Thomas Woods, senior fellow in history, has won the Templeton Enterprise Award for his book The Church and the Market (Lexington, 2005). More news here. The prize is $50,000.

As detailed here, no expensive and ill-used, Western aid, no high tech inputs, no government planning, no Malthusian doom — just a simple tale of human ingenuity, incentivised by the small matter of better property rights, overcoming an ecological disaster.

Which political parties have led the United States into its deadliest wars?

See 231 years of history in 90 seconds on a map of the world (flash).

Maps of War also provides a quick look at:

Imperial History of the Middle East

History of Religion

Signs of Occupation

From the Free New York and Lew Rockwell Blogs:

“Ron Paul has accepted an invitation to participate in the first national presidential debate in New Hampshire on Wednesday, April 4. It will be hosted by Wolf Blitzer and will be carried on CNN TV, radio, and cnn.com from 7-9 p.m. EST. (Thanks to Johnny Kramer.)”

Menger’s path-breaking Principles of Economics, published in 1871 and newly published by the Mises Institute with an introduction by Peter G. Klein, not only introduced the concept of marginal analysis, it presented a radically new approach to economic analysis, one that still forms the core of the Austrian theory of value and price. Menger favored an approach that was deductive, teleological, and, in a fundamental sense, humanistic. Menger was primarily interested in explaining the real-world actions of real people, not in creating artificial, stylized representations of reality. Economics, for Menger, is the study of purposeful human choice, the relationship between means and ends.

Or so argues Michael Crichton, in Patenting Life, a NY Times editorial (thanks to Isaac Bergman for link). Excerpts:

Czech President Vaclav Klaus - according to a report posted on Drudge - actually came out and told the Environmentalist Emperor he really ought to put some clothes on. Bravo! 

President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a ‘Myth’ - Questions Gore’s Sanity

Mon Feb 12 2007 09:10:09 ET

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis.

[Originally published February 2007.]

It is hard to think of a slogan that nurtures anti–free market sentiment as strongly as the term “stabilization policy.” To Ludwig von Mises, stabilization policy was a direct consequence of the failure of government’s interventionism in the field of monetary affairs:

There is an impulse inwrought in all living beings that directs them toward the assimilation of matter that preserves, renews, and strengthens their vital energy. The eminence of acting man is manifested in the fact that he consciously and purposefully aims at maintaining and enhancing his vitality.