Tag Archives: Conservatism

Restoring America’s Assimilation Apparatus


5 Things Marx Wanted to Abolish (Besides Private Property)

One of the remarkable things about The Communist Manifesto is its honesty.

Karl Marx might not have been a very good guy, but he was refreshingly candid about the aims of Communism. This brazenness, one could argue, is baked into the Communist psyche.

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims,” Marx declared in his famous manifesto. “They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.”

Like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, readers are presented with a pure, undiluted vision of the author’s ideology (dark as it may be).

Marx’s manifesto is famous for summing up his theory of Communism with a single sentence: “Abolition of private property.” But this was hardly the only thing the philosopher believed must be abolished from bourgeois society in the proletariat’s march to utopia. In his manifesto, Marx highlighted five additional ideas and institutions for eradication.

1. The Family

Marx admits that destroying the family is a thorny topic, even for revolutionaries. “Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists,” he writes.

But he said opponents of this idea fail to understand a key fact about the family.


Best of all, abolishing the family would be relatively easy once bourgeois property was abolished. “The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”

2. Individuality

Marx believed individuality was antithetical to the egalitarianism he envisioned. Therefore, the “individual” must “be swept out of the way, and made impossible.”

Individuality was a social construction of a capitalist society and was deeply intertwined with capital itself.

“In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality,” he wrote. “And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.”

3. Eternal Truths

Marx did not appear to believe that any truth existed beyond class struggle.

“The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class,” he argued. “When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie.”

He recognized how radical this idea would sound to his readers, particularly since Communism does not seek to modify truth, but to overthrow it. But he argued these people were missing the larger picture.

“‘Undoubtedly,’ it will be said, ‘religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.



4. Nations

Communists, Marx said, are reproached for seeking to abolish countries. These people fail to understand the nature of the proletariat, he wrote.

“The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.”

Furthermore, largely because of capitalism, he saw hostilities between people of different backgrounds receding. As the proletariat grew in power, there soon would be no need for nations, he wrote.


5. The Past

Marx saw tradition as a tool of the bourgeoisie. Adherence to the past served as a mere distraction in proletariat’s quest for emancipation and supremacy.

“In bourgeois society,” Marx wrote, “the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past.”

Reprinted from Intellectual Takeout

Jon Miltimore

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is a senior editor at Intellectual Takeout.


The Willful Blindness of an IRS Sycophant

The Willful Blindness of an IRS Sycophant

Remember Sleepless in Seattle, the 1993 romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan?

Well, there should be a remake of that film entitled Clueless in Washington. But it wouldn’t be romantic and it wouldn’t be a comedy.

Though there would be a laughable aspect to this film, because it would be about an editorial writer at the Washington Post trying to convince people to feel sorry for the IRS. Here’s some of what Stephen Stromberg wrote on Wednesday.

Congress has done some dumb things. One of the dumbest is the GOP’s penny-wise-pound-foolish campaign to defund the Internal Revenue Service. …its mindless tantrum against the IRS has produced for taxpayers: a tax season that was “by far the worst in memory,” according to the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an agency watchdog.

Before I share any more of the article, I should point out that the “Taxpayer Advocate Service” isn’t a watchdog. It should be renamed the “Government Advocate Service” since its main goal is to increase the IRS’s budget.

But I’m digressing. Let’s continue with Mr. Stromberg’s love letter to tax collectors.

The underlying problem is that Congress has asked the IRS to do a lot more, such as administering a critical piece of Obamacare, but the GOP Congress won’t give the agency the funding it needs to do its work. …But good luck convincing Republicans to fix the IRS’s entirely predictable and avoidable problems. Not when that would mean restraining the impulse to act on anti-tax orthodoxy, blind populist anger and scandal-mongering about the IRS mistreating conservatives. In fact, Republicans want to double down on their nonsense budgeting, proposing deep cuts to the IRS last month.

Oops, time for another correction.

Stromberg is cherry picking data to imply that the IRS budget has been savaged.

