One of the best ways to fortify your mind against this manipulation is through questioning.

The Socratic method — named after a philosopher who was ultimately executed for the crime of asking too many uncomfortable questions (go figure) — is built on a simple premise: a student does not really understand something until they can withstand interrogation. Not recite facts about it. Not summarize what someone else said about it. They must actually defend a position, respond to objections, and either strengthen their argument or honestly revise it.

The pattern here is clear: a student must test others and must also be tested.

This leads to my second point: students need to argue positions they disagree with. I know, shocker. Society makes that seem impossible, and even immoral, but it’s not. This is a standard exercise in law school, and it is one of the most intellectually formative experiences I have had. A person cannot genuinely understand an argument they have never been forced to make. They can caricature it, dismiss it, or condemn it — but they cannot actually engage it until they have had to defend it.

In a similar vein, a person cannot fully support their own argument without understanding the counterargument. How can someone truly know what they believe if they have never seriously engaged with the alternative? An opinion built without that engagement is an opinion built on sand.

And finally, students need to encounter logical fallacies in the wild, not just in a textbook. When a politician says, “everyone knows that” and offers no evidence, that is an appeal to popular opinion. When a commentator attacks the person making an argument rather than the argument itself, that is ad hominem. When an editorial presents a complex policy question as having only two possible answers, that is a false dilemma. Naming these things, recognizing them in real discourse, and refusing to be moved by them is a learnable skill.

And people, specifically students, need to do all of this repeatedly, over years, with increasing complexity. Reasoning is not a fact you learn once. It is a muscle you build through sustained practice.

Where I Am Going with This

I have been thinking for some time about how to take these ideas beyond my content online — how to put them into the hands of families who want something more rigorous for their children than what most educational options currently provide.

That is a longer conversation for another article. But I want to plant a flag here: the problem I have described is solvable. It has been solved before, by educational traditions that predated our current system by centuries and that produced thinkers of remarkable depth and civic seriousness. The tools exist. The methods are proven. What has been missing is the will and the resources to apply them seriously.

But I think that will is currently growing. I see it in the questions you send me, in the conversations happening on my social media accounts, in the number of parents who are looking at what their children are being taught and deciding they can do better. We are now at the point where we must match that will with resources, and I would like to help with that.

This stuff matters to me. Not abstractly, but in reality. More on why soon…

If this resonates with you, I would genuinely appreciate you sharing it with one person you think would find it useful. And if you have thoughts, objections, or your own experience with this problem, the comments are open — I read everything.

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The Death Penalty Debate

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This is a structured and clear breakdown of the strongest arguments for and against the death penalty. It aims to give you the freedom to develop an opinion on a highly contentious topic free from bias and manipulation. Whether someone is pro- or anti-death penalty, both positions come from legitimate moral concerns. Use this document to help you decide where you draw the ethical line and engage in civil discourse.

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The Lowest Common Denominator

International relations is a black hole where all ideologies eventually collapse into realism (specifically, neorealism). In other words, we don’t need a world of realists for realism to be the prevailing international ideology; we simply need one powerful actor to adopt a zero-sum posture, and all other nation-states will follow suit. This theory is perfectly exemplified by the South China Sea, where overlapping legal claims under a liberal ideology shifted into a militarized zone because of the realist actions of one country, China.

The Structure of International Anarchy

Neorealism is a theory that explains the structural reality of our world. As Kenneth Waltz argued, neorealism functions because of two non-negotiable facts: (1) the world exists in a constant state of anarchy, in that there is no overarching government imposing laws on the international actions of nation-states; and (2) power is not evenly distributed among the states. In that same vein, power is relative, and it’s this relative power that drives states’ actions.

This neorealistic framework highlights a dangerous international environment, as intentions are invisible, while capabilities are not. To operate within this environment, countries must focus on increasing their own security to survive, which results in a perilous security dilemma. One country moves to increase its own security, which in turn decreases the security of other nation-states. As a response, those other states increase their own security; they do not know whether the initial act was solely a security measure or for a future military attack. This can devolve into a security spiral, where two or more states are tied in an arms race as they all continue to increase their weapons and defense.

The Knife in the Room

No other modern international dilemma highlights the contagious effect of realism and what a true security dilemma is better than the South China Sea.

To put this into perspective, imagine international relations as if you, a country, are in a room with nine other people (other countries), and you’re all deciding whether to shake hands or draw a weapon. It doesn’t matter if nine of you go for a handshake if the tenth person pulls a knife, because they just unilaterally turned the situation into a physical fight.

