The Socialist Democrat Coup Proceeds Apace

Aristocracy and Oligarchy - How We Got Here

Tax ‘Em Until They Flee, Then Tax ‘Em Some More!

My Rant on Voting With Your Feet

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. - Carrol Quigley, Tragedy and Hope

Lessons for Washington DC from School House Rock

The Slaughter Solution for health care reform

Time to Pick a Side Fencesitters

A Tale of Two Protests: Coffee or Tea?

"We the People"

A great strength of the two-party system is that basically we have been in general agreement on many things and neither party has been the party of extremes or radicals, but temporarily some extreme elements have come into one of the parties and have driven out or locked out or booed out or heckled out the moderates. - Lyndon Baines Johnson, October 24, 1964

Is Texas Spinning History?

Free Banking, the Balance Sheet and Contract Law Approach

Experience the Experience

“Exorcising Toyota’s Demons”

Obama-nomics

Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts. - Eugene J. McCarthy

What a daft way to stop your spaniel eating the milkman

What happned [sic] to "Men" in America?

DADT In Action

5 Fool-Proof Paths Back to Freedom in America

Subservient Superpower

Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government - a bureaucratic elite. - Senator William Jenner, 1954

• Congress Won’t Accept a Public-Option for Themselves
• Levin Fans Promote Neo-Statists
• Collapse of the American Empire

Mitt warns against “Independent” Thinking

Good ole Mitt “has urged the Tea Party leaders not to be quite so independent minded”, cautioning them not to mount direct electoral challenges outside the GOP establishment. I guess Romney will be running for President on the Anti-Change platform, against Obama’s “Really, I mean it this time Change” platform. Decisions, decisions.

For a proper understanding of Mitt RomneyCare's "warning," please read "A Choice Not An Echo."

‘Money, Money, Money’

One man who doesn’t want to see that happen is Doug Hoffman, the “Ordinary American” candidate whose third-party campaign last year in New York’s 23rd District became a national crusade for conservatives fed up with Washington, including the Beltway GOP. “The legacy of my [2009] campaign is that many Americans who had never been involved before saw that they could get involved and make a difference,” Hoffman told me in a telephone interview last week, after announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination in this year’s mid-term election.

Strange as it may seem, some Republicans still haven’t gotten the message. There are rumors in New York that the national GOP establishment is trying to recruit Will Barclay to run against Hoffman. Scion of a wealthy family, Barclay is a state assemblyman whose father was appointed ambassador to El Salvador by President Bush. The chief argument for the younger Barclay’s candidacy, as one Hoffman-supporting conservative told me last week, can be summarized in three words: “Money, money, money.”

Can such an argument prevail in a year when Republicans hope to capture the populist energy of the Tea Party movement? ... It would also send a message to the party's conservative rank-and-file that their loyalty to Republicans is strictly a one-way street, never to be respected in any instance where grassroots preferences conflict with the political ambitions of party insiders.

Tea party brings energy, change and tumult to GOP

The political commentariat doesn't know what to make of those thousands of Americans who have spontaneously thronged to tea parties and town hall meetings to oppose the big government programs of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders.

In terms of their immediate effect on conventional politics and their potential for continued influence, I think the tea partiers bear an uncanny resemblance to the antiwar activists in the Vietnam War period.

But if they stay involved, the tea partiers are likely to gravitate to the Republican Party, just as the antiwar folk gravitated to the Democratic Party, on which they had a long-lasting and pervasive effect.

Tea partiers have caused some internal party splits (see the New York District 23 special election) and some may launch primary challenges or third-party efforts that will elect Democrats. Any time a large number of motivated people inject themselves into electoral politics, they cause a certain amount of chaos.

They also add a lot of energy, political creativity and enthusiasm into a moribund and dejected political party, like the Democrats of 1968 and the Republicans of 2008. New people change the positions and focus of their parties.

It's not clear whether the tea partiers' influence on Republicans will last as long as the antiwar cohort's imprint on Democrats. But their concern -- the fact that government spending is on a trajectory to increase far beyond revenues -- seems likely to persist. In which case a spontaneous movement that no one predicted and that no one person led could end up, again, reshaping one of our great political parties.

