Does the sight of a dolphin make you sad? Does the gentle lapping of the sea only make you think of the plastic water-bottle in your hand? Does a sunset fill you with fear and panic? Do you look at the world around you and in the place of wonder see only death?

You might be suffering from apocalyptic environmentalism – the world’s newest secular faith, which is also a death cult.

Arthur Koestler once wrote of socialism, “Every period has its dominant religion and hope, and ‘Socialism’ in a vague and undefined sense was the hope of the early twentieth century.” But that was then, a century ago. The new religion is apocalyptic environmentalism. “Environmentalism today is the dominant secular religion of the educated, upper-middle-class elite in most developed and many developing nations. It provides a new story about our collective and individual purpose. It designates good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. And it does so in the language of science, which provides it with legitimacy.”

But socialism, that great hope of the masses, was wrong. After all the marching and the philosophizing, they couldn’t make the math work, and it died in the bread lines. So too “apocalyptic environmentalism,” because they can’t make the science work – but will they destroy the world in their attempt to square the circle?

In that spirit, what if everything you thought you knew, that was screamed in your ear all day long and filled your Twitter and Facebook and your browser – what if all of that is wrong? Because that’s what Michael Shellenberger is telling us. And it goes for both sides – the apocalyptic environmental death cult as well as those who say not a care need be given to the world around us (but I am of course focusing this review on the former because they are the audience to whom Shellenberger is directing his extraordinarily well-researched book). Did you know plastics saved the turtle and the whale and the elephant? Did you know that power density is the only possible solution to our energy crisis – and the greatest density is found in nuclear, the only source of energy where all waste is literally put in a cement bucket and stacked in a (relatively small) cave? Even more – the great power unleashed by nuclear could, with the expansion of breeder reactors, double the capacity of our fissile material and reduce the waste to a tiny amount of plutonium; yes weapons grade perhaps (“But what about the terrorists?”), however in such a small quantity we could just shoot it into space. “But what about the aliens?” – now you’re just being silly. Did you know that the use of renewables cannot power Africa – and without power, Africa will continue to burn her forests? Did you know that the wildfires you care so much about are a result of putting houses too close to the forests and of allowing underbrush to build up without proper care and maintenance? Did you know we are not paving paradise – in fact all of construction in the world covers only .5% of the world. Land for agriculture use is going down, land for cattle grazing as well – due to efficiencies. And the deforestation? Global deforestation is being reversed, global population growth is on a decline, global land use is receding dramatically as our world urbanizes.

Why don’t we know these things? We all suffer from confirmation bias. We carefully prune our Twitter feeds until they deliver us only a fire-hose of half-truths, but they are our half-truths!!! I have already been yelled at by a friend for putting a Shellenberger quote on my public FB page (I no longer have a FB account, and my wife manages my public author page – for exactly this reason). I interrupted my friend’s perfect waterfall of self-confirming half-truths; and he called Shellenberger a stooge of greed, attacking not his work, which he has not read, but his integrity. This is what Koestler in The Invisible Writing called a “closed circle” or what in Washington DC is half-comically and half-sadly referred to as a “self-licking ice-cream cone.” Where we fawn over an ignorant 16-year-old girl, and throw invective at a consummate intellectual like Michael Shellenberger.

So what is the problem? “You’re saying everything is just fine. You want to destroy the world!!” you might be thinking. Far from it, for I am an environmentalist – not of the quality and character of Shellenberger, alas, but I do love our world and the beauty she holds. I’m raising my son to be a scientist (he wants to be a marine biologist); we do our best to reduce waste and to recycle plastics. My “environmentalism” has taken more the form of human activism, specifically trying to end the wars (mostly in Africa). Because while countries are at war with themselves, destroying their infrastructure and murdering their citizens, they cannot even begin to solve the epic problems that the use of low-density energy has pushed their environments into. And I wish I could do more. Because we have a lot to do. Overfishing is the worst problem. Only 8% of the oceans are protected, for example. Plastics – though they don’t last a million years, in fact probably only decades because though they are not broken down by bacteria they are by the sun – are still produced in too great of quantities. Rwanda has banned them altogether. We must recover from our terrible 20th century because though we cannot “leapfrog” past denser energy forms which are the motors of development (coal is better than wood, LNG is better than coal, nuclear is better than LNG), we must find a way to help Africa develop without the mess that the 20th century did to Europe and the western world.

But we can’t do that by subjecting the poor to poverty; it is not only immoral but impractical, for Africa’s population is still growing out of control, the only part of the world where that is the case. And correspondingly, that ancient of places is being burned down to create charcoal over which the famished fishermen cook the last minnows they have pulled from the desiccated lake, before they pack everything into a plastic bucket and march with it on their heads to the camps. For let’s be honest with ourselves; “sustainable development” failed. The only path to prosperity is the one we took – and we must not deny the Africans that opportunity.

Because poverty is the greatest polluter, and wealth, the greatest environmentalist.