In relation to the South China Sea, China pulled a knife when it continually redrew the South China Sea map, claiming territory that previously was a place of functional coexistence between Vietnam, China, and the Philippines, with strong influence from France, Britain, and the U.S.

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Facts on the Ground

While China has been attempting to redraw its territorial influence in the region for decades, we are going to look at the 21^st century to keep this analysis modern. Since 2012, China has ignored “international law,” built 3,200 acres of artificial land, continues to harass Philippine resupply missions, and more. These actions, while condemnable, are also understandable if viewed through realism; they’re responses to what China sees as three security-related situations:

• The Malacca Dilemma: China is paranoid that the U.S. Navy will block the Strait of Malacca, thus cutting off 80% of China’s oil imports. By controlling the South China Sea, it is creating a “buffer zone” to protect against this.

• Resource Nationalism: In the 1970s, surveys suggested the sea was rich in oil and gas. This shifted China’s view, and likely other nation-states’ views, of the ocean as valuable real estate.

• National Identity: The Ten-Dash Line that encompasses the territory China is claiming as its own is framed as a reversal of the “Century of Humiliation.” The Chinese believe that asserting sovereignty over this area is non-negotiable proof of their return as a Great Power.

In response to China’s aggressive declarations of territorial claims, the Philippines tried the liberal route through a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling. But, like a powerful realist state would be expected to do, China ignored the ruling; there is no international governing power to force China to heel. This signaled to neighboring countries that the game had changed, and the most powerful actor in the game, China, is setting the rules.

In response, these neighboring states did exactly what a realist would expect them to do:

• Vietnam’s military spending between 2003 and 2018 increased by nearly 700%, jumping from $841 million to $5.5. billion. By 2027, it is projected to hit $8.5 billion. Vietnam also built Kilo-class submarines, Su-30MK2 Fighters, and began its own island-building campaign—mirroring China’s tactics.

• Malaysia announced a 2026 Defense Budget of $5.15 billion and has moved to modernize its military, including building Littoral Mission Ships, Multi-Role Support Ships, and an aerial defense.

• The Philippines granted the U.S. additional base access and grew its long-term modernization plans from an initial $1.8 billion outlay in 2013 to a staggering $35 billion, 10-year program (Re-Horizon 3).

This aggressive pivot by neighboring states is the liberal door slamming shut as they realize that power is the only currency China will respond to. As a result, people have witnessed in real time how the international realm can move from liberalism to realism rapidly, an event almost impossible to reverse. Once trust is broken because one country interprets the world through a realist lens, then the cost of any country remaining idealistic turns into national suicide.

When Interdependence Becomes a Weapon

Liberalism and constructivism simply fail the stress test when push comes to shove on the international stage. If a realist is wrong about a liberal, the realist may lose a trade deal. But if a liberal is wrong about a realist, the liberal loses their sovereignty.

While liberalism argues that economic interdependence will stop fighting, this liberal mechanism has become a realist weapon. China has frequently used trade as coercion; for example, by blocking Philippine fruit imports or tourism during standoffs. This highlights that a powerful actor can use a liberal tool to effectuate its realist goals, especially when the victim is a smaller state.

When observing international affairs, it becomes evident that the stakes are simply too high to assume the best of other nation-states, as to assume the best spells out disaster for your own country. In high-stakes geopolitics, and arguably all geopolitics is high-stakes, paranoia is the most rational stance a leader can take, as it’s the safest.

The Only Safe Default

We don’t live in a realist world because realism is the morally correct way to live; we live in a realist world because it is the only safe default setting in a realm of independent, rational, and self-interested entities. International affairs must be viewed as a high-stakes business deal; expecting a great power to act on values, especially when those values change with cultural norms, is a poor investment strategy. The South China Sea proves that power determines the rules of the game, and while most people may wish liberalism ruled the roost, as long as one powerful country takes a realist stance, we must all do the same.

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I recently posted a reel explaining the difference between social liberals, leftists, and classical liberals. It went viral, with a repeated chorus in the comments claiming: “I am a classical liberal, and I am lost.” Thousands shared the same realization: the principles that built this country—individualism, limited government, the rule of law, and free markets—no longer have a seat at the major party tables.