If you look at the long-run data, however, you’ll see that the IRS now has almost twice as much money to run its operations as it did a few decades ago.

And that’s based on inflation-adjusted dollars, so we have a very fair apples-to-apples comparison.

Stromberg also wants us to sympathize with the bureaucrats because the tax code has been made more complex.

The underlying irrationality is the same: The IRS doesn’t write the tax code or health-care law, but the agency must apply these policies and engage with people affected by them, so it is an easy scapegoat.

Part of this passage is correct, and I’ve specifically pointed out that the tax code is mind-numbingly complex and that politicians deserve an overwhelming share of the blame for this sorry state of affairs.

That being said, the IRS goes beyond the law to make the system worse, as we saw when it imposed a regulation that put foreign tax law above American tax law. And when it arbitrarily rewrote the Obamacare legislation to enable additional subsidies.

In other words, it deserves to be scapegoated.

But there’s a bigger issue, one that Stromberg never even addresses. Why should we give more money to a bureaucracy that manages to find plenty of resources to do bad things?

Never forget, after all, that this is the bureaucracy that – in an odious display of bias – interfered with the electoral process by targeting the President’s opponents.

And then awarded bonuses to itself for this corrupt behavior!

Even more outrageous, the Washington Examiner reports today that the IRS still hasn’t cleaned up its act.

A series of new revelations Wednesday and Thursday put the Internal Revenue Service back under fire for its alleged efforts to curtail…conservative nonprofits. …the Government Accountability Office uncovered evidence that holes in the tax agency’s procedure for selecting nonprofit groups to be audited could allow bias to seep into the process. …lawmakers exposed the lack of safeguards that could prevent IRS officials from going after groups with which they disagreed. Meanwhile, the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch released documents Wednesday that suggested the IRS targeted the donors of certain tax-exempt organizations.

Does this sound like a bureaucracy that deserves more of our money?

If you’re still not sure how to answer, consider the fact that the IRS also somehow has enough money in its budget to engage in the disgusting “asset forfeiture” racket.

The Wall Street Journal recently opined on this scandal.

…a pair of new horror stories show why Americans dread any interaction with the vindictive tax man. Khalid Quran owns a small business in Greenville, North Carolina. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1997, opened a convenience store near a local airport, and worked long hours to give his four children more opportunity. After nearly two decades, Mr. Quran had saved $150,000 for retirement. Then in 2014 the IRS seized his bank account because he had made withdrawals that raised red flags under “structuring” laws that require banks to report transactions of more than $10,000. Mr. Quran had made transactions below that limit.

So even though Mr. Quran did nothing illegal and even though it’s legal to make deposits of less than $10,000, the IRS stole his money.

Just like money was stolen from the Dehko family.

Here’s the other example from the WSJ.

Maryland dairy farmer Randy Sowers…had $62,936.04 seized from his bank account because of the pattern of his deposits, though the money was all legally earned. …Mr. Sowers told his story to a local newspaper…a lawyer for Mr. Sowers asked…“why he is being treated differently.” Mr. Cassella replied that the other forfeiture target “did not give an interview to the press.” So much for equal treatment under the law.

Yes, you read correctly. If you have the temerity to expose the IRS’s reprehensible actions, the government will try to punish you more severely.

Even though the only wrongdoing that ever happened was the IRS’s confiscation of money in the first place!

So let’s celebrate the fact that the IRS is being subjected to some modest but long-overdue belt-tightening.

Notwithstanding Mr. Stromberg’s column, the IRS is not a praiseworthy organization. And many of the bureaucrats at the agency deserve our disdain.

The bottom line is that IRS budget cuts show that Republicans sometimes do the right thing.

And maybe if there are continued cuts and the current tax system actually does become unenforceable at some point, maybe politicians could be convinced to replace the corrupt internal revenue code with a simple and fair flat tax.

P.S. Clueless in Washington won’t be the only remake out of DC if President Obama decides to go Hollywood after 2016. Indeed, I suspect his acting career would be more successful than mine.