Unlike the apocalyptic environmentalists, Shellenberger in Apocalypse Never gives us an alternative. “Environmental humanism” he calls it, a return to a love of the wooded spaces, the gloriously tall trees and the deep blue oceans – our love of our wondrous world. And out of that love, the desire to protect and to preserve the natural places for ourselves, because they fill our hearts with joy. “Happily, nobody saves mountain gorillas, yellow-eyed penguins, and sea turtles because they believe human civilization depends on it. We save them for a simpler reason: we love them.”

Yes, things are tough, and we have a lot of work to do. So read this book, and then let’s get busy! Let us all go, with joy, eschewing irrational fear – and glory at being gifted with such an amazing planet and an opportunity to enjoy her as we serve her.

‍This article was first published on Joel D. Hirst’s personal blog.

Walter E. Williams, who many consider one of the greatest modern economists, has passed away at age 84.

My connections with Walter go back to UCLA, where we both got our doctorates (though I was a bit later, and it was my misfortunate we did not overlap). Then I started writing popular articles in defense of Americans’ liberty not too long after he did, which made me very aware of his writing (in fact, I once jokingly told my wife that I didn’t like him because his articles were often too good a substitute for mine). And I know lots of people with connections to George Mason University and stories about him.

Because many were closer to Walter than I, the large outpouring of appreciation and endorsements upon his passing is better done by others. But I believe that I have something worth adding for those who didn’t know about him but whose interest in his work has been piqued by the powerful response to his passing.

In 2016, I published a book titled Lines of Liberty, in which I curated what I felt were the best quotes on liberty I could find, by those who had labored in the front lines to defend it. Walter was not included, like his best friend, Thomas Sowell. But that was only because I had restricted my attention to people who had died, so I could consider the entirety of their work. Now, while I have not yet had time to do more than scratch the surface of his work, offering an initial collection of some of his most important insights may be the best tribute I can offer.

I must say that after many years of thinking about liberty, I can get a thrill out of a well-made, ear-catching argument on its behalf. Reading Walter’s words gave me such a thrill. But it was quickly obvious that there was far too much inspiration and wisdom to fit in a compact space. So I limited my collection to very short statements on only a few of the core issues he dealt with.

Consider my “top ten” lists (so far) in three different areas Walter thought deeply about as just the beginning of wisdom that can be found in Walter’s work, and as an invitation to further consideration.

On Property, Rights and Justice

1. My definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree?…how much of what I earn belongs to you–and why?

2. If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.

3. Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.

4. There is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another.

5. Government has no resources of its own…government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person’s property to give it to another to whom it does not belong.

6. We don’t have a natural right to take the property of one person to give to another; therefore, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to government.

7. Exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another.

8. No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong.

9. The better I serve my fellow man…the greater my claim on the goods my fellow man produces. That’s the morality of the market.

10. The act of reaching into one’s own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else’s pocket is despicable.

Liberty versus Coercion

1. Government is about coercion. Limiting government is the single most important instrument for guaranteeing liberty.
2. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.
3. The true test of one’s commitment to liberty and private property rights…comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.
4. In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.
5. The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
6. Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite backed up by the brute force of government.
7. If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.
8. Substituting democratic decision making for what should be private decision-making is nothing less than tyranny dressed up.
9. It’s government people, not rich people, who have the power to coerce and make our lives miserable.
10. The moral tragedy that has befallen Americans is our belief that it is okay for government to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another–that in my book is a working definition of slavery.

Protecting our Rights and Liberties

1. Always be suspicious of those who…claim their way is the best way and are willing to force their way on the rest of us.
2. People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange…are for control and coercion.
3. Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite backed up by the brute force of government.
4. Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good.
5. What our nation needs is a separation of “business and state”…That would mean crony capitalism and crony socialism could not survive.
6. The best good thing that politicians can do for the economy is to stop doing bad. In part, this can be achieved through reducing taxes and economic regulation, and staying out of our lives.
7. If we care about our remaining liberties we must at some point …let politicians and bureaucrats know we will not tolerate further encroachment on our God-given rights to liberty.
8. The public good is promoted best by people pursuing their own private interests.
9. Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place.
10. If we’re ignorant, we won’t even know when government infringes on our liberties. Moreover, we’ll happily cast our votes for those who’d destroy our liberties.

Walter Williams had a great deal of wisdom to offer, and he passed that wisdom on to many. But there are many more of us who could still benefit from it.

I hope the examples here touch a chord with readers and lead them to further consideration of what he understood.

Walter will be gone, and widely missed, but his insights are not.

Gary M. Galles, FEE

Texas claims that the presidential elections as held (and as directed by government officials outside the legislature) in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan all flagrantly violated their own election laws by materially weakening or doing away with security measures.  Further, according to the U.S. Constitution, the legislature (representing the citizens) of each state has absolute authority and responsibility for how presidential electors are chosen; the will of legislature being expressed through state law.

Texas claims that the violations of election law in these states created an environment where ballot fraud was enabled and likely to occur.  The lawsuit lists the violations of law in each of the defendant states and provides evidence of fraud (the number of ballots handled unconstitutionally) in each of the states sufficient to change the outcome of the ballot counts.

