As "left" and "right" categories dissolve and become increasingly meaningless on the American ideological scene, as young people, with the collapse of both the SDS-Left and the liberal "consensus," grope toward a new philosophy and a new orientation, right-libertarianism may ascend.
As with most regulations, the CFC ban hit the poor with a vengeance. Millions of perfectly functioning refrigerators could no longer be recharged with Freon, so everyone was forced to purchase new CFC-free appliances. This, of course, was especially difficult for those with low incomes.
The Creed goes: the United States must have a forward presence everywhere. It must be set up to project its power globally, whether that means boots on the ground, bombs from the sky, or knives in the dark.
Jim Manzi has been challenging mainstream economists to defend their models, which tout the benefits of fiscal and monetary "stimulus." Manzi has repeatedly asked why he should put any faith in the predictions of these models.
Anyone who has worked in middle management has likely, at one time or another, had their big boss pass out some dopey management books that especially touched the hamster-brained sociopath (as Scott Adams would say) who was in charge of operations.
The issue is whether current tax rates — which had been in place since 2003 — would stay the same, or whether they would go up in 2011. From this perspective, then, this has been a debate over a tax hike, not a tax cut.
The Lincoln regime destroyed the system of federalism, or states' rights, that was established by the founding fathers. After the war, the union was no longer voluntary, and all states, North and South, became mere appendages of Washington, DC.
Antitrust keeps superior products and marketing strategies from harming rivals, but halting such innovation harms consumers. It inhibits superior firms from passing on their efficiencies to consumers in lower prices.
The history of the 19th and 20th centuries has discredited the hopes and the prognostications of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. The peoples did not proceed on the road toward freedom, constitutional government, civil rights, free trade, peace, and good will among nations.
Government and the media bombard us with examples of real or often just imagined threats and expand them so that they become as big as our worst nightmares. As more of us buy into an overblown story, it takes on a life of its own and often becomes the accepted truth.