Reposted from International Liberty.

No one can give you what is already yours

This is the first of “How Big a Life Do You Want” articles.

No One Can Give You What is Already Yours.

Rights. A lot is said about rights. Not all everything called rights have anything to do with what essential rights are. If one were to get down to the root of the matter – rights are first and foremost unalienable, inherent, part and parcel of your very being. If at any moment the idea is accepted that rights are anything but unalienable, part of your very existence, then what you think you have is no longer a right but a decree, edict, endowment or some specific benefit bestowed by some higher authority, usually some form of government or ruler.

In the first case, your rights are the basis of law; in the latter, laws define your rights. Further, if rights are inherent, unalienable then no person, entity or governing body can be said to have jurisdiction over your rights. This is because the rights of every individual emanate from each and every individual’s very existence; this bundle of rights exist a priori, proceeding any law or government.

This is precisely what was meant by that portion of the Declaration of Independence which reads:


Frédéric Bastiat in “The Law” says it this way:





This cannot be understated: whether you believe in a God or not, if your rights begin and end with a governing entity, then you do not possess unalterable, unalienable, inherent rights. What you would have were little more than someone giving you at their discretion what they deem you should have. Their presumption is that they have the right and therefore the authority to decree as they see fit. How do they have such authority? Did you give it to them? By what right do they claim such power? Birth? Privilege? A superior intellect? Some high moral character that sets them apart and above the rest of humanity? Or is it mere political power?

Surely the ridiculousness of this notion can be see for what it is. If what you cling to as “rights” under this scenario can be dismissed at the whim and leisure of a ruling individual or group, then rights do not exist; only authority and political power. If rights are believed to be endowed by authority, and not inherent, unalienable, political structure doesn’t matter – it can be a true dictatorship, an oligarchy or a democracy (which is little more than soft tyranny of the majority).

Are you comfortable with the idea that what you believe you have as a right is nothing more than what another deems it to be? Or does it make more sense that rights are truly part and parcel of your being and the being of every individual? If these essential rights are inherently yours, then they are not and cannot be given to you.

No one can give you what is already yours: Life, Liberty, Property. Everything else grows out of this basic concept. Rights either are inherent and unalienable or law is based upon who rules at the time. The choice should be obvious.
Life, Liberty, Property – these are the essential rights each of us possess. You cannot have one without the other two. The existence of these carries with it your right to hold and enjoy these and to defend them, to keep them from being take from you.

This right of defense (to hold and enjoy one’s basic rights freely) is the foundation of all law. So, the purpose of Law is to protect the inherent and unalienable rights of every individual. Laws or legislation that violate anyone’s essential rights would then be contrary to the purpose of Law Theft and fraud are the taking of your property by force or coercion. Murder is the taking of another’s life. Slavery is the taking of one’s freedom and property. It is lawful to prevent theft, fraud, murder and slavery precisely because they take or attempt to destroy the essential rights of an individual or another group of individuals by another individual or group of individuals.

A characteristic of rights is that one’s possession and exercise of that right does not take from another. Your thinking, your speaking, your breathing, your own efforts do not directly cause the loss of the things in anyone else. Your Property, which begins initially with your own body, is not another person’s, nor does your mere existence, put an end to another individual’s having a body. Your right to maintain and improve your own existence does not preclude another person’s right to do so.

This may seem ridiculous to cover, but over the years so many assumptions have glossed over the basic concepts and observations of our own humanity and our relationships, they have to be mentioned. These are what make a truly free society possible,. Precisely because these are presumptive they are often overlooked and forgotten.

So what happens when the co-equal and inalienable rights of two individuals cross paths? Shall one merely use force to take what they want or need from the other? Or shall a mutually agreeable exchange be made to the basic satisfaction of both parties? Which of these choices would be the more civil and respectful? Which action represents freedom and tolerance?

I ask then, just how big a life do you want?

