Trump’s SOTU: Guns and Butter for Everyone

The theater of the State of the Union Address is always the hardest part to stomach. The endless outbursts of applause, the parading up of guests with allegedly inspiring stories, and the calculated pauses all make me wish we could return to the days when Thomas Jefferson submitted his addresses to Congress in writing. 

Nevertheless, the SOTU speeches do often provide some good fodder for evaluating just how bad an administration’s plans are for the next year. 

Why Intellectuals Fall for Socialism

In all democratic countries, in the United States even more than elsewhere, a strong belief prevails that the influence of the intellectuals on politics is negligible. This is no doubt true of the power of intellectuals to make their peculiar opinions of the moment influence decisions, of the extent to which they can sway the popular vote on questions on which they differ from the current views of the masses. Yet over somewhat longer periods they have probably never exercised so great an influence as they do today in those countries. This power they wield by shaping public opinion.

Paul Leroy-Beaulieu: A Warning Voice About the Socialist Tragedy to Come

The Russian Revolution of November 1917, now being marked by its centenary, ushered in a hundred years of political tyranny and terror, economic suffering, exploitation and corruption, along with unimaginable mass murder, among the tens of millions of people who came under the control and command of Marxist inspired socialist regimes around the world.