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Latest Articles: Historical
FDR’s Raw Deal for African Americans
Post Date: 2023-02-26 01:44:00 by Charles_Byrd
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The American Institute for Economic Research was formed 90 years ago to combat the New Deal, a series of vast socioeconomic experiments perpetrated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Dr. Jekyll of Hyde Park, New York. All of those experiments failed to extricate Americans from the Great Depression, and severely injured members of minority groups, including blacks. Yet for the better part of a century, the US, state, and local governments have run a disinformation campaign, primarily through the government school system, that asserts that FDR “saved” America from the Great Depression, and in the process aided sundry downtrodden groups, including women, American Indians, ...
When President Grover Cleveland Rejected Congressional Pressure for War against Spain
Post Date: 2023-02-24 04:55:18 by Charles_Byrd
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During the Tuesday episode of the Ron Paul Liberty Report, host Ron Paul answered questions that viewers had submitted. In the process of answering one of the questions, Paul mentioned that there was an instance in which President Grover Cleveland, who Paul has praised before, stood up against congressional pressure for the United States to go to war. While Paul did not go into details about the instance when mentioning it in his answer, what Cleveland did was refuse to go to war with Spain in the name of aiding an insurrection in Cuba. Click for Full Text!
The Destruction of Washington Street Methodist as a Metaphor
Post Date: 2023-02-24 01:05:50 by Charles_Byrd
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As Northern victory drew near in 1865, on the night of February 17/18 troops under General William T. Sherman set fire to the Washington Street Methodist Church in Columbia, South Carolina. Legend has it – highly plausible – that the soldiers intended to burn down the First Baptist Church. But when approached and queried by Union soldiers as to the Baptist church’s location, First Baptist’s quick-thinking sexton directed the soldiers around the corner to the Methodist church. Within minutes, that church was in flames. So goes the story.[1] Without a doubt, however, the First Baptist Church was where the first day’s meeting of the secession convention met, on ...
How the Founders Read Montesquieu
Post Date: 2023-02-22 20:02:08 by Charles_Byrd
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Scholars and especially commentators in need of a quotation frequently cite Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu to support the idea of a “mixed” constitution with democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical elements. Rarely, though, are Montesquieu’s works, especially The Spirit of Laws, explored at length. Montesquieu is more likely to be plumbed for quotes to diminish current politicians rather than to be read seeking wisdom. Some writers even call him a prophet. Once in a while, however, engaging Montesquieu in this way can produce something thoughtful, like this piece by Harvey Mansfield, but that is rare. What has long been needed is a ...
Naval Academy Continues War on Confederate Heroes, Symbols
Post Date: 2023-02-22 19:52:43 by Charles_Byrd
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The U.S. Naval Academy has renamed a building that once honored Matthew Fontaine Maury, the founder of modern oceanography. It is now named for President Jimmy Carter, a failed president whose most significant achievement was ordering the failed rescue mission of American hostages in Iran. The reason Maury had to go: He served in the Confederate Navy, all things Confederate now being the subject of a communist campaign of lies and hate. Click for Full Text!
The war on drugs: 50 years of death and failure
Post Date: 2023-02-15 20:37:16 by Charles_Byrd
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It is undeniable that the war on drugs has failed. In his speech at the United Nations, Colombian President Gustavo Petro fell short of offering what the world is still waiting for: a solution to the problem. In 2016, at a special UN assembly, former president Juan Manuel Santos also spoke about the lost war on drugs and emphasized the need to rethink the approach. The interventions of Petro and Santos are the first steps toward a possible solution. The war on drugs began 50 years ago when US president Richard Nixon declared “an all-out offensive” against what he considered to be “enemy number one”: illegal drugs. This war was immediately extended to Colombia. In the ...
The socialist founding fathers' hatred of free speech
Post Date: 2023-02-15 20:31:23 by Charles_Byrd
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Many have been shocked to see the left's merciless repression of free speech for those who have a worldview that is not in line with the current socialist, politically correct narrative. But they should not be so surprised. Karl Marx (1818-1883) clearly defined socialism and communism as ideologies that precisely aim at destroying the very structures of traditional civil society and its critical thinking. The quotation: "The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism," defines the disdain for plurality of opinions that has marked Marxist thought for generations. If one wonders what type of society socialists are trying to create, it is useful to study its ...
Brickbat: No Fighting on the Battlefield
Post Date: 2023-02-14 19:48:15 by Charles_Byrd
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Historical reenactors say new rules effectively ban reenactments of battles at state-owned historical sites in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission said it will no longer permit reenactments of "simulated warfare or violence between opposing forces" on sites it controls Click for Full Text!
