The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of “conservatism” and “liberalism” which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men. – AYN RAND
Scour the newspaper any day of the week and you will read stories detailing the many failures of the federal, state, and local governments or agencies, and of their stupendous ability to commit the same mistakes over and over again. Yet these agencies are the one that people turn to in times of troubles or needs.
The ten varieties of anti-capitalism are anarchism, medievalism, nationalism, socialism, communism, fascism, populism, racism, environmentalism, and subjectivism.
Does capitalism exist in “varieties,” as scholars began to insist two decades ago, or is it a unique social system fundamentally unlike all others? If there is a “pure” form of capitalism, what alterations or transformations render it impure? How impure must it become before we should cease calling it capitalism and call it something else instead?
“You got more questions but I tell ya, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
How cultural Marxists coopted the phrase “black lives matter” to instigate protests and riots to push a racist, anti-capitalist narrative to gain political power, while making Americans of all colors worse off.
Only in a society where individual rights are recognized and the government’s sole role is to protect them, will racism be eradicated.
We must judge ourselves and others by the content of our character, not by the color of our skin, our gender, socio-economic class, or any other group characteristic.
The recent murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis was ghastly and reminds us of the hideous racial injustice directed against black Americans in the nation’s past.
The true plight of black people has little or nothing to do with the police or what has been called “systemic racism.” Instead, we need to look at the responsibilities of those running our big cities.
An old adage says that tragedies often come in threes. Certainly, the first half of 2020 has seen a version of this.
Populism is what happens when a republic becomes a democracy, and politicians must curry the favor of voters in order to win office.
Black lives matter. Black businesses, not so much.
If there is a chance to not only pull society away from the social and economic abyss towards which it is moving, but return it to a path more in the direction of personal liberty, economic freedom, and equal individual rights under partial rule of law and constitutionally limited government, it requires resisting the pessimism that all is lost and irreversible, and having the courage and willingness to try to restore the free society.
A silver lining to this pandemic is that now more parents are learning about their options outside the government schooling system.
We must embrace individual freedom as the answer to this crisis. End the lockdowns, and end the collectivist approach to solving this crisis.
Whether one agrees with Adam’s views on “wet markets,” the origin of COVID-19, or the benefits of veganism, the “social justice” attacks on Bryan Adams as a “racist” are misguided. Far from being a racist, Bryan Adams is a victim. Bryan Adam’s accusers owe him an apology.
If we keep giving the state more power over our lives, we will freeze in the dark.
The kind of reasoning that underpins the tired old asymmetric information bogeyman in health care falls straight into the behavioral symmetry between market participants and policy makers that is a core contribution of modern public choice economics: it is not believable to submit that governments have magic wands.
Leftist politicians who want to get into our pocketbooks are beginning to argue that the COVID-19 pandemic is the best argument for a wealth tax.
Is it possible to envision Rome experiencing an industrial revolution?
As for Medicare for All, the COVID-19 crisis in Canada has shown the brutal consequences of government-run health care: shortages just when you need care the most.
The collectivism virus need not destroy us, if we immunize ourselves with the philosophy of liberty and market liberalism. What we need is herd immunity, but that requires as many of us as possible to spread the ideas of freedom to as many of our fellow citizens as is possible.
In implementing these types of dictates and commands, with the implied attitude that government officials have no restraints on their controls and decrees other than the ones they decide to impose on themselves, American politicians are no different than their implicit mentors in Beijing, China.
My prediction is that Americans, left to their own tendencies, will roar together as giants and will ignore the political and media crybabies.
We need new drugs to fight COVID-19 and other diseases. But our government’s approval process makes that too hard.
Politicians rush to limit our choices in the name of “keeping us safe.”
Sadly, conservatives and libertarians are perpetuating this myth that the UBI will replace the overgrown welfare system, or serve as a substantial alternative.
A wholesale economic lockdown in a pandemic does not protect but violates rights.
The point of the principle of indivisibility is to remind us that the various freedoms rise or fall together, even if with various lags, even if some freedom, for a time, seems to be rising as others fall; in whatever direction the freedoms move, eventually they tend to dovetail.
Grievance scholars, from gender studies, queer, sexuality and critical race studies, bully students, administrators, into adhering to their worldview.
If we want economic prosperity and human flourishing, we need to understand capitalism and advocate for it globally—and to shun countries like China that continue to violate individual rights.
Riding out storms and sharing risks across billions of people is a feature, not a bug, and the affluent capitalist nature of our institutions puts us in a better position to deal with them.