I am finding much in the news today discouraging and even disparaging the idea of personal responsibility and self ownership. Here are but three examples:

A perennial among the nostrums of statist “economists” is complaining about the populace’s penchant for buying and holding precious metals, notably gold. The French used to be mentioned frequently in this vein. FDR, of course, just made it illegal for Americans to own gold bullion or coin after 1933.

“Peak Oil” alarmists often point to the double-digit production declines taking pace in the fields on the UK continental shelf as a harbinger of our inexorable reversion to the pre-industrial primitivism these self-hating Malthusian members of the ‘plague-species’ so crave.

However, as the appended news article reveals, any drop-off is more a matter of simple economics than of complex geomorphology — not that the insufferable and increasingly fiscally-embarrassed UK Chancellor, Gordon Brown, would grasp the point.

Adele Mises Remembers . . .

A Day in the House of My Parents

(Mrs. Adele Mises dictated her reminiscences to a relative around 1929. Born in 1858, she was a granddaughter of Moses Kallir, grandniece of Mayer Kallir, prominent citizens of Brody, a city then in Austrian Galicia, now in Ukraine.)

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As you may have heard, New York Senator Charles Schumer is on a campaign to slap a 27.5% tariff on all Chinese goods unless they significantly revalue or float the yuan. But he denies being a protectionist. No, you see he merely claims to be opposed to currency manipulation. His threat of tariffs are meant to force the Chinese to end their currency manipulation.

Today, December 5, marks the birthday of Rose Wilder Lane (Daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder) born 1886 and died 1968. She was one of the last century’s most ardent defenders of American freedoms. In books such as The Discovery of Freedom (one of the top 100 non-fiction books of the 20th century in a readers’ poll) and Give Me Liberty, which laid out her conversion from socialism based on her experience in such a regime, she asserted the supreme importance of individual liberty.

The immigration issue is heating up in all parts of the world, and libertarians have a major contribution to make to the debate, writes Per Bylund.

by Larry Sechrest