A surprisingly sensible defense of a great institution, from the NYT no less: Being Fired. Still, the analysis by Timothy Terrell is more robust.

What follows is a bibliographic attempt to answer the question of what makes libertarians and conservatives different. Where possible I have linked to the articles and books, but much of the debate transpired before the advent of the Internet, and as such, is only available in hard copy. Two sources in particular warrant special attention – Murray Rothbard and Bill Buckley’s National Review. In many ways they encapsulate the rift.

In the typical unregulated pawn transaction in modern America, a money-hungry pawnbroker charges an annual interest rate of 300 percent on a fully-collateralized $80 loan. “Highway robbery,” we are told. “That’s taking unfair advantage of the already disadvantaged in the most egregious way possible!”

In the weeks before the election, with the usual partisan hysteria becoming ever more intense, public intellectuals are ripping off the mask of principle to come out in favor of one or the other candidate. Typically, many libertarians are throwing their support behind Bush, and on the usual grounds that he is better than a hypothetical alternative. It’s a strange argument. First, there is always a worse hypothetical alternative to even the worst hell on earth.

“The human right of a free press depends upon the human right of private property in newsprint.”—Murray N. Rothbard 1

Well, you can praise someone one minute, and have to harshly criticize them the next. On the Suze Orman show, Suze advised a highly indebted guest to declare bankruptcy on approximately $70K of credit-card debt. Telling him about the legal benefits of declaring bankruptcy, she went a step further and asked him to tell at least 10 of his friend’s that he was declaring bankruptcy, and to be proud of it. Unbelievable. Here’s my overview of the episode, and my commentary.

Paula Marantz Cohen writes an excellent review of Diane Ravitch’s book The Language Police (from April 2003), which shows how today’s textbooks conjure up a world so sanitized of reality that they turn students into cynics. The politics of victimhood and absurd levels of PC predominates over learning and even plausibility.

A recent NRO article by Larry Kudlow illustrates the absurdities to which analysts can be driven in order to defend a political party.1   The piece opens with the line, “Is there more sanity in the federal budget than people think?”  Such a question should prepare the reader