Pennsylvania

Facts:

1. Vote Tally: 3,445,548 for Biden and 3,363,951 for Trump – margin 81,597.
2. Requests for mail-in ballots 70% Democrats and 25% Republicans.
3. Mail-in ballots increased from 266,208 in 2016 to over 3,000,000 in 2020.

Violations of Election Law:

1. The Secretary of State unilaterally abrogated signature verification requirements for mail-in ballots.
2. PA supreme court changed existing deadline for receiving mail-in ballots from 8:00 PM on the day of election to 3 days after the election and adopted a presumption that non-postmarked ballots be considered as valid.
3. Election officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties did not follow state law permitting poll-watchers to be present for the opening, counting, and recording of mail-in ballots.
4. The Secretary of State directed election officials to remove ballots before 7:00 AM on the day of election in order to “cure” defective mail-in ballots.  This was done only in Democrat majority counties.
5. Election officials did not segregate ballots received after 8:00 PM on election day breaking the promise made to the U.S. Supreme Court thus making it impossible to identify or remove those ballots.

Evidence of Fraud:

1. Ballots with no mailed date: 9,005 (no evidence they were sent to a voter)
2. Ballots returned on or before the mailed date: 58,221
3. Ballots returned one day after the mailed date: 51,200 (Perhaps not impossible, but highly unlikely for the average voter to receive a ballot, fill it out, place it in the mail and have it returned the next day.)
4. On Nov 2, the day before the election, PA reports that 2.7 million ballots had been sent out.  On Nov 4 that number had increased to 3.1 million — an increase of 400,000 mail-in ballots at election time with literally no reasonable chance of them being used by legitimate voters.

Georgia

Facts:

1. Vote Tally: 2,472,098 for Biden and 2,458,121 for Trump – margin 12,670.
2. Mail-in ballots: 65.32% for Biden and 34.68% for Trump.
3. Mail-in ballots increased from 213,033 in 2016 to 1,305,659 in 2020.

Violations of Election Law:

1. The Secretary of State unilaterally abrogated signature verification requirements for mail-in ballots.
2. The Secretary of State authorized opening and processing mail-in ballots up to three weeks before election day when the law prohibits that until after the polls open on election day.
3. The Secretary of State materially weakened the security requirements for ballot rejection based on signature verification or other missing information.

Evidence of Fraud:

1. Mail-in ballot rejection rate for missing or inaccurate information or for non-matching signatures decreased from 6.42% in 2016 to .36% in 2020.  Rejecting 2020 ballots at the same rate as 2016 would have resulted in a net gain of 25,587 votes for Trump – twice the number needed to overcome Biden’s count.  With a six-fold increase in the number of mail-in ballots, reason would indicate that the rejection rate would increase, or at least stay the same, with so many first-time mail-in ballots.

Michigan

Facts:

1. Vote Tally: 2,796,702 for Biden and 2,650,695 for Trump – margin 146,007.
2. In 2016 587,618 voters requested mail-in ballots.  In 2020 3.2 million votes were cast by mail-in ballot.
3. Democrats voted by mail at a rate approximately two times that of Republican voters.

Violations of Election Law:

1. The Secretary of State unilaterally abrogated signature verification requirements for mail-in ballots.
2. The Secretary of State sent out unsolicited ballots to all 7.7 million registered voters contrary to election law which requires a voter to request a mail-in ballot through a process that includes a signature to be matched with the voter registration.
3. The Secretary of State also allowed absentee ballots to be requested online without signature verification.
4. Local election officials in Wayne County — containing 322,925 more ballots for Biden than for Trump — opened and processed mail-in ballots without poll-watchers present.
5. Local election officials in Wayne County also ignored the strict election law requirements of placing a written statement or stamp on each ballot envelope indicating that the voter signature was in fact checked and verified with the signature on file with the state.

Evidence of Fraud:

1. 174,384 mail-in ballots in Wayne County had no valid registration number, indicating they likely resulted from election workers running the same ballots through the tabulator multiple times.
2. 71% of Wayne County Absent Voter Counting Boards were unbalanced, where the number of people who checked in did not match the number of ballots cast.

Wisconsin

Facts:

1. Vote Tally: 1,630,716 for Biden and 1,610,151 for Trump – margin 20,565.
2. Mail-in ballots increased from 146,932 in 2016 to 1,275,019 in 2020.

Violations of Election Law:

1. The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) positioned hundreds of unmanned illegal drop boxes to collect absentee ballots.  (The use of any drop box, manned or unmanned, is directly prohibited by Wisconsin statute.  Any alternate mail-in ballot site “shall be staffed by the municipal clerk or the executive director of the board of election commissioners…”  “Ballots cast in contravention of the procedures specified in those provisions may not be included in the certified result of any election.”)
2. The WEC encouraged voters to unlawfully declare themselves “indefinitely confined” in order to avoid security measures like signature verification and photo ID requirements.  Nearly 216,000 voters said they were indefinitely confined in the 2020 election, nearly four times as many as in 2016.
3. Strict laws requiring mail-in voters to certify by signature including the signature of an adult witness were ignored or circumvented by election officials.