The Real Tea Party Story: Community Builders vs. Community Organizers

In less than a year, the MSM has gone from ignoring Tea Parties to mocking and insulting their participants to grudging coverage with ridiculing overtones. Finally it has arrived at giving wide attention to the movement, albeit grudgingly and ungraciously. A once-highly esteemed fourth estate, they have become talking-head dilettantes on a mission to save the disgruntled masses from democracy itself.

David Brooks, token toy conservative at the NYT, wrote his explanation for the Tea Parties without ever mentioning them by name, even. He wrote a whole diatribe on the meaning of it all. It's a knee-jerk reaction by us commoners, you see, against the "educated class." It has nothing to do with real issues, don't you know. This whole wave of discontent is simply a revolt by the common man against his intellectual betters.
What a bunch of myopic poppycock.

The real Tea Party story is quite simple and an eloquent tribute to democracy: a genuine movement of ordinary people rising to the demands of their all-American principles. It represents a fundamental difference between those who seek to provide for themselves and those who see government as provider of all material goods. The Tea Party movement is a valiant resistance to decades of profligate entitlement spending, which has had the real effect of worsening every problem it was intended to fix, landing the country, at last, in a sea of impossible debt. Tea Partiers, like the Liberty Boys of 1776, stand steadfast on the principle of equality in the rule of law, not government-ordered equality in material-world goods.

Basically, the resistance boils down to a contest between community builders and community organizers.

My 2 cents ... The Republican Party is at best, a tool to be used by the Tea Parties ... but it will never be the answer. Liberty is our goal!Similar Posts:

• Some Thoughts on the Tea Party Movement: Building Strengths and Avoiding Pitfalls
• Michael Steele and the Republican Party
• Wasting a Republican Opportunity, or Why Pigs Smell
• Republican Politicians and the State of the Nation
• Some Straight Talk about the Republican Party

Pelosi: 'I Have No Intention Of Not Passing This Bill'

At a roundtable meeting with several health care reporters and bloggers this morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once again predicted final passage of a far-reaching heath care bill by week's end--but she insisted that success will only be possible if she acts quickly, even if that means members and reformers will have to abandon some of their key priorities, and trust the Senate to pass an amending bill through the reconciliation process.

"I have no intention of not passing this bill," Pelosi said in response to a question from TPMDC. "Let me say it in a positive way: I have faith in my members that we will be passing this legislation."

Pelosi explained away a statement by her Whip, James Clyburn, that the votes aren't there "yet," by noting that the bill is still not yet complete. But getting a majority won't be easy. No vote is easy, Pelosi said, and she'll need members to focus on the big picture--insurance for 31 million people--without getting distracted by the demise of the public option, or the fact that the Senate may not be able to deliver what they say they can in reconciliation, in order to get it done.

Robert Gibbs: Even if I have to personally break into the Smithsonian with a blowtorch and burn the Constitution, we will pass health care this week

I never, in my wildest imagination, thought that the Democrat Party would take it this far. That they would move so far to the left that even Hugo Chavez is stunned.

If you have any way to get to the Capitol Building, join the march on Tuesday to stop the slaughter of the U.S. Constitution.

No Taxation with Misrepresentation?

If Congress passes a takeover of health care via dubious means, flouting the consent of the governed, the consequences may be far more profound than dreamed by Reid, Pelosi, and Obama. In addition to violating the spirit and perhaps the letter of the Constitution by changing the House rules to deem that the Senate Health Care Bill has passed, Speaker Pelosi is now thinking about folding the federal government's takeover of students loans into the process. I'll leave the discussion of the finer points of constitutionality of this power-grab to those with more expertise in the matter. My own thinking is that with this latest outrage, better political guidance may be found in the Declaration of Independence.