“The Law” by Frédéric Bastiat can be found in several places (it’s a mere 75 pages):





Senator Rand Paul’s Very Good Tax Plan Needs One Important Tweak

Senator Rand Paul’s Very Good Tax Plan Needs One Important Tweak

Our nation very much needs fundamental tax reform, so it’s welcome news that major public figures – including presidential candidates – are proposing to gut the internal revenue code and replace it with plans that collect revenue in less-destructive ways.

A few months ago, I wrote about a sweeping proposal by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

Today, let’s look at the plan that Senator Rand Paul has put forward in a Wall Street Journal column.

He has some great info on why the current tax system is a corrupt mess.

From 2001 until 2010, there were at least 4,430 changes to tax laws—an average of one “fix” a day—always promising more fairness, more simplicity or more growth stimulants. And every year the Internal Revenue Code grows absurdly more incomprehensible, as if it were designed as a jobs program for accountants, IRS agents and tax attorneys.

And he explains that punitive tax policy helps explain why our economy has been under-performing.

…redistribution policies have led to rising income inequality and negative income gains for families. …We are already at least $2 trillion behind where we should be with a normal recovery; the growth gap widens every month.

So what’s his proposal?

…repeal the entire IRS tax code—more than 70,000 pages—and replace it with a low, broad-based tax of 14.5% on individuals and businesses. I would eliminate nearly every special-interest loophole. The plan also eliminates the payroll tax on workers and several federal taxes outright, including gift and estate taxes, telephone taxes, and all duties and tariffs. I call this “The Fair and Flat Tax.” …establish a 14.5% flat-rate tax applied equally to all personal income, including wages, salaries, dividends, capital gains, rents and interest. All deductions except for a mortgage and charities would be eliminated. The first $50,000 of income for a family of four would not be taxed. For low-income working families, the plan would retain the earned-income tax credit.

Kudos to Senator Paul. This type of tax system would be far less destructive than the current system.

That being said, it’s not perfect. Here are three things I don’t like.

  1. The Social Security payroll tax already is a flat tax, so it’s unclear why it should be wrapped into reform of the income tax, particularly if that change complicates the possibility of shifting to a system of personal retirement accounts.
  2. There would still be some double taxation of dividends, capital gains, and interest, though the destructive impact of that policy would be mitigated because of the low 14.5 percent rate.
  3. The earned-income credit (a spending program embedded in the tax code) should be eliminated as part of a plan to shift all means-tested programs back to the states.

But it’s important not to make the perfect the enemy of the good, particularly since the debate in Washington so often is about bad ideas and worse ideas.

So the aforementioned three complaints don’t cause me much heartburn.

But there’s another part of the Paul plan that does give me gastro-intestinal discomfort. Here’s a final excerpt from his column.

I would also apply this uniform 14.5% business-activity tax on all companies…. This tax would be levied on revenues minus allowable expenses, such as the purchase of parts, computers and office equipment. All capital purchases would be immediately expensed, ending complicated depreciation schedules.

You may be wondering why this passage is worrisome. After all, it’s great news that the very high corporate tax rate is being replaced by a low-rate system. Replacing depreciation with expensing also is a huge step in the right direction.

So what’s not to like?

The answer is that Senator Paul’s “business-activity tax” doesn’t allow a deduction for wages and salaries. This means, for all intents and purposes, that he is turning the corporate income tax into a value-added tax (VAT).

In theory, this is a good step. After all, the VAT is a consumption-based tax which does far less damage to the economy, on a per-dollar-collected basis, than the corporate income tax.

But theoretical appeal isn’t the same as real-world impact.

Simply stated, the VAT is a money machine for big government.

All of which helps to explain why it would be a big mistake to give politicians this new source of revenue.

Indeed, this is why I was critical of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan four years ago.

It’s why I’ve been leery of Congressman Paul Ryan’s otherwise very admirable Roadmap plan.

And it’s one of the reasons why I feared Mitt Romney’s policies would have facilitated a larger burden of government.

