Author: Robert Higgs

As a child in government schools, I must have recited the pledge of allegiance thousands of times. And not once did it occur to me that the “one nation . . . indivisible” part of it is simply an embrace of the Lincolnian heresy, a preemptive attack on the potential for any kind of organized withdrawal whatsoever. At this point in history, can we not see what a terrifying affirmation this doctrine really is? No matter how oppressed people may be, their secession from the overbearing super-state is obstructed by invisible ideological walls. Thus the words of the Declaration of … Continue reading →

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The past year’s political events, especially the campaign for the presidency as it converged on a contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have illuminated the way in which ideology, with the identity politics that springs from it, drives a dialectical process: political domination creates resentment, which feeds reaction and, on occasion, revolution against a previously entrenched ruling class and its belief system. The various interest groups and institutions linked with the espousal of political correctness—in short, Hillary’s base—had become more and more pervasive and intrusive for fifty years or so. No doubt the members of this ideological bloc took … Continue reading →

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As elderly people get older they tend toward feeble-mindedness. Not in every case, of course, but as a general rule applicable to any given cohort. I am acutely aware of this tendency whenever I express an opinion or explain a conclusion: I may simply be losing my grip. Moreover, older people tend to become stuck in their ways. So they may often fail to see how the world is changing, not to mention why it is changing as it is. With the foregoing declarations as my preface, you may wish to disregard what I now have to say, which is—if … Continue reading →

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Ask a typical American how the United States got into World War II, and he will almost certainly tell you that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Americans fought back. Ask him why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he will probably need some time to gather his thoughts. He might say that the Japanese were aggressive militarists who wanted to take over the world, or at least the Asia-Pacific part of it. Ask him what the United States did to provoke the Japanese, and he will probably say that the Americans did nothing: we were just minding our … Continue reading →

The devil is agile and quick on his feet He fought at Gettyburg From beginning to end And never got a single scratch . At Verdun and the Somme back in ‘16 He displayed his great flair For adding large numbers Of young souls wickedly squandered . Dulce et decorum est, he shrieked, As the Brits and the Yanks Stoked the fires of hell at Hamburg In Operation Gomorrah . A master linguist, he spoke fluently in Vietnamese, French, and English Amid fetid fields and burnt villages Fouled by napalm and rotting flesh . He never tires and needs no … Continue reading →

The current issue of the Cato Policy Report (January/February 2015) contains a short article about a book by Zhang Weiying called The Logic of the Market: An Insider’s View of Chinese Economic Reform, which was originally published in Chinese (and said to be a best-seller in China in that form) and was recently translated into English. The author is the director of Peking University’s Center for Market and Network Economy and is described as a leader among pro-market economists in China, a description that accords well with the quotations given from his writings. In the article, a quotation from a recent Wall Street … Continue reading →

For as long as political and ideological movements have sought to engage large followings, they have embraced slogans and catch phrases that give pithy expression to their views, aversions, and objectives. Slogans are dangerous in that they substitute rote declarations for serious thought, yet they may sometimes serve a purpose even for thoughtful people as rhetorical hammers with which one hits potential listeners in the head to get their attention. In any event, it seems that slogans and politicking are inseparable under both democratic and revolutionary conditions. So, one must pick and choose. The following are two short lists of … Continue reading →

Ordinary people, and sometimes experts as well, tend to overreact to short-term economic changes. The current economic malaise in the United States and Europe has brought forth a bevy of commentators convinced that this time the economy has taken a permanent turn for the worse. Never again, they declare, will we enjoy growing prosperity as we did in days of yore. Some of these Chicken Littles do see a possible means of escape from the impending doom, but only if the government carries out an extraordinarily bold economic rescue program, flush with such Keynesian measures as unprecedented monetary “quantitative easing” … Continue reading →