[Newsweek column from February 3, 1947, and reprinted in Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt.]

[Newsweek column from May 7, 1956, and reprinted in Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt.]

Keynesism—the philosophy of big government spending, deficit financing, and continuous inflation—today dominates the policy of nearly every government in the world. Yet developments in the last few years have destroyed its central prop.

[Newsweek column from February 20, 1956, and reprinted in Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt.]

H.L. Mencken, who died on Jan. 29, was the outstanding American literary critic of his generation, its most influential stylist, its most prominent iconoclast, the chief scourge of the genteel tradition, and a great liberating force.

[Newsweek column from May 16, 1955, and reprinted in Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt.]

Once a government bureaucracy has been set up to do any job whatever, it will find endless excuses for expanding, prolonging, or perpetuating that job. This is the sad history of our postwar foreign aid.

Gregoire Canlorbe, who interviews Mark Thornton here, has posted a new an interesting interview with former Czech President Václav Klaus. 

Klaus describes himself as a defender of the “Nation-State,” but in an interesting way. 

For Klaus, the Nation-State acts as a bulwark against further centralization at the continental or the — god forbid — global level. 

[Newsweek column from May 9, 1949, and reprinted in Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt.]

We are now being told that our prosperity has been kept going in the last few years by our huge government spending, particularly on armaments and foreign aid. Any decline in this spending, we are now warned, would bring a recession. We are told, in fact, that if further signs of recession develop the Government must spend still more to keep the boom whipped up.

[Newsweek column from March 21, 1949, and reprinted in Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt.]

When Donald Trump raised taxes on steel and aluminum in the form of a large tariff hike, virtually no one in Washington seemed much perturbed by the fact that the president raised taxes without so much as a debate in Congress.

In the grade-school version of American politics, of course, children are taught that Congress controls government taxation and spending. Tax increases must be subject to a vote in Congress in order to become law. Or so we’re told.

What’s the best argument against statism?

As a libertarian, my answer is that freedom is preferable to coercion. Freedom also ranks higher than prosperity. For instance, the government might be able to boost economic output by requiring people to work seven days a week, but such a policy would be odious and indefensible.

If it seems like secession is become a more frequent topic in the global media, it’s not just your imagination. 

In recent years, talk of political separatist movements have become not only more commonplace, but are increasingly discussed as reasonable alternatives to the status quo. 

Historically, of course, established states have long sought to portray secession movements as unsavory forms of agitation pushed only by extremists.