Put aside all other issues for a moment, and ignore the trivialities that dominate the airwaves and what passes for national debate in this country. The Senate this week ratified a defense authorization bill containing an amendment cosponsored by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin and Republican Sen. John McCain that would empower the military to...
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In a recent podcast interview (please see below) of the economist Clifford F. Thies at Econ Journal Watch (EJW), he discusses the ideas and impact of Richard T. Ely (1854–1943), the highly influential “Progressive.” Ely was co-founder, first Secretary, and subsequent President of the American Economic Association (AEA), that continues to take great pride...
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My country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims’ pride, From ev’ry mountainside Let freedom ring!               My native country, thee, Land of the noble free Thy name I love; I love thy rocks and...
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An eighteen-year-old Floridian is pulled over for riding a bike without a night light. A small amount of marijuana is found on him. He is thus in violation of probation for a crime he committed years before as a juvenile. He is arrested and tossed in a jail cell. He suffers a medical emergency...
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Interventionists insist that “free market absolutism” is naive, runs counter to reality, puts ideology above empirical facts. Yet I am amazed by how often government policies with a clear historical record of failure are enacted and defended. This is the most baffling and frustrating as it concerns policies that the most elementary of economic...
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Mario Vargas Llosa admired the Cuban Revolution well into his writing career, but for more than two decades the 2010 Nobel laureate author has been the most famous exponent of classical liberalism in the Spanish-speaking world. Why did he forsake the radical collectivism of Che and Marx and embrace individual liberty instead? In his...
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Welcome to the next chapter in our continuing coverage of Police State USA. In a JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) opinion piece, the authors argue for taking “super-obese” children from parents and putting them in foster care. Having just researched the dark side of well-intentioned “Progressivism” (early 20th century), I find this...
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In his latest column for the New York Times, “Our Lefty Military,” the iconic “liberal” commentator Nicholas D. Kristof has now come clean on the reality of his own collectivist views that military means and organization embody the “liberal ethos” (“progressivism”), an admission that liberals rarely face up to. While numerous liberal and conservative...
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Soviet kids say the darnedest things, art historian Igor Golomstock discovered when he led field trips through Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in the late 1950s. The schoolchildren indicated that they couldn’t distinguish between the propaganda paintings of Nazi Germany on display and the works of Socialist Realism that had flourished (if that...
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At least in part. In the run-up to the Iraq war, many protesters brandished signs declaring, “No War for Oil!” The response from those pushing for the war was typically that this was a childish and silly admonition. And of course, the precise economic reasoning involved in much of this dissent was indeed faulty:...
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