Evidence of Fraud:

1. One hundred thousand ballots were supposedly missing and directed to be “found” after election day.

Conclusion

Significant violations of election law that were put into place to protect against election fraud is sufficient to invalidate the results of the elections, apart from whatever evidence is able to be gathered in a short time to show actual numbers of fraudulent ballots.  Reason would indicate that there is a high number of fraudulent ballots that are impossible to identify, which is why the election laws pertaining to mail-in ballots were established to begin with.

There is no remedy to correct the Nov 3^rd election because ballots that did not adhere to election law cannot be identified as separate from those that did.  An accurate count of legal ballots that were cast cannot be made.  Therefore, as directed in the Constitution, it falls to the legislature of each state to choose electors as has been done in the past.  Failing that, each state may determine not to submit any presidential electors.

The Texas lawsuit claims the odds of Biden overcoming Trump’s lead and winning any of the states after the point indicated was one in a quadrillion.  And therefore, the odds of winning all four was one in a quadrillion to the fourth power.  The lawsuit did not provide information on how that number was determined.  This may seem an exaggerated to some.  It is enough to state that the odds of winning any one of the states was highly unlikely and the odds of winning all four were extremely unlikely.  For example, if the odds of winning any one of the states was numerically much less extreme but still highly unlikely, say something like one in twenty, then the odds of doing that in all four states would be 1 in  160,000.  Twenty beans in a jar: 19 white and 1 black.  Reach in without looking and be lucky enough to pull out the one black bean.  Chances of doing that again is 1 in 400.  Clearly indicative of cheating if someone claims to have done that four times in a row.  As I said the statistical analysis behind the claim of odds of 1 in a 1,000,000,000,000 are not given so I cannot speak to that.  But even if the odds were orders of magnitude better than that, they were still astronomically small.  At any rate, the merits of the lawsuit do not depend on any certain level of odds of Biden overcoming a lead that had been established by 3:00 A.M. the day after election.

Robert Madsen, American Thinker

Three HUGE questions right now:

1) Will the Supreme Court invalidate the provably illegal election results from states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan — where their own constitutions, as well as the U.S. Constitution, were violated, e.g., changing election laws without the approval of the state legislatures?

2) If Biden successfully seizes the White House, will Trump supporters and other dissenters finally start to show their anger, rage, justified resistance and defiance against the most brazen tyranny in America since the years leading up to 1776 — and, if so, how?

3) If scenario # 2 happens, will Biden’s regime respond as all dictators throughout history have done, with coercion, intimidation, imprisonment, evasion of rule of law, and murder? Or will there be a civil war? Or both?

It seems surreal and bizarre to be asking these questions. But there is an actual, objective basis for asking them. It’s where we are, for real. Get your heads out of the sand, because regardless of what Trump or anyone else does, it’s not going to get easier any time soon.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

THOMAS Jefferson was the writer of the Declaration of Independence and the most prolific of our founding fathers on the topics of our liberty and the rights that America was created to preserve and protect. He recognized that American government exists only to defend our preexisting rights, that our liberty is to be limited only by others’ equal liberty, that government cannot legitimately take away rights or our liberty to exercise them, that economic freedom is not to be overridden and that American government is to be limited in power and scope. Particularly because his insights are so at odds with the everyday operation of American government, it is worth giving them careful thought.

The principles on which we engaged … issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights.

The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them. Nothing … is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.

A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our own will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.

I do not add “within the limits of the law,” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending to too small a degree of it. The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God.

It is to secure these rights that we resort to government at all. Laws abridging the natural right of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.

The purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors … there are certain portions of right not necessary to enable them to carry on an effective government, and which experience has nevertheless proved they will be constantly encroaching on, if submitted to them.

It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged.

Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.

The equal rights of man and the happiness of every individual are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.

Fortify the public liberty by every possible means. What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance?

The people … are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

The liberals destroyed Western civilization by teaching black Americans to hate white people, their “oppressors.” This made racial diversity and multiculturalism impossible. In the absence of assimilation, the result is disunity.

The left destroyed civilization by defining the working class—“the Trump deplorables”—as the victimizer. This freed the greed-driven elites from working class restraint. Today both the British Labour Party and the US Democrat Party represent the elite. Consider how rich the elite have made Tony Blair and the Clintons.

The liberals threw open the borders of Western countries to immigrant-invaders. As darker-skinned peoples flowed into white countries, liberals taught them that white people are their oppressors. Thus was hatred imported in large numbers into the West where the victim status of “people of color” is used to curtail freedom of speech and freedom of association of white people. Assimilation is considered racist and a suppressor of diversity and multiculturalism and was officially terminated. Thus was the unity that assimilation fosters destroyed.

The white liberal/left will suffer the consequences, just as they do in Jean Raspail’s novel, The Camp of the Saints, along with “the Trump deplorables.”

Of course, not all immigrant-invaders are haters. Some appreciate their improved chances in life and defend the system, but others see political opportunity in victimhood and thus exploit it. Generally speaking, the offense is more effective than the defense. The initiative lies in making charges, not answering them.

