I was a collegiate athlete 50 years ago in a National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I track and field program (University of Tennessee) and we were governed by strict rules on what kind of compensation we could have for our sport. According to NCAA rules, our compensation was limited to scholarships for tuition, room and board, and $15 a month for laundry. Any payments outside of those parameters could land a program in trouble with the NCAA.

Santa Claus is a magical and benevolent figure who is able to produce and distribute gifts to children every Christmas Eve at no cost to the recipients. But many economists and people in the general public mistake the political state for Santa Claus for failure to recognize the nature of government and one of the most basic rules of economics—a government has no resources of its own and cannot “give” with one hand what has not first been taken by the other.

At the end of every year, as we make our way through the holidays, you’ll hear no shortage of complaints about the rampant hyper-consumerism at the heart of modern American society. And these complaints aren’t without merit. Flip on the TV or walk through any city’s commercial district before Christmas, and it’s easy to get the impression that the entire American concept of familial love rests on how much stuff we buy for each other.

This week saw a new twist in what has become a D.C. Christmas tradition. I am not referring to the lighting of the White House Christmas tree but to passage of a “continuing resolution” (CR) funding the government and thus avoiding a Christmastime government shutdown.

It took the production of three separate CRs before one passed in the Senate after midnight Friday night and was then signed by President Joe Biden.

“The secrets of economic success are now known around the world: private ownership, legally enforceable contracts, thrift, low taxation, the free flow of capital, and the avoidance of war. Men still trust in government-controlled monetary systems [unfortunately] . . . But on the whole, people now know what makes societies rich: the free market.” —Gary North, May 22, 2002, (emphasis added)

One of the most common justifications for increasing state police and military power is that it guarantees the security of citizens. Without basic security, it is impossible for people to devote themselves to the pursuit of their social and economic goals. In the US there are proposals to send in the military to help enforce a crackdown on illegal immigration.

Revolutionary totalitarian regimes have long attempted to make Christmas disappear, or to at least make Christmas into something more to the state’s liking.

December marks the eighth anniversary of the passing of Ralph Raico, one of Murray Rothbard’s closest friends and the greatest twentieth-century historian of classical liberalism and a great libertarian theorist as well. In this week’s article, I’m going to highlight some of his insights, but it would be easy to fill several articles with more of them.

When the National Park Service was threatened with budget cuts (in D.C. this means budget increases less than the pie-in-the-sky wish list of the bureaucracy in question) the head of the “service,” one George Hartzog, shut down the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore. Members of congress from every state were bombarded with complaints by vacationing constituents about the shutdowns, so the talk of budget “cuts” ceased.