Let me begin with a quote from an article that my old friend Ralph Raico wrote some 15 years ago:
Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek are widely considered the most eminent classical liberal thinkers of this century. They are also the two best known Austrian economists. They were great scholars and great men. I was lucky to have them both as my teachers.… Yet it is clear that the world treats them very differently. Mises was denied the Nobel Prize for economics, which
Famous libertarian author Tom Woods discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the Occupy Wall Street movement on Freedomain Radio. Topics include the growth of fascism, financial deregulation, the Federal Reserve, the evils of fiat currency, and the path to genuine peace and justice.
It’s fascinating to juxtapose America’s reverence for Steve Jobs’ accomplishments and its draconian drug policy with this, from the New York Times‘ obituary of Jobs:
[Jobs] told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. He said there were things about him that people who had not tried
Statists are continuing to say that President Obama’s assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki (through his CIA and military forces) was justified because Awlaki was supposedly exhorting Muslims to resist U.S. foreign policy with force and that he was also supposedly engaged in operational activities to bring this about. For his part, Obama is remaining mum on the subject, as are the CIA and the Pentagon.
The statists are missing the point, however. What Awlaki wa... (more)
Nearly every day, we read about new exonerations of people wrongfully convicted of crimes, and in almost all of those cases, the main reason for the wrongful conviction was prosecutorial misconduct. Two exonerations in Texas and California highlight the role of prosecutors who wanted convictions more than they wanted the truth. We read:
"She then said, ‘And if we don’t clear you, you don’t fly’ loud enough for other passengers to hear. And they did. And they stared at the bald woman being yelled at by a TSA [Transportation Security Administration] Supervisor," writes the "bald woman," Lori Dorn.
Ms. Dorn is a consultant in "human resources" who underwent "a bilateral maste... (more)
Everyone knows that the term fascist is a pejorative, often used to describe any political position a speaker doesn’t like. There isn’t anyone around who is willing to stand up and say: "I’m a fascist; I think fascism is a great social and economic system."
But I submit that if they were honest, the vast majority of politicians, intellectuals, and political activists would have to say just that.
The famous seven words appeared in an unfinished manuscript written by the progressive essayist Randolph Silliman Bourne (1886-1918) during World War I. In a collection of Bourne's essays entitled War and the Intellectuals (1964), editor Carl Resek explained the phrase's meaning. Resek wrote, "In its proper place it [the saying] mean... (more)
The links connecting Anwar al-Awlaki to anti-American terrorism were entirely suppositious, forged through unsubstantiated official assertion. He was, at most, a clerical propagandist who never exercised command authority. For that matter, no evidence has been presented that he ever had an operational role in a military force of any kind.
"For the second time this year, Americans can celebrate the elimination of another enemy of the state, " proclaims columnist Mark Paredes of Utah's Deseret News, who -- like any other collectivist drone -- appears to be a stranger in the house of irony. He also appears to believe that the words "can" ... (more)
September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated.
Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from "patriots" who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe.
In our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Lawrence Stratton and I showed that long b... (more)
In the past decade, Washington has killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans millions of Muslims in six countries, all in the name of the "war on terror." Washington's attacks on the countries constitute naked aggression and impact primarily civilian populations and infrastructure and, thereby, constitute war crimes under law. Nazis were executed precisely for what Washington is doing today.
Moreover the wars and military attacks have cost American taxp... (more)
It is funny (in a sick kind of way) to watch the Obamaphile left lashing out at Ron Paul's principled position against a president having the power to order the assassination of an American citizen without charges or trial. Click on any Obama-friendly site like the HuffingtonPost and you will see them machine-gunning the comments section with deep thoughts such as this:
"The right is just mad that Obama has done more to clean up the mess GWBYA left us, in 3 years than G di
One of the most destructive ideas in American history may be collapsing under its own unsupportable weight. Andrew Jackson stated the idea succinctly: "The people are the government …" In the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln expanded, "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
Of the people means government consists of members drawn from the people, not from an elite or an invader. By the people means they are the ones in authority. For t... (more)
The fact that "we live in a post-9/11 world" has become a convenient refrain for law enforcement over the past decade — and one that can apparently be called upon to justify limitless growth of the American police state.
