The Dow Jones Industrials just closed above 17,000 for the first time ever. While they are celebrating the 4th of July, Americans can rejoice in the good fortune the stock market is giving them. But wait, what’s actually driving the stock market to reach its highest level of all time? Since its high in 2000, the Dow is up 45%. Over the same period the CPI is up 40%.
Lew Rockwell is “one of the leaders of the libertarian world” opines Robert Groezinger of Junge Freiheit. This title should of course not be confused with the sinister title ”leader of the free world.“ Says Groezinger:
Peter Klein discusses property rights, privilege, and free markets, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision.
Progressive Education and the Current Scene
It is obvious that there is little time or space here to enter into an extensive discussion of the much-criticized system of permissive-progressive education, and the state of current teaching in the public schools. Certain broad considerations, however, emerge, particularly in the light of the triumph of the Rousseau-Pestalozzi-Dewey system in this country since 1900:
The Goals of Public Schooling: The Educationist Movement
It is important to consider the goals of the establishment of public schools, particularly since professional educators were the prime force in both the establishment of free common schools and of compulsory instruction.
Postscript: Why a Socialist Economy is “Impossible” by Joseph T. Salerno
In “Economic Calculation in a Socialist Commonwealth,” Ludwig von Mises demonstrates, once and forever, that, under socialist central planning, there are no means of economic calculation and that, therefore, socialist economy itself is “impossible” (”unmöglich”)—not just inefficient or less innovative or conducted without benefit of decentralized knowledge, but really and truly and literally impossible.
Conclusion
It must follow from what we have been able to establish in our previous arguments that the protagonists of a socialist system of production claim preference for it on the ground of greater rationality as against an economy so constituted as to depend on private ownership of the means of production. We have no need to consider this opinion within the framework of the present essay, in so far as it falls back on the assertion that rational economic activity necessarily cannot be perfect, because certain forces are operative which hinder its pursuance.
Arguments For and Against Compulsion in the United States
The individualist tradition on this matter was well presented in the early nineteenth century by Thomas Jefferson. Although an ardent advocate of public schools to aid the poor, Jefferson squarely rejected compulsion:
Compulsory Education in the United States
The Development of Compulsory Education
Perhaps some people might feel that identification of compulsory education with tyranny could not be applicable to a free country such as the United States. On the contrary, the spirit and record of compulsory education in America point to very similar dangers.
Fascism, Nazism, and Communism
It is a grave and unanswerable indictment of compulsory state education that these modern totalitarianisms were eager to institute compulsory state schooling in their regimes. Indeed, the indoctrination of the youth in their schools was one of the chief mainstays of these slave-states. As a matter of fact, the chief difference between the twentieth-century horrors and the older despotisms is that the present ones have had to rest on mass support more directly, and that therefore compulsory literacy and indoctrination have been crucial.
