"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."
This is especially timely with the deadly Keynesian religion on the rise. High priest Paul Krugman recently resurrected this coprocephalic canard:
The fact is that war is, in general, expansionary for the economy, at least in the short run. World War II, remember, ended the Great Depression. The $10 billion or so we're spending each month in Iraq mainly goes to US-produced goods and services, which means that the war is actually supporting demand. Yes, there would be infinitely better ways to spend the money. But at a time when a shortfall of demand is the problem, the Iraq war nonetheless acts as a sort of WPA, supporting employment directly and indirectly.
Update: How man of us had a history class that would have helped us understand this political cartoon from the 1930s?
Maybe your schooling was a lot better than mine. I remember being taught that Hoover was a do-nothing and that FDR offered the hope of a more activist government. Raimondo writes:
When Roosevelt was swept into office, Flynn welcomed him, sharing the hope that the new president would get the country moving again. Flynn supported the Democratic Party platform of 1932, which called for an end to the extravagant spending of the Republicans, a balanced budget, and the abolition of the many government bureaus and commissions.
But Flynn was soon disillusioned. In fact, the New Deal that Roosevelt sold to the American people in 1932 bore absolutely no resemblance to the one he immediately imposed on an unsuspecting nation. During the first 100 days of his administration, Roosevelt racked up a deficit larger than the one it took Hoover two years to produce. Worse, from Flynn's viewpoint, was the blizzard of new government agencies the president created — agencies that sought to regulate every aspect of economic life — and the billions in borrowed money that financed them.
"Moral courage is the rarest of all the rare things of this earth. The war has shown that millions have physical courage. Millions were willing to face rifle and cannon, bombardment, poison gas, liquid fire, and the bayonet; to trust themselves to flying machines thousands of feet in air, under the fire of anti-aircraft guns of enemy planes; to go into submarines, perhaps to meet a horrible death. But how many had the courage merely to make themselves unpopular? The bitter truth must be told: the many enlisted or submitted to the draft on both sides of the conflict not because they were convinced that they were helping to save the world, not because they had any real hatred for the enemy, not to uphold the right, but simply that they hadn't the moral courage to face the stigma of "slacker" or "conscientious objector." ... Fear of death? No; the soldiers faced death bravely. But they feared unpopularity. They dreaded the suspicion of their fellows. What was needed in war is needed no less urgently in peace. How many persons in public or even in private life have the courage to say the thing that people do not like to hear?" – Henry Hazlitt, The Way to Willpower (via blog.Mises)
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?
Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.
I think Lew Rockwell's editorial this morning is critically important. Only libertarians have held onto the classical-liberal insight that so-called "class interests" are only in conflict in the context of coercion. Civil society (i.e., voluntary cooperation, e.g., the free market) will harmonize all peaceful interests — race, sex, language, religion, wealth, etc.:
If the political prediction markets are right, we are going to end up with a presidential contest between two people who agree on the pressing need to expand the entire welfare-warfare state.
They can argue about priorities, but they agree on the overall goal.
With the campaign lacking serious issues, something tells me that the great American obsession over race is going to play a major role, which is gravely unfortunate since the discussion is unlikely to be enlightening. But it does raise important questions: what is racism and how can we tell if it exists? FULL ARTICLE
Every Republican I've spoken to is mystified that John McCain has sewn up the Republican nomination. Of course I'm not talking to the run-of-the-mill Republican. There are vast hordes of these people who have never read a book and vote only by the most sordid political instinct known to man. McCain is their candidate. FULL ARTICLE
I have finally finished reading your great book about Mises. When I use the word "great," I mean not simply that it weighs at least a kilo and contains more than 1,000 pages. I mean most of all that it is a magnificent scholarly achievement. I can't remember when I have taken more pleasure from a book. It is a joy to read, in every way. The English is precise and polished, and everything is put just right. The research is amazingly broad, yet deep, too. The judgments are sensible and mature. The coverage — from the personal details to the content of Mises's ideas to the context in which he lived and worked — is extraordinary, and the organization puts everything into comprehensible order. The bibliography is more than impressive. All in all, the book is simply an amazing accomplishment, and a fitting tribute to its great subject.
The Mises Institute deserves great credit, too, not only for its support of your work on this project, but also for producing a book that is a fine example of the publisher's art: the typeface is clean and clear, and large enough to permit effortless reading; the layout is spacious and proper; the footnotes are where they should be, and they, too, are large enough to be read without a magnifying glass; the illustrations are splendid complements to the text; and the indexes are terrific. The work is thus not simply beautiful intellectually, but beautiful physically, as well.
If I had ever written anything half so wonderful — and I recognize that I lack the abilities to do so — I would consider my career a complete success, and feel myself justified in taking my ease, to rest on my laurels. I do not perceive that you have this plan in mind for yourself, and therefore the world will be the better, not only for your great book on Mises, but also for all the great achievements that lie in your future. I salute you, my friend, not without a touch of envy, but with my whole heart.
On LRC this morning, Gary North offers this non-negotiable list of demands, followed by some very encouraging commentary.
Serious, no-nonsense libertarians, whether anarchist or minarchist, demand the abolition of
Wars that have not been declared by Congress
The maintenance of military bases outside the United States
Military defense treaties (NATO, CENTO, etc.)
America's membership in the United Nations Organization
Graduated ("progressive") income taxation
Tax-funded education at any level
Government licensing of the right to keep and bear arms
The Federal Reserve System's monopoly over money
The Social Security system
Medicare and Medicaid
The Central Intelligence Agency
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
The National Parks system
The Post Office
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
The Food and Drug Administration
North adds, "This list of things to abolish is so far outside of mainstream politics that anyone proposing more than one of them is dismissed as a kook."
