Ia a FEE article click here for full article”
Why Is the Middle Class Shrinking?
2 Arguments in Favor of Economic Inequality
Year: 2015
Jacob G. Hornberger – discusses the problem
On December 17, 2015, Jacob Hornberger published:
MUSLIMS, ISLAM, AND THE KORAN ARE NOT THE PROBLEM
excerpt:
“Was any American statist expressing concern about Muslims, Islam, the Koran, or Sharia law during the 45 years of the Cold War?
Nope! Back then, the big bugaboo was communism, especially Soviet communism but also Chinese, North Korean, Cuban, Chilean, and Vietnamese communism, not to mention the U.S. Communist Party. At no time did any American statist exclaim against the Muslims or decry that they were coming to get us as part of their supposed centuries-old plan to establish a worldwide caliphate.”
If climate change – then: Tragedy of the Commons
BILL GATES, CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM
by
first of a multi-part discussion.
Excerpt:
If “climate change” and “global warming” are, in fact, problems facing people on Planet Earth, it is due to an atmospheric tragedy of the commons. The question, then, is, are there private solutions to this problem – if it exists as proponents claim – or does it have to be “solved” through the central planning of global governments and government-business “partnership” as asserted by some such as Bill Gates?
That is what will be discussed at a later date,
Predictable Change is Good
Many people today are concerned about predictions of global warning. But why fear the change. If it can be reliably predicted, then lets prepare for the change, and enjoy it.
Our environment changes all the time. The more reliably we can predict the change, then we can adjust our plans and use the change for our advantage.
We accurately predict when it gets dark and light each day. What could be a bigger change than a world with light, and a world in darkness. But we have all learned to live with day and night.
Many who live near the ocean use the prediction of the tides to plan their activities.
Most people who live in locations with seasons are able to accommodate big temperature changes from the high 90’s to below zero, even when they do not know precisely when the changes will occur.
Everyone is not wiped out by floods, hurricanes and lightning. Only those who do not take proper precautions suffer.
All those who are concerned about climate change should just prepare for it, rather than try to stop the inevitable.
FFF Except from Anthony De Jasay’s The State
The transition to socialism, in the sense of an almost subconscious, sleep-walking sort of “maximax” strategy by the state, both to augment its potential discretionary power and actually to realize the greatest possible part of the potential thus created, is likely to be peaceful, dull, and unobtrusive. This is its low-risk high-reward approach. Far from being any noisy “battle of democracy … to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state”; far from involving some heroic revolutionary break with continuity; far from calling for the violent putting down of the propertied minority, the transition to socialism would probably be the more certain the more it relied on the slow atrophy of initially independent, self-regulating subsystems of society. As their free functioning was constrained, the declining vitality of successive chunks of the “mixed economy” would eventually lead to a passive acceptance of a step-by-step extension of public ownership, if not to a clamour for it.
— Anthony de Jasay, The State [1985]
Call for Open Borders Continues
Short article by Bryan Caplan in Time Magazine Online makes a good case for open borders
Will Common Sense Gun Control Stop Mass Shootings?
Trevor Burns Commentary October 2, 2015
America Is Not Japan, and ‘Common Sense’ Won’t End Mass Shootings
Except:
Mass shootings should not be the centerpiece of gun-control policy. Mass shooters are motivated, difficult to detect, and commit only a tiny fraction of gun violence in America. Pretending that stopping these psychopaths is a matter of passing “commonsense” laws is just moral grandstanding for cheap political points. If all that is keeping us from being mass-shooter-free is failure to heed the suggestions of Obama and other champions of “common sense,” then I invite them to try — and then to take personal responsibility for every one that they miss.
Passing effective gun-control policies in a nation brimming with 300 million guns is difficult; don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. Have we come to accept that a certain amount of gun violence in our country is inevitable? The hard truth is that we have, just as we accept that deaths by automobile accidents, drowning in swimming pools, and industrial accidents are inevitable. This doesn’t mean that there is nothing we can or should do, but the first thing that we must do is to stop pretending that ending mass shootings is merely a matter of “common sense.”
Jeffery Tucker Discusses Open Borders
Why Open Borders?
Excerpt:
It’s freedom itself that people fear.
Once freedom goes away, it is difficult to imagine how things would work if it came back. The notion of freedom then scares people, and it becomes easy to think up a thousand different scenarios in which freedom can’t possibly work.
9/11 Commentary
by Jared Grifoni
as posted on Facebook by Jared Grifoni
After the attacks of 9/11/01, Americans stood united with one another based on the principles contained within our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of our fellow Americans was of primary concern. When the towers collapsed, Americans were not thinking about the race, gender, sexual orientation, political party, or socio-economic status of those impacted by what we were witnessing. Seeing our fellow Americans race for their lives out of those towers, some completely covered in dust, helping or carrying the coworkers, friends, family, or strangers out of danger, it is difficult today to remember without feeling the same pain we all felt on that day, 14 years ago.
Dust, dirt, debris, and worse. That was the skin color of the people that heroes helped that day.
Finding a loved one. It didn’t matter the gender just that we all couldn’t even imagine how horrible the feeling would be to not be able to locate the person we loved that day. We wanted them all to find their way homes.
American. That was the only political party that mattered.
Values. Liberty was the way of life we wanted to protect.
Checking up on friends and neighbors, talking with strangers in our communities, taking care of those who needed help – in the aftermath of the attacks we were shown the bonds with our fellow man that has made our country great. A simple, yet genuine concern for each other with a “How are you doing?” shared between two strangers… sometimes a devastating tragedy can be the catalyst that shakes us awake to what really matters.
9/11/01 didn’t just bring together Americans who were horrified at the vicious, unconscionable murder of innocents that day. It brought sympathy, partnership, and friendship from many corners of the globe from our allies but it even thawed some old Cold War and Middle Eastern rivalries.
All of those things, maybe we didn’t realize it then but could it all be any more blatantly obvious now as we look back on that day?
9/11/01 brought us together, true, but in many ways as the days, months, and years passed it became a tragedy utilized to split some of us apart. I remember how over time my shock, sadness, and empathy slowly morphed into anger, fear, confusion, and retribution. Liberty turned into security. Our Bill of Rights went from being what elevated America above other nations in the world to what many of us perceived as a weakness that allowed the attacks to occur.
It took years for me to realize that what I loved about America and Americans on 9/11 was being sacrificed and lost to the policies, foreign and domestic, and the emotions, fear and security, which I believed were the only way in a post-9/11 world.
While we are lucky that our nation has not had to deal with another attack on our soil as devastating in scope as what happened that day, our nation has had to deal with the lasting impact of the debate over foreign entanglements, inalienable rights, the Fourth Amendment, indefinite detention, torture, the balance between liberty and security, and respect for our fellow man and the choices they make in their private lives.
Let us remember those who died on 9/11/01. Let us remember the goodness of our fellow Americans we experienced in the days after 9/11/01. Let us never forget: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most militaristic of all
Gene Healy, Vice-President of the Cato Institute, comments on the militaristic tendency of various presidential candidates here.
Excepts:
“I’m the most militaristic person there is,” Donald Trump boldy bragged upon his return to Fox News Tuesday morning, after the clown-car wreck of last week’s Republican primary debate.
….
But “most militaristic?” Even for the Donald, this is a boast that goes a bit too far. In the 2016 election cycle, the “serious and responsible” candidates for the presidency are so bellicose they make Trump look Cindy Sheehan. He can’t even compete with the current Democratic president or the most likely Democratic nominee.