Get gov’t out of air travel, Dems can turn cities around and other commentary

Conservative: Get Gov’t Out of Air Travel

The “mess” at US airports now isn’t just about the standoff in Congress, explains Judge Glock at The Free Press: “The bigger problem is the government is simply not good at running air travel.” Fact is, “letting the private sector manage passenger security, air traffic control, and airports” is “the norm in much of the world.” Over 80% of commercial airports in Europe use private screening”; 20 US airports do, too, and Canada “contracts out the actual work.” Canada and Britain have privatized air-traffic-control; Germany and Australia use gov’t-owned companies. And about 75% of passengers in Europe “use privatized airports”; “in Latin America, two-thirds of passengers” do. And “these airports are generally more successful than government-run ones.”

Urbanist: Dems Can Turn Cities Around

“As crime and overdoses mounted” in cities that adopted anti-policing and drug-decriminalization policies, “some Democratic elected officials have responded with more pragmatic approaches that reduced crime and drug problems,” cheers Keith Humphreys at City Journal. San Francisco Mayor Dan Lurie “banned the distribution of clean crack pipes and foil” in his town. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan broke with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “Housing-First policies” and demanded “full funding” of “mandated treatment for repeat drug offenders.” Philly Mayor Cherelle Parker cleared homeless camps and “increased police presence.” “Homicide rates in San Francisco and Philadelphia are as low as they were in the 1950s and 1960s.” All three mayors have “strong” public support. Pray their example “leads to a broader Democratic rethinking on drugs, policing, and crime.”

From the right: Religious Revival ABC’s

There’s a “vigorous debate” over the flatlining of the “nonreligious share of the American population,” notes The New York Times’ Ross Douthat: Is it a “precursor to religious revival” or “just a leveling off preceding a further fall from faith”? Among the “conflicting revival-related evidence”: “The nonreligious share of the American population declined” again in 2025, while Catholicism, though boosted by a “big rise in conversions,” nonetheless “loses far more lapsed Catholics than it gains in converts.” In the end, what “determines whether a big religion is growing or shrinking” isn’t conversion but fertility; if it’s dropping, that means a “decline in the number of people born into a religion, period.”

Mideast beat: Answer Lebanon’s Call

“Limited, strategic involvement” can be “an opportunity,” argues Dan Perry at The Hill: “President Joseph Aoun’s new Lebanese government is actually trying to get rid of Hezbollah.” Success “would end one of Iran’s most powerful instruments of regional projection,” “open the door to a formal end to hostilities between Israel and Lebanon” and maybe “draw Lebanon into the broader architecture of regional normalization now tentatively taking shape.” But “Lebanon’s military is simply not capable of confronting Hezbollah,” so “the world should get involved — but only at Lebanon’s request,” as it answered past “appeals of governments facing fragmentation and militia violence.” “Interventions fail when they try to impose order where none exists,” but “stand a far greater chance of success” when “a state is prepared to act but lacks the capacity to succeed on its own.”

Canada watch: Handing Over the Land

“‘Land acknowledgements’ have become ubiquitous in Canada,” notes The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady, and it’s not just “mere virtue signaling.” The federal government last month “signed three agreements with the Musquam Indian band” recognizing its “title and rights” to 1.3 million acres in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. In 2024, British Columbia “granted Aboriginal title of Haida Gwaii” to the Haida Nation, even though the area’s people “constitute only about half” of its population. “Businesses and homeowners already face heavy tax and regulatory burdens.” Now, new “rulings by courts, the provincial government and Ottawa” that recognize the “Aboriginal rights” of “indigenous peoples” may “undermine the sanctity of their contracts.” Canadians are “right to worry about where it will all end.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board