“Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.” Cicero

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The Herd Mind by Dan Sanchez Randolph Bourne famously wrote, “War is the health of the State.” This has long been the byword for anti-war, anti-state libertarians, and rightly so. But Bourne did not mean exactly what most libertarians take this phrase to mean. To understand the maxim’s original meaning, as Bourne used it in his great unfinished essay “The State,” one must understand his distinctions among three concepts that are often conflated: Country, State, and Government. THE STATE IS A STATE OF MIND; IT IS THE HERD MINDSET ITSELF How Progressives Cling to the Past by Logan Albright The political Left, particularly in its extreme forms, has always been skillful in the use of language to further its ends. Recognizing that perception matters more than reality, exponents of socialism and communism use words in a particularly Orwellian way, imparting meanings to words directly opposite to what their etymologies would lead us to suspect. PROGRESSIVISM CLAIMS TO BE FORWARD-LOOKING, BUT IT IS ACTUALLY ROOTED IN THE DISTANT PAST 2017 Was a Year of Amazing Advances for Humanity by Marian L. Tupy The end of 2017 is barely a week away. So now is the perfect time to reflect on the positive difference humanity has made to the world over the past 12 months. How have we advanced as a species? The world has made incredible progress in the last year!  A POTENTIAL CURE FOR CANCER COULD BE READY AS EARLY AS NEXT YEAR The Christmas Truce of World War I by William N. Grigg By Christmas Eve, the German side of the Front was radiant with glowing Tannenbeume – small Christmas trees set up, sometimes under fire, by troops determined to commemorate the holy day. "For most British soldiers, the German insistence on celebrating Christmas was a shock after the propaganda about Teutonic bestiality, while the Germans had long dismissed the British as well as the French as soulless and materialistic and incapable of appreciating the festival in the proper spirit."   FOR A TRAGICALLY SHORT TIME, THE SPIRIT OF THE PRINCE OF PEACE DROWNED OUT THE MURDEROUS DEMANDS OF THE STATE America’s Great Depression and Austrian Business Cycle Theory by Richard M. Ebeling When Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression first appeared in print in 1963, the economics profession was still completely dominated by the Keynesian Revolution that began in the 1930s. Rothbard, instead, employed the “Austrian” approach to money and the business cycle to explain the causes for the Great Depression, and to analyze the misguided and counterproductive policies that followed in the early 1930s, which, in fact, only intensified and prolonged the economic downturn. THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS A GREAT ENGINE OF HUMAN PROSPERITY No, Tax Cuts Don't Kill People by Brad Polumbo When the Senate passed their tax reform bill earlier this month, Republicans were excited that the new law would cut taxes. Liberals thought it would kill people. Larry Summers, a top economist in the Obama administration, claimed that 10,000 people a year will die if this bill is signed into law, and many others have made similarly apocalyptic predictions. But regardless of your stance on tax reform, the idea that a moderate reduction in taxes will kill people isn’t just wrong – it’s absurd. NO ONE’S GOING TO DIE JUST BECAUSE THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE GETS REPEALED True Justice Is Restitution, Not Punishment by Randall G. Holcombe The ruling class benefits from “law and order,” and receives no benefit from justice. The ruling class wants citizens to believe that they will suffer if they violate the rules, but has nothing to gain if people believe that they will receive restitution if their rights are violated.   A LEGAL SYSTEM DESIGNED TO PROTECT INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS WILL REST HEAVILY ON RESTITUTION FOR VICTIMS San Francisco Outlaws Santa’s Little Robots by Charles Hughes The city had previously served as a hub of delivery robot testing and pilot programs, but now the operations and scope of delivery robots will be severely curtailed, and Santa’s little delivery helpers will not be around for the holidays. IMAGINE THE LOST OPPORTUNITIES IF YEARS AGO REGULATORS HAD INSISTED THAT ROADS WERE FOR HORSES, NOT CARS Justice and Liberty Have No Better Spokesman than Cicero by Gary M. Galles Cicero was an important influence on the American Revolution. His ideas on justice, law, and liberty inform our founding documents. Though he wrote two millennia ago, his understanding was thoroughly modern: “Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.” CICERO MERITS RENEWED ATTENTION You Bought Bitcoin. Now What? by David Veksler Understanding how Bitcoin ownership works requires understanding what it means to “own” a single Bitcoin address. At a practical level, Bitcoin ownership means the ability to send some amount of Bitcoin from one address to another or to cryptographically prove that one has that ability by “signing” a Bitcoin address. At a technical level, ownership means the possession of the private key which is used to sign a Bitcoin transaction. THERE IS AN ECOSYSTEM OF SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE SOLUTIONS TO STORE BITCOIN SAFELY, BOTH FOR INDIVIDUALS AND INSTITUTIONS