Welfare states are unstable, and tend either to give way to free market reforms and liberalization, to collapse under their own weight, or to fall down the slippery slope of interventionism and degenerate into authoritarian regimes. For as long as I can recall, and certainly for decades before I was born, the American left...
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Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. . . . On second thought, to hell with them.     First they came for the lettuce pickers, and I did not speak out because I was not a lettuce picker. Then they came for the maids and the dishwashers, and I did not speak out...
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With great sadness, I convey the news I have just received that Manuel F. Ayau died yesterday. Known to his friends as Muso, Ayau was one of the greatest persons I have had the privilege to know. I am not given to hero worship, but I do not hesitate to affirm that, to me, Muso...
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This week’s Lighthouse (available online here) touches on the WikiLeaks documents (Ivan Eland), the right to bear arms (Stephen Halbrook), the cost of U.S. foreign policy (Robert Higgs), and Hugo Chavez’s support of terrorists (Alvaro Vargas Llosa). Here are links to the individual items: Lessons from the WikiLeaks Docs Halbrook Lauded for Defense of...
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As with everything else about the U.S. police state that is often associated with Republicans and the right, the Obama administration has pushed the envelope and showed itself to be as draconian as Bush. Deportations of illegal aliens—as in, people without the federal government’s permission to be here—have increased under Obama, including deportations of...
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My Division of Labour co-blogger Noel Campbell hits a home run with today’s post on immigration. Two key quotes: Arizona doesn’t have an illegal immigration problem; Arizona has an organized crime violence problem. What created the incentives for organized crime (and its penchant for violence) to develop? Well, the War on Drugs, of course....
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The Obama Administration has announced that it wants to spend at least $3.5 billion—and I wonder where they’re getting that kind of money?—over the next 3 years to help as many as 60 poor nations feed themselves. While it is very good news that this involves ending the practice of sending U.S. crops to...
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I rarely agree with Lou Dobbs but am gladdened to find out that he has adopted a radical Ron Paulian stand on foreign policy. He is promoting a petition to bring home all U.S. troops from overseas. This is a hopeful sign that some elements on the right are beginning to question Obama’s wars....
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When Honduras’s president Manuel Zalaya attempted recently to unconstitutionally extend his powers, in this case to thwart his term limit, Honduras’s Congress—controlled by the president’s own party—and Supreme Court acted quickly and decisively to remove him from office, and utilized the military to enforce their rulings. In contrast, as a series of U.S. presidents...
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Bruce Bartlett just informed me of the sad news that my friend, and Independent Institute Research Fellow, Professor William Marina, died this morning of a heart attack. Bill was a fearless friend of the truth and his passing will be a great loss for us all. I was first introduced to Bill about twenty...
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