More Awful Truths About Republicans

Four years ago we observed that the so-called “Republican philosophy” of small government, sound money, and balanced budgets was illusory in terms of the history and then-current policies of the Republican Party. However, even we would never have guessed how awful the Republican Party economic policy would become. From mere mercantilism, the Republican Party is now flirting with comprehensive socialist economic policy and another Great Depression.

Sarah Palin’s Career Ends in Tragedy

When a decent person accepts a job such as vice president, our first instinct is to celebrate that good people are in a position of power and influence. This is what McCain is counting on. But this is an illusion. The influence runs completely the other way. Good people become part of the party machine and surrender all their principles in order to survive. This, sadly, is the future of Sarah Palin, who may have been doing some good in Alaska.

Mises University 2008

What an enthusiastic, smart, and committed bunch of students we had this summer at the Mises University. The faculty agrees. This was an exceptional year. What encouragement it is to see so many young people taking up the cause of the free economy. We’ve become used to receiving more qualified applications than we can accept. But we were stunned by the flood this year. Twice as many top young people could have been let in, if we’d had room.

The American Empire is Another Bubble

The situation is actually significantly worse than the mere bailout of Fannie, Freddie, and the FDIC would suggest. For the last sixty years, the United States has provided military protection for the European and Asian capitalist powers, all possessing economies governed by regulatory apparatuses analogous in character to the apparatuses of the American postwar New Deal. These apparatuses, especially when coupled to fiat money, have in common the fundamental flaw that they create economic instability via moral hazard.

Longing for Dictatorship

Watch the conventions with an eye to what the political class wants to do for you. Everything they promise has a flip side of what they want to do to you. And the power to do these things has to come from the violence of the state, and using that violence requires a form of total control over government and society.

Why Taxes Don’t Matter Much Anymore

Why is it that talk of tax policy doesn’t seem to have a relationship to policy generally? Whether it’s a bailout of subprime mortgage holders, large investment banks, or going to war, whether or not the resources exist to do these wonders rarely enters into the equation. Why is it that tax cuts don’t curb the government? And why do politicians not feel the need to tax us more when they spend more?

Officer Kanapsky, is it?

We need to realize that the police are like all other government employees: self-interested, living off tax dollars, parasitical on our liberties. The case of Officer Kanapsky shows precisely how and why. The policeman, standing around in a courtroom to testify against our claims, is being paid time and half to waste our time and cause our insurance rates to rise. It is a low-risk, high-revenue earning activity that exploits the population.

The Calamity of Bush’s Conservatism

Conservatism as we once knew it is hopelessly corrupted. Conservatism has come to be identified with endless war, government expansion, violations of every human right and liberty. You can detect it at cocktail parties, where self-identified conservatives sneer at the very idea of liberty. Clearly, in the age of Bush, conservatism now constitutes as great or even greater a threat to American liberty than the Left and left-liberalism. It is long past time for every right-thinking American to reject the term conservative as a self-description.

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