Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2335

Have Your Cake But Don’t Eat It

NEW YORK—If you’re having a gay wedding, and your cake has been baked by a man who thinks gay marriage is an abomination against God, do not eat the cake.

I’m surprised I have to tell you this.

People like myself are in no danger at all because we learned years ago to never eat the wedding cake.

Quick digression for all men who hate weddings as much as I do: Volunteer to park the cars. It’s less boring than the reception, it makes you late for everything (“Sorry, I was parking the latecomers”...

Messianic Communism

[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith.]

Communist Zealots: the Anabaptists

Sometimes Martin Luther must have felt that he had loosed the whirlwind, even opened the gates of Hell. Shortly after Luther launched the Reformation, various Anabaptist sects appeared and spread throughout Germany. The Anabaptists believed in predestination of the elect, but they also believed, in contrast to Luther, that...

Uncle Evil

Gun stores have a difficult job. While it sounds like a heck of an awesome way to make a living, surrounded by firearms, but that’s before you take into account the reams of paperwork required by the federal government just to be legal. One screw up can have some nasty ramifications on your livelihood and possibly your freedom.

To make matters worse, however, is that the same federal government can screw your business over just by not doing anything.

This past weekend was supposed to be one o...

Surprise! Greenland Ice Sheet Melting

From the American Geophysical Union and the “but we’ll still find a way to blame CO2, just you wait” department. It seems this is a frustrating day for climate-ice researchers, earlier, it was found that ice cores used to determine ancient CO2 levels are likely contaminated by microbes, and they altered the gas mixture balance.

Algae growth reduces reflectivity, enhances Greenland ice sheet melting

WASHINGTON D.C. — New research shows algae growing on the Greenland ice sheet, the Earth’s seco...

The GOP Tax Plan

Last night the Senate passed the Republican proposed tax plan, which is expected to be signed later today.

At the Mises Wire, we have featured numerous articles pointing out many of the fallacies involved with the general debate on the issue of “tax reform.” For example, the absurdity of “revenue neutral” reform, the danger of raising rates through eliminating loop hopes, the fallacy of trying to address the deficit through eliminating deductions on state and local taxes, and the general noti...

In a Toxic Age

“I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.” ―  Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Christmas

I keep waiting to encounter the “kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant” Christmastime environment that Charles Dickens describes in A Christmas Carol: “when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grav...

Negative Liberty

Luther and His Progeny: 500 Years of Protestantism and Its Consequences for Church, State, and Society, edited by John C. Rao.

What I would like to demonstrate in this study is the unnatural “nature” of what has been labeled “negative liberty.”

So writes Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro-Carámbula (to save myself much trouble, from here on I will refer to him as IBC).  In this post, I will not examine the background of why the author lays blame on the Reformation for the war on nature brought on by th...

Hillary’s Favorable Rating at New Low

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hillary Clinton’s image has declined since June and is now the worst Gallup has measured for her to date. Her favorable rating has fallen five percentage points since June to a new low of 36%, while her unfavorable rating has hit a new high of 61%.

Clinton’s prior low favorable rating was 38% in late August/early September 2016 during the presidential campaign. She also registered a 38% favorable rating (with a 40% unfavorable rating) in April 1992, when she was much less...

An Imperfect President

He’s boastful.  He’s brash.  I get the idea he is his own hero.  He Twitters in knee-jerk fashion when unfairly criticized in social media (two can play that game he says).  I can’t imagine the next President firing back at critics via Twitter, or any succeeding President.  But Mr. Trump is Mr. Trump.  Americans may end up thanking him for saving what is left of a democracy.  And Americans get to view the Executive Branch as a fully transparent branch of government on Twitter.  Can you imagin...

The Coming Fiscal Derailment

Since last November 8th the Russell 2000 has risen by 30% and the net Federal debt has expanded by an astounding $1.0 trillion dollars.

In a rational world operating with honest financial markets those two results would not be found in even remotely the same zip code; and especially not in month #102 of a tired economic expansion and at the inception of an epochal pivot by the Fed to QT (quantitative tightening) on a scale never before imagined.

And we do mean exactly those words. By next Apr...