World History

September 11 was far from the first time that the United States has been targeted by terrorists. In a 1997 report on the scourge of terrorism, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board observed: "Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States." Recognizing that fact is crucial to understanding why both terror and the response to terror have become such grave threats to freedom and prosperity.

Through it all, the libertarian theme was the same: liberty for everyone, legal privileges for no one. This is the essence of a free market, but even today it is a message that no faction within the apparatus of the ruling class wants to hear. No matter how divided the factions are among themselves, they form a united front against the libertarian idea, which is the one thing they find most intolerable.

World War I marks one of the great watersheds of modern history.

Gold is the antidote to inflationary money. Gold, its advocates have said through the centuries, protects an individual against the damage caused by the disease called inflation that is created by central banks. Gregory Bresiger reviews Peter Bernstein's attempt to debunk: The Power of Gold: History of an Obsession.

Each time America has become politically involved in the Middle East, the results have been the same: U.S. demonization of a single man grows a once-shadowy or despised crank into a popular hero of the Arab masses--the Arabic or Islamic David that dares to stand up and confront the U.S. oil dominion over the Arab world.

There is so much nonsense written about luxury. Yet, Ludwig von Mises has put forth what has to be one of the most cogent, elegant, and sensible theories of luxury ever penned by an economist. It was written more than 70 years ago in his book Liberalism, a timeless exposition of the classical-liberal political philosophy.

The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom. It is no accident that the age of capitalism became also the age of government by the people.

Ten years ago, Pope John Paul II released Centesimus Annus, an encyclical, at once subtle and sweeping, that addressed the future of the post-communist countries of Europe and the general subject of freedom, society, and faith. Jeff Tucker recalls its meaning.

Government is far from the economy's savior.  Rather, it is a parasite, a cancer, that eats away at the wealth of its citizens with its fiat currency, its many billions of dollars of expropriated wealth, and its multitudinous directives.

A supporter of the absolute state might defend his cause with many slogans, but freedom of religious opinion, one would think, could hardly find a place among them.