First they came for the inmates’ cash. . . . 

In Britain as in America, the modern metropolitan left at this point seems to be defined by little more than its bemusing inclination toward self-sabotage.

One of the ironies of the U.S. national-security state’s never-ending efforts to effect regime change in Cuba is that the United States ended up adopting and embracing many of the dark-side policies and practices of what one might expect a communist regime to engage in. After the conversion of the U.S. government to a national-security state after World War II, the notion was that in order to defeat the Reds during the Cold War, America needed to become like them.

Patrick Buchanan is an informative and interesting writer. On foreign policy, especially, he’s long been one of the most reasonable voices among high-level American pundits.

When it comes to cultural matters, however, Buchanan has long held to a peculiar and empirically questionable version of American history in which the United States was once a mono-culture in which everyone was once happily united by “a common religion,” a “common language,” and a “common culture.”

A few months before the 2016 election, the Obama administration was claiming that the federal government needed to seize control of the election process because, according to CNN ”Vladimir Putin’s hackers could wreak havoc” on the electoral process.

[A selection from an interview by Brian Doherty which appeared in the May 12, 1999 issue of SpintechMag.com as “Libertarianism and the Old Right.” Re-published in 2003 as part of Speaking of Liberty, a collection of interviews and speeches by Lew Rockwell.]

Brian Doherty: What was the genesis of the Mises Institute? How difficult was it to get off the ground?

The chief root of our present monetary troubles is, of course, the sanction of scientific authority which Lord Keynes and his disciples have given to the age-old superstition that by increasing the aggregate of money expenditure we can lastingly ensure prosperity and full employment.

“You just follow the money. What happens is that you’re faced with a situation of shooting somewhere you want to shoot, versus somewhere you’d less rather shoot — and you get an extra three weeks of filming. It comes down to the fact that you have x amount of money to make your movie in a business where margins are really thin.” — Ben Affleck, on making films in Georgia over Hollywood, CA.

Many moons ago, I wrote a piece for mises.org introducing Westley’s Law, which was my theory for government growth based on its being held to lower expectations, relative to the market. It struck a nerve, of sorts. Many emailed me to say the idea required expansion into a book.