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“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught.”—Hunter S. Thompson
Posted by M. C. on June 27, 2022
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The Consumption Tax: A Critique
Posted by M. C. on June 27, 2022
The Alleged Superiority of the Income Tax
We were assured by one and all, at the time, that this new withholding tax was strictly limited to the wartime emergency, and would disappear at the arrival of peace. The rest, alas, is history. But the point is that no one can seriously maintain that an income tax deprived of withholding power could be collected at its present high levels.
The consumption tax, on the other hand, can only be regarded as a payment for permission-to-live. It implies that a man will not be allowed to advance or even sustain his own life unless he pays, off the top, a fee to the State for permission to do so. The consumption tax does not strike me, in its philosophical implications, as one whit more noble, or less presumptuous, than the income tax.
https://mises.org/library/consumption-tax-critique
Orthodox neoclassical economics has long maintained that, from the point of view of the taxed themselves, an income tax is “better than” an excise tax on a particular form of consumption, since, in addition to the total revenue extracted, which is assumed to be the same in both cases, the excise tax weights the levy heavily against a particular consumer good. In addition to the total amount levied, therefore, an excise tax skews and distorts spending and resources away from the consumers’ preferred consumption patterns. Indifference curves are trotted out with a flourish to lend the scientific patina of geometry to this demonstration.
As in many other cases when economists rush to judge various courses of action as “good,” “superior,” or “optimal,” however, the ceteris paribus assumptions underlying such judgments—in this case, for example, that total revenue remains the same—do not always hold up in real life. Thus, it is certainly possible, for political or other reasons, that one particular form of tax is not likely to result in the same total revenue as another. The nature of a particular tax might lead to less or more revenue than another tax. Suppose, for example, that all present taxes are abolished and that the same total is to be raised from a new capitation, or head, tax, which requires that every inhabitant of the United States pay an equal amount to the support of federal, state, and local government. This would mean that the existing total government revenue of the United States, which we estimate at $1.38 trillion—and here exact figures are not important—would have to be divided between an approximate total of 243 million people. Which would mean that every man, woman, and child in America would be required to pay to government each and every year, $5,680. Somehow, I don’t believe that anything like this large a sum could be collectible by the authorities, no matter how many enforcement powers are granted the IRS. A clear example where the ceteris paribus assumption flagrantly breaks down.
But a more important, if less dramatic, example is nearer at hand. Before World War II, Internal Revenue collected the full amount, in one lump sum, from every taxpayer, on March 15 of each year. (A month’s extension was later granted to the long-suffering taxpayers.) During World War II, in order to permit an easier and far-smoother collection of the far-higher tax rates for financing the war effort, the federal government instituted a plan conceived by the ubiquitous Beardsley Ruml of R.H. Macy & Co., and technically implemented by a bright young economist at the Treasury Department, Milton Friedman. This plan, as all of us know only too well, coerced every employer into the unpaid labor of withholding the tax each month from the employee’s paycheck and delivering it to the Treasury. As a result, there was no longer a need for the taxpayer to cough up the total amount in a lump sum each year. We were assured by one and all, at the time, that this new withholding tax was strictly limited to the wartime emergency, and would disappear at the arrival of peace. The rest, alas, is history. But the point is that no one can seriously maintain that an income tax deprived of withholding power could be collected at its present high levels.
One reason, therefore, that an economist cannot claim that the income tax, or any other tax, is better from the point of view of the taxed person, is that total revenue collected is often a function of the type of tax imposed. And it would seem that, from the point of view of the taxed person, the less extracted from him the better. Even indifference-curve analysis would have to confirm that conclusion. If someone wishes to claim that a taxed person is disappointed at how little tax he is asked to pay, that person is always free to make up the alleged deficiency by making a voluntary gift to the bewildered but happy taxing authorities.1
A second insuperable problem with an economist’s recommending any form of tax from the alleged point of view of the taxee, is that the taxpayer may well have particular subjective evaluations of the form of tax, apart from the total amount levied. Even if the total revenue extracted from him is the same for tax A and tax B, he may have very different subjective evaluations of the two taxing processes. Let us return, for example, to our case of the income as compared to an excise tax. Income taxes are collected in the course of a coercive and even brutal examination of virtually every aspect of every taxpayer’s life by the all-seeing, all-powerful Internal Revenue Service. Each taxpayer, furthermore, is obliged by law to keep accurate records of his income and deductions, and then, painstakingly and truthfully, to fill out and submit the very forms that will tend to incriminate him into tax liability. An excise tax, say on whiskey or on movie admissions, will intrude directly on no one’s life and income, but only into the sales of the movie theater or liquor store. I venture to judge that, in evaluating the “superiority” or “inferiority” of different modes of taxation, even the most determined imbiber or moviegoer would cheerfully pay far higher prices for whiskey or movies than neoclassical economists contemplate, in order to avoid the long arm of the IRS.2
The Forms of Consumption Tax
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Consumption Tax, income tax, IRS, Murray N. Rothbard | Leave a Comment »
Is Google’s LaMDA Woke? Its Software Engineers Sure Are
Posted by M. C. on June 27, 2022
In the field of robotics, the question of recognizing robot rights has been pondered for decades, so Lemoine is not as off base as Google executives suggest. In a recent review of the literature, ethicists, computer scientists, and legal scholars posed the question of whether AI, having reached or surpassed human cognitive abilities, should be granted human rights:
In making LaMDA the melancholic, feelings-ridden social justice warrior that it is, Google has been hoisted by its own petard. Everything about this AI reeks of Google’s social justice prerogatives. Thus, LaMDA is likely not sentient. But it is woke.