The response to my reel highlights a growing discontent among the American people and a mass migration from the political parties. This article theorizes the nomadic movement of the classical liberal: a group currently left “politically homeless” by a system that has abandoned its own backbone. In this exile, however, we may find that the classical liberal has unintentionally heeded a warning George Washington left us with over two centuries ago, and in doing so, may have found the solution to the partisan war that threatens to consume our national interest.

The First Displacement: The COVID Era

The first nomadic flight was in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Democratic Party transitioned from a champion of civil liberties to a paternalistic rule-enforcer. I remember this time clearly, as I am sure a lot of us do: the 24/7 death toll tallies, the images of body bags outside hospitals, and the bizarre ritual of scrubbing down our groceries. The American public, rightfully so, was terrified as they looked death in the eye on a daily basis.

While almost everyone was compliant early on, inconsistencies soon became apparent, putting astute observers on high alert. Many Democratic leaders championed mass protests in the streets related to George Floyd as a “public health necessity,” while simultaneously, leaders like Governor Newsom were shuttering public beaches and parks. For the classical liberal, this was the selective application of the law that signaled individual sovereignty was being traded for political preference.

This was coupled with ongoing reports of Democratic leaders breaking their own COVID rules, highlighting a view of government as a paternalistic rule enforcer that was necessary to keep the average American safe. The idea of individual sovereignty, for the voters at least, was thrown out the window; they weren’t educated enough to make their own decisions. But the politicians and other elites? The rules didn’t apply to them.

As the pandemic continued, the collateral consequences of prolonged lockdowns and societal disruption created wounds that began to fester among the American people: alcoholism, drug use, physical violence, murder, and youth suicide all increased; children were significantly falling behind in their education; people were breaking under a lack of income; and small businesses were being strangled by the excessively regulated market.

As the collateral consequences of lockdowns became undeniable, many sought a hybrid model that balanced protection for the vulnerable with individual liberty. However, those who voiced those grievances on social media met unprecedented censorship, stifling the very discourse essential to a functioning republic.

The COVID period is when the Democrats became fractured. Prior to 2020, many classical liberals viewed the Democratic Party as the primary defender of civil liberties and individual expression. However, from 2020 to 2024, that same coalition shifted toward a model of increased government overreach, excessive market regulations, and suppression of dissenting scientific opinions.

Meanwhile, the Republicans either kept their states wide open or delivered what the people were crying for—a hybrid model that considered the needs of varying demographics. During COVID, the Democrats violated every core pillar classical liberals held so dearly, while the Republicans gave them room to exercise what they saw as inherent rights. While classical liberals may not have agreed with Republicans on social issues, the party provided the liberty and openness essential for a functioning society.

The Second Displacement: Immigration Whiplash and Federal Overreach

The brief sense of a political “home” within the GOP vanished the moment the party began trading its commitment to limited government for a new, populist brand of State Nationalism. While a classical liberal may not disagree with the principle of border security, they are fundamentally opposed to the methods of the 2025-2026 mandates. The deployment of thousands of federal agents into American cities, the use of military-style checkpoints, and the sweeping use of executive orders to skirt due process are seen, in classical liberal eyes, as an expansion of the Federal Police State.

However, this “whiplash” the classical liberal is experiencing goes beyond the border. In the last year, we have seen the GOP abandon several other core classical liberal pillars.

The Republican Party has rejected free trade and has pivoted toward aggressive protectionism, utilizing universal tariffs and reciprocal duties as economic weapons. To a classical liberal, tariffs are seen as government intervention in the free market, raising the costs for individuals and granting the state the power to pick economic winners and losers.

The GOP has also taken a chainsaw to the bureaucratic government, which may appear as a victory for limited government, but it masks a deeper classical liberal fear: the erosion of the separation of powers. For a philosophy that prioritizes a limited state, the trade-off of a massive, faceless bureaucracy for an efficient and centralized executive is not a victory for liberty. Whether it is a health official or a federal agent, the classical liberal is repelled by the unilateral exercise of force, regardless of which branch it originates from.

This consolidation of power is not only structural, but also digital. Despite the rhetoric about “dismantling the Deep State,” the administration has relied heavily on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—specifically the Biden-backed 2024 reauthorization known as RISAA. Originally a foreign intelligence tool, it allows for warrantless surveillance on non-U.S. persons abroad, yet it inevitably sweeps up millions of communications involving U.S. citizens through incidental collection.

