Topic: History

Giles Milton’s Spectacular ‘Checkmate In Berlin’

– April 28, 2022

“How do we explain why humans can be so cruel to other humans? A read of this brilliant book will cause its readers to contemplate the previous question, and many more for a long time.” ~ John Tamny

Art and Culture, Government, History, Regulation

Decriminalizing Cannabis Won’t Stop the Black Market

– April 25, 2022

“High taxes and meddling restrictions will limit the economic and humanitarian benefits associated with cannabis reform, retrench the black market, and continue the discriminatory impact of cannabis criminalization on the poor.” ~ Laura Williams

Books, Economic Education, History

Review of The Sovereign Consumer: A New Intellectual History of Neoliberalism

– April 22, 2022

“The emphasis on consumer sovereignty helps clarify the discussion, and this is a book intellectual historians, economic historians, and historians of economic thought can read profitably.” ~ Art Carden

Books, Classical Liberalism, Government, History

Illiberalism Will Not Secure the Common Good

– April 21, 2022

“One does not need to be a full-on classical liberal to recognize that liberal principles, even where they lack substantive justification, may preserve correct intuitions about morality and the common good.” ~ James Dominic Rooney

Education, Government, History

Should We Replace Racial Preferences with Socio-Economic Preferences?

– April 20, 2022

“Preferences of any kind—racial, legacy, athletic, or socio-economic—are a bad idea. College officials should resist the urge to engage in social engineering and just admit students based on their academic ability and eagerness to learn.” ~ George Leef

Books, Classical Liberalism, Government, History

Speaking With Generosity

– April 19, 2022

“The challenge that faces us at present is to believe the truth, speak it with a generous spirit, and attempt to persuade others instead of making them our inveterate enemies.” ~ Elizabeth Corey

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Government, History

What, to the Classical Liberal, Is Patriots’ Day?

– April 18, 2022

“Perhaps instead of celebrating Patriots’ Day, classical liberals should learn from it by establishing parallel governance structures, alternative institutional arrangements anchored in liberty, just as our forefathers did.” ~ Robert E. Wright

Books, Education, Government, History

A Parent’s Guide to Kendi’s Antiracist Baby

– April 17, 2022

“Maybe we should go back to reading liberalism to our children. By liberalism, I mean a cluster of ideas that includes equal freedom, equal treatment under the law, and colorblindness.” ~ Max Borders

Education, Government, History

Can We Teach the “Federalist Papers” Today?

– April 15, 2022

“The virtues of a bourgeois republic – honesty, compromise, tolerance, and fair-dealing – seem pale in comparison to the demands for social justice here and now. As a student of mine once said, ‘I need something to help me get up in the morning.’” ~ Steven B. Smith

Art and Culture, Crisis, Education, History

A Tale of Two Statutes

– April 13, 2022

“In the end, Title IX has always had two faces. Either it is a law with content to be respected, or it is a blank slate whose meaning is in the eye of the beholder.” ~ Elizabeth Kaufer Busch

Art and Culture, Authoritarianism, Free Markets, History

Cold War Music: A Top Ten List

– April 11, 2022

“With the Fall of the Berlin Wall, we were neither red nor dead. Instead, we were alive and free, and poised – with the revolution in development economics of the 1990s – for the greatest advance in history in the global standard of living.” ~ Clifford F. Thies

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Economic Education, History

Taming the Dictator Within, Part 2

– April 10, 2022

“Your experience of reality is directly related to the mindset of true or false individualism that you embrace. When you release your tight grip on your thinking, you allow your life to reveal what your Dictator Within has fabricated.” ~ Barry Brownstein