These politicians may have had their hearts in the right place and wanted to use the VAT to finance pro-growth tax reforms. But I can’t stop worrying about what happens when politicians with bad motives get control.

Particularly when there are safer ways of achieving the same objectives.

Here’s some of what I wrote last year on this exact topic.

…the corporate income tax is a self-inflicted wound to American prosperity, but allow me to point out that incremental reform is a far simpler – and far safer – way of dealing with the biggest warts plaguing the current system.

Lower the corporate tax rate.

Replace depreciation with expensing.

Replace worldwide taxation with territorial taxation.

So here’s the bottom line. If there’s enough support in Congress to get rid of the corporate income tax and impose a VAT, that means there’s also enough support to implement these incremental reforms.

There’s a risk, to be sure, that future politicians will undo these reforms. But the adverse consequences of that outcome are far lower than the catastrophic consequences of future politicians using a VAT to turn America into France.

To wrap things up, there’s no doubt that Senator Paul has a very good proposal. And I know his heart is in the right place.

But watch this video to understand why his proposal has a very big wart that needs to be excised.



For what it’s worth, I’m mystified why pro-growth policy makers don’t simply latch onto an unadulterated flat tax.

That plan has all the good features needed for tax reform without any of the dangers associated with a VAT.

P.S. You can enjoy some good VAT cartoons by clicking here, here, and here.

Reposted from International Liberty.

Why it Matters that the United States Is (Supposed to Be) a Republic, not a Democracy


If you want to go to a Presbyterian church instead of a Baptist church, should the government be able to interfere with that choice? Even if, for some bizarre reason, 95 percent of the population doesn’t like Presbyterians?

If you want to march up and down the sidewalk in front of City Hall with a sign that says the Mayor is an idiot, should the government be able to throw you in jail? Even if 95 percent of the population somehow has decided the Mayor is a genius?

Most Americans instinctively understand that the answer to all these question is no. Not just no, a big emphatic NO!

That’s because certain rights are guaranteed by our Constitution, regardless of whether an overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens feel otherwise.

And that’s what makes us a republic rather than a democracy.

But the bad news is that many of our rights in the Constitution no longer are protected.

For instance, Article I, Section 8, specifically enumerates (what are supposed to be) the very limited powers of Congress.

Our Founding Fathers thought it was okay for Congress to have the power to create courts, to coin money, to fund an army, and to have the authority to do a few other things.

But here are some things that are not on that list of enumerated powers (and certainly not included in the list of presidential powers either):

And the list could go on for several pages. The point is that the entire modern Washington-based welfare state, with all its redistribution and so-called social insurance, is inconsistent with the limited-government republic created by America’s Founders.

These programs exist today because the Supreme Court put ideology above the Constitution during the New Deal and, at least in the economic sphere, turned the nation from a constitutional republic into a democracy based on unconstrained majoritarianism.

Here’s some of Walter Williams wrote on the topic.

Like the founders of our nation, I find democracy and majority rule a contemptible form of government. …James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said that in a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” …John Adams said, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” …The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation — the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. …the Constitution’s First Amendment doesn’t say Congress shall grant us freedom of speech, the press and religion. It says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” …In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. …Laws do not represent reason. They represent force. The restraint is upon the individual instead of government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government. …ask yourself how many decisions in your life would you like to be made democratically. How about what car you drive, where you live, whom you marry, whether you have turkey or ham for Thanksgiving dinner?

And click here for a video that explains in greater detail why majoritarianism is a bad idea.

But perhaps these cartoons will make it even easier to understand why 51 percent of the population shouldn’t be allowed to rape and pillage 49 percent of the population.

We’ll start with this depiction of modern elections, which was featured on a friend’s Facebook page.

And here’s one that I’ve shared before.

It highlights the dangers of majoritarianism, particularly if you happen to be a minority.

P.S. George Will has explained that the Supreme Court’s job is to protect Americans from democracy.