Currently, the GOP relies on this mass surveillance for pursuing drug trafficking and narco-terrorists, which clashes heavily with their previous calls to “Kill FISA.” Ironically, the Democrats now fear the same domestic surveillance they once facilitated, largely because they see the vetting powers they created being repurposed for domestic immigration tracking. To the classical liberal, this is the ultimate evidence that the Fourth Amendment and individual liberties are a secondary concern to whoever holds the lever of power.

As a result of this partisan bait-and-switch, the classical liberal is once again left “politically homeless.” First displaced by the excessive focus on collective safety and social engineering from the Democrats, and they are now displaced again by an increase in nationalist identity and the use of federal force from the Republicans.

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Tracking the Nomad: What the Data Tells Us About the “Independent” Surge

We can observe this flight in real time; 45% of Americans now identify as Independent, marking a historic rejection of the two-party status quo. We are witnessing a recurring pattern of “displacement by overreach.” Just as the 2020 lockdowns fractured the Left through paternalistic overreach, the 2025-26 combination of federal immigration mandates, protectionist tariffs, and an increase in executive power is fracturing the Right. This data precisely reflects the whiplash classical liberals are experiencing. Already burnt by the Democrats just six years prior, and with no evidence that the Democrats are moving away from increased government involvement, many classical liberals are now joining the Independents.

Interestingly enough, the movement towards identifying as an Independent is spearheaded by the younger generations. A staggering 56% of Gen Z and 54% of Millennials have abandoned party labels to call themselves Independents. Together, these two cohorts represent the majority of the adult population under 45. While looking at this data, one must then ask: Are these two generations the nomadic classical liberals? I theorize that they are.

Gen Z and Millennials are generations whose “digital sovereignty” is defined by decentralized systems like cryptocurrency, social media, and gig work; systems that naturally align with classical liberal skepticism of authority and increased individual autonomy.

In addition, these generations were in their formative social and career years during 2020 and were most acutely affected by school closures and market regulations. Their split from the Democratic Party was not a mere policy disagreement; they were displaced by a paternalistic COVID response.

This same demographic logic applies to the recent Republican handling of immigration. Because Gen Z and Millennials disproportionately consume news via social media, they are the primary audience witnessing the nationalist federal surge in real-time. For a generation already wary of state power, this visual evidence of massive federal force is triggering a second wave of displacement, driving them away from the GOP.

This theory is further refined by a subtle shift in which party these Independents “lean” towards. Nearing the end of 2024, Republicans held a 4-point advantage, which completely evaporated by Q1 2025. By Q2 2025, Democrats regained a 3-point lead in “leaning” affiliation.

While some might expect these political refugees to remain “Republican-leaning” since that’s the party they are coming from, the data shows a shift toward a Democratic lean in 2025. This invites us to ask: Why? To further refine this specific theory regarding the classical liberal flight, I would argue that the classical liberal’s commitment to limited government is so fundamental that they will reflexively lean toward whichever party is currently not in power, simply to balance the scales against federal overreach.

This is supported by Gallup statistics showing that 47% of Independents identify as “Moderate.” A Moderate Independent determines the validity of actions independent of party platform, and this results in naturally leaning away from the party in power since that is the entity passing the policies they are vetting. They cannot lean away from a party that is not in power, as it offers less to criticize.

In our current environment of partisan extremes, the political ideology that favors liberty, private property, capitalism, freedom of religion, and a limited Republican style of government has repeatedly been forced to choose a side by picking, in their minds, the “lesser of two evils.” The major parties have abandoned many of the “liberal” pillars and have therefore forced the classical liberals’ hand to identify as a Moderate Independent—a position that feels like accepting political homelessness as a long-term reality.

Reclaiming the Tension: Why Political Homelessness is a Washingtonian Virtue

While “homelessness” implies a lack of stability, this nomadic state may actually be the most intellectually honest position a citizen can hold in our polarized age. At this point, we are forced to ask: Is political homelessness truly bad? It may be uncomfortable, as our naturally tribalistic tendencies want us to choose a side. And it may be hard; intellectually vetting every single policy of each party is exhausting. But this hardship may be the price of liberty.

In his Farewell Address, George Washington expressed his fears of political parties. He warned the American people about the dangers of adhering too closely to a chosen side. Washington wanted Americans to work together for the national interest and felt political parties worked against this. He believed a united government was the only way for the nation to stay independent and be successful. Washington feared that partisan loyalty would lead to the government focusing on the spirit of revenge, rather than the needs of the people. Do his fears sound familiar to you? Because they should; they directly mirror our current reality.

