Author: Gary North

Today, Tony Bennett will be publicly receive the Gershwin Prize in Popular Song. It is granted annually by the Library of Congress. He is 91 years old. The previous winners were Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Sir Paul McCartney, song writing team Burt Bacharach and the Hal David, Carole King, Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, and Smokey Robinson. Here is what is unique about Bennett: the previous winners got their breakthroughs in the mid-1960’s or the 1970’s. Bennett got his in 1951. He has never looked back. He is a pure singer. These stylists used to be called crooners. We still remember … Continue reading →

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A deputy sheriff pays a visit to a small business. He confronts the owner. DS: I see you got a “help wanted” sign in your window. Owner: That is correct. DS: How much is the starting wage? Owner: The federal minimum wage. DS: We got a local minimum wage of $15 an hour. Time to buy old US gold coins Owner: I cannot afford that much. DS: That don’t cut it with me, boy. The city government says you got to pay a living wage. Owner: I already do. All of my employees are alive. DS: You trying to make … Continue reading →

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Regarding the mass murder in the Texas church, President Trump was correct: it was a good thing that somebody had a gun. Somebody outside the church had a rifle. He knew how to use it. It will not cost $1 million for the local authorities to try and convict the murderer. There will be no life imprisonment without possibility of parole, and no overturning of that sentence by a parole board. The murderer was transferred to the Supreme Court. I am certain that he has been tried, convicted, and sentenced. There will be no appeal. There will be no parole. … Continue reading →

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Twice a week, I receive a spasm message from Congressman Gaetz. They are always boring. They refer to some obscure bill he voted for. No one cares except donors who want him to vote for or against this bill. The average voter has no interest. Why should he? The function of emails from a Congressman is not to provide information on his philosophy of government. It is not to report on the central issues he regards as the heart of his political life. The function of emails is this: to keep his name in front of voters in his district. This … Continue reading →

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This 26-minute film is a classic example of subtle anti-free market propaganda. The Department of Agriculture produced it. It cost $6,000, which today would be the equivalent of $110,000. That was dirt cheap. Roosevelt liked it so much that he created a federal propaganda film department in 1938. Time to buy old US gold coins In 1999, I published a brief account of the film and its background. It appeared in Chapter 33 of my book, Boundaries and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Leviticus. I did not include it in the 2012 typeset edition. I thought it was too obscure for an … Continue reading →

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Fats Domino died on October 25, 2017. He was 89. Fats was the pioneer of rock and roll. People who came of age after 1954 forget this. Actually, my generation never knew it. “The Fat Man” was released in December 1949. It eventually sold a million copies. But it did not sell to the likes of us in 1950. It was not called rock and roll in 1949. It was called race music. It did not get onto pop music radio. From the day I heard it in 1956 at age 14, when I worked in a West Coast record store, I … Continue reading →

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Remnant Review On October 25, 1917, the precursor to the Communist Party in Russia launched a 24-hour revolution against the revolutionary government of socialist Alexander Kerensky. This became known as the October Revolution in order to distinguish it from the revolution that had overthrown the Czar the previous February. In the October revolution, two people were killed while the revolutionaries were capturing the Winter Palace, where the Provisional Government met. By the evening of October 26, it was clear just how provisional the government had been. On August 21, 1991, eight leaders of the tattered remnants of the Communist Party … Continue reading →

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What I’m about to write here, I have believed for close to 40 years. I wrote about it decades ago in Remnant Review. I’m not going to look through all of the published issues to find when I wrote it. What good is gold in the vaults of any central bank? I understand why it’s a good idea to have bullion gold coins in your “vault.” I don’t understand why it’s a good idea for central bankers to put gold bullion bars in their vaults. Central banks buy gold from the general public. They also buy gold from each other. Why … Continue reading →

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Every ideologically driven citizen has one law that he would like to see enacted. The trouble is, there is no agreement about which law it should be. We all have our favorite hobby horse, our recommended silver bullet. I suggested two laws on Lew Rockwell’s site back in May 2000. It was the first article by me that he posted. Since then, he has posted about 1,700 more. The site no longer numbers them, so I am not sure how many. The article was titled, “Two Teensy-Weensy Legal Reforms.” Every American visitor to this website probably has a cabinet-level agency … Continue reading →

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Socialism was a specific philosophy of government ownership of the means of production. The democratic welfare state was never a variety of socialism. Marx, the most famous socialist, despised democracy. He despised all attempts at economic amelioration through legislation. He wanted a proletarian revolution. He preached — the correct verb — a religion of revolution. That was the thesis of my first book, Marx’s Religion of Revolution (1968). You can download it here. He was silent about how the state would allocate resources under his system. He published nothing about the actual operations of the post-revolutionary society, socialism, and its final successor, communism. … Continue reading →

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Because I was a revisionist historian at the age of 16, back in 1958, I am more aware of the development of revisionist history over the years than most people are. The fact that I received a Ph.D. in history designates me as probably the oldest living Ph.D.-holding historian who has always been a revisionist on America’s entry into World War I and World War II. Revisionist historians are dismissed as conspiracy historians. This is a popular designation. It was dreamed up in 1967 by the Central Intelligence Agency. That, at least, is a good revisionist account of the origins of the … Continue reading →

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The obvious question in the San Bernardino mass shootings in December 2015 was this: “Does the ballistics evidence at the murder scene show that the alleged shooters’ weapons were involved?” I asked this ten days after the shootings. The Washington Post reported this: Agents from the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations and the ATF headed to the scene of the shooting to aid local law enforcement, authorities said.The 10 special agents from the ATF included ballistics experts and explosive specialists as well as two explosive detection canines, said Meredith K. Davis, an ATF special agent. We are still waiting for the … Continue reading →

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The present federal tax code allows deductions for state income taxes. This is as it should be. Why? Because we should not have to pay taxes on what the locusts consume before we harvest the crop. This should be obvious. Let’s consider the doctrine of the tithe. A farmer should pay a tithe on that portion of the crop that he harvests, not counting the replacement seeds saved from the previous year. He pays on his net return. If he benefits from a harvest, he pays the tithe. What about that portion of the crop that is eaten by locusts … Continue reading →

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If Trump was ever sincere, his election has proven that one person simply cannot fight this corrupt system, this horrid swamp. Trump the reformer, the unlikeliest of knights in shining armor, is gone. The renegade billionaire striking fear into the heart of the establishment lasted a brief shining moment, like Camelot. — Donald Jeffries These are the concluding words of an article listing Donald Trump’s sellouts since January 20, 2017. There have been a lot of them. I think he is correct about his association of Trump with Camelot. Trump is a lot more like Camelot then Jeffries imagines. JFK AS … Continue reading →

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It is one of the biggest stories in the media today: for assistant basketball coaches have been accused of taking bribes. Here is a summary from CBS News: The picture of college basketball painted by the charges is not a pretty one,” Joon H. Kim, the acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a Tuesday afternoon press conference. “Coaches at some of the nation’s top programs taking cash bribes, managers and advisers circling blue-chip prospects like coyotes, and employees of a global sportswear company funneling cash to families of high school recruits. … For the … Continue reading →

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