EDITORIAL
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September 17, 2015
Capitalism is the engine of a society's prosperity. It remains mostly hidden, unnoticed, but attacked and reviled when attention is focused on it as a result of some scandal. But what drives this hostility toward capitalism? To clarify: What drives the hostilit ...
September 16, 2015
Yet again, the public is seeing video of a police-citizen encounter gone wrong. Retired tennis star James Blake, whom everyone agrees was guilty of absolutely nothing, was nevertheless tackled and handcuffed by an NYPD officer with a history of using excessive ...
September 16, 2015
In the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.). Indeed, at a time ...
September 15, 2015
Any American, regardless of age and ancestry, who flies to Turkey in hopes of joining the Islamic State has made a terrible choice. He or she is taking a road that leads nowhere good. On the other hand, anyone who has parented teenagers learns to expect bad cho ...
September 15, 2015
For over a decade, now, the American economy has been on an economic rollercoaster, of an economic boom between 2003 and 2008, followed by a severe economic downturn, and with a historically slow and weak recovery starting in 2009 up to the present. Before the ...
September 14, 2015
The writer for Germany-based Spiegel rightly notes the increasing wealth concentration in the United States in recent decades. The rich are indeed getting richer, while many in the bottom 99% struggle to make ends meet. He veers off course, however, by blaming ...
September 14, 2015
Reports that the official unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1 percent may appear to vindicate the policies of easy money, corporate bailouts, and increased government spending. However, even the mainstream media has acknowledged that the official numbers unders ...
September 13, 2015
Synopsis: Dancing Fawn has decided to use a hidden area of the Internet to support herself and her twin daughters. She knows any activity she engages in there will probably be illegal, but she must take the chance. Her children are worth the risk. What she does ...
September 12, 2015
Failed civilizations require surprisingly long periods of time to reset. During these periods, power devolves and legitimacy – the belief that it is right for us to serve rulers – falls apart. Resetting legitimacy is ultimately more critical than restoring ...
September 11, 2015
Political mavens tell us polls are mostly meaningless this long before an election. I certainly hope so. As Jeffrey Tucker says in today's excerpt, the current data point to a seriously problematic outcome next November. Nascent authoritarianism has long simmer ...
September 11, 2015
Millions of refugees from Washington's wars are currently over-running Europe. Washington's 14-year and ongoing slaughter of Muslims and destruction of their countries are war crimes for which the US government's official 9/11 conspiracy theory was the catalyst ...
September 10, 2015
The phrase "to carefully gerrymander" is more than just a split infinitive. It is apparently a legally permissible activity in Missouri. The Business Loop 70 Community Improvement District tried its best to make sure no annoying voters could stop its new taxes, ...
September 10, 2015
Being humble or even productively self-critical isn't fashionable. People groundlessly and publicly proclaiming, "I'm the greatest" or "Nobody is as smart as me" seems commonplace today. When people hold differing opinions, I have noticed many people "listen" t ...
September 09, 2015
The presidential race is already entering silly season. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wants to build a wall spanning the U.S.–Canada border. Do we have a problem with Canadians sneaking into the United States to take our coffee and donuts? No, of course not. Ca ...
September 09, 2015
“Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps ...
September 08, 2015
Islamic State militants may be crazed killers, but at least some of them are taking an interest in the evil that underlies modern banking. They claim the group will soon issue gold coins as its medium of exchange. In compliance with sharia, the new dinars will ...
September 08, 2015
The attempt to establish a comprehensive socialist system in many parts of the world over the last one hundred years has been one of the cruelest and most brutal episodes in human history. Some historians have estimated that as many as 200 million people may ha ...
September 07, 2015
Civil disobedience in defense of individual rights can be noble and effective, but its success usually depends of the view of the evaluator. People defend disobedience when they agree with its goal. Senator Rubio defends the Kentucky county clerk who says that ...
September 07, 2015
Last week Europe saw one of its worst crises in decades. Tens of thousands of migrants entered the European Union via Hungary, demanding passage to their hoped-for final destination, Germany. While the media focuses on the human tragedy of so many people uproot ...
September 06, 2015
While Dancing Fawn considers how to make a living in the hidden area of the Internet and Joshua Weidemeyer catches counterfeiters who work there, another resident of that 'new badlands' continues her clandestine life. Although the lone woman seemed to be sittin ...
September 05, 2015
Western civilization is poorly understood, aside from vague images and the thought that it is "what we have." This civilization, in danger of being centralized to death by the current ruling regimes, has been unique and valuable. We really should understand it ...
September 04, 2015
Government officials including FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers frequently demand greater investigative powers. They justify it by highlighting – some would say hyping – terrorist threats from ISIL and other radical groups. To s ...
September 04, 2015
It's no secret that government absolutely loathes juries. They are an obstacle, an encumbrance to greater power, and government sidesteps the jury trial any chance it gets. But a jury trial is our right as American citizens, for now, and government has to deal ...
September 04, 2015
America's descent into totalitarian violence is accelerating. Like the Bush regime, the Obama regime has a penchant for rewarding Justice (sic) Department officials who trample all over the Constitution. Last year America's first black president nominated David ...
September 03, 2015
Our view of civil rights has to evolve as technology changes our lives. More often than not, the changes are for the worse. Fifty years ago, could the police enter your home without a warrant and review your family photos for criminal evidence? No, and they sti ...