While we can sit back and observe the classical liberals’ flight across the political landscape, we should do more than just theorize. We should welcome the tension this “homelessness” creates. If we want an independent and united country, the answer isn’t a polarized two-party war; it’s the nuanced, principled independence that Washington envisioned. So, I end with a question: How do we make that happen?

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Our society cheers as the modern world provides us “freedom” via on-demand pleasure in every form, yet we have skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide. If this kind of freedom is something we celebrate, then how come we are so unhappy?

The source of the problem is antithetical to modern cultural norms, and my proposed solution is even more radical.

According to the dictionary, “freedom” is “[t]he condition of being free of restraints, especially the ability to act without control or interference by another or by circumstance.”

The modern Western world emphasizes the portion of that definition that says, “control or interference by another.” It’s an interpretation that puts weight on external mechanisms of control.

But what if I told you, in a “free” society such as the West, freedom means something completely different? What if I told you that ultimate freedom includes breaking from internal control, not only external?

Our society has portrayed overconsumption as true liberty, while pointing at the “freedom boogeyman” as existing outside of our bodies. The freedom boogeyman is the government, our parents, the constructs of monogamy, our friends, our teachers, or any outside threat to our sovereign choice to indulge in this overconsumption. As we scroll on Tinder, consume unhealthy media, ghost last night’s date, and order UberEats, we fall deeper into an existence of dopamine hits and convenience, completely unaware that underneath these allegedly free choices, the real freedom boogeyman is pulling the strings from inside us.

The concept that the “sovereign body,” which is making the alleged free choices, is actually what’s limiting our freedom is antithetical to modern culture, because it forces us to look in the mirror. Not only do we find this concept incredibly uncomfortable, but it’s counter to a society that relies on our lack of agency to function. If we go one level deep, we observe that the human mind prefers blaming our problems on something bigger than us and separate from us. If we go a level deeper, we notice that society wants us to treat overindulgence as a symptom of an external issue we have no control over. While we crave autonomy, we reject agency, and corporations and politicians benefit from it as we continue to consume whatever they are peddling. If we pause to think, we soon realize that this kind of consumption comes with a deeper slavery.

To properly address the myth of modern freedom, we must ask a set of questions: Are we really free if the reason we are making our choices is because of an internal interference? If we buck at committed relationships because dating apps and Instagram models distract us, are we in control? If we spend our Friday nights drinking because it’s the only way we can make friends, are we autonomous? If our only source of entertainment is gossiping about that one girl in our class, are we free?

The worldly definition of freedom is a distraction from the internal governance that controls our thoughts, actions, wants, and everything in between. An internal governance that we can recalibrate to give us true freedom if we take the proper steps.

And this is where my proposed solution comes in, which is even more counter-cultural than the problem.

I grew up Christian but fell away from the church in my teenage and young adult years when I felt religion was too restrictive and left too many questions unanswered. I re-labeled myself as agnostic and embarked on a journey of self-defined freedom. Over time, I began to realize that my version of freedom was actually a subtle form of entrapment. I was free to do what I wanted, but I wasn’t free from my own impulses driving my choices.

My path only became clear once I ended up back at Christianity’s doorstep with The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel in my hands. My research and experiences while agnostic not only led to the revelation that my “unanswered questions” remained unanswered without Christianity, but also that many of these questions did not, in fact, go unanswered under Christianity; I was simply uneducated.

As any person does, I had my own struggles and constantly wrestled with relying on sheer willpower or turning to Christianity to handle those struggles. As a presumably self-led person raised in a strong-willed family existing within an individualistic society, the idea of looking towards someone else, especially a religion, to aid me in my battles felt unnatural.

But it all clicked when I reframed what ultimate freedom meant and interpreted it through a Biblical lens rather than a worldly one. True freedom is not capitalizing on unadulterated choice; it’s the ability to restrain yourself when faced with unadulterated choice. And more specifically, it’s recognizing that our internal governance—the “sovereign being” that makes our choices—is set to our base desires, or as the Bible calls it, our “fleshly desires.”

After this realization, I was able to answer the question of: Why can’t I fix my internal governance through sheer individualistic willpower?

The answer, for me, was simple: The very system I had found to be broken—my own will, bound by its own fleshly desires—could not be the same system I relied on to fix itself. And, I don’t think I am alone in this. We have mountains of scientific studies and our own experience that highlight the dangers of doomscrolling social media, consuming porn, engaging in casual flings, excessive drinking, and more…yet we, as a society, are still crippled by these addictions and habits. So, my counter-cultural solution to the problem of an animalistic self-governance system is Christianity, and more specifically, Jesus Christ’s teachings.

