The upshot was that it was a bat, which, despite the prevalence of bat revisionism, is a spooky, nasty, disease-carrying, malicious threat to peace and contentment, made all the worse by its elusive, nocturnal habits. But this wasn’t at all obvious at first. It began as little more than a peculiar sound, noted by a visitor to our home. It sounded
The Heritage Foundation offers one of those site polls designed to keep you tooling around, and this one I thought was interesting. Do liberals exaggerate threat to civil liberties from security measures like the Terrorist Surveillance Program? Yes. Security programs like the TSP protect the nation and keep civil liberties intact. No. The TSP and
In Washington, words such as “cost,” “tax,” “subsidy,” “spending,” and other fiscal terms have no fixed meaning. For example, it is considered costly to cut taxes, and a subsidy to provide a tax break. This morning, we read that Bush wants to provide a tax break to low income people who buy private coverage, while taxing people “for some workers
I find Iraq news painful to read so I was glad for this summary of the current situation in Iraq, from Antiwar.com, but can you believe that author’s claim that “cuts to state subsidies” for industry contributes to inflation? Oh well, it still contains good information. Nowhere on Earth is there a worse refugee crisis than in Iraq today. According
Fortune takes note of the “crumbling infrastructure “ and suggests that Randian capitalists might come to the rescue (the article is confused and meandering so no reason to ponder the thesis completely). But it does remind me of the book I just read last week, one I thought was just over-the-top wonderful: The Driver, by Garet Garrett . It is set
John Derbyshire explains why he is tempted by Ron Paul’s views on government but must ultimately reject them. His argument seems to be that if government is small, it’s fine to favor small government. But if it is vast and imperial, we should favor that too. Doesn’t this reduce “conservatism” to nothing but status quo cheering of the state? I
Last night, a lady from my neighborhood just delivered her last pint of chicken salad to my door. Her chicken salad—made by “The Chicken Salad Chick”—has been all the rage, with everyone in the neighborhood forking over for this stuff. It’s a classic case of a suburban food hysteria. But she is shutting down, not because of her failures but her
The Bush administration gives advice on an interesting get-rich scheme ( WSJ ) Blowing the whistle on big-time tax cheats could make some informants wealthy -- as long as they have hard evidence and plenty of patience. Just over a year ago, President Bush signed legislation authorizing the Internal Revenue Service to pay sharply higher rewards to
According to the NYT , the problem with the government’s handling of the fires is due to poor coordination between agencies (reform!), communication snafus (reform!), and not enough money (fork
The struggle over holidays oddly mirrors the intractable struggle between market and state, so that we have Labor Day, Presidents Day, and Memorial Day etc. for those who find their meaning in official civic celebrations. But for millions of others, a new calendar of sorts is starting to emerge that secedes entirely from the attempted
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.