September 03, 2015
"The West is empty, even if it has not yet become really aware of it. An extraordinarily inventive civilization, surely the only one capable of meeting the challenges of the third millennium, the West has no soul left. At every level – nations, races, culture ...
September 02, 2015
Many non-scientists hold a romanticized view of scientific research. We think it is very black and white, with scientists rigorously searching for measurable evidence, and happily conceding when experiments prove a hypothesis wrong. In fact, scientists are as h ...
September 02, 2015
“If the freedom of speech be taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”—George Washington The architects of the American police state must think we’re idiots. With every passing day, we’re being moved further down th ...
September 01, 2015
The technology that lets unmanned U.S. drones blow up alleged "enemy combatants" in the Middle East is coming home. U.S. police departments, which already embraced drones for surveillance purposes, now want to deploy weapons on them. North Dakota's legislature ...
September 01, 2015
With the seventieth anniversary this year of the end of the Second World War, a number of commentators have focused on the presumed "unity" of America seven decades ago to "win the war" against global tyranny and international aggression by Nazi Germany and Imp ...
August 31, 2015
A good question arose in the comments to our Thursday story about U.S. border agents searching and seizing laptop computers. Can't people simply store their data on the cloud to keep it safely from government hands? Let's think this through. Say you have a few ...
August 31, 2015
Following Monday's historic stock market downturn, many politicians and so-called economic experts rushed to the microphones to explain why the market crashed and to propose "solutions" to our economic woes. Not surprisingly, most of those commenting not only f ...
August 30, 2015
Two years before Dancing Fawn made her first crossing, Arnold Wilson Parker* sat on the veranda of his estate overlooking the Rockies. Next to him sat Edgar Kohrob, CEO of ENGCO, a conglomerate of the largest engineering, design, and construction companies in t ...
August 29, 2015
Declining civilizations (and the current moment provides a fine example) are characterized by basing political power on free food and similar handouts. This not only diverts production to foolish ends, but it harshly punishes producers. Worse, it undercuts the ...
August 28, 2015
George Will, who often has no problem embracing Big Brother, found enough small-government vocabulary to write an entertaining takedown of Donald Trump's immigration plan. The article exemplifies the exasperation mainstream GOP powers must feel at Trump's ascen ...
August 28, 2015
It's 3:00 in the morning. Your wife and young children are asleep. You hear a commotion outside, followed by the sound of a window rattling. You get up, grab your 12 gauge and creep down the stairs. You hear window glass breaking. A black-clad man scrambles in, ...
August 27, 2015
There are logical arguments for nation-states to defend their borders against illicit persons and goods. Those arguments are not nearly as compelling as some people think, but they exist. They apply mainly for people and goods entering a country – not those l ...
August 27, 2015
First published in Inquiry, November 12, 1979. A half-century ago, America — and then the world — was rocked by a mighty stock-market crash that soon turned into the steepest and longest-lasting depression of all time. It was not only the sharpness and dept ...
August 27, 2015
The talking heads of the establishment are heaping scorn on Donald Trump like squawking crows defecate on those beneath the phone lines where they sit. The long knives are coming out of the sheaths of the New York-Washington literati. Everyone is attacking Dona ...
August 26, 2015
Having the right to vote is significant only to the extent it means you can vote for some meaningful office or issue. Saudi Arabian women can now vote in municipal elections. This is progress for a kingdom in which men, particularly men of the royal family, hol ...
August 26, 2015
There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt ...
August 25, 2015
Americans like to think the nation takes good care of their veterans. Its actual record for doing so is spotty at best, as recent VA hospital scandals demonstrate. Nevertheless, one category of veterans always lands on its feet after it hangs up the uniform. Re ...
August 25, 2015
The U.S. presidential election of 2016 may still be well over a year away, but those who dream of sitting at the desk in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. are busy scrambling for campaign supporters, financial contributions and potential vo ...
August 24, 2015
In a world where economic dinosaurs quickly go extinct, traditional banking is one of the prime survivors. Abundant capital and friendly capital have let it adapt to every challenge. When banks lost commercial lending business to asset backed securitization in ...
August 24, 2015
What should be done with the estimated 15 million people living in the United States without the legal right to be here? It seems most politicians and many Americans come down on one or the other extreme. Many Republicans, including Republican presidential cand ...
August 23, 2015
Arnold Wilson Parker sat with his back to the French doors of his upstairs study. Light from a gloriously clear winter sky streamed past his shoulder, fell on the bare wooden floor, and filled the room with a golden glow. Facing him, across a coffee table on a ...
August 22, 2015
This week, we'll see the truly subversive nature of Jesus' teachings... a subversion that remains unappreciated but potent. One has to wonder what would happen if large numbers of professed Christians took these concepts seriously. Continued from last week… W ...
August 22, 2015
The term “Sagebrush Rebellion” is again showing up in newspapers across the American west as states seek more control over federal lands within their own boundaries. As with the original Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s, several western states, wh ...
August 21, 2015
On the surface, Ohio looks like a strong candidate to join the list of states allowing legal recreational marijuana. Look deeper and you will find a more complicated story. "ResponsibleOhio" is a noble-sounding name for a group of investors who seek a state-enf ...
August 21, 2015
The Saudi-led war against Yemen is going very badly for Yemeni civilians. A recent Amnesty International report has revealed the extent of destruction resulting from the fighting that has been raging for the last four months: The conflict has been raging in 20 ...