But when a long Train of abuses and Usurpations pursing invariably the same Object evinces a Design to reduce then under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

If the Congressmen who found their town hall meetings last summer contentious actually vote to pass this abomination, it's a sure bet that they ain't seen nothing yet when it comes to constituents with their dander up. Nor do I think that some citizens will be willing to wait for November's election to let the full extent of their displeasure be known.

I am sure that I am not alone in wondering whether I have any civil obligation to obey the laws that this Congress would pass in the manner being contemplated. If they continue to express their contempt for the Constitution as they attempt to amass power, how can I adequately express my contempt with them?

In their quest to force an unsustainable European-style health care system on America, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid may end up creating something entirely unexpected: American ingenuity and can-do attitude wedded to an Italian sensibility towards tax evasion. Should that attitude take hold as more than a short-term reaction to an injustice that can be corrected with the next election, this nation may well become ungovernable.

open letters to our chickenshits in congress ... the "slaughter solution" ...

friends, buy guns and buy ammo, and lay in a proper store of potables, canned veggies, canned meats, and other fat laden edibles. and, i would also suggest all the rice, flour, pastas and canned butter substitutes you can lay your hands on: butter flavored crisco will do. buy gallons and gallons of olive & soy oil, and more peanut butter than you could ever conceive of eating, in two lifetimes. and, do not forget dehydrated potatoes, … , mashed, au gratin or scalloped. ummers.

it is going to come to that.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

dear speaker pelosi:

if the house of representative "passes" health care "reform" on the "slaughter solution," please be advised that such will be in derogation of your obligations as a member of congress to entered a recorded vote on the merits of such a "bill."

i believe the process patently unconstitutional.

i also believe it to be a usurpation of dictatorial power by the democratic party.

it will not stand. and, you incite civil war.

Similar Posts:

• Congress Won’t Accept a Public-Option for Themselves
• Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are Un-American Traitors
• What Has Government Done to the Dollar?
• Eye On the Political Class: Democratic Tax Cheat Edition
• Donkeys and Elephants

In my 41 years, the government has consistently grown in size and scope as we continue to march further and further down the road of serfdom. In other words, the Beltway pundits have harmed our cause, not helped.

These are not normal times. They are historical times. Volatile times. Keep listening to the same, tired-old mumblers ... at America's peril.

Washington will no longer vote on legislation, but instead, we now have law by fiat.

Introducing ObamaCare 2.0: The 2,309-Page Scam That Will Live in Infamy

More at Michelle Malkin, Riehl World View, Da Tech Guy, Fire Andrea Mitchell, Another Black Conservative, Red State, Doug Ross, Sundries Shack, Melissa Clouthier and Memeorandum. Also see Paul Ryan’s op-ed column proposing a different vision of health-care reform.

This whole Pelosi procedure is nothing but a thumb in the eye of the Constitution. The House could merely have an up-or-down vote on the Senate version of the bill, but Pelosi doesn’t have enough votes to do that – she’d lose the votes of several Democrats who have principled objections to various measures in the Senate version — and so instead they’re going through this bizarre kabuki dance.

House and Senate Cloakroom

Democrats Continue War With Public Opinion

Progressives Hate Representative Democracy

TOM FRIEDMAN: Well this is what worries me. I’ve been saying for awhile Tom, there’s only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, the Chinese form of government, and that’s one-party democracy. In China, if the leadership can get around to an enlightened decision it can order it from the top down, OK. Here when you have one-party democracy, one party ruling, basically the other party just saying no, every solution is sub-optimal. And when your chief competitor in the world can order optimal and you can only produce sub-optimal?

'Slaughter solution cannot be squared with Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution'

Democratic congressional leaders have floated a plan to enact health-care reform by a procedure dubbed “the Slaughter solution.” ...Democrats would pass a rule that deems the Senate’s health-care bill to have passed the House, without the House actually voting on the bill. This would enable Congress to vote on legislation that fixes flaws in the Senate health-care bill without facing a Senate filibuster, and without requiring House members to vote in favor of a Senate bill that is now politically toxic.

McConnell's assessment squares with those of other Constitutional experts who believe that the use of the "Slaughter Solution" is "preposterous" and "dangerous".

