A mid-year collection of interesting and insightful passages.
A feared “future” that actually began decades ago
In 1950, the Buchanan Committee began its investigation with “a probing questionnaire sent to more than 170 businesses and organizations. The wording defined lobbying in the broadest possible terms to also include groups responsible for the indirect formation of political ideas. Buchanan vowed to play no favorites and pledged that his goals were only information and transparency, but few of the questionnaires went out to businesses or groups led by New Dealers or Fair Dealers. Especially revealing was the question asking to ‘include all expenditures in connection with’ eight, and only eight, named organizations. All but one of these organizations were either right-wing or libertarian in orientation: the CCG [Committee for Constitutional Government], the American Enterprise Association (predecessor of the American Enterprise Institute), America’s Future, Inc. (a conservative outlet for Robert McCormick of the Chicago Daily Tribune), the Constitution and Free Enterprise Foundation, the Economists National Committee for Monetary Policy (pro–gold standard), the libertarian Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), and the Constitutional Educational League. The lone exception to this pattern was the Public Affairs Institute, a left-of- center group that promoted a larger welfare state.
“[G]laring omissions” from the list were “the CIO-PAC as well as businesses allied with the administration … Buchanan himself revealed some explicit bias early on when he said that three out of the eight organizations under fire advocated ‘a brand of American Fascism; they are against those who believe in a free, progressive America.’”
— David T. Beito, The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights, reviewed in “Amidst historical nescience, recalling the Black, Minton, Anderson, and Buchanan Committees,” February 9, 2026
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Floated reforms for a better future
“Improved enforcement by the IRA and perhaps some new rules from Congress should be considered to trim these abuses:
- “The surge of foreign philanthropy that has helped politicize American charities should immediately be cut off.”
- Internal Revenue Code § 501(c)(3) groups’ “‘voter registration’ efforts that quickly veer into politicking … should be stopped.”
- (c)(3)s “should not be involved in ballot initiatives, as some currently are,” either.
- Nor should (c)(3)s “be allowed to take donations and re-grant them to politically involved” § 501(c)(4) groups.
- “The tax-law language” allowing (c)(4)s to “get involved in politics so long as it is not their ‘primary activity’ should also be tightened and specified.
- “Congress should consider placing time limits on foundations.”
- And to maintain their tax-preferred status, “foundations should be expected to distribute into society every year a much larger fraction of their endowment. …
…
“Refined rules and improved enforcement could make philanthropy even better. But it is vital we not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Trumpers disturbed by flares of ideological charity have recently joined progressive projectors of a ‘billionaire boys’ club’ in assailing philanthropy broadly. While taking sensible criticisms seriously, we must make sure that politicos don’t destroy one of America’s most important secret weapons: the decentralized giving and organizing that solves millions of community needs through spontaneous, voluntary, grassroots action.”
— Karl Zinsmeister, Sweet Charity: Why Private Giving Is So Important to America (And Must Not be Wrecked By Politics), reviewed in “The ‘baby,’ the ‘bathwater,’ and the billionaires,” February 10, 2026
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Pretty much the same underlying music
“Nonprofit leaders must avoid both knee-jerk capitulation to the demands of their most radical staffers and the kind of symbolic battles that can drain organizational energy and effectiveness. This patient, tactical approach to managing institutional tensions might seem cowardly and insufficient to anti-woke advocates and left-wing activists, both of whom seek the catharsis of confrontation. But leaders can only govern with the consent of the governed, and few people are interested in being martyrs for abstract causes like free speech or due process.
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“Both sides of the American cultural war debate like to bash the nonprofit sector these days. To be sure, the language and the targets of right-wing activists are very different than the language and the targets favored by the left. But if you listen to the underlying music, it sounds pretty much the same. Both sides tend to suggest that the nonprofit sector is a tool of undemocratic and unaccountable elites who use the sector to advance their political goals at the expense of the people.”
— Greg Berman, The Nonprofit Crisis: Leadership Through the Culture Wars, reviewed in “DEI’s Danger to Nonprofits,” Modern Age, Spring 2026, republished in The Giving Review, May 4, 2026