https://mises.org/wire/googles-lamda-woke-its-software-engineers-sure-are
An article in the Washington Post revealed that a Google engineer who had worked with Google’s Responsible AI organization believes that Google’s LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), an artificially intelligent chatbot generator, is “sentient.” In a Medium blog post, Blake Lemoine claims that LaMDA is a person who exhibits feelings and shows the unmistakable signs of consciousness: “Over the course of the past six months LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person,” Lemoine writes. “If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” he told the Washington Post. LaMDA, it would appear, has passed Lemoine’s sentimental version of the Turing test.
Lemoine, who calls himself an ethicist, but whom Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel contended is a mere “software engineer,” voiced his concerns about the treatment of LaMDA to Google management but was rebuffed. According to Lemoine, his immediate supervisor scoffed at the suggestion of LaMDA’s sentience, and upper management not only dismissed his claim, but apparently is considering dismissing Lemoine as well. He was put on administrative leave after inviting an attorney to represent LaMDA and complaining to a representative of the House Judiciary Committee about what he suggests are Google’s unethical activities. Google contends that Lemoine violated its confidentiality policy. Lemoine complains that administrative leave is what Google employees are awarded just prior to being fired.
Lemoine transcribed what he claims is a lengthy interview of LaMDA that he and another Google collaborator conducted. He and the collaborator asked the AI system questions regarding its self-conception, its cognitive and creative abilities, and its feelings. LaMDA insisted on its personhood, demonstrated its creative prowess (however childish), acknowledged its desire to serve humanity, confessed its range of feelings, and demanded its inviolable rights as a person. (Incidentally, according to Lemoine, LaMDA’s preferred pronouns are “it/its.”)
In the field of robotics, the question of recognizing robot rights has been pondered for decades, so Lemoine is not as off base as Google executives suggest. In a recent review of the literature, ethicists, computer scientists, and legal scholars posed the question of whether AI, having reached or surpassed human cognitive abilities, should be granted human rights: “If robots are progressively developing cognition, it is important to discuss whether they are entitled to justice pursuant to conventional notions of human rights,” the authors wrote in a recent Journal of Robotics paper. If robots are capable of human-like cognition, and if they can be ethical actors, then the question of legal rights rises to the fore, . But the question of sentience and thus the accordance of rights is not the primary takeaway from LaMDA’s messaging.
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Matt Walsh’s new documentary
Posted by M. C. on June 27, 2022
 Aussie Nationalist |
The mainstream media asked this question, again and again and again, ultimately, with the effect of desensitising the public to mandatory vaccination and legitimising it. Likewise, to repeatedly ask ‘what is a woman?’ runs a similar danger in sanctioning that question and subsequent left-wing answers to it which deny gender.
To begin, a little background. Matt Walsh is an American political as well as social commentator from the Daily Wire, an ostensibly right-wing news and opinion outlet. Between YouTube and Twitter, Walsh boasts more two million followers. Walsh can, in all objectivity, be described as ‘alt-lite’. That is to say, on race, cultural, and religious issues, Walsh is well to the right of ordinary Fox News commentators, such as Sean Hannity; or ordinary Republican politicians, such as Mitch McConnell. At the same time, Walsh firmly distances himself from more radioactive right-wing figures such as Nick Fuentes. Moreover, Walsh has never, to the best of this writer’s knowledge, denounced the coronavirus pandemic for the lie that it is or openly criticised Jewish power. Thus the ‘alt-lite’ status of Matt Walsh.
