World War II

Very often bad and failed ideas do not die, they reappear during periods of crisis in different intellectual garb, and offer “solutions” that would help to bring about some of the very types of crises for which they once again claim to have the answers.

The current counter-revolution against liberty is being fought on a number of fronts in American society.

What if we could have an experiment to compare the two systems? Wait – we already did.

Many Social Democrats believed that democracy was both compatible with and an essential complement to a humane socialism, a socialism that did not reduce humanity to obedient cogs in a giant collectivist wheel directed by a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” They wanted socialism with traditional civil liberties, personal freedom and democratic politics.

Transit ridership is increasing in the United States. The American Public Transportation Association (APTA)has reported that 10.8 billion trips were taken on transit in 2014, the largest number since 1956. With a more than 80% increase in gasoline prices since 2004, higher transit ridership was to be expected. However, it would be wrong to suggest the transit ridership is anywhere near its historic peak, nor that the increases have been broadly spread around the nation.

Seventy years ago, during the week of February 4-11, 1945, the most momentous conference of the Second World War was held at Yalta in the Crimea between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Their decisions have affected much of the world ever since.

The American presidency has grown in power almost continuously since the outbreak of World War II. The executive has risen from being simply the chief magistrate of the government to be being a quasi-legislative force, a leader who pushes an aggressive legislative agenda as well as enforcing the laws passed by the legislature. The president is frequently referred to as “the most powerful person in the world,” or “the leader of the free world.” Such appellations represent far more than good PR. They are statements of fact that the president of the United States has drastically more power and authority than any other individual on Earth. For that reason certainly, presidents should be restricted to a single term of office.

The United States is now manifestly seen as a weak horse even by its allies, a nation in military retreat throughout the world against its three most dangerous adversaries: Russia, China, and militant Islamic fascism.

My Father was born in 1901 and was too young for World War One and too old to serve in World War Two. A gentle, quiet man, he would have been a terrible soldier. My older brother, however, was inducted in the U.S. Army and served during the Korean conflict. In the 1960s I served during a period of peace despite Cold War tensions.

Seventy years ago this month, on March 10, 1944, “The Road to Serfdom” by Friedrich A. Hayek was first published in Great Britain. For seven decades it has continued to challenge and influence the political-economic landscape of the world. Hayek delivered an ominous warning that political trends in the Western democracies, including America, were all in the direction of a new form of servitude that threatened the personal and economic liberty of the citizens of these countries.

A truly free market economy is one that tends to have the “good deflation,” and we should look forward to it.

Forgotten or at least certainly downplayed in the international remembrance of Mandela’s nearly three decades of imprisonment and his historical role in becoming the first black president of post-Apartheid South Africa is the fact that through most of the years of his active resistance leading up to his arrest and incarceration he accepted the Marxist interpretation that racism and racial discrimination were part and parcel of the capitalist system.

Along with July 4, 1776, December 7, 1941 — and perhaps, someday, Barack Obama’s Birthday — June 6, 1944, will long be remembered as one of the most important and…