Immigration Controls Are Socialist by Jake Desyllas July 1, 2016 In the classical-liberal age of 19th-century Europe, there were no immigration controls. Here is how Gustav Stolper — a German economist, classical liberal, and an immigrant — described the world he had known: This economic and social system of Europe was predicated on a few axiomatic principles. These principles were considered safe and unshakable…. They were freedom of movement for men, for goods, and for money. Everyone could leave his country when he wanted and travel or migrate wherever he pleased without a passport. The only European country that demanded passports (not even visas!) was Russia, looked at askance for her backwardness with an almost contemptuous smile. Who wanted to travel to Russia, anyway? The liberal thinkers of the 19th century got a few things wrong, but they were steadfast in their defense of a free market in labor. They upheld freedom of migration as an axiomatic principle, as Stolper put it. They won the argument. And they lived ...
Ron Paul Institute: Peace and Prosperity by Future of Freedom Foundation June 29, 2016 FFF president Jacob G. Hornberger will be a speaker at The Ron Paul Institute's "Peace and Prosperity" conference. How did the use of military force become the first option in US foreign policy? Why must we spend a trillion dollars each year to fund a global empire that leaves us poorer and less safe? How does the military-industrial complex rip off working Americans while becoming obscenely wealthy? And what can we do about it? Join Ron Paul and the Ron Paul Institute for a one of a kind event making an uncompromising case for a foreign policy of peace and non-intervention. In addition to an address by Ron Paul, the conference will feature several prominent speakers associated with the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. This conference will educate but it will also be a call to action Details will be forthcoming.
America Should Exit From NATO and the National Security State by Jacob G. Hornberger June 27, 2016 In its reporting on Brexit, the New York Times asks an interesting question: “Is the post-1945 order imposed on the world by the United States and its allies unraveling, too?” Hopefully, it will mean the unraveling of two of the most powerful and destructive governmental apparatuses that came out of the postwar era: NATO and the U.S. national-security state. In fact, although the mainstream media and the political establishment elites will never acknowledge it, the irony is that it is these two apparatuses that ultimately led to the Brexit vote: The Times points out: Refugees have poured out of Syria and Iraq. Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon have absorbed several million refugees. But it is the flow of people into the European Union that has had the greatest geopolitical impact, and helped to precipitate the British vote. But what was it that gave rise to that massive refugee crisis? The answer: It was the U.S. national-security state’s regime change operations in the Middle East, ...
Obama, Clinton, and Trump Are Wrong on Orlando by Jacob G. Hornberger June 15, 2016 Give Donald Trump credit. With his call to ban all Muslims from coming into the United States, he has drawn President Obama into the political fray. Trump’s position is that the anti-American terrorist problem lies with all Muslims, insinuating that deep down they are all enemies of America and the West and, therefore, should be barred from coming into the ...
A Note to Myself on Switzerland by Harry Teasley June 10, 2016 With each visit, my understanding and appreciation of the political economy of Switzerland becomes deeper and more nuanced. The Swiss people have been incredibly successful in evolving a philosophy, culture, and a structure of political economy which limits the potential power of a centralist, nationalist, and statist administration through the adoption of an effective federal system and other policies, which ...
Free Trade Is Fair Trade by Laurence M. Vance June 1, 2016 As relayed by Harvard economics professor and chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw, “The Princeton economist Alan Blinder once proposed Murphy’s Law of economic policy: ‘Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed; they have the most influence on policy where they know the least ...
Praxeology and Hostile Action by Joseph R. Stromberg June 1, 2016 Praxeology according to Mises Ludwig von Mises saw praxeology — “the general theory of human action” — as the foundation of proper economic reasoning. Starting from the self-evident fact that men “act” so as to substitute more satisfactory states of affairs for those now existing, he believed he could build the basic toolkit of economic science by working deductively from ...
Memorializing the Horrors of War with 10 Must-See War Films by John W. Whitehead May 31, 2016 “The horror... the horror...”—Apocalypse Now (1979) “You can’t show war as it really is on the screen, with all the blood and gore. Perhaps it would be better if you could fire real shots over the audience’s head every night, you know, and have actual casualties in the theater.”—Sam Fuller, film director and author Nearly 71 years ago, the United States ...
What It Takes to Be President of the American Police State by John W. Whitehead May 27, 2016 “The qualifications for president seem to be that one is willing to commit mass murder one minute and hand presidential medals of freedom to other war criminals in the next. One need only apply if one has very loose, flexible, or non-existent morality.”—Author and activist Cindy Sheehan Long gone are the days when the path to the White House ...
Missing the Lessons on Vietnam by Jacob G. Hornberger May 24, 2016 In light of President Obama’s current trip to Vietnam, Secretary of State John Kerry, U.S. Sen. John McCain, and former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerry had a joint op-ed in the New York Times yesterday entitled “Moving On in Vietnam, but Remembering Its Lessons.” Unfortunately, however, the three Vietnam veterans have failed to draw the real lessons to be ...
Open Immigration with a Welfare State by Jacob G. Hornberger May 20, 2016 Although free-market economist Milton Friedman defended the principle of open immigration, he had a caveat: “It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state.” Conservatives and even some libertarians have long used Friedman’s statement to justify their support of government-controlled immigration. But Friedman was wrong. Of course you can have both open immigration and a welfare state. ...
Anti-war Is Pro-American by Mike Marion May 19, 2016 Thomas Jefferson declared the American way of interacting with the world to be "peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none." However, over the course of at least the past seven decades, the US government has turned this admonition on its head. Peace? The US government has waged wars of choice almost constantly since the ...