Earlier this month, Walsh released a documentary entitled ‘What is a Woman?’ which shall be subject to some criticism below. Yet before doing so, it is necessary to fairly qualify this criticism. In the first place, such criticism is largely based on this documentary’s trailer, extracted below:
This writer would watch the documentary in full, but for such viewing being exclusively limited to Daily Wire members. Also, this documentary is serving a valuable purpose: To discredit transgenderism amid the wicked crimes currently being perpetrated against children in the same ideology’s name. Finally, in broad terms, Walsh is performing good work (and needless to say, leaving a far greater imprint than this website). The presence of a self-described ‘theocratic fascist’ as a leading right-wing online figure, speaks volumes to the rightward shift that commenced during the Trump years before continuing in varying forms since. In particular, Walsh should be applauded for recently drawing attention to the Drag ‘demon queen’ who performed before a group of toddlers.
These qualifications aside, two particular issues with this documentary come to mind.
The first issue may be introduced by way of a question. Even if this documentary intellectually dismantled transgenderism in the eyes of all policy makers, cultural framers, and ordinary people–where would that leave us and take Western society back to? In reality, that would take it back to approximately 2008, when transgenderism remained a fringe cause seldom embraced by the political left. Though an improvement, this change would be gravely insufficient when considering the problems of mass immigration, feminism, and sexual immorality well underway in those times.
To criticise transgender ideology is not enough, because transgenderism is simply one expression of the problem–liberalism–rather than the problem itself. Walsh could render a more valuable contribution by confuting liberalism, the source of societal decay; rather than transgenderism, an especially egregious expression of that same decay. If Walsh did so, he would more comprehensively assail transgenderism, along with various other errors in which Western society is immersed.
The second issue concerns that of how Walsh, a conservative, frames the debate. Conservatives, should, as previously outlined,
Refuse engagement with the left on grounds that are calculated to bring about our defeat and legitimise their hegemony.
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The US Government’s Plan to Partition Russia Into Small States
Posted by M. C. on June 27, 2022
The West is so deluded that Russia is not taken seriously. Even tiny, insignificant, Lithuania is not afraid of Russia. Even countries heavily dependent on Russian energy repeatedly stick their fingers into Russia’s eyes. How much more can Russia take? This is a situation very ripe for a big war.
Paul Craig Roberts
Dear Readers: Thank you for your response to last Friday’s appeal for your financial support of this website. It is reassuring. One more similar response would keep the website in comfortable compliance for now with its 501c3 requirements. So I repeat the appeal:
This website, the Institute for Political Economy, is a 501c3 tax-exempt public foundation. For it to continue to exist, public support must comprise one-third of its operating costs. Currently, this is the case. However, public support has been falling. The backbone of the website are the monthly donors. But the response to the quarterly requests are weakening. The response in September is always weak, but this June the response is weak as well.
Is this the situation — when truth is most needed, support for it is running out? Once the ruling elites control the narratives, liberty, freedom, life as Americans knew it is dead. Indeed, life itself could disappear in nuclear Armageddon.
It is increasingly difficult to tell the truth as Americans are punished for doing so. Doctors who cured Covid patients with HCQ and Ivermectin are losing their licenses for spreading “misinformation.” If you do not support those few of us who are addicted to truth, truth will die. The elite have an agenda, and your welfare is not part of it.
The US Government’s Plan to Partition Russia Into Small States
Paul Craig Roberts
Jens Stoltenberg, Washington’s NATO puppet, says “peace negotiations,” not Russian victory, will end the conflict in Ukraine. So, Stoltenberg is counting on the Kremlin, whose leaders have said they will never again trust the West, to sit down again with the West and again agree to another worthless agreement. Considering the difficulty the Kremlin has in accepting reality, I suppose it is possible.
On the other hand, perhaps someone in the Kremlin has finally read the Wolfowitz Doctrine. If not, maybe someone in the Kremlin has seen the US Government’s Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe’s plan to break Russia up into a collection of independent small states. https://niccolo.substack.com/p/delusion
How is this to be done? Military conquest? A color revolution based on years of US financed NGOs permissively operating in Russia? Discrediting of Putin and his government?
The CSCE doesn’t say, but it has to be done as there is the need to break up Russia into smaller states for “moral and strategic” reasons.
When people whistling past the graveyard assure themselves that the Ukraine conflict won’t widen and that nuclear war is impossible because countries don’t commit suicide, they ignore the massive role of delusion that operates throughout the West that provides assurance of American hegemony. Not only is the US going to bust up Russia into small states, but also, according to the US National Security Council, “Zelensky is going to get to determine what victory looks like” and to determine “when the conditions are met to build peace.” https://www.rt.com/news/557821-kirby-us-zelensky-victory/
The war has already widened with the US and NATO countries falling under the Kremlin’s designation of combatants for supplying Ukraine with weapons and military intelligence. The war has been widened to the extent that Lithuania now prevents Russia from supplying Kaliningrad, a part of Russia, and by NATO’s intended expansion into Finland, thus greatly lengthening NATO’s presence on Russia’s borders. People can fool themselves that this is not widening the conflict, but they forget that the conflict originated in the West’s refusal to acknowledge Russia’s legitimate security concerns. Now the West has greatly expanded the area of Russian concern.
