I’m not a moral philosopher or a theologian. I was once a half-decent economic historian, but that’s another story. Anyhow, I’m going to offer you a few words of unsolicited moral advice along with some observations on the nature of the world in which you live. You may not need this advice, in which case I apologize for bothering you, but it’s clear that many people do need it.
Author: Robert Higgs
Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.
The Fearful Millions
A group of several thousand Central Americans continues to make its way slowly toward the USA. The people who compose this unarmed group consist in large part of women and children. As their difficult journey continues, many are giving up in exhaustion or losing hope and dropping out, long before they reach the U.S. border, where they hope to apply for admission as refugees.
Propping Up State Violence
Libertarian anarchy, which grew out of classical liberalism and pushed it to its logical conclusion in favor of the complete privatization of economic life and the phasing out of the state, continued for a long time to be as cosmopolitan as its antecedent doctrine. But in recent years some anarchists have been misled by twisted and fantastical constructs to suppose that so long as states persist, they ought to employ their powers to keep migrants out and preserve some sort of imagined national cultural purity.
Government Obstructions on Importation and Immigration Are Parallel Forms of Plunder
When the government imposes tariffs or import quotas, it harms a few foreigners — exporting producers and their workers mainly — but it harms far more people in the country with these trade obstructions, who suffer an absence of superior options or face higher prices for the imported types of goods on the domestic market owing to lessened competition.
Elections and Climate Change
Unlike climate change, this event and its consequences are not matters of speculation; the future that will follow the elections is, in its main outlines, as predictable as anything in human life can be.
Anarchy: The Science is Settled
In the latest issue of Nature, the world’s leading scientific journal, a team of paleontologists from seven top-rank universities has presented conclusive evidence from the fossil record that during the nearly 200 million years in which non-avian dinosaurs roamed the earth, anarchy was the prevailing political system.
An Indignity We Cannot Bear
I find the agenda and actions of the Democrats despicable. I find the agenda and actions of the Republicans despicable. What can a decent American do?
Tearing Families Apart
People think that one of the worst aspects of chattel slavery in the USA and its colonial antecedents was how the slave owners tore apart families, sometimes wrenching children from their parents’ arms and separating family members forever. What could be more horrible?
American Exceptionalism
When others do it, it’s terrorism; when Americans do it, it’s national defense. When others do it, it’s a war crime; when Americans do it, it’s collateral damage.
For Most Americans, U.S. Defense and Foreign Affairs Take Place in a Parallel Universe
They don’t have to smell the smoke and the decomposing bodies. They don’t have to hide in holes while their homes are demolished by bombs, rockets, and artillery. Because they have so little first-hand experience, they are vulnerable to being bamboozled by what their leaders tell them about what’s going on halfway around the world.