Source: Town Hall
by Armstrong Williams

“Hard work, passion, virtue and true grit earmark the American heartland. Anecdotes, generation-spanning farm families and crop innovations speak volumes. They are all children of agriculture. Farming teaches faith in God, food cultivation, animal husbandry, the value of love, the richness of relationships and the growth of character. Farming offers time for reflection — an Aristotelian balance between nourishing and strengthening the physical body and deepening and improving our souls. From my earliest days, the farm was my classroom and nature was my teacher. I learned to treasure my parents, a work ethic, discipline and sacrifice. A diminishing number of Americans are denied that chance today. Engaging in routine daily farm tasks and providing care for the animals instilled accountability and highlighted the precariousness of life, illustrating how it can be either abruptly lost or extinguished over time.” (04/18/24)

https://townhall.com/columnists/armstrongwilliams/2024/04/18/a-story-of-the-soil-and-the-soul-n2637940

Source: The UnPopulist
by Thomas Shull

“After Jan. 6, 2021, any future election involving Donald Trump was going to make a sizable bloc of Americans anxious about the state of U.S. democracy. Trump’s persistent, months-long lead over President Joe Biden in surveys of the 2024 presidential race thus raises what would once have been viewed as a pointless question: Just how committed are Americans to representative democracy? Now come two recently published survey reports not on the presidential race, but rather on Americans’ views of democracy itself …” (04/18/24)

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/americans-may-be-turning-against

Source: The American Conservative
by Bradley Devlin

“House Speaker Mike Johnson has finally unveiled his foreign aid package. His plan to get it across the finish line, however, remains less clear. There are three main bills in Johnson’s package that will provide aid to Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific respectively. Although the supposed urgency for this aid package stems from Iran’s strikes on Israel, the bulk of the package’s funding, just over $60 billion worth, is aimed towards Ukraine. Israel receives quite the chunk of change, however: $26 billion courtesy of the American taxpayer. The Indo-Pacific region gets just over $8 billion. This brings the total price tag of Johnson’s foreign aid bonanza to $95 billion. Sound familiar? The resounding answer for conservatives in the House is yes. Johnson’s future hangs in the balance, and his conservative wing is nearly out of patience.” (04/18/24)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/johnson-tying-his-own-noose-with-foreign-aid-package/

Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton

“More hyperbolic fearmongering? Or is there something for real here? The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a government-run, government-supporting, micro-management sort of institution. It exists to empower government and has always done so. Whatever reports they issue have to be judged not just on accuracy and professional competence but on what political points they are pushing and who is pushing their buttons.” (04/18/24)

https://thepriceofliberty.org/2024/04/18/economic-collapse-or-more-chicken-little-with-intent/

Source: Quillette
by John Lloyd

“Why are some in Russia and Eastern Europe pining for the communist system that once oppressed them?” (04/18/24)

https://quillette.com/2024/04/18/nostalgia-for-confinement-communism-russia-romania/

Source: TomDispatch
by John Feffer

“Haiti has descended into chaos. It’s had no president or parliament — and no elections either –for eight long years. Its unelected prime minister Ariel Henry resigned recently when gang violence at the airport in Port-au-Prince made it impossible for him to return to the country after a trip to Guyana. Haiti is the poorest country in the region, its riches leached out by colonial overlords, American occupying forces, corporate predators, and home-grown autocrats. As if that weren’t enough, it’s also suffered an almost Biblical succession of plagues in recent years. A coup deposed its first democratically elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, not once but twice — in 1991 and again in 2004. An earthquake in 2010 killed hundreds of thousands, leaving 1.5 million Haitians homeless, out of a population of less than 10 million. In the wake of that earthquake, nearly a million people contracted cholera, the worst outbreak in history, courtesy of a contingent of U.N. peacekeepers.” (04/18/24)

https://tomdispatch.com/haiti-today-america-tomorrow/