Democrats are holding a match to the very fabric of our society.

All of this ... is on top of a totally unsustainable financial path, leading us straight to America's Armageddon.

This is real folks! Things are so bad, they're way beyond the tired-old "Democrat vs. Republican" dance.

Collapse of the American Empire: swift, silent, certain

"One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse," warns anthropologist Jared Diamond in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." Many "civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power."

Now, Harvard's Niall Ferguson, one of the world's leading financial historians, echoes Diamond's warning: "Imperial collapse may come much more suddenly than many historians imagine. A combination of fiscal deficits and military overstretch suggests that the United States may be the next empire on the precipice." Yes, America is on the edge.

Dismiss his warning at your peril. Everything you learned, everything you believe and everything driving our political leaders is based on a misleading, outdated theory of history. The American Empire is at the edge of a dangerous precipice, at risk of a sudden, rapid collapse.

Throughout history imperial leaders inevitably emerge and drive their nations into wars for greater glory and "economic progress," while inevitably leading their nation into collapse. And that happens suddenly and swiftly, within "a decade or two."

You'll find Ferguson's latest work, "Collapse and Complexity: Empires on the Edge of Chaos," in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council of Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank. His message negates all the happy talk you're hearing in today's news -- about economic recovery and new bull markets, about "hope," about a return to "American greatness" -- from Washington politicians and Wall Street bankers.

In a Los Angeles Times column, Ferguson asks: "America, a Fragile Empire: Here today, gone tomorrow, could the United States fall that fast?" And his answer is clear and emphatic: "For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public have tended to think about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms ... we discern a rhythm to history. Great powers, like great men, are born, rise, reign and then gradually wane. No matter whether civilizations decline culturally, economically or ecologically, their downfalls are protracted."

We are deceiving ourselves, convinced "the challenges that face the United States are often represented as slow-burning ... threats seem very remote."

"But what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arrhythmic?" asks Ferguson. What if history is "at times almost stationary but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?" What if the collapse of the American Empire is dead ahead, in the next decade? What if, as with the 2000 dot-com crash, we're in denial, refusing to prepare?

Ferguson's final message about America's destiny comes from Foreign Affairs: "Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole's great five-part painting has a clear message: all empires, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall." Throughout history, empires function "in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable period. And then, quite abruptly ... collapse," a blunt reminder of the sudden, swift, silent, certain timetable in Diamond's "Collapse" where a "society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power."

Dollar Bulls Beware

The Bubble That Broke the World

How Long Before You Wake Up?

Global Economic Collapse

The Global Economy Unravels

There Will Be (Hyper)Inflation

America’s Creeping Death

Fight for nothing less than the liberty and freedom our founding generations bequeathed us. Compromise won't do. "Republican" isn't enough.

The Grim Reaper is knocking at America's door. What are YOU going to do about it?Similar Posts:

• Congress Won’t Accept a Public-Option for Themselves
• Economic Reality
• Donkeys and Elephants
• Random Thoughts in Troubling Times
• Rebuilding the Republican Party

Jackie at Faithful in Prayer for America has a great list of books she recommends here: Books to Read.

Jumping in Pools put together a fine reading list too: 5 books all Conservatives should read.

Make sure you take the time to check out their excellent recommendations.

The following is an additional list of books that I personally recommend. If any of my recommendation overlap those already recommended above, then I'd say that's all the more evidence of how important those books are. But since nobody visits the Classic Liberal for standard fare ... this list should be no exception.

See also: Books

P.S. - Support a capitalist! If you purchase any of these books through Amazon by clicking on their respective links, you'll not only help keep this blog afloat, but keep it growing too. Thank you!

If you don't understand economics, there's no point in arguing politics. The following economics books are very highly recommend.

Economics Books

The Mainspring of Human Progress

The Mainspring of Human Progress provides an overview of the central importance of human freedom in liberating people from poverty, famine, and death. It is striking how the author continues to remind the reader that the “state of nature” is not a blissful oneness with the creator and creation but rather a grim poverty and struggle for survival.