This week, reporting on the protests still underway on Wall Street, the New York Times' Joseph Goldstein noted that the "police's actions suggested the flip side of a force trained to fight terrorism." That's because the NYPD have dealt with demonstrator... (more)
If knowledge is power, then ownership of knowledge and its application is an ultimate grasp on power.
President Obama made the overhaul of America's patent law a personal priority, including it prominently in his January 2011 State of the Union address. The America Invents Act was signed into law on September 16. The key change is a switch from "first to invent" to "first to file."
Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan wants doctors to track the body mass index (BMI) of children through a database that currently tracks immunizations and then to report the collected data to the state. (BMI is the ratio between a person’s weight and the square of his height; it is viewed as an indication of whether that person’s weight is healthy.)
The New York Times reports that many small restaurants and fast-food chains, desperate to hang on to profitability to some extent while the government conspires to kill it, are trying to introduce wine and beer on their menus as a way of drawing customers in.
Seems like a no brainer, right? Well, it’s not easy. You have to get permi... (more)
Several years ago, the police entered the office of a young professor at a reputable university and arrested him for an online crime. They took the professor away, booked him, and then offered him a deal: admit guilt and get off easy. The professor said to the few people to whom he was permitted to speak that this was crazy because he was innocent. His lawyer warned him: fight this and you could get life; admit guilt and you will get a suspended sentence. He took the deal. It was a trick.... (more)
Libertarians who criticize the United States government are sometimes told "If you don’t like it here, leave." Sir Walter Scott’s lines are a poetic reply:
"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality" -HL Mencken
In a recent debate CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul who should pay for the health care of someone who doesn’t have insurance and who is seriously ill. Blitzer asked Dr. Paul if, in a society presumably in which the government doesn’t fund health care, should the society just let the patient die. Dr. Paul replied, "No," and explained how, in the pre-welfare statist days, hospitals, churches, friends and neighbors never turned away sick people, and he addressed t... (more)
We are now living in a world consumed by killing, murder, and torture, and the very government that claims to be the most righteous on earth is responsible for most of these heinous crimes. That government of course is the United States government, now the largest empire on earth. There are supporting players involved like the U.S. military, the NATO countries, and those banks and corporations who profit from the slaughter of peoples overseas, but without the full sanction of these unho... (more)
Armed troops acting on behalf of a British carbon trading company backed by the World Bank burned houses to the ground and killed children to evict Ugandans from their homes in the name of seizing land to protect against “global warming,” a shocking illustration of how the climate change con is a barbarian form of neo-colonialism.
The evictions were ordered by New Forests Company, an outfit that seizes land in Africa to grow trees then sells the... (more)
From there, he moved inexorably through the Paul oeuvre: the need for the gold standard, the problem with energy-efficient light bulbs, why Greece should declare bankruptcy, why Grover Clev... (more)
A government’s laws direct all those within its jurisdiction. They go further. They presume to "speak" for those under control: to say what is right and wrong, to say that this is what you shall do and shall not do, and to say what you may do and what you may not do. Still more, they say that this is what will be taken from you and what will be given to you.
Law-making is a great power, and we can expect that those in government are going to use it to advance ... (more)
The bankruptcy filing of a solar energy company might not ordinarily make for the most tantalizing of headlines. When it follows, however, a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government, and prompts a congressional investigation, it's news.
The Red and Blue teams, both eager to appear as vindicating the taxpayer, have hastily seized upon Solyndra's bankruptcy and begun their pathological blame-game exercise. Republicans, for their part, have accused the White House of n... (more)
Troy Davis, despite the state acknowledging the possibility of his innocence, was just murdered in an utterly grotesque show of raw state power. Armed stormtroopers in full riot gear guarded the jail where the execution took place, protecting their criminal overlords from a furious public begging for justice. Shame on anyone who supports anything this criminal government does. These gangsters are not here to "protect us," but to rul... (more)
.jpg)
