In this week‘s Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon reviews Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Jim Downs, who exposes the high death rates from disease suffered by newly-freed slaves because of neglect by Union armies.
The fallout of FDR‘s gold adventures was far worse than reneging on US gold bond redemption. FDR declared that the price of gold would henceforth be increased to $35 per ounce from $20.67 per ounce, which immediately devalued the US dollar.
The Atlantic recently published an article claiming that modern “food deserts” exist because the government fails to enforce a New Deal law meant to force up prices and stifle competition. Once again, we see how progressives push their economic illiteracy on everyone else.
When one thinks of Jeffersonian Democrats, the founding of the US comes to mind. However, the Jeffersonian ideals were held well into the 1860s by people who believed that the states created the union, not the other way around.
When Benjamin Franklin’s older brother, James, used his anti-establishment newspaper to criticize the Crown’s lax attitude towards pirating along t
The Southern Reconstruction, while portrayed by progressives as virtuous northerners trying to rebuild the South, was actually an attempt to use state power to direct social and economic life there.
While historian Walter A. McDougall was not a libertarian, nonetheless he had some Rothbardian insights on Woodrow Wilson and his reckless intervention into World War I. David Gordon notes that while McDougall‘s views on intervention were inconsistent, they still are useful.
In a recent New York Times column, Dartmouth professor Brooke Harrington claimed that Trump is undoing trust in our institutions while Franklin Roosevelt restored it. Clearly, Harrington doesn‘t know much about FDR—or Trump.
The US government has long pushed to establish government-sponsored cartels and monopolies that weakened free-market competition and enriched incumbent businesses, unions, and other interest groups.
The American Revolution struck a heavy blow to mercantilism. Unfortunately, many mercantilist policies persisted under new labels: cartelization, monopoly, regulation, and taxation to support corporate friends. Today we call these neomercantilist practices cronyism and corporatism.