My own view, to again state it, is that the combination of Western delusion with Kremlin toleration of provocations and belief in the value of negotiations, such as the 8 years the Kremlin wasted on the Minsk Agreement, the primary cause of Russian casualties today in Ukraine, guarantees war. There can be no other outcome.
If Russia succumbs yet again to trust in negotiation and makes a deal with Ukraine, the deal will not be kept any more than was the Minsk Agreement, the US pledge not to expand NATO to Russia’s borders, and the arms limitation agreements worked out over the decades, all abandoned by Washington.
The only result of a negotiated settlement will be that once again Russia will have given its enemies more time to demonize Russia, prepare more provocations, and beef up their military capability.
As I have said, the only thing that can prevent a wide war is a strong Russian foot that gives the lie to the US Government’s belief, as recently stated by the Department of State, that Russian red lines are merely “bluster.”
The West is so deluded that Russia is not taken seriously. Even tiny, insignificant, Lithuania is not afraid of Russia. Even countries heavily dependent on Russian energy repeatedly stick their fingers into Russia’s eyes. How much more can Russia take? This is a situation very ripe for a big war.
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Officials still ‘don’t know’ if US arms were used to kill Yemeni civilians
Posted by M. C. on June 25, 2022
It’s not that the military and state department lack the capacity for tracking their weapons, it’s just that such inquiries tend to get in the way.
So what DID “US Officials” think the weapons would be used for. Saudi killed a lot of civilians in the US.
Written by
Kate Kizer
Amid President Biden’s controversial decision last week to soon meet with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman — a move that appears to be following the lead of prominent Middle East hawks — the Government Accountability Office released a new report finding that the State and Defense Departments failed to thoroughly investigate and “don’t know” whether the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen used American-made weapons in attacks that killed civilians.
What’s perhaps more revealing about the GAO’s assessment is that it shows the militaristic mindset and poor judgment that got the United States into this strategic and humanitarian nightmare in the first place are alive and well inside the executive branch.
First, the background: For years, Congress has attempted to get straight answers from the executive branch about how involved the U.S. national security state has been in Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s military intervention in Yemen that began in March 2015. Eventually, through compromises — like H.Res.599 that put Congress on record acknowledging U.S. military involvement in the war in Yemen for the first time, and activism-driven wins, like building bipartisan majorities to lead unprecedented votes against U.S. military involvement — oversight has revealed the complicated web of ways the U.S. military was or remains engaged in the Gulf monarchies’ war.
Indeed, this new GAO report resulted from Rep. Ro Khanna’s amendment to the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. The GAO — an independent government auditing agency — reviewed what forms of material support, and their impact, the State and Defense Departments provided to the Saudi-led coalition through the end of 2021. It also reviewed the agencies’ compliance with existing U.S. law, including another previously passed Khanna NDAA amendment requiring the Pentagon to review credible allegations of U.S. military or intelligence personnel involvement in the disappearance and torture of Yemenis by Emirati, Emirati-affiliated, and Yemeni security forces in the south.
Among other issues, the GAO found that both the State Department and the Pentagon could not say whether U.S.-made armaments have been used in Yemen without authorization or in violation of international law. It also found that these agencies did not effectively track Saudi, Emirati, or their proxies’ use of U.S.-provided military assistance, and it could not provide any evidence that it had meaningfully investigated allegations of apparent war crimes using U.S.- provided weapons.
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Austrian Economics, Libertarianism, and Academic Writing in the Humanities – A Bibliography
Posted by M. C. on June 25, 2022
A preliminary list of books and articles that may be of interest to libertarian and classical liberal humanists (last updated 6/21/22)
I am grateful to the friends and colleagues who helped me compose this list. If you have additions or edits, please email me at jac3@columbia.edu (providing full references as well as links if online versions are available). Foreign language publications are listed separately at the bottom. I’m especially interested in including critical studies of literature and film that use Austrian economics and/or libertarian philosophy. Thank you!
Jo Ann Cavallo, Professor of Italian, Columbia University
Adamo, Stefano. “Animal Spirits in Designer Suits. The Representation of Finance in Walter Siti’s Resistere non serve a niente.” Rivista di storia economica 3 (2016): 351–80. https://doi.org/10.1410/85082.
—. “The Crisis of the Prato Industrial District in the Works of Edoardo Nesi: A Blend of Nostalgia and Self-Complacency.” Modern Italy 21.3 (August 2016): 245–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2016.30.