P.P.S. Here’s more analysis of the issue from Walter Williams.

P.P.P.S. Some leftists are totally oblivious about America’s system of government.

P.P.P.P.S. Though Republicans also don’t really understand what the Constitution requires.

P.P.P.P.P.S. Looking at the mess in the Middle East, I’ve argued we would be in much better shape if we promoted liberty instead of democracy.

Reposted from International Liberty.

Does “Freedom” Mean an Entitlement to Other People’s Money?

Does “Freedom” Mean an Entitlement to Other People’s Money?

Maybe the warm weather is affecting my judgement, but I’m finding myself in the odd position of admiring some folks on the left for their honesty.

A few days ago, for instance, I (sort of) applauded Matthew Yglesias for openly admitting that punitive tax rates would put us on the downward-sloping portion of the Laffer Curve.

He still favors such a policy, which is very bizarre, but at least his approach is much more honest than other statists who want us to believe that very high tax rates generate more revenue.

Today, I’m going to indirectly give kudos to another leftist.

Writing for the Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel openly argues that the meaning of freedom should be changed. Here’s some of her argument, and we’ll start with her reasonably fair description of how freedom currently is interpreted.

For conservatives, freedom is centered in markets, free from government interference. …Government is the threat; the best thing it can do is to get out of the way. …freedom entails privatization, deregulation, limiting government’s reach and capacity.

Needless to say, I agree with this definition. After all, isn’t freedom just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual?

Heck, this is why I’m a libertarian. Sure, I like the fact that liberty produces more prosperity, but my main goal it to eliminate needless government coercion.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to her column. She complains that folks on the left have acquiesced to this traditional conception of freedom.

Democrats chose to tack to these conservative winds. Bill Clinton’s New Democrats echoed the themes rather than challenge them. “The era of big government is over,” he told Americans, while celebrating “ending welfare as we know it,” deregulation of Wall Street… Obama chose consciously not to challenge the conservative limits on what freedom means.

Then she gets to her main argument. She wants Hillary Clinton to lead an effort to redefine the meaning of freedom.

This is Hillary Clinton’s historic opportunity. …She would do a great service for the country — and for her own political prospects — by offering a far more expansive American view of what freedom requires, and what threatens it. …expanding freedom from want by lifting the floor under workers, insuring every child a healthy start, providing free public education from pre-k to college, rebuilding the United States and putting people to work… Will she favor fair taxes on the rich and corporations to rebuild the United States and put people to work? Will she make the case for vital public investments — in new energy, in infrastructure, in education and training — that have been starved for too long? Will she call for breaking up banks…? Will she favor expanding social security…? …to offer Americans a bolder conception of freedom…and set up the debate that America must decide.

Needless to say, I strongly disagree with such policies. How can “freedom” be based on having entitlements to other people’s money?!?

Heck, it’s almost like slavery since it presupposes that a “right” to live off the labor of others. But that’s not technically true since presumably there wouldn’t be any requirement to work. So what would really happen in such a society is that people would conclude it’s better to ride in the wagon of government dependency, as illustrated by these cartoons.

Which means, sooner or later, a Greek-style collapse because a shrinking population of producers can’t keep pace with an ever-expanding population of moochers and looters.

Nonetheless, I give Ms. vanden Heuvel credit for acknowledging that her preferred policies are contrary to the traditional definition of freedom.

To be sure, I’d admire her even more if she simply admitted that she favors government coercion over freedom. That would be true honesty, but I can understand that folks on the left would prefer to change the meaning of words rather than admit what their agenda really implies.

P.S. Some of you may recognize that the issues discussed above are basically a rehash of the debate between advocates of “negative liberty” and supporters of “positive liberty.” The former is focused on protecting people from the predations of government while the latter is about somehow guaranteeing goodies from the government.

P.P.S. As mentioned in Ms. vanden Heuvel’s column, today’s effort to redefine freedom is similar to the so-called economic bill of rights peddled in the 1940s by FDR.

Reposted from International Liberty.