“That government is best which governs not at all,”
Said Henry David Thoreau,
But what did he know?
_______________________________________________
“Liberty:  not the daughter but the mother of order,”
Declared Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
And then he passed on.
_______________________________________________
“When the government is too intrusive, people lose their spirit,”
Noted Lao-tzu,
As I would, too.
_______________________________________________
“Great men are almost always bad men,”
Declared Lord Acton
―some wisdom to act on.
_______________________________________________
“Let [...]

Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs is interviewed here by Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News’ program, “Freedom Watch,” regarding the utter folly of the gigantic federal spending programs first started under George W. Bush and now enormously expanded by Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress. Prolonging the recovery amidst enormous economic confusion and new [...]

A fascinating and frustrating exchange. Smith is exactly right that mandatory insurance without a public option is hardly a victory for the American people:
Over the last ten years health care costs in America have skyrocketed. Regular folks cannot afford it. So, they tax the system by not getting preventative medicine. They go to the emergency [...]

Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs is interviewed on Fox News’ “Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano” on how Barack Obama is Herbert Hoover’s true “Progressive” heir as an economic interventionist, corporatist and protectionist. Hoover’s policies caused the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt then continued and greatly expanded such policies as his New Deal, deepening [...]

September 1, 1939—exactly seventy years ago today—is customarily considered the day when World War II began, owing to the German invasion of Poland. Of course, some belligerents, most notably the Japanese and the Chinese, had already been at war for years, and others did not join the fray until later. The United States actually began to [...]

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Inglourious Basterds and the Problem of Revenge,” Jordana Horn incisively examines the theme of Quentin Tarantino’s new, fictional, revenge film, Inglourious Basterds, in which German soldiers and others in World War II are targeted by an elite Jewish-American commando unit to be killed, scalped, tortured, beaten [...]

When American students learn about World War II, they are usually taught that it began on September 1, 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland. They do not get much instruction about the Treaty of Non-Aggression between the Third German Reich and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, better known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (after the foreign [...]

The Democratic Party agenda tends to be a mixture of socialism and corporatism, whereas Republicans probably emphasize corporatism and socialism. Obama’s health care plan has always been a hybrid, as most interventionist polices are in a mixed economy. Perhaps in the longterm he wants to move toward as fully socialist a system as possible, but [...]

The Onion News Network hilariously and insightfully satirizes the escalation of the gigantic spending, debt, and disregard for constitutional law by the U.S. government, “U.S. Government Stages Fake Coup to Wipe Out National Debt:”
U.S. Government Stages Fake Coup To Wipe Out National Debt
To understand the folly of Barack Obama’s New, New Deal, see the following [...]

News item:
Goldman Sachs surprised even optimistic analysts with a $3.44 billion profit for the three months to June, almost 90% more than the previous quarter. Profits were also up at JP Morgan Chase, which announced second-quarter profits of $2.7 billion on July 26th, which were 36% higher than a year ago. (“The World this [...]