Why Is John Stossel Always So Cynical?

We Caught Up With Him To Find Out

 

 

 

 

 

 

” Wondering how libertarians view the world? The Daily Signal caught up with John Stossel, host of “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network, to hear how the political perspective applies to controversial issues such as Ebola, the economy and drug legalization.

“ Legalization is not about moral implication,” he said while speaking on the issue of drug legalization. “We argue that the drugs are bad … but the laws against them creating the black market are far worse.” “

 

Thanks to The Daily Signal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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About That Vaunted Swedish Healthcare System … Nevermind

‘Socialist’ Swedes Take To Private Health Insurance

 

 

 

” Sweden, a country famous for a welfare state that has actually been trimmed back substantially in recent years, is experiencing a phenomenon unlikely to bring cheer to those Americans who think the answer to Obamacare’s problems is more government involvement in medicine. Tired of long waits and inadequate care, Swedes increasingly purchase private health insurance policies to gain access to the care the state can’t provide.

  According to Sweden’s insurance trade industry organization, Svensk Försäkring:

  The number of private health care insurance policies has increased in recent years. In 2011 about 440,000 people had private health care insurance. Most of these people have their policy paid by their employer.”

 

Reason has more

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Obama : “Government Is Us”

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S REMARKS ON THE ECONOMY:

“GOVERNMENT IS US”

 

 

 

” Mr. Obama said, “we can’t tackle inequality if the economic pie is shrinking or stagnant.”  But as Heritage’s David Azerrad explains, “Free-market economics is not about dividing up a dwindling pie, but expanding the pie to serve everyone. Those who succeed do not do so at the expense of others.”

  Mr. Obama’s policies have resulted in $17 trillion in debt, up from $10.6 trillion when he took office in 2009.  He would be better off focusing on cutting back excessive government spending rather than redistributing wealth.”

 

 

    No Mr President , the government isn’t “Us” . The government is “Them” as in “Us versus Them” . We are no longer partners , the government long ago ceased being “Us” and took on a life of it’s own .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Morality Of Free Trade

Seven Moral Arguments For Free Trade

 

 

 

 

” Daniel Griswold argues that free trade is not only more efficient than protectionism but also more moral.”

 

 

” One: Free Trade Respects Individual Dignity and Sovereignty

  A man or woman engaged in honest work has a basic right to enjoy the fruits of his or her labor. It is a violation of my right to property for the government to forbid me to exchange what I produce for something produced by a fellow human being, whether the person I’m trading with lives across town or across the ocean.

  Protectionism is a form of stealing, a violation of the Eighth Commandment and other prohibitions against theft. It takes from one group of people, usually a broad cross section of consumers, and gives the spoils to a small group of producers whose only claim to the money is that they would be worse off under open competition.

  Free trade meets the most elementary test of justice, giving to each person sovereign control over that which is his own. As Frederic Bastiat wrote in his 1849 essay, “Protectionism and Communism”:

  Every citizen who has produced or acquired a product should have the option of applying it immediately to his own use or of transferring it to whoever on the face of the earth agrees to give him in exchange the object of his desires. To deprive him of this option when he has committed no act contrary to public order and good morals, and solely to satisfy the convenience of another citizen, is to legitimize an act of plunder and to violate the law of justice.”

 

 

    Read the whole thing . The essay dates from 2001 but that does nothing to diminish the validity of Mr Griswold’s argument . On the contrary , the intervening years of State growth and the corresponding inflation , depression and recession demonstrate more than words how the morality of the free market far surpasses that of the coercive State .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We Agree With John Stossel – “Privatize Everything”

PRIVATIZE EVERYTHING

 

 

 

 

” The market is fine for some things, people will say, but other activities are too important to be left to the market. Or too complicated. Or too fundamental to our democracy.

I say: Privatize everything.

To some of you, that will sound callous — but failure to privatize services, keeping them in government hands instead, is what impoverishes and kills people. Nothing compassionate about that.

Take organ donations.

Regulations forbid buying and selling organs, so the market cannot operate. Desperate patients must wait and hope someone gives out of sheer generosity, that someone dies at just the right time, and that hospital administrators bump their case to the top of the list.

Some things ought to be done by government: things like running courts, policing pollution, and protecting the border. But most everything else should be left to private actors.

Government offers guarantees on paper and promises in speeches. But government rarely delivers. Private companies did brilliant Internet work for President Obama’s election campaign. But when it came to his health insurance website, the president put government in charge. We saw the result.

Markets aren’t perfect, but they allow for a world where prudence is rewarded and sloth punished, a world in which more people take risks and innovate. That’s a world where people prosper.”

 

Read it all . It all boils down to accountability … With government there is none .

