Murray Rothbard spelled out inflation’s devastating consequences before proposing his heretical solution: repudiation.
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Machine Politics
From the December 1993 issue of Chronicles. “Modern liberty begins in revolt.” —H.M. Kallen In 1943, in the midst of the dark years of World War II when collectivism seemed to be sweeping all before it at home and abroad, three fiercely independent and feisty women, all of them friends and libertarians devoted to what...
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Repudiating the Debt
In the spring of 1981, conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives cried. They cried because, in the first flush of the Reagan Revolution that was supposed to bring drastic cuts in taxes and government spending, as well as a balanced budget, they were being asked by the White House and their own leadership to...
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Repudiating the National Debt
Before the Reagan era, conservatives were clear about how they felt about deficits and the public debt: a balanced budget was good, and deficits and the public debt were bad, piled up by free-spending Keynesians and socialists, who absurdly proclaimed that there was nothing wrong or onerous about the public debt. In the famous words...
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Sweet Land of Liberty
I am deeply honored to receive the Richard Weaver Award, to stand in the ranks of the distinguished men who have received it, and to have an award in the name of a man who has always been one of my heroes. As a lifelong libertarian, I have been moved by the occasion to reflect...
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Sanctions: War on the Cheap
The modern weapon of “sanctions” seems made-to-order for the foreign policy of Bill Clinton. Remarkably evasive and unprincipled even for a modern politician, Clinton is possessed of a horror of commitment in both his personal and his political life. The armamentarium of minute differentia in sanctions allows Clinton to posture at length as a man...
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Life in the Old Right
One problem with labeling ideological movements “old” or “new” is that inevitably, with the passage of time, the “new” becomes an “old” and the markers get confusing. In the modern, post-World War II right wing, there have been a number of “news” and hence “olds” over the past half-century. But what I call the “Old...
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Machine Politics
“Modern liberty begins in revolt.” —H.M. Kallen In 1943, in the midst of the dark years of World War II when collectivism seemed to be sweeping all before it at home and abroad, three fiercely independent and feisty women, all of them friends and libertarians devoted to what was then called “individualism,” hurled mighty manifestos...
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The Year of the Italian Nonwoman
It was late October, and my old friend was very depressed: “I’m not interested in any of these guys,” he said of all the presidential candidates. “I’m only interested in one thing in this election.” His voice grew warmer: “The reelection of ‘Senator Pothole.'” Senator Alfonse D’Amato, the only Republican victorious in a statewide election...
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The Saga of Esteban Solarz
Not long ago, during the glory days of the Gulf War, Stephen J. Solarz, ferret-faced little Democratic congressman from southern Brooklyn, was riding almost as high in the saddle as our Commander-in-Chief. For it was Solarz who played the major role in dragging his often- reluctant liberal colleagues away from their traditional dovish stance into...
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Twofold Question
Regarding Europe, I’ve got a nagging twofold question I’d love to have answered: Why has no one remarked on the incredible, glaring double standard in Establishment treatment of ex-Nazi and Communist regimes? And what in blazes is the justification for that double standard? We start with a stipulation, presumably made both by myself and by...
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When Democracy Comes to Town
It was one of those political pundit panels on C-SPAN. Mona Charen, neoconservative columnist, was asked to sum up her experiences in the Kemp-for-President campaign in 1988. Miss Charen grew unwontedly misty-eyed: “The [democratic] process,” she sighed wistfully. “The process was so wonderful.” It is doubtful if any of the presidential candidates or their handlers...
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Repudiating the National Debt
In the spring of 1981, conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives cried. They cried because, in the first flush of the Reagan Revolution that was supposed to bring drastic cuts in taxes and government spending, as well as a balanced budget, they were being asked by the White House and their own leadership to...
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Coping With Street Crime
Any cogent discussion of crime must begin by casting aside the obfuscations of criminologists and social scientists who habitually lump together all types of crime. But while most people can be made to wax indignant against fraud or against such abstract “crimes” as insider trading, or even become outraged at employees taking pencils from their...
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Long Hot Summer, Long Cold Winter
Violence in New York seems to have escalated to a new dimension. It used to be that ethnic violence would erupt in the hot summers, to subside in the winters when those folks who live their lives in the street withdraw indoors for R & R. Now, however, at this writing in midwinter, violence has...
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The Long Hot Summer
July 18, 1991. The temperature was 99 degrees, the hottest day since the summer of 1988. The humidity, as usual, was stratospheric (undoubtedly the reason they stopped broadcasting the Temperature Humidity Index years ago). The hitherto unknown Coalition for Black and Hispanic Jobs at the Port of New York Authority decided that this was the...
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Life Lessons
Academics have no more human frailties, I suppose, than are rampant in any other occupation. But those frailties are far more repellent, and far funnier, in a profession ostensibly dedicated to the disinterested search for truth. 1. The pettiness of the stage. Backstabbing and politicking in the Executive Suite to obtain a million-dollar post as...
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In the Old Days
The Insensitivity Squad has struck again: this time against a board game and a marching band. Parker Brothers, venerable producer of board games, was recently denounced by the head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, left-Republican Susan Engeleiter. It seems that its new game, Careers for Girls, for ages 8-12, lists six “careers” for the...
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Affirmative Scholarship
“An excellent scholar! One that hath a head filled with calves’ brains without any sage in it.” —John Webster Thomas Sowell has become a virtual one-man publishing industry, and Preferential Policies is his latest contribution to the Sowell book-of-the-year club. It is not surprising to find that this scattered and woefully disorganized potboiler is part...
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It Was a Long Hot Summer
I returned to New York at the end of May for my summer stint to find that both bellwethers of New York life, the far-out left Village Voice and the chic liberal New York, were headlining (respectively) “Race Rage,” and “The Race Mess.” Yes, the fabled and much-dreaded Long Hot Summer was already well under...
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Foreign Policy for the Post-Cold War World
Nineteen eighty-nine was a year of great joy for lovers of freedom everywhere. For it was the “revolutionary” year in which totalitarian communism, throughout Eastern Europe and perhaps even in the Soviet Union itself, suddenly collapsed like a house of cards. Many of our pundits, equating complexity and permanent quasi-gloom with profundity, sternly warned us...
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That Infamous Diary
“Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.” —William Hazlitt Rarely does a published diary, even of a celebrated writer, become anything more than fodder for the specialist. Yet H.L. Mencken’s diary has been turned into a cause célèbre by its editor, Charles A....
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The Politics of Race
The politics of race—mayoral candidate Rudi Giuliani realized after the September 12 primary that to win as a Republican in a Democratic town like New York, he would have to get a large chunk of liberal and centrist Jews to desert David Dinkins’ ticket. As soon as the primary was over, therefore, the Giuliani campaign...