Free PDF Version: The Mainspring of Human Progress

Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse

Thomas Woods Jr. Woods provides an easy to read, free-market, conservative analysis of the financial collapse of 2008–09. He explains what led up to the current economic crisis, who's really to blame (Federal Reserve System), and why government bailouts won't work. Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse is a book for everyone concerned about how the financial crisis impacts them as well as to business leaders and investors wishing to be more knowledgeable about the crisis.

Liberalism

If not socialism, and if not fascism or interventionism, what form of social arrangements are most conducive to human flourishing? Mises's answer is summed up in the title, by which he meant classical liberalism.

"The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production... All the other demands of liberalism result from his fundamental demand."

Free PDF Version: Liberalism

The Case Against the Fed

The most powerful case against the American central bank ever written. This work begins with a mini-treatment of money and banking theory, and then plunges right in with the real history of the Federal Reserve System. Rothbard covers the struggle between competing elites and how they converged with the Fed.

Rothbard calls for the abolition of the central bank and a restoration of the gold standard. His popular treatment incorporates the best and most up-to-date scholarship on the Fed's origins and effects.

Free PDF Version: The Case Against the Fed

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal

In this timely new P.I. Guide, Murphy reveals the stark truth: free market failure didn't cause the Great Depression and the New Deal didn't cure it. Shattering myths and politically correct lies, he tells why World War II didn t help the economy or get us out of the Great Depression; why it took FDR to make the Depression Great; and why Herbert Hoover was more like Obama and less like Bush than the liberal media would have you believe. Free-market believers and capitalists everywhere should have this on their bookshelf and in their briefcases.

Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government

"A superb history....Two hundred years after the establishment of the American Constitution, I can think of no more important reading that Mr. Higgs' book, aside from the Constitution itself."--R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., Editor-in-Chief, The American Spectator

"A book of major importance, thoroughly researched, closely argued, and meticulously documented. It should be high on the reading list of every serious student of the American political system."--Political Science Quarterly

Higgs, a political economist, analyzes how the American federal government has come to exercise so much control over individuals and the marketplace in this century. Essentially he proposes that government control, which increases during a war or economic depression, continues after the crisis, with each increase influencing the prevailing ideology, making further increases more acceptable to the public. The process involves government taking on new functions more than expanding traditional ones. Because of this ratchet-like movement toward ever bigger government, Higgs is somewhat pessimistic about the survival of individual rights and a free society. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.

The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Impending Currency Crisis with Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments

Charles Goyette reveals the governmental errors that led to the current economic crisis and the bumpy road ahead. The signs are clear: Federal debt is compounding while growth has stalled, and America's foreign creditors are questioning the dollar's reserve currency status. Meanwhile, the "hidden" federal debt, much larger than the official debt, makes things even worse.

So what can you do to safeguard your assets when the dollar heads south? This book is the essential guide for protecting yourself--and even profiting--in this time of financial turbulence. In clear detail, Goyette explains the alternative investments--from gold and silver to oil and agriculture-- that will remain strong in the face of mounting inflation. The Dollar Meltdown gives you the tools to maintain the value of your savings and captilize on the coming opportunities.

Don't get left holding the bag after decades of government irresponsibility. The Dollar Meltdown shows you how to take the safety of your finances into your own hands.

Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

Henry Hazlitt has been interpreting business trends for the American people for the past 35 years. Starting in the field of economics as a reporter on the Wall Street Journal, he has served on the financial and editorial staffs of several of the great New York newspapers, including the Sun, the Herald, and the Times. In addition, he has been associated with The Nation and edited American Mercury and the Freeman. Mr. Hazlitt has traveled extensively in Europe and South America for on- the-spot studies of world economic conditions. Since 1946, he has been a contributing editor to Newsweek magazine, where his weekly column, "Business Tides," is a regular feature. Born in Philadelphia , in 1894, he attended the College of the City of New York and served with Air Service, U. S. Army, in World War I. He is the author of many books and pamphlets dealing with economics, among which are Will Dollars Save the World? and The Great Idea. We is also well known as a lecturer and literally critic.

