There is a widespread opinion that liberalism is distinguished from other political movements by the fact that it places the interests of a part of society — the propertied classes, the capitalists, the entrepreneurs — above the interests of the other classes. This assertion is completely mistaken. Liberalism has always had in view the good of the whole, not that of any special group.

My thanks to The Lens in Washington state for covering Saturday’s Mises Circle in Seattle, with a lot of attention to my talk on “Three Lies You’ll Hear from the Candidates this Year”.

[Editor’s Note: This Q & A with Dr. Michel Accad, M.D. on the economic history of modern medicine covers the “pre-Flexner era” to the Great Depression. Part 2 will feature the period from the the Great Depression to today.]

Q: What is the starting point in the history of the American health care system?

A: The American health care system was born in the 1910s out of the so-called “Flexnerian reform” in medical education and the resulting licensing laws.

Experts increasingly agree that the TSA is inept and has not actually prevented any terrorist attacks on airplanes. Recently, Homeland Security sent a team to attempt to smuggle guns and bombs onto planes. The so-called “red team” succeeded on 67 out of 70 tries, or more than 95 percent of the time!

Released on May 12, the new film Brexit: The Movie makes the case for the “Leave” campaign in significant detail. At an hour and 11 minutes, the film sticks to the economic debate behind the Brexit campaign. This is wise since, as the vote approaches, the “Remain” campaign is likely to become increasingly hysterical with claims that leaving the UN will spell an economic apocalypse for Britain.

The city of Chicago had the highest urban bank rate failure during the Great Depression. A new study by Dr. Natacha Postel-Vinay just published in the prestigious Journal of Economic History uncovers the link between Chicago’s huge real estate boom and bust during the 1920s and the failure of the majority of Chicago’s banks in the early 1930s. In her article “What Caused Chicago Bank Failures in the Great Depression?” Dr.