President Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton was in Moscow last week organizing what promises to be an historic summit meeting between his boss and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bolton, who has for years demanded that the US inflict “pain” on Russia and on Putin specifically, was tasked by Trump to change his tune. He was forced to shed some of his neoconservative skin and get involved in peacemaking. Trump surely deserves some credit for that!

In the final chapters of his masterful history of the American Revolution, Conceived in Liberty, Murray Rothbard takes to examining the political and social repercussions of the American Revolution’s success. He notes the revolution accelerated the elimination of old feudal laws, the disestablishment of churches, and the confiscation of lands from the old Tory ruling classes.

[Adapted from the lecture “Render Unto Caesar: A Most Misunderstood New Testament Passage“ presented March 13th, 2010, at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.]

I. INTRODUCTION

Last week the Fed released the results of its regular ”stress tests” given the large banks. It outright failed the US branch of Deutsche Bank which, as Thorsten Polleit recently noted, has problems so severe they could risk the whole Eurozone.

You get a lot of attention if you shout out things like “The stock market is about to collapse”, or “The US dollar crash is just around the corner”, or “The housing market slump is about to unfold”. But from the viewpoint of sound economics, making these kinds of predictions is quite impossible. Putting probabilities to certain outcomes – such as “I assign a probability of 30 per cent that the stock market collapses in 2018” – might be fashionable among forecasters, but it certainly does not do the trick or make things any better.

Americans’ faith in democracy and politicians has plummeted in large part due to perennial violations of their rights by one federal alphabet agency after another, from the FBI, to the TSA, to the DEA, to the DHS, and to the IRS. Candidate Donald Trump periodically signaled that he would curb federal abuses but, as president, he has instead spurred new crackdowns on drug users, property owners, immigrants, trade, and other targets. 

When suicide rates are in the news, some observers who are already in favor of gun control will attempt to blame suicides on the mere presence of guns . The claim is that guns are easy to use for suicide, so this leads to more successful attempts.