Good for Rod Dreher

From conservative author Rod Dreher, of National Review and the Dallas Morning News, on a broadcast essay at NPR:

“As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.

“But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool....

Does the Third World Need More Laptops?

Jamaica is a nation where Jim Fedako’s students believed the solution to the country’s ills was to “ask for more money from President Bush.” Jim knew better. US aid rarely makes it to a small school in the countryside. There were too many dollar-hungry bureaucrats driving late-model Fords circling the government agencies and NGOs of the capital, Kingston, to allow much money to escape their grasps. And, it would not have mattered even if some money filtered through; the money always went for the PC when it was bicycle repairs that were needed. Mises long ago explained this inability for central planners to lead an economy in any direction other than down Chaos Avenue.

Planned Chaos

The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars, and revolutions is its anti-capitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties are eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise. It is an almost unchallenged dogma that capitalism is done for and that the coming of all-around regimentation of economic activities is both inescapable and highly desirable.

A Strange Way to Promote Freedom

Many people around the world, actually most people, have been convinced for some time that the US is being run by a power-mad lunatic. The video of the Saddam killing, which crystallized the extent to which extremist Shiites have taken over the country, has galvanized millions and confirmed the worst suspicions about what is going on in Iraq.

Lost In Translation

Bernanke’s failure to pin himself down to a firm definition of exactly what he means when referring to the gold standard leaves his writing flawed from a scientific standpoint, says Cyd Malone. Science requires exactitude, consistency, and clarity; all are inseparable from its very nature. Science defines its terms clearly and sticks to them — if you can’t do that then it isn’t science. The gold standard is the essay’s whipping boy, its harmful effects his main warning, yet like “enemy combatant” it is loosely defined, at best.

Making Kids Worthless: Social Security’s Contribution to the Fertility Crisis

“Kinder haben die Leute immer — People will always have children,” assured Konrad Adenauer, the German Chancellor, in 1957. He was convinced that the future of the brave new pay-as-you-go social security system would not be undermined by demographic changes.

Adenauer was as wrong as ever. Social security schemes around the developed world are facing a major crisis due to greater longevity, declining retirement ages and — lo and behold — below-replacement fertility rates.

The Living Reality of Military-Economic Fascism

Military-supply firms exemplify a fundamentally corrupt type of organization. Their income comes to them only after it has first been extorted from the taxpayers at gunpoint — hence their compensation amounts to receiving stolen property. They are hardly unwitting or unwilling recipients, however, because they are not drafted to do what they do. No wallflowers at this dance of death, they eagerly devote strenuous efforts to encouraging government officials to wring ever-greater amounts from the taxpayers and to distribute the loot in ways that enrich the contractors, their suppliers, and their employees.

An unlikely champion

From the heart of the would-be global Hoi Phylakes — the Council for Foreign Relations — comes a piece written by their Director of International Economics, Benn Steil, which bemoans the costs imposed by monetary nationalism and floating exchange rates and even suggests that ‘digital gold’ accounts might one day become the money of the future. Truly remarkable!

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