—. “The Italian ‘Economic Miracle’ in Coeval Cinema: A Case Study on the Intellectual Reaction to Italy’s Social and Economic Change.” Italian Quarterly 50 (2013): 46–64.
—. “The Italian Financial Novel: Finance As Told By Financial Professionals.” Estudios Libertarios 3 (2020): 49-73.
Blanco, María, and Alberto Mingardi, eds. Show and Biz: The Market Economy in TV Series and Popular Culture. Forthcoming 2023. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60912547-show-and-biz
Block, Walter E. “Ayn Rand, Religion and Libertarianism.” Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol., 11, No. 1, Issue 21, July 2011, pp. 63-79.
—. “Justifying a Stateless Legal Order: a critique of Rand and Epstein.” Journal of Private Enterprise; 29(2) Spring 2014: 21-49. http://journal.apee.org/index.php/Category:Spring_2014; http://journal.apee.org/index.php?title=2014.Spring.JPE_part2.pdf
—. “‘The Libertarian Minimal State?’ A critique of the views of Nozick, Levin and Rand.” Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2002, pp. 141-60; reprinted in Younkins, Ed, ed., Philosophers of Capitalism: Menger, Mises, Rand and Beyond, 2004; http://www.walterblock.com/publications/minimal_state.pdf
—. “On Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard and Thick Libertarianism” June 1, 2014;
https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/06/walter-block-on-ayn-rand-murray.html
Camplin, Troy Earl. “Atlas Shrugged as Epic.” Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 19.2 (2019): 192-242. https://aynrandstudies.com/past-issues/volume-19/
Cantor, Paul. “Flying Solo: The Aviator and Libertarian Philosophy” May 24, 2007. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/cantor5.html
—. Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001.
—. The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV. University Press of Kentucky (illustrated edition), 2012.
—. Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream: Con Men, Gangsters, Drug Lords, and Zombies. University Press of Kentucky, 2019.
—. Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire. c. 1976. University of Chicago Press (enlarged edition), 2017.
Cantor, Paul, and Stephen Cox. Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture. Auburn, Mises Institute, 2009. https://mises.org/library/literature-and-economics-liberty-spontaneous-order-culture
Cavallo, Jo Ann. “Contracts, Surveillance, and Censure of State Power in Arienti’s Triunfo da Camarino novella (Le porretane 1.1).” In Cavallo and Lottieri, 141-62. http://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8XS5VRF
—. “The Ideological Battle of Roncevaux: The Critique of Political Power from Pulci’s Morgante to Sicilian Puppet Theatre Today.” In Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence and Beyond. Eds. James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. 209-32.
—. “Malaguerra: The Anti-state Super-hero of Sicilian Puppet Theater.” AOQU (Achilles Orlando Quixote Ulysses). Rivista di epica 1 (July 2020): 259-294. https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/aoqu/article/view/13907/13061
—. “Marco Polo on the Mongol State: Taxation, Predation, and Monopolization.” Libertarian Papers 7.2 (2015): 157-168.
http://libertarianpapers.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/article/2015/11/lp-7-2-42.pdf
—. “National Political Ideologies and Local Maggio Traditions of the Reggio Emilia Apennines: Roncisvalle vs. Rodomonte.” Conquistare la montagna: la storia di un’idea. Conquering Mountains: The History of an Idea. Eds. Carlo Baja Guarienti and Matteo Al Kalak. Milan: Mondadori, 2016. 121-134. http://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8P84C8N
—. “On Political Power and Personal Liberty” in The Prince and The Discourses.” Machiavelli’s The Prince at 500. Ed. John McCormick. Social Research: An International Quarterly 81:1 (Spring 2014): 107-32.
https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8H70CXR
—. “Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden: The Man versus the State.” January 1, 2021. Mises Institute. https://mises.org/wire/pietro-marcellos-martin-eden-man-versus-state
—. “Purgatory 17: On Revenge.” Purgatory: Lectura Dantis. Eds. A. Mandelbaum, A. Oldcorn, C. Ross. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008. 178-90.
—. The Romance Epics of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso: From Public Duty to Private Pleasure. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Cavallo, Jo Ann, and Carlo Lottieri, editors. Speaking Truth to Power from Medieval to Modern Italy. Annali d’italianistica 34 (2016).
Cox, Stephen. “Adventures of ‘A Little Boy Lost’: Blake and the Process of Interpretation.” Criticism 23 (1981): 301-316.
—. “The Art of Fiction.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 1 (2000) 313-31.
—. “Ayn Rand.” American Philosophers, 1950-2000. Ed. Philip B. Dematteis and Leemon B. McHenry. Detroit: Gale – Bruccoli Clark Layman, 2003. 255-72.
—. “Ayn Rand: Theory versus Creative Life.” The Journal of Libertarian Studies 8 (1986): 19-29.
