"Geezer Wii-zer"

Does your GEEZER just sit there moping...

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‘Little Jazz’ and the Meaning of Life

WKCR-FM just aired its forty-third annual Roy Eldridge Birthday Broadcast...

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KA-POW! #15 - Carkuff

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Doug Carkuff for “Neither Left Nor Right: Of Liberty And Libertarians” :

The central libertarian principle is the principle of nonaggression. Taken to its logical conclusions it pretty much covers everything that is the cause of so much consternation in the life of our society. You would think that no one could possibly have a problem with this principle, but many people do. In order for the nonaggression principle to mean anything you have to believe you own yourself and, by extension, that you own the fruits of your endeavors. For any statist/collectivist self-ownership is conditional. In other words, you only own yourself to the extent society says you own yourself which is really the same as saying you don’t own yourself at all. You can make the decisions about your life that society/the state says you can make. Ultimately and inescapably, in the statist’s view, society/the state owns everything and anything you own, including yourself — you only own conditionally.

“Spectral Shadows”

The naked trees stood in a craggy group...

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KA-POW! #14 - Mises

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Ludwig von Mises for “Free Banking and Contract Law” :

It is a fable that governments interfered with banking in order to restrict the issue of fiduciary media and to prevent credit expansion. The idea that guided governments was, on the contrary, the lust for inflation and credit expansion. They privileged banks because they wanted to widen the limits drawn to credit expansion by conditions prevailing on the unhampered market or because they were eager to open to the treasury a source of revenue.

“Who is Mendacious Smith?”

Mendacious Smith has an endearing smile...

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Loquacious Lingo

Mendacious Smith (men·dā’·shǝs smith) n., Slang. – a politician; esp. a pejorative for an official of the national government: That Mendacious Smith was on the boob tube last night claiming that violating my liberties was for my ‘own good’. [poss. cynical deriv. from film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington]

KA-POW! #13 - Chodorov

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Frank Chodorov for “Does the State Protect Us?” :

Since Society puts so high a value on independence from a foreign State, it should not demur at the cost of maintaining this independence. One must pay for what one wants. However, when we examine the most approved method of financing war we find that it is based on a general reluctance to foot the bill. Every war is fought with current production — there is no way of shooting off guns that have not yet been made or of feeding soldiers with food that will be raised by the next generation — and in a real sense every war is conducted on a pay-as-you-fight basis.

The economic consequence of the most approved method of financing wars is that a lien on the future production of the nation is established, and nearly always it is a permanent lien. ...

Johnson Sandwich

Since the District of Columbia is the seat...

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Truth in Propaganda

The U.S. Treasury issued a series of quarter-dollar coins...

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KA-POW! #12 - Smith

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to George F. Smith for “The Long Shadow of Frédéric Bastiat” :

Tocqueville described the situation [of France in 1848]: "The truth — the deplorable truth — is that a taste for holding office and a desire to live on the public money is not with us a disease restricted to either party, but the great, chronic ailment of the whole nation; the result of the democratic constitution of our society and of the excessive centralization of our Government; the secret malady which undermined all former governments, and which will undermine all governments to come."

"A Christmas Offering"

Once upon a time, there was a wonderer...

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Scrooge Was Not ‘The Dickens’

Charles Dickens evidently intended to make...

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KA-POW! #11 - Lilburne

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to J. Grayson Lilburne, who quotes Ludwig von Mises in “For Civilization, It Is Mises or Bust” :

But once a society has plucked all the low-hanging fruit of "no-brainer" productivity improvements, what then can its members do to improve productivity? The only thing left to do would be to adopt improvements in productivity that involve more roundabout methods of production.

... However, since making bows and arrows takes more time [than making pointed sticks], and perhaps more resources, the hunters and their investment must be sustained by an adequate stock of food and other materials; even though the bows and arrows will yield a greater bounty, they will only do so after a longer period of time. Thus, savings are an indispensable prerequisite for increases in productivity that involve lengthening the structure of production.

KA-POW! #10 - Douglass

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to student Brian Douglass for “On the Road to the Servile State” :

Belloc defines the Servile State as "that arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labor for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the whole community with the mark of such labor." ...

The Servile State is not the market economy. It is also not simply socialism. Instead, it is a creation of the State to benefit a class, which is considered free, and for which class the system is perpetuated by force of law. Essentially, it is a State marked by artificial, government-created monopolies. ...

"Somewhere Else"

Billy always seemed to be somewhere else. Vernon once asked him...

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KA-POW! #9 - Bastiat

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Frederic Bastiat for “Should the State Support the Arts?” excerpted from That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, 1850 :

But, by a deduction as false as it is unjust, do you know what economists are accused of? It is, that when we disapprove of government support, we are supposed to disapprove of the thing itself whose support is discussed; and to be the enemies of every kind of activity, because we desire to see those activities, on the one hand free, and on the other seeking their own reward in themselves.

“Great Grammy”

Dear Santa,

Thanks for the race car last Christmas...

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KA-POW! #8 - Chodorov

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Frank Chodorov for “Economics vs. Politics” :

Economics is not politics. One is a science, concerned with the immutable and constant laws of nature that determine the production and distribution of wealth; the other is the art of ruling. ...

Back in the USSA

I was lately reminded of the west’s self-righteous news reporting...

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