The left has destroyed American unity with Identity Politics, systemic racism, and critical race theory and stood Karl Marx on his head by defining the American working class as racist and misogynist oppressors of “people of color” and women. In the hands of the left, the working class has gone from victim to victimizer. The black hat is no longer the capitalist exploiter of the worker. The liberal/left has placed the black hat on the demonized “white racist, sexist, working class.”

The alleged “racial minorities” are actually vast majorities. White people constitute a small percentage of people on earth. Single countries, such as India and China, have more “people of color” than the entire Western World has white people.

The Democrat Party has raised Identity Politics to an ideology and justifies electoral theft as a necessary means to suppress “whiteness” and all its sins and crimes represented in their minds by Donald Trump and “the deplorables.”

Armed with an ideology is what makes Democrats and their militias—Antifa and BLM—dangerous. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “Ideology is what gives evil doing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.”

It requires certainty and audacity for the DNC to organize the theft of a presidential election and for Antifa and BLM to assault strangers, to loot and burn white businesses, and to threaten white neighborhoods. Their certainty comes from their conviction that “whiteness” must be brought to an end. Their audacity comes from their knowledge that white confidence has been impaired by years of demonization and, therefore, they will not be held accountable for their violence.

Just as in Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother needs an enemy of the people, the liberal/left also need an enemy and have created as their enemy “white supremacy.” But where is the enemy’s ideology? Has it been taught for decades in the educational system like critical race theory, systemic racism, and Identity Politics? Where is the Jacques Derrida of the “far right” who is deconstructing the anti-white ideology of Identity Politics? Where are voices in politics, universities, media, and judiciary that are protecting white people from hate speech and crimes?

They don’t exist.

Therefore, the conflict is unequal. The attack on white people is ideology-driven and white people have no defense. Any defense of whiteness is considered by the liberal/left to be ipso facto proof of racism.

The Jewish people, especially the Zionists among them, have made a great deal of how the demonization of Jews led to extermination. Demonization demeans, and it is the tactic that was used in the 20th century to destroy perceived class and race enemies.

It is realistic to expect demonized white people to experience the same fate. The process has already begun: 

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/12/05/mark-zuckerberg-demonstrates-his-virulent-racism-against-white-gentiles-by-denying-them-equal-protection-on-facebook-from-hate-speech/

Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ Review

The nearly universal opinion expressed these days is that the economic crisis of recent years marks the end of capitalism. Capitalism allegedly has failed, has proven itself incapable of solving economic problems, and so mankind has no alternative, if it is to survive, than to make the transition to a planned economy, to socialism.

The nearly universal opinion expressed these days is that the economic crisis of recent years marks the end of capitalism. Capitalism allegedly has failed, has proven itself incapable of solving economic problems, and so mankind has no alternative, if it is to survive, than to make the transition to a planned economy, to socialism.

This is hardly a new idea. The socialists have always maintained that economic crises are the inevitable result of the capitalistic method of production and that there is no other means of eliminating economic crises than the transition to socialism. If these assertions are expressed more forcefully these days and evoke greater public response, it is not because the present crisis is greater or longer than its predecessors, but rather primarily because today public opinion is much more strongly influenced by socialist views than it was in previous decades.

I

When there was no economic theory, the belief was that whoever had power and was determined to use it could accomplish anything. In the interest of their spiritual welfare and with a view toward their reward in Heaven, rulers were admonished by their priests to exercise moderation in their use of power. Also, it was not a question of what limits the inherent conditions of human life and production set for this power, but rather that they were considered boundless and omnipotent in the sphere of social affairs.

The foundation of social sciences, the work of a large number of great intellects, of whom David Hume and Adam Smith are most outstanding, has destroyed this conception. One discovered that social power was a spiritual one and not (as was supposed) a material and, in the rough sense of the word, a real one. And there was the recognition of a necessary coherence within market phenomena which power is unable to destroy. There was also a realization that something was operative in social affairs that the powerful could not influence and to which they had to accommodate themselves, just as they had to adjust to the laws of nature. In the history of human thought and science there is no greater discovery.

If one proceeds from this recognition of the laws of the market, economic theory shows just what kind of situation arises from the interference of force and power in market processes. The isolated intervention cannot reach the end the authorities strive for in enacting it and must result in consequences which are undesirable from the standpoint of the authorities. Even from the point of view of the authorities themselves the intervention is pointless and harmful. Proceeding from this perception, if one wants to arrange market activity according to the conclusions of scientific thought—and we give thought to these matters not only because we are seeking knowledge for its own sake, but also because we want to arrange our actions such that we can reach the goals we aspire to—one then comes unavoidably to a rejection of such interventions as superfluous, unnecessary, and harmful, a notion which characterizes the liberal teaching. It is not that liberalism wants to carry standards of value over into science; it wants to take from science a compass for market actions. Liberalism uses the results of scientific research in order to construct society in such a way that it will be able to realize as effectively as possible the purposes it is intended to realize. The politico-economic parties do not differ on the end result for which they strive but on the means they should employ to achieve their common goal. The liberals are of the opinion that private property in the means of production is the only way to create wealth for everyone, because they consider socialism impractical and because they believe that the system of interventionism (which according to the view of its advocates is between capitalism and socialism) cannot achieve its proponents’ goals.

