Joseph Schumpeter described capitalism as a process of creative destruction, and an economic system that is always changing, never stationary. He called capitalism an evolutionary process and said the engine that keeps the economy advancing is entrepreneurship. In a capitalist economy, people get ahead by being entrepreneurial: looking for ways to create value for […]

Make up all the justifications you want, but the deal was just another example of crony capitalism.

On April 25, a videotaped talk by Pope Francis was released at the international TED conference in Vancouver, Canada. The 18-minute talk, titled “Why the Only Future Worth Building Includes Everyone,” can be viewed here. Francis highlighted three themes, beginning with the observation that community is central to human existence: [L]ife flows through our […]

Hollywood’s rediscovery of freedom is cropping up in interesting places more and more. I’ve discussed themes emphasizing individual responsibility and skepticism about government in films such as Captain America: Civil War, the Divergent trilogy, and other media, but these ideas might have real staying power if what I just saw in Jason Bourne, the Matt Damon vehicle […]

In the aftermath of the Solyndra cronyism debacle, the Los Angeles Times now reports that a no-bid contract was awarded last May to a firm controlled by a billionaire Obama supporter for the highly unlikely national security threat of a small pox attack: Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a […]

A review of James Ledbetter, Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011. 268 pp. $26.00. On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his final presidential speech, which turned out to be his most memorable by virtue of this warning: “In the councils […]