But he goes on to say,
Yet I contend that most of these demands will be met within the lifetime of my children. Why am I so optimistic about this list? Because I am optimistic about the costs of continuing to operate everything on the list. They will bankrupt the central government.
Politicians espouse numerous theories about the cause of this country's economic woes; seldom however do these officials look below the surface: the roots of our economic ills can be traced to central banking and our present monetary system.
The Federal Reserve claims to manage our money; instead it makes our money worth less and less every day. It has generated continuous and worsening business cycles and lowered our living standards.
Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) is the American individualist anarchist and legal theorist, known mainly for setting up a commercial post office in competition with the government and thereby being shut down. But he was also the author of some of the most radical political and economic writings of the 19th century, and continues to have a huge influence on libertarian thinkers today. He was both a dedicated opponent of slavery in all its form, even going so far as to advocate guerrilla war to stop it, but also a dedicated opponent of the federal invasion of the South and its postwar reconstruction.
This collection was selected personally by Murray Rothbard as his best work. It includes "Trial by Jury," which argues for the idea of jury nullification, that is, the right of the jury to reject the law under which a defendant is tried. It also includes his "Letter to Grover Cleveland," which remains one of the most rigorous pieces of political argument ever penned. Finally, it includes his classic work "No Treason," which argues that the US Constitution is not a social contract at all and that it cannot bind the current generation.
Spooner was obviously a great dissident -- and one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 19th century and an American original. His influence has been quiet but very long and pervasive.
The title here is of Rothbard's own choosing, but it sums up the theme of his best work.
A friend who knows I was recently reading medieval history as part of my ongoing remedial self-education just pointed me to this great passage from today's LRC:
French historian Marc Bloch noted that, during the Middle Ages, "the notion arose that freedom was lost when free choice could not be exercised at least once in a lifetime." The only freedom many people sought was to pick whose "man" they would become. Medieval times included elaborate ceremonies in which the fealty was consecrated. With current elections, people are permitted to choose whose pawns they will be. Voting is becoming more like a medieval act of fealty — with voters bowing down their heads and promising obedience to whoever is proclaimed the winner.
"If we must choose – and indeed we must – between the world's most powerful and aggressive state, on the one hand, and a man who wishes to move to Yakima to support his family by picking apples, on the other hand, which side does human decency dictate that we choose?" – Robert Higgs, "The Difference Between an Illegal Immigrant and Me"
In response to the hullabaloo around yesterday's article on George Washington, Jeffrey Tucker offered the following defense of Rothbard's treatment of The Founder:
This article hurls a dead cat into the temple of the civic religion — and does so in way that only Rothbard can.
Given the general tenor of the pro-Washington comments, I'm not sure how many of the commentators even understand what "civic religion" Tucker is talking about, let alone the importance of violating its shrines.
Listening to the History of Rome podcast that I recently discovered, I was surprised and delighted to hear the intelligent commentary of host and author Mike Duncan on the legendary founder of an earlier empire:
It seems comically naive of the Romans to believe that so much could be owed to a single man, but when we look at our own almost religious veneration of George Washington, it begins to make sense. In 500 years, will historians be reporting that George Washington was born of a cherry tree — and had wooden teeth to prove it? That he flew over the Delaware River, defeated the British army, and designed the Constitution all by himself? It seems crazy, but as time goes by, the subtleties of actual events are compressed into small, digestible units. Horatio Gates has already been pushed from the collective consciousness and is known only to historians, but it was his victory at Saratoga, not Washington's, that led the French to support the Revolution, and thus ensure its success. That story, however, is too complicated. Most Americans don't know how critical French involvement was, let alone that Washington had little to do with securing it. Washington beat the British. That is the story of the American Revolution. As the years pass, will the name of Madison be lost? Hamilton? Even the great Thomas Jefferson, whose fame is second to none, may yet fall under the juggernaut that is this mythical Washington, as he, like Romulus, becomes the answer to all questions about the founding of America.
By the way, that's the same Horatio Gates about whom Rothbard writes, "During the campaigns of 1777 a suspicion began to well up among many Americans that Gates was an excellent general and Washington a miserable one, and that maybe something should be done about it." The same General Gates who wrote a less than flattering letter about General Washington to General Thomas Conway, after which "Washington and his influential friends immediately conjured up a nonexistent widespread 'plot,' the mythical 'Conway Cabal' … soon forced out of the army by the vindictive Washington."
February 29th, 2008 by 
bkmarcus
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"Moral courage is the rarest of all the rare things of this earth. The war has shown that millions have physical courage. Millions were willing to face rifle and cannon, bombardment, poison gas, liquid fire, and the bayonet; to trust themselves to flying machines thousands of feet in air, under the fire of anti-aircraft guns of enemy planes; to go into submarines, perhaps to meet a horrible death. But how many had the courage merely to make themselves unpopular? The bitter truth must be told: the many enlisted or submitted to the draft on both sides of the conflict not because they were convinced that they were helping to save the world, not because they had any real hatred for the enemy, not to uphold the right, but simply that they hadn't the moral courage to face the stigma of "slacker" or "conscientious objector." ... Fear of death? No; the soldiers faced death bravely. But they feared unpopularity. They dreaded the suspicion of their fellows. What was needed in war is needed no less urgently in peace. How many persons in public or even in private life have the courage to say the thing that people do not like to hear?" – 
Lew Rockwell does great radio. He's really at his best as a public speaker. Here's Lew talking with 
Let's Abolish Government
A 
In response to the