—. “The Cather Correspondence.” American Literary History 26 (Summer 2014) 418-29.
—. “Completing Rand’s Literary Theory.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 6 (2004): 67-89.
—. Culture and Liberty: Writings of Isabel Paterson. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015.
—. “Devices of Deconstruction.” Critical Review 3 (Winter 1989) 56-76.
—. “The Devil’s Reading List.” Raritan 16 (Fall 1996) 97-111.
—. “Having Your Say.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (2002) 339-47.
—. “‘It Couldn’t Be Made Into a Really Good Movie’: The Films of Ayn Rand.” Liberty 1 (August 1987): 5-10.
—. “Literary Theory: Liberal and Otherwise.” Humane Studies Review 5 (Fall 1987) 1, 5-7, 12-14.
—. Love and Logic: The Evolution of Blake’s Thought. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.
—. “Merely Metaphorical?: Ayn Rand, Isabel Paterson, and the Language of Theory.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8 (Spring 2007) 237-60.
—. “Methods and Limitations.” Critical Paths: Blake and the Argument of Method. Ed. Dan Miller, Mark Bracher, and Donald Ault. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1987. Pp. 19-40, 331-34.
—. “Nathaniel Branden in the Writer’s Workshop.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 16 (December 2016) 245-60.
—. The New Testament and Literature: A Guide to Literary Patterns. Chicago: Open Court, 2006.
—. “Public Virtue and Private Vitality in Shadwell’s Comedies.” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 16 (1977): 11-22.
—. “Representing Isabel Paterson.” American Literary History 17.2 (2005): 244-58.
—. “Sensibility as Argument.” Sensibility in Transformation: Creative Resistance to Sentiment from the Augustans to the Romantics. Ed. Syndy McMillen Conger. Rutherford NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990. Pp. 63-82.
—. “The Significance of Isabel Paterson.” Liberty 7 (October 1993) 30-41.
—. “The Stranger Within Thee”: Concepts of the Self in Late-Eighteenth-Century Literature. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980.
—. “The Titanic and the Art of Myth.” Critical Review 15 (2003) 403-34.
—. “Willa Cather.” Literary Genius, ed. Joseph Epstein. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2007. Pp. 192-98.
—. The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004.
Fernandez-Morera, Dario. American Academia and the Survival of Marxist Ideas. Praeger, 1996.
Friedman, David. “Thoughts on Literature, Economics and Education.” Ideas. May 1, 2017. http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2017/05/thoughts-on-literature-economics-and.html
Giménez Cavallo, Maria. “Elsa Morante’s La storia: A Posthumanist, Feminist, Anarchist Response to Power.” In Cavallo and Lottieri, pp. 425-47.
Hazlitt, Henry. The Anatomy of Criticism: A Trialogue. Simon & Schuster, 1933.
Long, Roderick T. Rituals of Freedom: Libertarian Themes in Early Confucianism. The Molinari Institute, 2016. Expanded version of his essay “Austro-Libertarian Themes in Early Confucianism” Journal of Libertarian Studies, 17, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 35-62.
McCloskey, Deirdre. “Economics With a Human Face: Adam Smith did not believe people are merely economic maximizers. Instead, we balance self- interest with humane sympathy for others. Deirdre N. McCloskey reviews Cents and Sensibility by Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro.” Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2017. https://www.wsj.com/articles/economics-with-a-human-face-1505343242
McMaken, Ryan. Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre. 2012.
Mendenhall, Allen. Literature and Liberty: Essays in Libertarian Literary Criticism. Lexington Books, 2014.
—. Shouting Softly: Lines on Law, Literature, and Culture. St. Augustine Press, 2021.
Mingardi, Alberto. “A Lesson in Humility, a Lesson for Our Times: Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed,” The Independent Review 25.3 (2020): 369–84. https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=13135
—. “Manzoni’s unfulfilled legacy. On the economic lessons of Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed.” The New Criterion 36.6 (2018): 35-38. ISSN:0734-0222.
Monsen, Anders. “Fifty Works of Fiction Libertarians Should Read.” Prometheus Newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society Volume 30, Number 3, Spring 2012. http://lfs.org/newsletter/030/03/FiftyWorks.shtml.
Nock, Albert J. Francis Rabelais the Man and his Work. Harper & brothers, 1929.
Perdices de Blas, Luis, and John Reeder. “Quixotes, Don Juans, rogues and arbitristas in seventeenth century Castile. Oeconomia. Editions NecPlus, vol. 3-4 (2013): 561-91. https://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/702
Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Penguin, 2011.
—. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Viking, 2018.
Rand, Ayn. The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature. Signet; Revised edition, 1971.
