From the onset of the current Israeli-Hamas conflict, the statements from the Joe Biden administration and Congress were crystal clear: America is the indispensable nation, and we’re rich and powerful enough to be able to afford two wars to guarantee the safety of the world. Even with the displeasure over an unstoppable growth in debt and a declining economy, the message to both the domestic and international audiences is DC will get involved wherever it need be.

Dorothy and her companions in the movie The Wizard of Oz feared lions and tigers and bears as they journeyed through the woods to visit the wizard. But real people living today might fear frighteningly large numbers more than large wild animals.

The role of the infinitely small is infinitely large.”

― Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, “MAXIMS FOR REVOLUTIONISTS”

― Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

In 2002, President George W. Bush cited the now famous “axis of evil”—Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—as he tried to get the American people to look beyond those responsible for the 9/11 attacks and greenlight a global military campaign to “rid the world of the evil-doers.”

The Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself from the Coming Inflation Storm
by David A. Stockman
Humanix Books, 2022; 229 pp.

We’re about six weeks into fiscal year 2024, but if this year looks anything like last year, we can assume the federal government will continue to pile up debt at astonishing rates. 

The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Louisiana just sent out a press release reporting that a New Orleans federal judge has sentenced a 28-year-old man, Derek Nolan, to 15 years in a federal penitentiary for drug-related crimes. 

For decades, I have worked to make the Mises Institute the world center for Misesian and Rothbardian economics it has become, and I’m glad to say that our Board of Directors has chosen a new president, Tom DiLorenzo, who is a great scholar and who will lead the Institute to new victories for freedom and Austrian economics. In this week’s column, I’d like to discuss some of Tom’s ideas.

As I wrote in my previous piece on statism and the Israel-Hamas conflict, states are organized crime rackets. Wars between states thus represent warfare between rival gangs. The proper libertarian position with reference to such gang wars is neutrality, or the opposition to all state parties to war. Neutrality includes opposition to interventionism, including opposition to sending arms and aid to other nations.