Topic: History

When Will the Madness End?

– July 10, 2020

“We’ve learned throughout this ordeal that despite our technology, our knowledge, our history of building prosperity and peace, we are no smarter than our ancestors and, by some measures, not as smart as our parents and grandparents. The experience with COVID has caused a mass reversion to the superstitions and panics that sporadically defined the human experience of ages past.” ~ Jeffrey A. Tucker

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Rothbard’s Challenging History of the Revolutionary War and the Constitution

– July 7, 2020

“In short, one does not have to share Rothbard’s opinion about the undesirability of the Constitution to find his interpretation of what actually happened illuminating. Whether you think that the Constitution was a mistake, that it was a good idea, or that it didn’t do enough to empower government, you will still encounter reliable, engaging, and challenging history in the fifth volume of Conceived in Liberty.” ~ Jeffrey Rogers Hummel

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The Metaphysics of Lockdown, According to Albert Camus

– July 7, 2020

“This drastic, clean-cut deprivation and our complete ignorance of what the future held in store had taken us unawares; we were unable to react against the mute appeal of presences, still so near and already so far, which haunted us daylong. In fact, our suffering was twofold; our own to start with, and then the imagined suffering of the absent one, son, mother, wife, or mistress.” ~ Albert Camus

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market, people

Strata of the Unseen

– July 6, 2020

“When an economist reminds you to pay attention to what is unseen, he or she counsels you to humbly understand that a modern market economy is far too complex and inescapably reliant upon trial-and-error experimentation to enable the interventionist schemes that are forever being proposed to succeed.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

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The American Revolution Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic

– July 4, 2020

“For soldiers in the Revolutionary War, COVID-19 would have been hardly noticed. Instead they dealt with a disease far more ghastly. And yet they fought. For freedom.” ~ Jeffrey Tucker

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broken windows, brick building

Opposing Subsidies Isn’t Opposing What’s Subsidized: Bastiat’s Lesson

– July 2, 2020

“Among the dead and largely forgotten, Bastiat is worth reading for the depth of his insight and the clarity of his exposition. His articles and essays expose the hidden absurdity of a lot of proposals to “encourage the national labour” by subsidizing the arts, by blocking out the sun to benefit the candlemakers, or by building a negative railroad consisting of nothing but stops.” ~ Art Carden

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Robert William Fogel (1926-2013): A Birthday Appreciation

– July 1, 2020

His students report that Fogel had a dictum: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth spending ten years of your life doing it right. Fogel was a master at finding the right questions, finding the right methods and data to answer them, and–importantly–putting in the work to ensure that in the long run, we get things right.” ~ Art Carden

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Jefferson Memorial

Ad Hominems Against Freedom

– July 1, 2020

“The avenue to a peaceful, prosperous and truly color-blind free society will not come about through a victory by the identity politics warriors and the ideological high priests of political correctness. It requires an appreciation and defense of the liberal principles of individual liberty, equality of rights before the law, and a vibrant, open, and competitive free market.” ~ Richard M. Ebeling

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Claude McKay with Max Eastman

Max Forrester Eastman: The Gangster of the Pen

– July 1, 2020

“Max Eastman published detailed explanations that socialism, passed off as a social science, is in fact a disguised religious belief. Eastman revealed evidence of spiritual and animist elements in Marxism that, despite Karl Marx and others’ attempts to remove and erase them, are undeniably present throughout socialist ideology.” ~Lucio Saverio-Eastman

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Park, Saint Cloud

“The Most Brilliant Economic Journalist Who Ever Lived”: A Birthday Appreciation of Frederic Bastiat

– June 30, 2020

“Bastiat was one of the nineteenth century’s most eloquent defenders of liberty and dignity, and Joseph Schumpeter was clearly right to describe him as “the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived.” He has heirs, but no equals.” ~ Art Carden

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Westbury New York

Slavery Did Not Enrich Americans

– June 25, 2020

“The New History of Capitalism misfires badly, however, in its interpretation of these facts. Slavery was not necessary for cotton, and cotton was not necessary for industrialization. Had chattel slavery never taken hold in the United States, we would very likely be richer than we are today.” ~ Art Carden

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robot, text, planning

Why Facts Don’t Matter to People

– June 24, 2020

“COVID-19 has forced many of our well-intentioned friends into what some call liminal space—’a space where you have left something behind, yet you are not yet fully in something else.'” ~ Barry Brownstein

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