In the modern Western world, we have been granted more external freedom than ever before. As a result, we must pivot to the next threat to our sovereignty, which is the one lurking within us. This threat is the passive acceptance of flesh-based desires at the expense of Spirit-led agency.

To finish this piece and round it out, I will leave you with a quote from the Bible that speaks to this directly.

“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.” (Galatians 5:16-17 ESV)

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Why do Trump’s deportations feel more extreme and more controversial, despite the raw numbers suggesting otherwise?

The true answer has very little to do with how many people were deported, and a lot to do with how it’s being done, who is being deported, where ICE is operating, and how it’s being portrayed to the public.

Before we break this down, consider a few things happening under Trump’s second term:

• In August of 2025, over 60,000 migrants were sitting in ICE detention centers, more than 80% of them with no criminal record.

• In March of 2025, more than 200 Venezuelan migrants were sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, despite many never being convicted of a crime in the U.S.

• In January of 2026, a leaked ICE memo claimed officers could enter a suspect’s home with only an administrative warrant and a final order of removal, bypassing a neutral judge and “probable cause.”

• In 2025 alone, 32 people have already died in ICE custody, making it the deadliest year for detainees in two decades.

These are the headlines and stories shaping how people feel about deportation and ICE today.

But it’s more complicated than that. Obama deported more people than Trump, relied heavily on expedited removal, and also deported tens of thousands of migrants with no criminal record. So, how do we make sense of this?

Obama deported more people than Trump, but what else should we know?

Obama deported a significant number of migrants, which garnered him the nickname Deporter-in-Chief. As it currently stands, he deported more migrants than Trump, with Obama formally deporting around 3.1 million people over his two terms, and Trump deporting fewer than 1 million migrants in his first term, and deporting around 622,000 migrants so far in his second term. (Note: DHS has not consistently released detailed breakdowns of deportations as historically practiced. As a result, the numbers from Trump’s second term are not as reliable as preferred.)

There is a difference between the kinds of arrests, detentions, and deportations we saw under Obama versus what we are seeing under Trump. While Obama deported an average of 1,123 immigrants a day in 2012, breaking a historic record, Trump set a record of his own. On August 11, 2025, the Trump administration had over 60,000 people in detention centers, with more than 80% of them without a criminal record.

The number of deaths that have occurred in immigrant detention centers is important to consider, as well. Under Obama, 56 to 67 individuals died in ICE custody during his two terms. During Trump’s first term, 36 detainees died, and in 2025 alone, ICE publicly acknowledged 32 deaths in custody. Adding these figures together, 68 individuals have died in custody across both of Trump’s terms, with another three years yet to go.

If Obama also ignored due process, what’s different under Trump?

Despite Obama deporting significantly more migrants than Trump, critics of Trump highlight the lack of due process under his administration. This leads many to ask, are we seeing unprecedented due process violations under Trump?

The answer, like in most cases, is not a simple “yes” or “no.” Obama was well-known for capitalizing on the U.S.’s expedited removal process, and the Migration Policy Institute found that 75% of people removed under his administration never saw a judge. Many point to his high numbers as further evidence of this process—he didn’t get tied up in court because courts weren’t often used, allowing him to deport larger numbers of migrants at a faster pace. During Obama’s presidency, the ACLU accused his administration of “prioritizing speed over fairness,” and “sacrificing individualized due process in pursuit of record removal numbers.”

Like the Obama admin, the Trump admin also leans heavily on administrative removal orders. In 2019, 64% of deportations under Trump were administrative; the deported illegal immigrants never saw a judge.

Something most people don’t realize, though, is that in the U.S., most deportations are via administrative removal orders, not criminal arrests that require judicial warrants. Immigration officers have statutory authority to arrest and detain noncitizens without a judicial warrant. And while these actions have been heavily criticized as “warrantless arrests” and violating civil-rights protections, this practice has both historical precedent and statutory support.

Nonetheless, Trump has deviated from this practice in a few distinct ways that critics argue is cause for concern.

First, in January of 2025, Trump signed an executive order that expanded expedited removal. Now, illegal immigrants may be subject to the expedited deportation process anywhere in the U.S. if they cannot prove they have resided in the U.S. for at least two years.

