“Every year people come to the United States seeking protection,” the U.S. government explains, “because they have suffered persecution or fear that they will suffer persecution” due to race, religion, membership in a particular social group, and “political opinion.” That one now applies to citizens of Canada.
We were greatly saddened by the news that our very dear friend Patrick Jake “P.J.” O’Rourke had passed away on February 15th, at the age of 74, of complications from lung cancer. P.J. was peerless as a maverick journalist, essayist, humorist, and New York Times bestselling author, who we were privileged to know and work with for decades, as he was a founding Member of the Board of Advisors for the Independent Institute.
Over the years, we held numerous events with him, including our 30th Anniversary: A Gala for the Future of Liberty, for which he served as master of ceremonies and at which we honored tech-entrepreneur Timothy C. Draper; Nobel Laureate economist Vernon L. Smith; and North Korean refugee, defector, and human-rights activist Yeonmi Park with the Alexis de Tocqueville Award.
Normally, when people talk about how President Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) failed, it’s about how the stimulus helped create the worst inflation in 40 years. But did you know it was a total bust for creating jobs too?
The great satirist P.J. O’Rourke, who died last week at 74, once said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sounded like “a failed savings and loan.” As it turned out, that was more than a quip.
On President’s Day weekend, let us commemorate the record of the best president in U.S. history: John Tyler.
A random poll of Americans would draw mostly puzzled looks at the name, but according to Independent Institute Senior Fellow Ivan Eland, in his 2009 ranking of the presidents, Recarving Rushmore, this 10th U.S. president has the strongest record upholding Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty.
One would have thought that the end of the Soviet empire and the triumph of the liberal democratic paradigm (the Hegelian “end of history” Fukuyama so controversially cited at the time) would create an environment in which authoritarians were on the defensive, constantly having to justify themselves under the weight of a universally accepted liberal democratic standard.
On February 1, 2022, the U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding surpassed $30 trillion. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation created an infographic to memorialize the grim debt milestone.
Many readers of The Beacon will know that the current annual inflation rate, from January 2021 to January 2022, came in at 7.5%, which continues the upward trend we’ve seen for the past year. Prices rose 0.8% in the month of January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” proclaimed Joe Biden last September, in reference to COVID-19. Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, now backs vaccine mandates for children and infants. For those of the generation following World War II, that should bring back memories.
