In following the daily news events both in the United States and around the rest of the world, it is easy to get lost in the detail and not step back once and awhile and remind ourselves what the really important issues are. Under the anxiety of a possible nuclear war in Korea, actual terrorist attacks in the Middle East and by seemingly “lone wolves” in other countries, threats of trade wars, and polarizing trends in politics in many places, the real underlying issue is and remains, how should people live together?

The US Supreme Court today ruled 7-2 in favor of a Denver small business owner who has been threatened, sanctioned, and ultimately driven out of business by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The controversy arose when the cake shop owner, Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop, refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding, claiming to be motivated by religious beliefs.

In 1215, in the Borough of Runnymede, a group of English nobles met with King John. During the meeting, they pressured the monarch into surrendering some of his autocratic powers. Among the kingly prerogatives that King John relinquished was the authority to confiscate property and detain nobles without cause. King John signed the famous Magna Carta, and the right of citizens to be protected from arbitrary arrests was first enshrined in this famous document (though it originally did not apply to all English people).

Dr. Ron Paul recently joined Dan Dicks at Press For Truth for a great conversation. 

[The Road to Freedom and the Demise of Nation States. By Peter B. Bos. Free Trade Press, 2015. Xxv + 620 pages.]

This remarkable book reflects the author’s enthusiasm for liberty and his vast intellectual curiosity. I propose to discuss only a few of the book’s central insights, but only reading the book will adequately convey Peter Bos’s intellectual range.

When governments subsidize goods and services — or provide them directly through government-owned institutions — the effect is to lower the price to consumers, thus increasing demand.

Put another way: if the price of, say, a college education is near-zero to the consumer, then consumers are likely to demand a college education in much higher numbers than if the price were higher.

Congratulations to Mises Senior Fellow Peter G. Klein for being recognized by Baylor University as an Outstanding Professor for 2017-2018. In particular, Dr. Klein was credited for his scholarship as the W. W. Caruth Chair and Professor of Entrepreneurship, and Senior Research Fellow with the Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship & Free Enterprise. 

His works the past year includes:

Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities came to mind this morning as I drove to work listening to the unemployment report on the radio. The report indicates that the official unemployment rate dropped to the lowest level in almost 50 years. Reporters have been quick to move from this “good news” to the fact that President Trump “leaked” the information via Twitter an hour before the report was released in violation of federal rules.