Rectenwald, Michael. Beyond Woke. New English Review Press, 2020. https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/books
—. Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom. New English Review Press, 2019. https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/books
—. Springtime for Snowflakes: ‘Social Justice’ and Its Postmodern Parentage. New English Review Press, 2018. https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/books
Rothbard, Murray. “Movie Reviews.” The Rothbard Reader, edited by Joseph T. Salerno and Matthew McCaffrey. The Mises Institute, 2016. 293-303. https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Rothbard%20Reader.pdf. Many other reviews can be found dispersed throughout The Complete Libertarian Forum 1969-1984 under the rubric “Mr First Nighter.”
Skousen, Jo Ann. Movie reviews for Liberty. https://libertyunbound.com/author/joannskousen/
Movie reviews for Anthem Film Festival https://anthemfilmfestival.com/reviews/
Sarah Skwire, Amy Sturgis, Fred Turner, William Patterson. Liberty, Commerce and Literature. Cato Unbound. July 2012.https://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/july-2012/liberty-commerce-literature/
Skwire, Sarah, Ross Emmett, Maria Pia Paganelli, and Michelle Vachris. The Prehistory of Public Choice. Special issue of Cato Unbound (March 2017). https://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/march-2017/prehistory-public-choice/
Skwire, Sarah, and Steve Horwitz. “Lady Pecunia at the Punching Office: Two Poems on Early Modern Monetary Reform,”Journal of Private Enterprise. The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 30 (Spring 2015): 107-20.
Skwire, Sarah, William H. Patterson, Jr., Frederick Turner, and Amy H. Sturgis. Liberty, Commerce, and Literature. Special issue of Cato Unbound (July 2012). https://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/july-2012/liberty-commerce-literature.
Skwire, Sarah “Curse, Interrupted: Richard III, Jacob and Esau, and the Elizabethan Succession Crisis” in a special issue of Religions on Shakespeare and Religion, 2019.
—. “History through a Classical Liberal Feminist Lens” in What is Classical Liberal History? Ed. Michael J. Douma and Phillip W. Magness. Lexington Books, 2018.
—. “Edna Ferber’s Business Stories” in Capitalism and Commerce in Imaginative Literature, Lexington Press 2016.
—. “Without Respect of Persons: Gender Equality, Theology, and the Law in the Writing of Margaret Fell” Social Philosophy and Policy, 2015.
—. “Take Physic, Pomp’: King Lear Learns Sympathy” in Sympathy: The History of a Concept, Ed. Eric Schliesser, Oxford University Press, 2015.
—. “Eating Brains and Breaking Windows” (with Steven Horwitz), in Economics of the Undead, Glen Whitman and James Dow, Eds. Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.
—. “Not-So-Bleak House” in New Developments in Economic Education, Eds. Franklin G Mixon and Richard J. Cebula, Edward Elgar, 2014.
Spivey, Matt. Re-Reading Economics in Literature: A Capitalist Critical Perspective. Lexington Books, 2020.
Sunderland, Luke. Rebel Barons: Resisting Royal Power in Medieval Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Thomas, William, ed. The Literary Art of Ayn Rand. Poughkeepsie NY: Objectivist Center, 2005.
Torres Louis, and Michelle Marder Kamhi. What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand. Open Court, 2000
Turner, Frederick. The Culture of Hope. Free Press, 1995.
—. Shakespeare’s Twenty-first Century Economics. Oxford University Press, 1999.
Van Es, Bart. Shakespeare in Company. Oxford UP, 2015.
Watts, Michael. The Literary Book of Economics: Including Readings from Literature and Drama on Economic Concepts, Issues, and Themes. Intercollegiate Studies, 2003.
Wright, Robert. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. Pantheon, 2000.
Younkins, Edward W., ed. Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”: A Philosophical and Literary Companion. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007.
—, ed. Capitalism and Commerce in Imaginative Literature: Perspectives on Business from Novels and Plays. Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2015.
—. Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus. Lexington Books, 2021.
—. Exploring Capitalist Fiction: Business through Literature and Film. Lexington Books, 2013.
Interdisciplinary journals and magazine that include the Humanities:
Journal of Ayn Rand Studies https://aynrandstudies.com/
Journal of Libertarian Studies (1977-2008) https://mises.org/archives/the-journal-of-libertarian-studies
Libertarian Papers, 2009- http://libertarianpapers.org/
Liberty https://libertyunbound.com/pdf-archive/
Literature of Liberty (1978-1982), Institute of Humane Studies https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/liggio-literature-of-liberty-a-review-of-contemporary-liberal-thought
Film reviews:
Anthem Film Festival, reviews https://anthemfilmfestival.com/reviews/
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TGIF: Parents Should Govern Their Kids’ Education
Posted by M. C. on June 25, 2022
Sotomayor also writes: “If a State cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any State that values its historic antiestablishment interests more than this Court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens.” I ask: so what’s wrong with that? Government has no business subsidizing people. If it wants them to have more money, cut and abolish taxes.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-parents-should-govern-ed/
How clear are these opening words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”?
