The European elections took place over a span of four days from last Thursday, May 23, to Sunday, May 26, and yet, considering results were held back in those countries that voted earlier, the first major shock came Sunday, 6pm, when Germany’s polling stations closed and first projections were possible.
I recently saw the documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, an account by English soldiers of their experiences in the Great War of 1914-1918. Culled from hundreds of hours of colorized actual wartime footage, it’s a beautiful and heart wrenching film. It’s also a superb antiwar film, simply through its graphic and accurate depiction of mass death and casualties across blood-soaked European battlefields.
The Left and mainstream political science identify Italian fascism and German national socialism as a right-wing ideology. Their motivation is clear — they do not want to be associated with regimes that brought civilization the horror and suffering of an unprecedented scale. The Left traditionally substantiates their point of view with two theoretical propositions. First of all, fascism and Nazism do not belong to the Left because those regimes did not institute total collective ownership on means of production as Marx prescribed.
When people talk about the economy, they generally focus on government policies such as taxation and regulation. For instance, Republicans credit President Trump’s tax cuts for the seemingly booming economy and surging stock markets. Meanwhile, Democrats blame “deregulation” for the 2008 financial crisis. While government policies do have an impact on the direction of the economy, this analysis completely ignores the biggest player on the stage — the Federal Reserve.
The mercantilists contend that President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports are to shrink the trade deficit, protect American businesses, and boost exports to the rest of the world. But the latest developments in international commerce show this is not going to plan.
[Editors note: After this article was written, Theresa May officially announced she is leaving the position of Prime Minister on June 7th.]
Brexit has been a long, drawn-out saga. But finally, Theresa May’s indecision appears to be coming to an end. She has finally been cornered in a tragic opera with more twists and turns than Wagner’s Ring Cycle. May’s Götterdämmerung is reaching its conclusion. Brünnhilde is riding Grane, her trusty steed, into immolation on the funeral pyre of her heavily-amended withdrawal agreement.
Most economists, while recognizing the great 19th-century French liberal Frédéric Bastiat as an outstanding economic journalist and a master polemicist for free trade and other liberal economic policies, have summarily dismissed him as an economic theorist. These include economists from Mises and Hayek to Schumpeter and Marx. Lately some economists have begun taking a second look at Bastiat’s work in economic theory.
Winston Churchill famously said that “socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” He should have added that it is also an ideology of for thee but not for me. Anytime socialist idealists have an opportunity to practice the dogma outlined in Das Kapital or the teachings espoused by Sen.
