What if two of history’s most infamous ideologies—Nazism and Fascism—shared more in common fundamentally with Communism than we often recognize? Recently, a chairwoman of a German political party controversially claimed that Hitler was a communist. While this assertion is incorrect, much of the criticism it drew focused only on the visible differences between Hitler and Communists, leaving their deeper ideological similarities unexamined.

The philosopher and teacher of rhetoric Richard Weaver is best known today for his book Ideas Have Consequences, which was one of the founding works of post-World War II American conservatism.

In the first few weeks of President Trump’s second term, the Trump administration has unleashed a barrage of executive orders and other actions intended to dizzy his detractors. So far, he has been successful. However, his opposition has taken a unique interest in President Trump’s efforts to streamline government. President Trump has tasked Elon Musk and a team of tech gurus—under the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”)—to perform “audits” of key federal agencies by examining their expenditures and identifying fraudulent or wasteful spending.

In one of his literary masterpieces, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Mises provided a chapter titled, “Christianity and Property,” in which he wrote the following statements regarding the teachings of Jesus,

When President Trump recently began calling the Ukrainian dictator a dictator elements of both Left and Right in the Washington establishment became quite indignant over it. After all, he is their poster boy for their beloved “foreign aid.” The Ukrainian constitution allows for the suspension of elections during wartime, shouted “The Grate One,” Mark Levin of FOX News. Levin then gave the Ukrainian dictator his full throated support since, after all, a piece of paper written by his government gives him such dictatorial powers, said the self-professed constitutional scholar. 

One of President Trump’s proposals for his new term is to abolish the federal income tax and replace it with tariffs as the primary revenue source for the US federal government. In a brilliant rhetorical move, he suggests implementing this through abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and replacing it with the “External Revenue Service,” claiming that the tariffs collected by this new agency would be financed by foreigners rather than Americans. This sure sounds like a good deal.

The standard economic argument against tariffs is that, by eliminating foreign competition, they simply raise prices for consumers. While true, this argument barely scratches the surface of the problem and overlooks a critical reality: tariffs and protectionist policies do far more than just raise prices—they block the entrepreneurial discovery process that is essential for progress.

In late January, the Trump administration issued a series of executive orders that paused Treasury payments to a variety of federal contractors and grantees. These orders also often cancelled contracts with NGOS and other contractors altogether. Soon afterward, we began to see countless media stories about job losses at private NGOs and for-profit federal contractors. Many were so heavily reliant on revenue from taxpayer cash that they immediately began laying off employees.