Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute

Structure, Loyalty, and Power: Understanding China’s Party-State Under Xi Jinping

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Feb 19, 2026 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In late January 2026, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced investigations into two of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) most senior officers: General Zhang Youxia, long-time vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and a close Xi Jinping ally, and General Liu Zhenli, chief of the CMC’s Joint Staff Department. These investigations capped a wave of high-level purges that began in 2023 and steadily hollowed out the PLA’s senior leadership. At one point, the CMC, China’s supreme military decision-making body, was reduced in functional terms to Xi himself as chairman...

Can We Rescue the Constitution?

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Feb 12, 2026 | Book Reviews, Featured Articles

William J. Watkins Jr.’s The Independent Guide to the Constitution: Original Intentions, Modern Inventions is an admirably clear-eyed and disciplined examination of a document that has, over the course of two centuries, been transformed from a charter of limited and enumerated powers into a font of nearly unlimited federal authority. Watkins writes with alarm at how far modern constitutional doctrine has drifted from the Founders’ design—but his book is more than a lament. It is a structured, systematic guide to how the Constitution was meant to work, how it has been distorted, and what...

The Vain Struggle to Curb Congressional Stock Trading

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Feb 5, 2026 | Featured Articles, Politics

In the halls of the U.S. Capitol, where lawmakers craft policies that shape the nation's economy, a persistent ethical dilemma looms: the ability of members of Congress to trade stocks while possessing privileged, non-public information. This practice raises serious concerns about insider trading, where legislators can leverage insights from committee briefings, closed-door meetings, or upcoming legislation to achieve returns that often outpace the broader market. Studies have shown that congressional portfolios frequently beat benchmarks like the S&P 500, with average returns for...

Reindustrialization, the Dollar, and the Limits of Tariff Politics

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jan 29, 2026 | Economics, Featured Articles

President Donald Trump’s call to reindustrialize the United States taps into a widely shared sense that something fundamental has gone wrong in the American economy. Manufacturing employment has collapsed, entire regions have been hollowed out, and supply-chain disruptions during the COVID era revealed how dependent the United States has become on foreign production for even basic goods. Trump’s proposed remedy—high tariffs on imports combined with subsidies and industrial policy at home—aims to reverse decades of deindustrialization by forcefully redirecting capital back into domestic...

Trump’s Tariffs Made His Farm Bailouts Inevitable

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jan 22, 2026 | Economics, Featured Articles

In the comic theater of American politics, few spectacles are as reliably absurd as the utopian promises of protectionism. Donald Trump's tariffs, hailed by their proponents as a bold strike against foreign exploitation, have instead proven to be a blunt instrument of economic self-sabotage—particularly for the nation's farmers. From his first administration to the present day these policies have not only disrupted free markets but have necessitated a cascade of government bailouts, turning independent producers into wards of the state. Such interventions are not savvy trade strategy but are...

The Thirty Years’ War: Political and Religious Dimensions Considered

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jan 19, 2026 | Uncategorized

Introduction: The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) remains one of the most complex and devastating conflicts in European history, its origins debated extensively by historians seeking to classify its primary cause as either religious or political. Traditional narratives have often framed the war as a direct consequence of the Reformation and the escalating confessional divisions between Protestant and Catholic rulers within the Holy Roman Empire, a view championed by historians emphasizing the role of the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Habsburgs’ consolidation of power, and the Protestant...

Airstrikes in Nigeria and the Wider Failure of Washington’s Africa Policy

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jan 15, 2026 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Recent U.S. missile strikes in northwest Nigeria, ordered by President Donald Trump on Christmas Day 2025, were heralded by the administration as a decisive blow against ISIS-linked militants persecuting Christians. Yet, as investigative reporting has revealed, the operation was marred by technical failures, questionable intelligence, and dubious strategic value—exemplifying the pitfalls of America's overreliance on military intervention in Africa. At least four of the sixteen Tomahawk missiles failed to detonate, landing unexploded in fields and near civilian areas, according to Nigerian...

War and the Making of the American State in the 20th Century

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jan 14, 2026 | Uncategorized

Introduction: From the trenches of the Western Front to the jungles of Vietnam and the geopolitical standoff of the Cold War, the 20th century transformed the United States through a succession of conflicts whose effects reshaped nearly every dimension of American life. Military history did not merely accompany the development of modern America: it drove it. Charles Tilly’s well-known dictum—“war made the state and the state made war”—captures the essence of the American experience: the United States amassed unprecedented administrative, fiscal, and coercive capacities through wartime...

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