Sam Ashworth-Hayes ponders mankind’s undying tribal urges and how they manifest on the left despite the left’s ostensibly antithetical global mindset. Ashworth-Hayes argues in The Critic that the cottage industry of flags superimposed on other flags, or flags redesigned to explicitly include certain groups, represents a permissible outlet for this innate desire.

Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.


