In the absence of effective checks on government power, all governments tend towards tyranny. This explains why John C. Calhoun defended the constitutional principle of limited government, emphasizing the importance of restraining the power of the majority. Calhoun argued that the aim of a constitution is not merely to confer power, but also to restrain it, hence a constitution that fails to limit the power of the majority has failed in its essential purpose.

On Saturday morning, the US military attacked Venezuela. After bombings of Venezuelan infrastructure, a small US force landed in Caracas and abducted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Trump has characterized the attack as a “law enforcement” action although Secretary of State Marco Rubio has not been able to state what legal authority has authorized the invasion, or how the United States government has jurisdiction to do so. 

Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani inadvertently praised one of the great accomplishments of capitalism as he was sworn in as mayor of New York City.

He took the oath in one of the original subway stations—a system built and maintained by private management companies as part of a wildly-successful private transportation system that lasted 36 years. It was a showcase that people came from around the world to see.

Texas is well-known as the “Lone Star State” and is the site of perhaps the strongest secessionist impulse in the United States today. But what if the way in which Texas was annexed into the Union in the first place was ill-advised and questionably accomplished?

The following is published from an X thread from Dr. Peter Klein, Mises Senior Fellow.

Trump justifies his war on Venezuela by saying that “they” stole “our” oil. Unpacking this claim gives us insight into Trump’s version of crony capitalism – a system of private ownership in which the state intervenes to promote the interests of politically connected firms.