Jefferson Was Right: The SOTU Address Should Be Written, Not Spoken
Post Date: 2023-02-14 19:17:04 by Charles_Byrd
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The absurdity of those State of the Union Speeches. Like many political traditions accepted as unchangeable or timeless by Americans, the State of the Union Speech is neither required nor wise. First of all, the constitution merely states that the president "give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." It doesn't say anything about this information being conveyed in a speech. Naturally, Washington gave these addresses as speeches because he liked that sort of thing, and Adams used speeches because he was obsessed with the pomp of government power. Thomas Jefferson, on ...
The Calamity of America’s ‘Divine Mission’
Post Date: 2023-02-13 17:00:23 by Charles_Byrd
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Prolific author Robert Kagan’s latest elevation of Americans to God’s new chosen people leaps from the 688 pages of his new book, The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941. It is probable that none wish it were longer, as sage Samuel Johnson said of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The lion’s share of Kagan’s handiwork is a workmanlike chronicling of United States politics and foreign policy from the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor, Cuba, in 1898 through Pearl Harbor in 1941. The chronicle is meticulous but no literary equivalent of the Hope Diamond. Click for Full Text!
The 1619 Project’s Confusion on Capitalism
Post Date: 2023-02-13 16:47:40 by Charles_Byrd
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A pervasive sense of confusion characterizes Hulu’s new 1619 Project episode on “capitalism,” beginning with the basic definition of its titular term. Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones opens the episode by conceding that “I don’t feel like most of us actually know what capitalism means.” This should have provided her an opportunity for self-reflection on how the embattled project has, over the last three years, trudged its way through the economic dimensions of slavery. Click for Full Text!
Remembering the Great Pizza Funeral of 1973
Post Date: 2023-02-09 18:26:13 by Charles_Byrd
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Fifty years ago this March, dozens of people gathered in Ossineke, Michigan, for one of the strangest funerals in American history. They were there to witness the burial of nearly 30,000 frozen pizzas that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had deemed inedible. The pizzas actually were just fine. At the center of the "Great Pizza Funeral" was Mario Fabbrini, an Italian immigrant who founded Papa Fabbrini Pizzas after settling in Michigan. In February 1973, Fabbrini heard from officials at the FDA, which was issuing a widespread recall of canned mushrooms after a suspected outbreak of botulism at a canning facility in Ohio. Fabbrini submitted samples of his pizzas to the FDA ...
Adam Smith’s Liberal Path
Post Date: 2023-02-09 18:14:16 by Charles_Byrd
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The title “The Godly Path to Adam Smith’s Liberal Plan” refers to Smith’s politics. He put it this way: “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.” My topic is the Godly path. When does it begin? One answer is with what is told of in Genesis, so billions of years ago. Click for Full Text!
The Not-So-Great Depression Diet
Post Date: 2023-02-07 17:34:32 by Charles_Byrd
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When E.C. Harwood formed the American Institute for Economic Research 90 years ago, the New Deal was just beginning. The Great Depression, though, was over three years old, and it was a hangry, troublesome toddler. For those with a job, or on a fixed income, the Depression was great, because prices sank a great deal. Unlike today, real wages, or in other words wages adjusted for the declining price level, remained high for many. Click for Full Text!
Garet Garrett, the Great
Post Date: 2023-02-02 22:51:30 by Charles_Byrd
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It’s time for liberty lovers to (re)acquaint themselves with Garet Garrett, a prolific voice of the Old Right. It’s not that everything the largely homeschooled farm boy wrote was right – he reconciled himself to the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and some restrictions on trade and immigration – but that what his “unsanctioned voice” got right, especially about the New Deal, was analytically powerful, yet largely forgotten today. That’s unfortunate, because today’s Great Reset repeats many of the same patterns of authoritarian control that Garrett identified and excoriated. Biography, like history more generally, can contain ...
History of Nuclear War. The “90 Seconds to Midnight”
Post Date: 2023-02-01 16:59:19 by Charles_Byrd
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90 Seconds to Midnight according to the Doomsday Clock. The Nobel Peace Laureates are casually blaming Russia, without recalling the history of nuclear war, not to mention Joe Biden’s 1.3 trillion dollar program to develop “more usable”, “low intensity” “preemptive nuclear weapons” to be used on a “first strike basis” against both nuclear and non nuclear states as a means of “self defense”. Let us recall the history of the “doomsday scenario” which was part of America’s Manhattan project launched in 1939 with the support of Britain and Canada. Click for Full Text!
When a Classical Liberal Confronted Nazi Terror
Post Date: 2023-01-31 19:01:08 by Charles_Byrd
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Ninety years ago, Adolf Hitler was sworn into office as Chancellor of Germany. January 30, 1933, would be henceforth regarded by Germany’s National Socialists as the Machtergreifung: the day that the Nazis seized power and began consigning the Weimar Republic to its grave. Hitler never made any secret of his intention to strike against those he saw as his enemies once his grip on power had been consolidated. It was thus at considerable personal risk that a young German economics professor delivered a public lecture in Frankfurt am Main, just eight days after Hitler took office, in which he made clear his opposition to the new government. Click for Full Text!