The liberal view has found bitter opposition. But the opponents of liberalism have not been successful in undermining its basic theory nor the practical application of this theory. They have not sought to defend themselves against the crushing criticism which the liberals have leveled against their plans by logical refutation; instead they have used evasions. The socialists considered themselves removed from this criticism, because Marxism has declared inquiry about the establishment and the efficacy of a socialist commonwealth heretical; they continued to cherish the socialist state of the future as heaven on earth, but refused to engage in a discussion of the details of their plan. The interventionists chose another path. They argued, on insufficient grounds, against the universal validity of economic theory. Not in a position to dispute economic theory logically, they could refer to nothing other than some “moral pathos,” of which they spoke in the invitation to the founding meeting of the Vereins für Sozialpolitik [Association for Social Policy] in Eisenach. Against logic they set moralism, against theory emotional prejudice, against argument the reference to the will of the state.

Economic theory predicted the effects of interventionism and state and municipal socialism exactly as they happened. All the warnings were ignored. For fifty or sixty years the politics of European countries has been anticapitalist and antiliberal. More than forty years ago Sidney Webb (Lord Passfield) wrote: “it can now fairly be claimed that the socialist philosophy of to-day is but the conscious and explicit assertion of principles of social organization which have been already in great part unconsciously adopted. The economic history of the century is an almost continuous record of the progress of Socialism.”2 That was at the beginning of this development and it was in England where liberalism was able for the longest time to hold off the anticapitalistic economic policies. Since then interventionist policies have made great strides. In general, the view today is that we live in an age in which the “hampered economy” reigns—as the forerunner of the blessed socialist collective consciousness to come.

Now, because indeed that which economic theory predicted has happened, because the fruits of the anticapitalistic economic policies have come to light, a cry is heard from all sides: this is the decline of capitalism, the capitalistic system has failed!

Liberalism cannot be deemed responsible for any of the institutions which give today’s economic policies their character. It was against the nationalization and the bringing under municipal control of projects which now show themselves to be catastrophes for the public sector and a source of filthy corruption; it was against the denial of protection for those willing to work and against placing state power at the disposal of the trade unions, against unemployment compensation, which has made unemployment a permanent and universal phenomenon, against social insurance, which has made those insured into grumblers, malingers, and neurasthenics, against tariffs (and thereby implicitly against cartels), against the limitation of freedom to live, to travel, or study where one likes, against excessive taxation and against inflation, against armaments, against colonial acquisitions, against the oppression of minorities, against imperialism and against war. It put up stubborn resistance against the politics of capital consumption. And liberalism did not create the armed party troops who are just waiting for the convenient opportunity to start a civil war.

II

The line of argument that leads to blaming capitalism for at least some of these things is based on the notion that entrepreneurs and capitalists are no longer liberal but interventionist and statist. The fact is correct, but the conclusions people want to draw from it are wrong-headed. These deductions stem from the entirely untenable Marxist view that entrepreneurs and capitalists protected their special class interests through liberalism during the time when capitalism flourished but now, in the late and declining period of capitalism, protect them through interventionism. This is supposed to be proof that the “hampered economy” of interventionism is the historically necessary economics of the phase of capitalism in which we find ourselves today. But the concept of classical political economy and of liberalism as the ideology (in the Marxist sense of the word) of the bourgeoisie is one of the many distorted techniques of Marxism. If entrepreneurs and capitalists were liberal thinkers around 1800 in England and interventionist, statist, and socialist thinkers around 1930 in Germany, the reason is that entrepreneurs and capitalists were also captivated by the prevailing ideas of the times. In 1800 no less than in 1930 entrepreneurs had special interests that were protected by interventionism and hurt by liberalism.

Today the great entrepreneurs are often cited as “economic leaders.” Capitalistic society knows no “economic leaders.” Therein lies the characteristic difference between socialist economies on the one hand and capitalist economies on the other hand: in the latter, the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production follow no leadership save that of the market. The custom of citing initiators of great enterprises as economic leaders already gives some indication that these days it is not usually the case that one reaches these positions by economic successes but rather by other means.

In the interventionist state it is no longer of crucial importance for the success of an enterprise that operations be run in such a way that the needs of the consumer are satisfied in the best and least expensive way; it is much more important that one has “good relations” with the controlling political factions, that the interventions redound to the advantage and not the disadvantage of the enterprise. A few more Marks’ worth of tariff-protection for the output of the enterprise, a few Marks less tariff-protection for the inputs in the manufacturing process can help the enterprise more than the greatest prudence in the conduct of operations. An enterprise may be well run, but it will go under if it does not know how to protect its interests in the arrangement of tariff rates, in the wage negotiations before arbitration boards, and in governing bodies of cartels. It is much more important to have “connections” than to produce well and cheaply. Consequently, the men who reach the top of such enterprises are not those who know how to organize operations and give production a direction which the market situation demands, but rather men who are in good standing both “above” and “below,” men who know how to get along with the press and with all political parties, especially with the radicals, such that their dealings cause no offense. This is that class of general directors who deal more with federal dignitaries and party leaders than with those from whom they buy or to whom they sell.

