Life in American changed twenty years ago after the 9/11 attacks. Many Americans became enraged at anyone who did not swear allegiance to President George W. Bush’s antiterrorism crusade. Anyone who denied “they hate us for our freedoms” automatically became an enemy of freedom.

No one must profit from the misfortune of others.

I have heard and read such assertions many times, virtually any time there is an emergency or disaster anywhere, or whenever some good involved is considered by someone as essential or something they “need.”

Sunday’s news reports that the Biden Administration mistakenly killed nine members of one Afghan family, including six children, in “retaliation” for last week’s suicide attack which killed 13 US servicemembers, is a sad and sick epitaph on the 20 year Afghanistan war.

Promising to “get tough” on ISIS, which suddenly re-emerged to take responsibility for the suicide attack, the most expensive military and intelligence apparatus on earth appears to have gotten it wrong. Again.

Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower
by Michael Beckley
Cornell University Press, 2018
xi + 231 pages

At this point, most everyone is now familiar with a certain narrative about China. Namely, the narrative about how China will soon be the most economically powerful country in the world, and how its military power will soon eclipse that of the United States.

Over a decade ago, on July 21, 2009, then Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal titled The Fed’s Exit Strategy. His words are all too familiar, starting with his opening sentences:

Over the last several years, as Jordan Peterson rose to international fame, many thoughtful individuals in the Mises Institute orbit have voiced an appreciation for how Peterson’s work may complement the Austrian tradition. Some have written on the topic, including Jonathan Newman who noted in 2018:

Students often ask me to recommend a good introduction to philosophy, and now the question can be answered more easily than in years past. Michael Huemer’s Knowledge, Value, and Reality, published last April, contains a profusion of arguments on important topics and is written in a conversational style that is easy to follow, and is often very funny as well. Huemer is especially good at coming up with objections and counters to these objections, in a way that shows how contemporary analytic philosophers work.