In a characteristically excellent post, the Bionic Mosquito calls attention to Murray Rothbard’s ethical “absolutism”. In this view, human beings can grasp what is objectively case in ethics. If, for example, stealing is wrong, its being wrong is not just an expression of individual or group preference. Rothbard held that an adequate defense of libertarianism depends on objective values and that political freedom was not the only such objective value needed for this defense.

Pipeline Observer Magazine recently interviewed Jeff Deist on the subject of tribal land and sovereignty in North America. Interview by Clayton Reeder, originally published in May 2019.

Pipeline Observer: The Ludwig von Mises institute in Alabama is the world’s most popular free market think tank, promoting the “Austrian School” of economics. 

If there’s anything I hate, it’s a taxpayer-funded, pro-government party. I hate state dinners, I hate inauguration galas , and I hate the president’s proposed “Salute to America.”

The July 4 event, will feature military tanks lined up on the National Mall, war plane flyovers and a televised national address by the president. There will also be two firework displays.

And the event certainly won’t be free:

With the beginning of the American Revolutionary War at the outbreak of Lexington and Concord, two truths about the Revolution already stand out clearly. One is that the Revolution was genuinely and enthusiastically supported by the great majority of the American population. It was a true people’s war against British rule. The American rebels could certainly not have concluded the first successful war of national liberation in history, a war against the world’s greatest naval and military power, unless they had commanded the support of the American people.

President Donald Trump’s plan to give an Independence Day televised address from the Lincoln Memorial has outraged manypundits and plenty of normal Americans, too. There has rarely been a shortage of political buncombe on July Fourth but Trump could, as usual, break all records.

Few people who write for the news media — most of whom have only ever studied journalism or “mass communications” — know much about markets or entrepreneurship. Thus, it’s not difficult to understand by people who are not entrepreneurs or capitalists get labeled at such in newspapers and on TV news shows.

Every now and then, even The New York Times publishes an op-ed which suggests that war with Iran is maybe not the best option.

The current head of the International Monetary Fund, Christina Lagarde, is the likely replacement for Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank. Draghi’s eight-year term ends on October 31.

Earlier today, the internet was aflutter with rumors that we were on the verge of an international crisis following schedule changes involving Russian President Vladamir Putin and Vice President Mike Pence. While it appears there two events were unrelated, a different sort of tragedy struck the international stage hours later when it was announced that Christine Lagarde had been named the new head of the European Central Bank.