Growing up as a child in World War II, I saw countless movies in which a German soldier in uniform, or a Gestapo agent in plain clothes, would utter the spine-chilling words “Papiere, Bitte” (”Papers, Please”). What made those words spine chilling was the fact that whoever they were uttered to was in imminent danger of arrest, imprisonment,
Below are the headlines of four obituaries that have run in The New York Times . The first is that of the recent obituary of the Anti-Communist Augusto Pinochet. The next three are those of the obituaries of the Communist mass murderers Mao, Stalin, and Lenin. Please be sure to note how many are described as having ruled by terror. December 11,
The New York Times must have a guilty conscience about the continuous distortions of the news that appear in its pages. Evidence of this guilt is provided everyday in The Times’ claim that its “news and editorial departments do not coordinate coverage and maintain a strict separation in staff and management.” That claim is necessary only because
In the New York Times, Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winner in economics, has an article titled “How to Fix the Global Economy .” Judging from his article, Stiglitz appears to believe that the main problem of the global economy is “global financial imbalances.” By this, he means “America’s enormous trade deficits,” which he states are close to $3
Ask yourself if the following paragraph would seem believable to you if you were to read it a in a newspaper: Washington, D. C., Oct. 10. Following in the footsteps of “No Child Left Behind,” the Department of Education is considering new requirements applicable to all colleges and universities benefiting in any way from federally financed
From The New York Times of October 31, 2006 : Dozens of people appeared before the city’s Board of Health yesterday, offering a largely favorable response to proposed restaurant regulations that would ban all but a minute amount of artificial trans fats in food preparation, and require some restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus and
Saving is the use of revenue or income by a business or individual for purposes other than expenditure on consumers’ goods (or consumers’ services). It is revenue or income that is not consumed. Because what is saved is not spent by the saver for consumption, a popular fallacy has grown up that saving is synonymous with hoarding— i.e., with the
At the most fundamental level, environmentalism and the Green movement that represents it are hostile to business. The ethics of environmentalism and the Greens is one of human deprivation and individual self-sacrifice. Business in contrast rests on a foundation of the pursuit of happiness and the profit motive. The one represents a joyless
In the last 500 million years, there have been two ice ages at the same time that vastly higher carbon dioxide levels prevailed in the earth’s atmosphere—up to 16 times the present level. This remarkable finding, along with others, was reported in yesterday’s (November 7, 2006) New York Times . For details, see the article by William Broad, “In
Like clockwork, The Onion has a poignant article that summarizes the reality of the situation: “politicians were the big winners in Tuesday’s midterm election.” And in the words of a fake officeholder, “It’s a good night to be a politician.” Perhaps H.L. Mencken said it best however, “every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.