Free PDF Version: Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

End the Fed

At first glance, abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard seems a quaintly eccentric idea, but Texas congressman Paul presents a plan to eliminate our country's central bank, and return to a private banking system, that's both serious and plausible. The questionable aspects involve Paul's predicted results: not only will ending the Fed eliminate inflation (the government cannot print more money than it has gold reserves), but also business booms and busts, wars, income inequality, trade imbalances and the growth of government. Further, and perhaps most important, it would "disempower the secretive cartel of powerful money managers who exercise disproportionate influence over the conduct of public policy." Paul tends to gloss over those periods in history, including the Panic of 1907, in which private banking and the gold standard were law: "the bad reputation of nineteenth century American banking... is largely the result of... propaganda agitating for the creation of the Fed." With respect to "secretive cartels," Paul takes up the interesting question of whether J.P. Morgan is in fact preferable to Ben Bernanke. An engaging response to big-government solutions for the financial crisis, this knowledgeable and opinionated look at U.S. economics, from a firebrand public servant, should provoke much thought.

Get the inside scoop on politics.

Politics

Conscience of a Conservative

Conscience of a Conservative written by legendary author Barry Goldwater is widely considered to be one of the top 100 greatest books of all time. This great classic will surely attract a whole new generation of readers. For many, Conscience of a Conservative is required reading for various courses and curriculums. And for others who simply enjoy reading timeless pieces of classic literature, this gem by Barry Goldwater is highly recommended. Published by Classic House Books and beautifully produced, Conscience of a Conservative would make an ideal gift and it should be a part of everyone's personal library.

A Choice Not an Echo: The inside story of how American Presidents are chosen

What Ms Schlafly set out to demonstrate--and she succeeded to a considerable degree--was that the Eastern Establishment of the Republican Party, with its money, access to the media and advertising expertise, had for years wielded an inordinate influence over who would be the eventual presidential nominee every four years. At first blush this might seem to confirm the reformers intuition, but, as Ms Schlafly said, what these men believed in was not conservative politics, as we understand it today, but their own rather large pocketbooks. This led them to favor stability, domestic and global, above all other causes, and meant that they were de facto defenders of the New Deal and relentless advocates of détente with the Soviets.

In this thin volume, Ms Schlafly argued that for Republicans to compete and win on the presidential level they would need to shuck off the influence of the Easterners, the moneyed interests, and select truly conservative candidates who would draw sharp contrasts with the Democrats, not try to fudge their differences. When she first wrote the book it was to justify a Goldwater candidacy, and she rewrote it somewhat later in 1964 to prepare Republicans for the vicious assault that she correctly predicted that Madison Avenue would launch against him, with establishment Republicans in the East joining with Democrats to defeat a man who threatened both big government and the rather stable balance of terror that was the Cold War.

The Betrayal of the American Right

This remarkable piece of history will change the way you look at American politics. It shows that the corruption of American "conservatism" began long before George W. Bush ballooned the budget and asserted dictatorial rights over the country and the world. The American Right long ago slid into the abyss. Betrayal of the American Right is the full story, and the author is none other than Murray N. Rothbard, who witnessed it all first hand. He tells his own story and reveals that machinations behind the subversion of an anti-state movement into one that cheers statism of the worst sort. The book was written in the mid-1970s and is only now published for the first time. Each time a prospective publisher promised to go ahead, the deal fell through. Even so, it has been privately circulated for the 30 years since it was written - and everyone lucky enough to own a copy of the manuscript knew he had a treasure. People who have read it swear that it is the best account ever how the old right was subverted to become a propaganda branch of the state, not just recently but fifty years ago. So Rothbard's account is not only a critical historical document; it also has explosive explanatory power.

Free PDF Version: The Betrayal of the American Right

Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

Throughout our history, the federal government has lied to send our children off to war, lied to take our money, lied to steal our property, lied to gain our trust, and lied to enhance its power over us. Not only does the government lie to us, we lie to ourselves. We won't admit that each time we let the government get away with misleading us, we are allowing it to increase in size and power and decrease our personal liberty.

