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Is Life So Dear?

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There really isn’t anything shameful about being a serf. What is shameful is the willingness to accept one’s serfdom for the sake of being kept safe and secure. That’s the trade that unfortunately all too many Americans have made, with respect to both the warfare state and the welfare state. On the warfare state side of things, people are willing to let the government wield totalitarian powers, which, needless to say, infringe on freedom. They’re willing to let the government have the power to spy on them, keep track of their telephone calls, listen to and record their telephone conversations, read and copy their emails, sneak and peek into their homes, delve into theikr personal financial affairs, incarcerate them in military installations, torture them, assassinate them, and do many of the other things that totalitarian regimes do. Why are they willing to sacrifice their freedom for democratic totalitarianism? “I just want to be kept safe, Jacob. That’s what matters to me. If the ...

The Business Cycle Explained

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It Didn’t Have to Be This Way: Why Boom and Bust Is Unnecessary — and How the Austrian School of Economics Breaks the Cycle by Harry C. Veryser (Intercollegiate Studies Institute 2012), 318 pages. This is one instance where a book’s subtitle tells the reader much more about its content than the title does. You know at once that the book is devoted to explaining Austrian-school thinking, especially with respect to the problem of cycles of economic booms followed by recessions. The United States enjoyed a boom, largely due to the housing bubble, from 2002 to 2007, and since then it has languished in a recession that shows no sign of abating, much less turning into another boom. Economists and politicians keep proposing to solve the economy’s troubles by “stimulating” it with more government spending and more money creation by the Federal Reserve. Once you have read this book, you will understand why such “solutions” must not only fail but ...

AmeriCorps: Idealistic Triumph or Usual Buffoonery?

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National service is the latest fashionable panacea for all that ails America. Time magazine ran a July cover story, “How Service Can Save Us,” on the potential benefits of pressing all young people into service. The article approvingly quoted a retired Air Force veteran: “There isn’t an 18-year-old boy who doesn’t need to get his butt kicked by someone in a position of complete authority.” Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson chimed in with a piece headlined “National Service Can Heal a Divided Nation,” while a Politco article headline promised, “National Service Is Key to National Strength. Gen. Stanley McChrystal (retired) stoked this boomlet with a Wall Street Journal piece that proclaimed, “Universal national service should become a new American rite of passage.” The Aspen Institute launched a special project, the 21st Century National Service Summit, with a gathering that included visionaries such as Arianna Huffington, Chelsea Clinton, and Barbara Bush. For McChrystal and many other service advocates, AmeriCorps is the ...