The Wrong Question
Post Date: 2023-01-30 22:24:02 by Charles_Byrd
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An article appeared on January 20th, 2023, touching upon the assault on the “Reconciliation” monument in Arlington National Cemetery. The monument has been labeled as “Confederate” and therefore resides in the cross-hairs of the present Woke Nation. Author Allen Brownfeld entitled the piece: Removing the Confederate Memorial From Arlington: What Would Lincoln or Grant Think? Of course, the contretemps about the effort by the vandals of WOKE to remove any and all Confederate along with other “American” cultural monuments is nothing new. Perhaps the newest thing about this one – though there had been earlier intimations on the matter – is the ...
From MLK to CRT
Post Date: 2023-01-21 06:37:36 by Charles_Byrd
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Nearly a decade into what has been called “The Great Awokening,” fanatical racial wokeness shows little signs of abating. The pieties of critical race theory (CRT), which we are told is not being taught anywhere, are now authoritative. Everything is racist. It’s never the fault of black people. And America can never sufficiently abase itself for the “original sin” of slavery. To counter the madness, many invoke the moral authority of Martin Luther King, Jr., arguably the most admired person in recent American history. As House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy once explained in an interview: “Critical race theory goes against everything Martin Luther King has ...
Martin Luther King and Planned Parenthood
Post Date: 2023-01-18 00:02:17 by Charles_Byrd
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By the time Martin Luther King Jr. had taken his seat in 1960 on Planned Parenthood’s committee on the study of contraception, his views on how artificial birth control could be used to reduce Black family size were well-known throughout the United States. King had been recommended to join the committee by the accomplished and influential Morehouse University sociology professor Walter R. Chivers, who had twice written to his former student (October & November), asking him to become a member. For his part, Chivers had volunteered with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for sixteen years and vouched for the organization’s “integrity, honesty, and complete lack of ...
Decline of Empire: Parallels Between the U.S. and Rome, Part II
Post Date: 2023-01-17 22:27:22 by Charles_Byrd
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Like the Romans, we’re supposedly ruled by laws, not by men. In Rome, the law started with the 12 Tablets in 451 BCE, with few dictates and simple enough to be inscribed on bronze for all to see. A separate body of common law developed from trials, held sometimes in the Forum, sometimes in the Senate. When the law was short and simple, the saying “Ignorantia juris non excusat” (ignorance of the law is no excuse) made sense. But as the government and its legislation became more ponderous, the saying became increasingly ridiculous. Eventually, under Diocletian, law became completely arbitrary, with everything done by the emperor’s decrees—we call them Executive ...
The Gulag Archipelago 50 years later– reassessing one of the greatest works of literary realism
Post Date: 2023-01-15 18:34:51 by Charles_Byrd
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was one of the most notable Russian authors of the 20th century, having written perhaps the greatest nonfiction book of his time. His magnum opus, The Gulag Archipelago (1973) is a riveting chronicle of Solzhenitsyn’s enduring punishment by Soviet Communism in the harshest prison system on the planet. It contains records of 227 other individuals who suffered in the Gulag and provides interviews, reports, letters and memoirs that vividly describe the horrors endured by prisoners. Most prisoners, including Solzhenitsyn were branded as enemies of the state, with many having been former Soviet government officials or military. Solzhenitsyn was himself a ...
The Tyranny of the Majority
Post Date: 2023-01-15 17:55:21 by Charles_Byrd
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Does the “tyranny of the majority” exist? Short answer, yes. Click for Full Text!
Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Liberty
Post Date: 2023-01-07 06:05:00 by Charles_Byrd
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It seems Michael Anton wants to define American conservatism. He accuses the other side of playing this game, but there are not many “conservatives” who have spilled as much ink on the topic as Anton in the last couple of years. I had it out with him in 2021. Now, he has directed his fire at others who are questioning the underpinnings of the West Coast Straussian view of the American founding. Click for Full Text!
Rome's Runaway Inflation: Currency Devaluation in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries
Post Date: 2023-01-05 23:20:16 by Charles_Byrd
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By the beginning of the fourth century, the Roman Empire had become a completely different economic reality from what it had been at the beginning of the first century. The denarius argenteus, the empire’s monetary unit during the first two centuries, had virtually disappeared since the middle of the third century, having been replaced by the argenteus antoninianus and the argenteus aurelianianus, numerals of greater theoretical value, but of less and less real value. The public excesses in the civil and military budgets, the incessant bribes and gifts, the repeated tax increases, the growth of the state bureaucracy, and the continuous requisitions of goods and precious metals had ...
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