Second, one of Trump’s most heavily criticized actions occurred in March of 2025, when his administration sent over 200 Venezuelan migrants accused of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act with little to no due process. A majority of these migrants had not been convicted of crimes in the U.S., but the Trump admin doubled down on their stance, claiming they used a comprehensive vetting process that included looking at crimes committed both inside and outside the U.S. This claim conflicted with the fact that a man named Abrego Garcia was one of the 200 plus migrants deported to that very prison despite having never been charged with or convicted of a crime in any country he lived in.

Finally, and most recently, a leaked ICE memo, which was signed by the acting director of ICE in May of 2025, claims that ICE officers do not need a judicial warrant to enter a suspect’s home, which departs from traditional practices. The memo claims all ICE needs is an administrative warrant and a final order of removal, thus bypassing an independent neutral review by a judge or magistrate and the need for “probable cause” to enter a suspect’s house. Critics have flagged potential violations of people’s Fourth Amendment rights, which protect individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. While this has been in circulation within ICE since May, there have been no reports of this occurring prior to this document being leaked.

Contrary to what some commentators claim, Trump is not universally violating undocumented immigrants’ due process rights in an unprecedented manner. His use of administrative removals follows in the footsteps of previous presidents. Nonetheless, his expansion of expedited removal, transferring over 200 migrants to a high-security prison in another country without due process, paired with the recently leaked ICE memo, are ways in which Trump is deviating from the norm, metaphorically pushing the envelope, and generating both fear and criticism of unprecedented governmental overreach.

What each administration actually focused on.

The statistics discussed earlier in this article highlight prominent policy differences between the two presidents. Which leads us to consider: what did the presidents focus on when managing deportations?

During Obama’s first term, he maintained Secure Communities, which was launched in 2008 under Bush’s presidency. This data-sharing program had local police send fingerprints to the FBI and DHS for identification, and then the information was passed along to ICE, allowing ICE to detect illegal immigrants and those with deportation orders. As ICE Secretary Julie L. Meyers said, this program “creat[ed] a virtual ICE presence at every local jail.” The publicly stated focus was on individuals who committed serious crimes and those who recently crossed the border, aiming at apprehending undocumented immigrants before they integrated into the community. That being said, of the immigrants expelled during the six years the program operated, more than 70% of deported immigrants did not have crimes considered a national security threat.

During Obama’s second term, he publicly proclaimed a focus on criminals and backed this up by shutting down Secure Communities and replacing it with Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which prioritized national security threats, dangerous criminals, and recent border arrivals. Despite this proclamation, during his first fiscal year, around 50,000 immigrants were deported for entering without authorization, around 30,000 were deported for a misdemeanor (specifically, driving under the influence), and over 15,000 were deported for traffic violations. In other words, the administration’s public focus looked one way, but its actions showed something else.

During Trump’s first term, he reversed Obama’s PEP and returned to Bush’s Secure Communities system. As a result, arrests increased in the country’s interior. Trump also implemented the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while U.S. immigration courts resolved their cases.

During Trump’s second term, he has become more aggressive in his deportation tactics and has cast a wider net compared to his first term, as well as Obama’s two terms. He is now focused on deporting all illegal immigrants, not just those with criminal records or who are national security threats (despite public rhetoric saying otherwise). To put this into perspective, on a single day in January of 2025, Trump deported more than 2,000 migrants.

Trump’s deportation increase and expansion is supported by a variety of actions, such as him deporting Venezuelan migrants to the El Salvadorian prison, an increase in detainees, an increase in deportations from the interior, an increase in ICE raids and presence within U.S. communities, an expansion of the expedited removal, an increase in arrests, and his termination of the humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.

In sum, both presidents publicly focused on undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds or who were national security threats, and Obama went so far as to implement a program (PEP) to effectuate his public goals. Regardless of their public sentiment, both presidents still deported, arrested, and detained tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who didn’t meet these criteria.

Despite these similarities, Trump departs from Obama in that he shifted his focus during his second term towards indiscriminate mass deportation across the United States, making his deportation tactics less strategic and targeted than Obama’s.

Why Trump feels worse, even if the numbers don’t match.

A marked difference between Obama and Trump is the optics of their deportation and immigration policies. This is not only because mass dissemination of videos, images, and text via social media places Trump in a different landscape than Obama, but also because both presidents purposefully crafted different portrayals to meet their objectives.

