The statement given by the Bush administration to Congress and now available online, entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," must be read to be believed, writes Joseph Stromberg. Its historical points are dubious, its economics misleading, and its social theory a heap of dangerous half- or third-truths.
In point of fact, terms like "dove" and "hawk" have little substantive meaning when applied to the Federal Reserve. Robert McTeer's unrelenting inflationism is considered dovish, while Laurence Mayer is labeled a complete hawk on TheStreet.com's Fed Scorecard, despite the fact that he has yet to cast a dissenting vote!
Modern Americans live lives considerably less simple than that of Henry David Thoreau on Walden Pond. But Thoreau's insights in "Civil Disobedience," writes Gary Galles, are more important in our far more complex world.
In Zimbabwe, reparations are a transparent cover for one of the most monstrous governmental crimes of the last 10 years. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe's land reforms have amounted to nothing more than a power grab by his government, which is starving a country that once was one of Africa's shining stars.
The Soviet system was a chaotic one that was destined not only to enslave and impoverish its people but also to degenerate and finally disintegrate. The Russian people have long experience in suffering poverty and hardship. Full of hope, they may yet find their way to comfort and ease--the way of freedom.
When a politician talks of "reform," grab your wallet. As in "welfare reform," for example. For as any hardened inside-the-Beltway observer of dark Washington ways can tell you, "welfare reform" is typically a spin for tightening the screws on the taxpayer and easing welfare access.
The main political divide of our time is between those who trust the state and those who do not. We can argue without end about economics, regulation, trade, and war, but we have not touched the core issue until we address the questions: what is the state, and how much, if any, faith should we put in it? Alberto Mingardi is our guide through the literature.
With the average American spending more to fund government than to buy food, clothing, and shelter combined, the greatest impact the government has on those of us for whom it "cares so much" is through the huge gap it creates between the value of our productive contribution to others in the workplace and what we actually take home.
In economics literature, the rhetoric about "market failure" too often serves as a mask for boundless faith in the power of the state. D.W. MacKenzie examines the case of Joseph Stiglitz, who is always hopeful that government will change under his guidance.
Abraham Lincoln is incorrectly remembered as a restorer of liberty, while Prussian autocrat Otto von Bismarck is generally seen as a ruthless dictator, eager to sacrifice men to his policy of deciding the future of his countrymen "by blood and iron." Contrary to this view, Adam Young explains why both men should be viewed as allied together in the common cause of destroying the principles of classical liberalism.