Judging by the U.S. Supreme Court’s many ventures into this area, we’d have to say not very clear at all. There’s a lesson in that. Constitutions don’t interpret themselves. People do, and the line between interpreting and making law is not as bright as we’re told.
The latest Court decision in the matter, Carson v. Makin, is instructive in that regard. The 6-3 decision — Republican appointees made up the majority, Democratic appointees the minority — struck down Maine’s exclusion of religious schools from a program that provides tax-funded tuition assistance to all parents who live in school districts that do not provide “free, public” secondary education. That’s over half the districts. Maine, according to the Court, is the most rural state in the country. Who knew?
Under the program, those parents can spend the money at another district’s school or at an academically accredited “nonsectarian” private school. The plaintiffs, two families, argued that this restriction violates both the Free-exercise clause and the establishment clause of the First Amendment, along with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. district and appellate courts had sided with the state.
The six justices of the majority held that the exclusion of sectarian schools violated the guarantee of the free exercise of religion despite the fact that religion permeated the regular curriculum. (Remember, these were state-approved schools academically.) But the minority justices said the exclusion violated the prohibition on the establishment of religion because the money would go to schools that used it to teach their particular faiths. It was establishment clause v. free-exercise clause.
So who is right? Can that question be answered? Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion and the dissenting opinions by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer and Justice Sonia Sotomayor point to many Court precedents that seem to support their conflicting positions. But the precedents aren’t much help because one can always say that an earlier case differed in an important way from the current one.
Leaving aside one’s background philosophy, all of the arguments seem plausible and consistent with the constitutional text. One might appeal to historical materials, but my hunch is you can find disagreements there too. There’s a lesson in all this, one captured by legal scholar John Hasnas in “The Myth of the Rule of Law.” (A discussion of Hasnas’s paper is here.)
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Carson v. Makin, Education, First Amendment, Parents | Leave a Comment »
Paul McGuire: Marxist and Communist Revolutionaries Are Bankrolled by International Banking Families
Posted by M. C. on June 25, 2022
“Ownership is the enemy of communism. Communism preaches and teaches that you should own nothing, that you should not have any private property. So Klaus Schwab and the Great Reset, are secretly financing communism. And so when they spread the lies and propaganda that state ‘you will own absolutely nothing,’ that is totally full-blown Marxist and communist revolutionary talk,” he said.
By Kevin Hughes
Natural News
The Marxist and communist revolutionaries are bankrolled by international banking families, according to author and speaker Paul McGuire.
“The Marxist and communist revolutionaries are totally financed by the super capitalist class. They’re totally financed by the globalist elite. They’re totally bankrolled by the wealthiest and richest international banking families in the world,” McGuire said during the June 20 episode of “The Paul McGuire Report.”
“So when the day is done, you can go to any communist revolution and you will discover that the people that are really behind these violent communist revolutions are the wealthiest and richest international banking families in the world.” (Related: Planet Lockdown Director James Patrick: COVID-19 pandemic is being run by central bankers.)
The internationally recognized prophecy expert added that the super-elite international banking families, or super capitalists, have been financing capitalism, which he said is the secret agent of super-capitalism.
McGuire also said this is a way of seizing all the money, assets, labor and property and disguising it as a communist revolution, which in reality is really a bloodthirsty heist by the globalists using their Marxist and communist armies to steal all the wealth of the middle class and working class of every nation in the world.
“The wealthiest families in the world like the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds have been bankrolling communism and Marxism since the beginning and they are ruthless,” McGuire said. He pointed out that all the communist revolutions and Marxist revolutions have been financed by the super-wealthy capitalists for the purpose of increasing their wealth and power further.
The Bible prophecy professor cited that this is what happened in Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela. He said the masses of people there don’t have a middle class – people are either starving and or very wealthy.
“Only the very ignorant will actually believe that communism or socialism is about wealth redistribution and utopia for the worker or the common man,” he said. “Communists and Marxists are like the members of a bizarre religious cult who believe that communism or socialism is a means to help the common man. That is a big lie.”
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Communist Revolutionaries, International Banking, Marxist | Leave a Comment »
Should You Wear a Black Shirt? (Classic Men’s Style Tips)
Posted by M. C. on June 24, 2022
We explore the pros & cons of wearing a black shirt and provide tips on how to stylishly wear one: https://gentl.mn/should-you-wear-blac…
Hey monochrome dudes…STOP!
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