Because many ventures depend on political favors, those who undertake such ventures must repay the politicians with favors. There has been no big venture in recent years which has not had to expend considerable sums for transactions which from the outset were clearly unprofitable but which, despite expected losses, had to be concluded for political reasons. This is not to mention contributions to non-business concerns—election funds, public welfare institutions, and the like.

Powers working toward the independence of the directors of the large banks, industrial concerns, and joint-stock companies from the stockholders are asserting themselves more strongly. This politically expedited “tendency for big businesses to socialize themselves,” that is, for letting interests other than the regard “for the highest possible yield for the stockholders” determine the management of the ventures, has been greeted by statist writers as a sign that we have already vanquished capitalism.3 In the course of the reform of German stock rights, even legal efforts have already been made to put the interest and well-being of the entrepreneur, namely “his economic, legal, and social self-worth and lasting value and his independence from the changing majority of changing stockholders,”4 above those of the shareholder.

With the influence of the state behind them and supported by a thoroughly interventionist public opinion, the leaders of big enterprises today feel so strong in relation to the stockholders that they believe they need not take their interests into account. In their conduct of the businesses of society in those countries in which statism has most strongly come to rule—for example in the successor states of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire—they are as unconcerned about profitability as the directors of public utilities. The result is ruin. The theory which has been advanced says that these ventures are too large to be run simply with a view toward profit. This concept is extraordinarily opportune whenever the result of conducting business while fundamentally renouncing profitability is the bankruptcy of the enterprise. It is opportune, because at this moment the same theory demands the intervention of the state for support of enterprises that are too big to be allowed to fail.

III

It is true that socialism and interventionism have not yet succeeded in completely eliminating capitalism. If they had, we Europeans, after centuries of prosperity, would rediscover the meaning of hunger on a massive scale. Capitalism is still prominent enough that new industries are coming into existence, and those already established are improving and expanding their equipment and operations. All the economic advances which have been and will be made stem from the persistent remnant of capitalism in our society. But capitalism is always harrassed by the intervention of the government and must pay as taxes a considerable part of its profits in order to defray the inferior productivity of public enterprise.

The crisis under which the world is presently suffering is the crisis of interventionism and of state and municipal socialism, in short, the crisis of anticapitalist policies. Capitalist society is guided by the play of the market mechanism. On that issue, there is no difference of opinion. The market prices bring supply and demand into congruence and determine the direction and extent of production. It is from the market that the capitalist economy receives its sense. If the function of the market as regulator of production is always thwarted by economic policies in so far as the latter tries to determine prices, wages, and interest rates instead of letting the market determine them, then a crisis will surely develop.

Bastiat has not failed, but rather Marx and Schmoller.

Ludwig von Mises

The two most frightening words in Washington are “bipartisan consensus.” Bipartisan consensus is when my doctor and my lawyer agree with my wife that I need help.   – P.J. O’Rourke, Cato’s Letter [Spring 2008]

It might seem reasonable to think that in the early days of a pandemic involving an unfamiliar pathogen, the public ought to allow the government leeway in its imposition of extreme measures, such as the virtual shut down of economic activity. But the initial impression ought to dissolve when one reminds oneself that we’re talking about government, a monopolistic organization shot through with perverse incentives because it gets its revenue through coercion (taxation) and faces no profit-and-lost test.

Obviously everyone will know less about a newly emerged virus on Day 1 (whenever that may be) than on Day 30 and beyond. That ought to mean that policymakers and their advisers in the world of science should be prepared and eager to retreat from the early extreme measures when the data point in that direction. But, again, we’re talking about politicians, bureaucrats, and the anointed experts who have their ears and don’t wish to lose them. They all face perverse incentives that induce bureaucratic sclerosis. (Other perverse incentives also apply.) This phenomenon has long been identified with the Food and Drug Administration. Look at the incentives facing a bureaucrat who must choose between approving a new drug or not. If he approves and headline-catching unanticipated rare side-effects emerge, the bureaucrat’s name on the dotted line could be mud, no matter how beneficial the drug is on the whole. Career ruined. But if he doesn’t sign off and people keep dying because the drug remains unavailable, few among the public will call the bureaucrat a killer because his responsibility will escape most people’s notice.

You can see the parallel with the pandemic. Even if new information showed the initial extreme measures to be inappropriate, officials would have almost no incentive to remove them. If they did and the number of cases and death rose, they would be pilloried in the press, whether or not their policies had anything to do with the rise. But if they didn’t remove the extreme measures and cases or deaths surged, they would not be on the hook. In fact, they would say their policy actions kept the surge from being even greater. (The policy makers would be even less accountable for the deaths directly caused by the policies themselves, which is the case with the shutdown.)

However formidable, these perverse incentives are not insurmountable, and occasionally someone in the government world admits a mistake. But this is not to be expected often. Government is deadly.

The only cure is full freedom, decentralization, and open debate in an environment where dissenter are not officially stigmatized, shunned, or repressed. In other words, we need a radically freed market, which rewards rather than penalizes the identification and correction of errors.

