What the heck is going on? A friend asked. When I started the Institute in 1982, Austrian economics was on the defensive, socialism in the ascendency. Over the next several decades, we made real progress, thanks to our donors and scholars.

Now the Left is on the march. If we listen to the mainstream media, it’s an unstoppable parade of evil. Not so, of course.

[The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. By John J. Mearsheimer. Yale University Press, 2018. Xi + 313 pages.]

Morgarten, Switzerland – Here, in 1315, a force of Swiss mountaineers ambushed an invading force of Austrian feudal knights who had come to reassert Hapsburg feudal rule over the rebellious Swiss.

The burly Swiss farmers and woodsmen from the forest cantons Unterwalden, Uri, and Schwytz fell upon the close-packed Austrian knights and men-at-arms, using long pikes or deadly pole axes known as halbards, and massacred them without quarter.

Two years later, a second Austrian expeditionary force was caught by the Swiss peasant infantry near Lucerne at Sempach and crushed.

An Earth scientist’s recent article making the rounds on social media highlights a terrifying conversation he had with “a very senior member” of the IPCC, which is the UN’s body devoted to studying climate science.

Within the established world of finance, Bitcoin is pretty much out these days. At least that is the impression you get from talking to bankers, asset managers, and professional traders, who have entered the “Blockchain” space. They’ve entered not because of Bitcoin and Ether, but because they see a huge potential in tokenizing traditional financial instruments.

The federal government spends more than $20 billion a year on subsidies for farm businesses. About 39 percent of the nation’s 2.1 million farms receive subsidies, with the lion’s share of the handouts going to the largest producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.

President Trump has outraged legions of political opponents with his plan to give a Fourth of July speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. A Washington Post columnist frets that Trump’s speech will leave a “stain” that “won’t ever completely wash away.” But before any more teeth-gnashing occurs, we should recognize the surprising parallels between Trump and President Lincoln.

A standard objection to the use of markets in organizing society’s production and consumption is that individuals are “malleable” — subject to social influence. They use a two-step approach.