This past summer I joined my son in Vienna. He was there on a fellowship from his senior year at Carleton College to study architecture, in particular the work of Otto Wagner, the Secession movement, and so on. I had only been there once before, when backpacking during law school. I accompanied him on his explorations and we feasted on Viennese cuisine at places recommended by local friends.
The internet has blown up in rage at the recent capture and euthanization of a famous TikTok/Instagram Squirrel named “Peanut.” Peanut was rescued over 7 years ago by his owner Mark Longo. Since then, Peanut has become a hit on TikTok and Instagram where he garnered millions of views and support. But the State of New York has declared war on this little critter, as well as his companion, “Fred” the raccoon.
Mark Longo described in a TMZ interview:
Facebook notified me on Sunday morning that eight years ago, I posted a link to my Washington Times article warning of Dictatorial Democracy regardless of whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump won the 2016 election.
The most important and globally misunderstood aspect of tariffs is their impact on the stock market. History has demonstrated that tariffs can cause immediate market corrections and destroy investor capital. They also backfire on American manufacturers and consumers.
“What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer… And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge.
Normal folks rejoiced when the Federal Reserve lowered the only interest rate it controls, Fed Funds, by a surprise 50 basis points. However, since then, the rate on 10-year bonds has increased 70 basis points. Focusing on the positive, Almost Daily Grant’s (ADG) reports “An outbreak of optimism has taken hold across the land, as the Conference Board’s monthly gauge of consumer sentiment painted a pretty picture for the economy and asset prices alike.”
In “The Terror of Reconstruction,” Lew Rockwell highlights the dangers of governments seeking to suppress their political opponents by an assault on citizens’ liberties. He draws upon the experience of the South under military dictatorship during the Reconstruction years as an example of what happens when governments embark on social revolution. One tactic described by Rockwell is denying the vote to those who supported their opponents:
Many misconceptions about the nature of the free market system stem from an ignorance of who ultimately benefits from the market process. That the significant number of those who would benefit the most from the operations of the market—consumers—tend to also harbor much of the antagonisms against logically necessary features of the market highlights the unfortunate reality that the majority of people have yet to rightly understand how their best interests could be served by the mechanism of the market.