 

 

 

 

 

 

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John Stossel – 99% Economic Illiteracy

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45 ENEMIES OF FREEDOM

People Who Have Been Trying To Control Your Life Since Reason Was Founded In 1968

 

 

” In 2003, to celebrate 35 years of publishing a monthly magazine dedicated to Free Minds and Free Markets, reasonnamed “35 Heroes of Freedom”—innovators, economists, singers, anti-communists, pornographers, professional athletes, and even the occasional politician who contributed to making the world a freer place since 1968.

These weren’t necessarily the 35 best human beings to span the globe. Richard Nixon, for example, was selected for encouraging “cynicism about government” through his rampant abuses of power. And, well, let’s say Dennis Rodman hasn’t aged particularly well. But the list reflected the happy, unpredictable cacophony that has helped liberate the world one novel or deregulation or electric guitar at a time.

Our 45th anniversary has come along at a darker time. The post-9/11 lurch toward unchecked law enforcement power has now become a permanent feature of our bipartisan consensus, with a Democratic president now ordering assassinations of American teenagers and with millions of Americans unaware that the feds are combing through their telecommunications. Keynesians in Washington responded to the financial crisis of 2008 by ushering in a lost decade of government spending, sluggish growth, and the worst employment numbers since Jimmy Carter was president. And after an initially promising Arab Spring, whole swaths of the Middle East seem  poised for a long, sectarian, transnational war.

So it’s fitting that this time around we’re anointing reason’s 45 Enemies of Freedom. Again, these aren’t the worst human beings who bestrode the planet since 1968 (though Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden rank right down there). Some, like John McCain, are even genuine American heroes. What unites them is their active effort to control individuals rather than allow them free choice, to wield power recklessly rather than act on the recognition that the stuff inherently corrupts, and to popularize lies in a world that’s desperate for truth.

You’ll see some familiar names there (we can’t quit you, Tricky Dick!) and some others that deserve to be more notorious. But in our otherwise alphabetical list we’ll start with the man who nearly everyone on our staff nominated, a figure who embodies so much that is wrong with public policy and the political conversation in these United States.“

 

1. Michael Bloomberg

 

 

Click here to read the whole list

Click here to cast your own vote for the biggest enemies of freedom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Frederic Bastiat on the Seen and Unseen

Competition Is Good For Medical Care Consumers In Oklahoma

Free Market at Work: Okla. City Hospital Causes Bidding War by Posting Surgery Prices Online

” For most Americans, the cost of undergoing surgery can cost anywhere between $1 and $1,000+ dollars. The prices vary as all sorts of factors affect the final price.

That is, the price of surgery is a total mystery unless you go to the Surgery Center of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City. They post their prices online.

Founded nearly 15 years ago by Dr. Keith Smith and Dr. Steven Lantier, the clinic has thrived on its promise of “price transparency,” KFOR-TV reports.

“What we’ve discovered is health care really doesn’t cost that much,” said Smith. “What people are being charged for is another matter altogether.”

The company started posting its all-inclusive surgery prices online four years ago. ”

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What Libertarians Mean By “The Free Market”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published on May 20, 2013

” Markets are much more than multinational corporations, banking firms, and stock brokerages on Wall Street, though all of those things are the result of a market system.

Sound economies, from the biggest multinational banks to a child’s sidewalk lemonade stand, operate on the principles of private property and exchange. These concepts are the building blocks of free societies, and it is the system of countless small trades, taken as a whole, that we call “the market.”

It is important to note that these trades are positive sum (win-win) situations: each party agrees to a trade because they value what they’re getting more than what they’re giving up.

And when those trades are voluntary–when nothing is preventing people from making trades or forcing people to make trades–that results in a free market, which makes everyone healthier, wealthier, more peaceful, and more technologically advanced.

That’s what libertarians mean when they defend the free market.”

Produced by Evan Banks and Aaron Ross Powell.

 

 

 

 

 

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Demolishing A Media Meme – The Non-existent Parallels Between The Tea Party & Occupy

Occupy Wall Street And The Tea Party

 

” Some say there are important parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. I do not see them, only minor and inconsequential similarities highlighted much by those who have a proneness to anarchy.

Occupy attacks Free Market Capitalism, not just “corporations.” Corporations are for them the most visible sign of the evils of Market economics. Tea Party attacks cronyism, that is, corporations that align with power to get undue advantage. Big difference: one attacks corporations to dissect Capitalism and the other attacks corporations to bring about real Free Markets.

Occupy sees the solution for Corporatism in Statism. They want to give government even greater power to reign in corporations. They are blinded to the fact that the biggest corporation is Big Government, which has the power to confiscate and kill and the power to lure corporations that are willing to surrender to political pressure for advantage. In attacking unruly corporations they incentivize even more cronyism. In the end, their solution, of necessity, ends in totalitarianism. The more they attack corporations and empower government, the more Corporatism is empowered until they see no other choice than to offer all power to the State.

Tea Party sees the problem in Big Government first and in corporations in a subsidiary way. By limiting the power of government one limits the lure of power to attract corporations. If there is nothing for them in aligning with government they can only compete openly and win or fail. Or they can act illegally to get advantage but knowing that government is not there to protect them. When government is reign in to limit its purpose to protecting our liberty, government becomes a source of good and a true steward of our liberty.

