A review of Thomas Woods’ “Meltdown”

One of the marks of great writing is that, no matter how abstract a subject might be, the author’s text remains lucid and understandable.  It is not crowded with irrelevant information, unduly antiquated language, or a dense texture.  H.L. Mencken, Joseph Ratzinger, and Murray Rothbard all have this gift.  So does Tom Woods, whose recent [...]

Two LRC podcasts to drive the Anti-Saloon League batty

Seventy five years ago yesterday, Prohibition was repealed.  It would figure, of course, that this was not motivated by common sense, but rather by political greed.  Lew Rockwell talks to Mark Thornton about all this. Be sure also to listen to the interview with Thornton about the drug war. It’s interesting to me that, with [...]

Of plumbers, philosophers, and would-be “DeFamers”

There has been some discussion on the Mises Yahoo! Group regarding an attack that a Brad DeLong — a man who does not register on my radar — directed towards a book written by Ludwig von Mises, the dean of the Austrian school of economics. The target of the attack was The Theory of Money [...]

Illustrating Liberty: “The Apotheosis of Washington”

[Illustrating Liberty is a new, irregular feature on this blog featuring the occasional "Political Photoshoppery" of Aristotle A. Esguerra.] This post isn’t about an original work at all; in fact, I did very little to come up with the image that accompanied Lew Rockwell’s Monday article for Mises.org, “The Myth of Good Government.” It was [...]

Remembering broken promises on Veterans’ Day

Although I am quite aware that Veterans’ Day was originally called Armistice Day and was set aside for veterans of “The War to End All Wars”, I recall the sacrifices made by Filipino veterans less than a generation later on their home soil, in response to the call of a faraway imperial regime. No, not [...]

The New Mass: Bringing Socialism to the Catholic Church Since 1969

The following insights are indebted almost entirely to Friederich August von Hayek’s book The Counter-Revolution of Science, which I highly recommend and which is certainly a hell of a lot better than The Road to Serfdom. For those readers who may not be aware of it, the Roman Catholic Church completely redesigned her liturgy in [...]

Everything you learned in public school (except for Math) is wrong.

I hated school from the moment I entered kindergarten. The whole routine of going to this maze of cinder block cells for five days a week always rubbed me the wrong way. I’m not sure I ever figured out why until many years after I graduated, and this is probably good: If I knew then [...]