Sheldon Richman, FEE

It’s been over a month since the election, and all is not well in Mudville.  The home team fights round the clock to prove that the challenger cheated, and the challenger makes no effort to calm fears or address concerns — just continues naming cronies and planning not just to take over the ballpark, but to change the rules for the entire sport.

For those who care, the internet still exists, and there are more sites than Twitter, Facebook and news services out there where the truth actually matters.  So why does anyone have to search for the truth?  Investigations and impeachments have been blasted forcefully into our faces for years, thanks to the author of the MSM’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Joseph Goebbels, of Third Reich fame, who said, “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly — it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. … A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”  It appears he also wrote the SOPs for Facebook, one of which is clearly “propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.”

Now, all across the MSM, Biden’s “victory” consequences are given the fait accompli treatment.  We should all just behave and accept reality.  It sounds and reads like this: “Trump is baselessly contesting the results.”  “Trump campaign court cases have been thrown out due to baseless claims.”  All the “doing” is from the Trump side, and it’s wasting everyone’s time.  The Democrats haven’t done a thing, obviously.  They are the innocent victims, once again, of Trump’s craziness.  “Meanwhile, President-Elect Biden saw his shadow again today.”

There is nothing baseless about what happened.  It’s clear the Democrats planned this for quite some time, focusing on the battleground states, and centrally synchronizing and executing their Transition Integrity Project war-gamed plan.  They prepped the battlefield with lawsuits all across the country to remove any teeth in election laws, thus making the commission of fraud much easier and its discovery much harder.  And here is what they did.  And here.  And here.  And here.  More here.  Just check it out.  I recommend getting a head start and caring now; otherwise, it will be a big shock when you care later, and you will certainly care later.

So there’s a growing mountain of evidence that President Trump was re-elected.  If the election had been conducted according to existing laws, there would be no question.  If only legal ballots were counted, there would be no question.  If the Democrats hadn’t fabricated so many illegal votes, there would be no question.  But there is a question, and it’s this: how are we going to make this right?  This is no conspiracy theory; it’s a real conspiracy, across many states, involving the highest levels of Democrat elected officials, down to hapless election volunteers just following directions.  It was a conspiracy to steal the federal election for Joe Biden or, in other words, to remove Donald Trump from office, something Democrats have been openly trying to do for at least four years. 

All the guilty Democrats believe that if they act the propaganda out, it will actually happen.  Why don’t they call for transparency?  Because they don’t want it.  It will expose them for what they are.  Don’t they want to eliminate the cloud of illegitimacy in the election?  No, because they built it; it’s about power, not legitimacy.  What about their reputations in being associated with a fraudulent election?  They don’t care what we think of them; they want their shot at wielding power and getting rich from taxpayer dollars, book deals, and speaking fees.  There is no MAGA in what the Democrats did, nor in what they plan to do.  If they are allowed to do it, there will be no America left to make great. 

Like the home title theft commercials, this is entire country and cultural theft.  Every MAGA policy will be reversed if Biden is allowed to take the Oval Office.  He will make America weak again, dependent upon others again, full of Made in China again, and friends to jihadists again — it’ll be Obama II, the narcissistic pronoun president again.  “I,” “Me,” and “My” will dominate every speech again, which will repeatedly lecture to us, “That’s not who we are,” as something we absolutely are is insulted in favor of some more egalitarian socialist-globalist replacement.  Under a Democrat administration, “we” real Americans who love “our” nation and don’t want “our” prosperity given to China so Hunter Biden can get rich again will slowly watch “our” Constitution, freedom, history, democracy, tradition, and independence chip away. 

Because the Democrats are so self-centered, they have framed the governance of the U.S. as them versus Donald Trump.  They have fought everything Trump because he has fought their corruption with his promise to “Drain the Swamp.”  But this is much bigger than Donald Trump, and he has openly said so.  It’s not whether he wins or loses this election; it’s whether the U.S. ever again holds a free and fair election.  To the Democrats, it’s “Donald Trump’s investigations can destroy many of us in the next four years and we’ll never win another election” versus “Donald Trump goes away, and so do his investigations of Democrat crimes (and as a bonus, Joe Biden will let us do whatever we want and we’ll ensure we never again lose an election).”  In framing it in such a way, the Democrats’ thirst for power at all costs created the circumstances whereby they couldn’t succeed without doing grave damage to the country.  That’s where we are, with our election system shattered, void of the electorate’s trust, and those who did the damage potentially and ironically poised as the only ones who can fix it.  The epitome of “the fix is in.”

In the end, it comes down to this: what does it mean to have right versus wrong, corrupt versus honest, truth versus lies, fair versus stolen all work out backwards?  The last place on Earth the rest of the world would have thought that possible is right here.  “Our” America.  Abraham Lincoln said, “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”  He was talking about slavery, an evil that needed to be purged from our nation, lest we lose our nation altogether.

There are many evils, but today the foremost evil we must address is the Democrat party’s corruption of our national election.  We all know what happened, and what the right thing is.  We need to fix it.  Now.  The details and the prison terms can be figured out later.

Donald N. Finley is a retired Air Force Colonel.