In acquiescing to the government's continuous fraudulent behavior, we bear partial responsibility for the erosion of our individual liberties and the ever-expanding federal regulation of private behavior. This book attacks the culture in government that facilitates lying, and it challenges readers to recognize that culture, to confront it, and to be rid of it.

Witness

First published in 1952, Witness was at once a literary effort, a philosophical treatise, and a bestseller. Whittaker Chambers had just participated in America's trial of the century in which Chambers claimed that Alger Hiss, a full-standing member of the political establishment, was a spy for the Soviet Union. This poetic autobiography recounts the famous case, but also reveals much more. Chambers' worldview--e.g. &quote;man without mysticism is a monster&quote;--went on to help make political conservatism a national force.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History

Claiming that most textbooks and popular history books were written by biased left-wing writers and scholars, historian Thomas Woods offers this guide as an alternative to "the stale and predictable platitudes of mainstream texts." Covering the colonial era through the Clinton administration, Woods seeks to debunk some persistent myths about American history. For instance, he writes, the Puritans were not racists intent on stealing the Indians' lands, the Founding Fathers were not revolutionaries but conservatives in the true sense of the word, the American War Between the States (to even call it a civil war is inaccurate, Woods says) was not principally about slavery, Abraham Lincoln was no friend to the slaves, and FDR's New Deal policies actually made the Depression worse. He also covers a wide range of constitutional interpretations over the years, particularly regarding the First, Second, Ninth, and Tenth amendments, and continually makes the point that states' rights have been unlawfully trampled upon by the federal government since the early days of the republic.

The Left, The Right and The State

There are very few books in which you can open up any page and immediately find a quotable and inspiring passage that will make you think hard, laugh out loud, or see things a completely new way. This is certainly one of them.

He covers every topic related to economics and politics, from the business cycle, to trade, to the drug war, to environmentalism. His central thesis is that the threat to liberty comes from both the left and the right, and that neither really offers a consistent way out. The real problem is much deeper than either the right or the left recognizes. It is the institution of the state itself, which everyone seems to want to use to his own philosophical advantage.

The problem, he writes, is that not that we have chosen the wrong flavor of public policy but that we have public policy at all. All forms of policy decisions made by state institutions that affect the uses of private property according to political priorities amount to invasions of liberty. Relentlessly moving from left-wing to right-wing and back to left-wing policy is not progress; it means continued movement down the road to serfdom.

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

In this broadside against the received wisdom of America's elite liberal intelligentsia, noted conservative Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, offers some strenuous arguments as well as fuzzy generalizations. Thus, his attacks on the war on poverty, sex education and criminal justice policies forged in the 1960s counter some slippery rhetoric by their defenders, yet his suggestion that these policies exacerbated things is questionable. Sowell deconstructs how statistics can be distorted to prove assumptions (that lack of prenatal care is the cause of black infant mortality) and gleefully skewers "Teflon prophets" such as John Kenneth Galbraith (who said that big companies are immune from the market) and Paul Ehrlich (who said starvation loomed). While "the anointed" favor explanations that exempt individuals from personal responsibility and seek painless solutions, those with the "tragic vision" see policies as trade-offs. Sowell scores his targets for disdaining their opponents, but this book also invokes caricature-these days, many of "the anointed" are less unreconstructed than he assumes.

Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America

"All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" wedded the American soul to the concept that freedom comes from our humanity, not from the government. But American governments legally suspended the free will of blacks for 150 years, and then denied blacks equal protection of the law for another 150 years. How did this happen in America, how were the Constitution and laws of the land twisted so as to institutionalize racism, and how did it or will it end? In a refreshingly candid book, Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom In America, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano takes a no-holds-barred look at the role of the government in the denial of freedoms based on race.

"The best history of the law and race I've ever read. . . Judge Napolitano has written a challenge to anyone who thinks they understand the roots of America's tangled race relations." -- Juan Williams, National Public Radio

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