In the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Kiev government issued a decree that men between the ages of eighteen and sixty were prohibited from leaving the country so as to conscript them into military service.
So-called liberal democracies have characterized the West for the past century and are viewed as the pinnacle of political development. So much so that Western elites are firmly convinced that this system of governance should be spread far and wide—be it indirectly (color revolutions) or directly (economic sanctions, kinetic military actions, or nation-building expeditions).
The Supreme Court declared last week that Americans have no right to learn the grisly details of CIA torture because the CIA has never formally confessed its crimes. The verdict symbolizes how the rule of law has become little more than a form of legal mumbo-jumbo to shroud official crimes. Why should anyone expect justice from a Supreme Court that covers up torture?
The United States and its Western European allies have in recent days repeatedly increased economic sanctions against not only the Russian regime, but against millions of ordinary Russians.
The ideas of “natural selection” or “Darwinism” are familiar to almost everyone who has an elementary understanding of the natural sciences. It invokes the notion of constant struggle for survival and competition. Only those who are strong will stay alive. Might makes right, in the most literal sense of the term. Even though it is the “Law of the Jungle”, it is commonly believed today that mankind lives outside this jungle, and has escaped the clutches of natural selection.
While the US had already been reversing course on trade liberalization for a decade prior, the election of Donald Trump brought with it a programmatic protectionist approach. As President, Joe Biden has largely followed Trump’s lead, with polls showing broad support among respondents of both parties for “Buy American” initiatives and other protectionist measures.
Forty years ago, I was worried. I was working at a free-market think tank at a major university, and I could see that Austrian economics was becoming less and less influential.
Who would speak for untrammeled freedom and capitalism? Sound money and no central banking? Would economics entirely betray its great advocates of liberty from Menger to Mises in favor of monsters like Keynes and Marx?
Was Hitler really “right wing”? The German-British publicist Sebastian Haffner, who wrote one of the most notable essays on Adolf Hitler, has pointed out that the only opposition which could really have become dangerous for Hitler came from the Right: “From its vantage, Hitler was on the left. This makes us stop and think. Hitler can certainly not be so readily sorted into the extreme right of the political spectrum as many people are in the habit of doing.”
