Congress Ignores Real Debt Ceiling Drama
2023-05-02
Last week the House passed legislation increasing the debt ceiling. The bill was supported by all but four Republicans. For some Republicans, this was the first time they had ever voted for a debt ceiling increase. Perhaps the reason they did so this time was because the legislation also promised to reduce federal spending by $4.5 trillion over the next decade. Most of those spending reductions are achieved by rolling back Fiscal Year spending to 2022 levels and then limiting increases in spending to one percent for the next ten years. The bill also returns unspent COVID relief money to the US Treasury and eliminates President Biden’s student loan forgiveness programs.
Perhaps the most significant part of the bill is the REINS Act. This legislation requires congressional approval of any
The Environmentalist Revolt against Humanity.
2023-04-28
The Revolt against Humanity: Imagining a Future without Usby Adam KirschColumbia Global Reports, 2023; 100 pp.
Aristotle says in book 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics that “happiness, therefore, being found to be something final and self-sufficient, is the End at which all actions aim.” The Greek word eudaimonia, “happiness” in this edition, is often translated as “flourishing.”
Isn’t it obviously true that you want your life to flourish? Of course, all sorts of bad things can happen to you, but they aren’t what you aim for. Some people think there is more to morality than happiness, or define “morality” so that it includes only duties to others, but even those who do this usually acknowledge that seeking your own happiness is important.
In his new book, Adam Kirsch, a poet and literary critic
Rothbard War Right: Wars Don’t Enhance Freedom. They Destroy Liberty.
2023-04-27
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Western leaders have declared that Ukraine was defending not only its own freedom, but ours too. President Joe Biden, to whom apparently “freedom is priceless,” vowed to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”
In turn, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that the American support for Ukraine is not charity but an “investment in global security”. Other commentators also argue that a Ukrainian victory would strengthen global freedom by deterring other aggressions from autocratic powers like China. Yet, these positions are at odds with the clear antiwar stance of Murray N. Rothbard, one of the most prominent American libertarians of the twentieth century.
Rothbard made a clear distinction between the interests of governments as opposed to those