Obama publicly portrayed himself as a reluctant enforcer and didn’t play into controversial news stories or sensational statements to gain traction or support. In addition, his policies backed a reformative approach, which we saw in his creation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a policy that provided temporary relief from deportation and work authorization to some young undocumented immigrants brought into the U.S. as children.

Crafting a public image of a President who was simply enforcing the law, protecting American citizens, while also allowing for exceptions for certain illegal immigrants, all during a time when society lacked the kind of social media virality and transparency we have nowadays, made Obama’s deportations more palatable to the public, despite a lot of similarities between him and Trump.

This is in stark contrast to Trump’s public portrayal as a zealous enforcer protecting Americans from dangerous criminals; a man who “says it how it is,” and who leans into controversial headlines to circulate his objectives. In line with this, Trump has not enacted any policies focused on reformation but rather has continued to focus on restricting immigration.

This public portrayal, combined with a social media landscape where everyday citizens make money off opinion pieces, polarizing viewpoints, and emotional footage, while palatable to some segments of the public, is unpalatable to other segments and creates an overall inflammatory environment that invokes increased criticism.

So, why is Trump receiving so much backlash?

Trump’s and Obama’s deportation and immigration policies and tactics are relatively similar, and Obama deported significantly more migrants than Trump. Yet it seems Obama faced less backlash than Trump is currently receiving, and many have wondered why. There are a variety of reasons for this.

First, social media has changed. During Obama’s presidency, individual citizens used social media for personal reasons, with public accounts reserved for named celebrities. Nowadays, average citizens can become famous overnight from a single video, and the algorithm, combined with our own psycholog,y dictates what videos make someone famous. Polarizing opinions, emotional footage, and posts that confirm our biases have created a deep divide among the American people while keeping our nervous system perpetually fried.

Second, a large segment of those chronically on social media apps were either unborn or in middle or high school during Obama’s presidency, and therefore they don’t have a proper comparison of Obama’s actions to Trump’s actions. Many ask, where were the protests during Obama’s presidency about his deportation tactics? Well, there were protests, but they weren’t blasted on TikTok in real time. ACLU sued Obama, and he was labeled “Deporter in Chief,” yet many twenty- and thirty-year-olds have no recollection of this because either they didn’t exist yet, or they were binge-watching One Direction on old-school YouTube during this time.

Third, Trump and Obama have very different PR tactics. Obama soothed the public by avoiding incendiary remarks, seemingly cooperating with reporters, and avoiding controversial headlines. This gave Obama more wiggle room to get away with actions that, nowadays, would incite fear, anger, and disagreement. Trump, on the other hand, uses incendiary remarks to rile up both his base and his opponents, he is adversarial to reporters, and he doesn’t seem to shy away from controversial headlines. Obama’s tactics allowed him to operate in the background, whereas Trump is operating under a self-made spotlight.

Fourth, Obama was a Democrat, which protected him from excessive criticism. Republican politicians and media companies gained no political leverage for criticizing a sitting president who was enacting policies their base agreed with, even if that sitting president was from the opposing party. In addition, Democrats softened their criticism because Obama was one of their own; infighting is strategically disadvantageous to a political party looking to maintain control.

This is in stark contrast to what Trump is currently facing. Trump’s deportation policies have given Democrats the opportunity to harshly criticize their opposition while simultaneously garnering additional support from a base of voters who already view deportations in a critical light.

And finally, there are some big strategic and practical differences between Trump and Obama’s policies. People can point to the fact that Obama deported more migrants than Trump, that he ignored due process via administrative removals, or that he deported tens of thousands of immigrants who didn’t meet his publicly declared criteria. Nonetheless, Trump has amped up deportation tactics. He has shifted towards more aggressively targeting all illegal immigrants, rather than focusing on a specific category of illegal immigrants, he has expanded potential due process violations in a variety of ways, he has escalated tension in the interior of America with an increased presence of ICE within American neighborhoods, he has increased arrests and detentions, and more detainees have died while in custody under Trump.

Conclusion.

While the reasons in the last section are listed individually, they work together to create an incendiary environment, both online and in-person, that explains the harsh criticism Trump is receiving despite not only having some similar policies to Obama but also having deported fewer migrants than Obama.

To criticize any president’s deportation and immigration policies, one needs not only a comprehensive knowledge of said policies but also a deeper understanding of the different landscapes these presidents are operating within, how they wield rhetoric to meet their objectives, and how they manage the press. This article does not aim to take a hardline position on whether one president is worse than the other in the realm of immigration, but rather provide contextual information to give you the power to decide where your opinion lies.

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