As you can see, there is no comparison between Occupy and the Tea Party, no matter how many fake similarities some want to establish. “
Ismael Hernandez, Freedom & Virtue Institute,www.fvinstitute.org

 

 

 

 

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The Iron Lady Passes

Margaret Thatcher, The “Iron Lady” Of British Politics, Is Dead

 

 

 

” Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister and uncompromisingly conservative “Iron Lady” of the 1980s, has died. She was 87.

She died following a stroke.

“We’ve lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton,” Prime Minister David Cameron said.

Thatcher suffered a series of minor strokes in recent years. She rarely appeared in public after doctors forbade her from talking to large groups in 2002 for health reasons. But she continued to meet and dine privately with old friends in recent years who guarded details of her health and condition.

Thatcher was one of the most recognizable political figures of the second half of the 20th century. She was a political soulmate of conservative U.S. President Ronald Reagan, with whom she stood shoulder to shoulder against communism in the twilight decade of the Cold War.

Her free-market policies rolled back decades of state socialism in Britain and ushered in what her fellow “Thatcherite” conservatives say was an era of prosperity that endured until recently.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Why Do The Young Vote For Dependency—When The Essence Of Youth Is A Quest For Independence?

The University Utopia

 

 

 

” Just after November’s election, I posed three paradoxes of American politics, asking why certain demographic groups make up reliable voting blocs for the left, even though the pro-free-market ideas of the right have so much to offer them.

I have begun to revisit these paradoxes. In part one of this series, I laid out the case for why the pro-free-market right needs to reclaim these key demographic groups—young people, racial minorities, and city dwellers—and why I regard these as natural constituencies for the free market whose lockstep voting for the left is a paradox.

In this installment, I take up the first of the paradoxes: Why do the young vote for dependency—when the essence of youth is a quest for independence? My purpose for now is mostly just to solve the paradox, to explain the reason for the apparent contradiction, and to indicate what this implies for how the right should change its message and its sales tactics. When I am done looking at all three paradoxes, I will look in greater depth at an agenda of reform for the political strategy of the right.

First, let me explain why I do not include women among the main demographic groups the right needs to reach. Despite the left’s rhetoric on this issue, women are not a monolithic voting bloc. If you break down the numbers for last fall’s election, for example, Mitt Romney won the vote of white women by 56 to 42 percent. President Obama only won the women’s vote on the strength of his enormous advantage among racial minorities. The “marriage gap” was equally striking. Romney won 53% of the votes of married women, while Obama won 67% of the votes of unmarried women.”

Related articles

• Preparedness Community: Individualism vs. Collectivism (thedailysheeple.com)
• Words of Wisdom- and a Call for Change and Hope from America’s Youth! (legitimatelibertarian.wordpress.com)
• DEPRIEST: Don’t drone me, bro (washingtontimes.com)
• The Liberal Blind Spot (fff.org)

 

 

 

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Ignore The Tea Party At Your Peril

 

Americans Favor Tea Party Principles Over Progressive Ideas By 2-to-1 Margin

 

 

 

” In a recent survey done by NSON, a non-partisan polling agency, Americans identified with the Tea Party principles of limited government, free markets and personal responsibility by a margin of 2-to-1 over the progressive principles of big government, higher taxes, more spending, more regulations and more government programs.

In the poll, 47.8% of respondents identified with “Tea Party principles” while 20.6% of respondents identified with “progressive principles.” Another 22.8% responded “Neither/Other/Somewhere in the middle” and 8.8% responded “Don’t know.” The poll did not ask for respondents’ party affiliations, but it did identify their genders and geographic locations. The poll has a margin of error of 4.38%.”

 

 

 

 

 

Related articles

• The Tea Party Lives (freebeacon.com)
• Poll: 48 Percent Of Americans Support The Tea Party (paramuspost.com)
• Tea party still strong in Maine (bangordailynews.com)
• Tea party: come together (canadafreepress.com)
• Marco Rubio a hit with Tea Party voters, less so with independents (al.com)
• Poll: The Tea Party Lives (joemiller.us)

 

 

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CBS Cola Cronyism

CBS Bans SodaStream Ad -Where’s The Outrage?

 

” CBS banned SodaStream’s Super Bowl spot because, apparently, it was too much of a direct hit to two of its biggest sponsors, Coke and Pepsi.

Please pause and read that sentence again.

I am shocked that CBS would ban a spot for being too competitive. But I’m even more shocked that the advertising world isn’t up in arms about it.

The media’s job isn’t to judge.

SodaStream has a product that could be wildly disruptive to the soda industry, if successful. As in, the “automobile” to the soda industry’s “buggy whip.” If SodaStream takes off, Coke and Pepsi would have a lot to worry about, for sure. But isn’t that what progress is all about?

CBS is protecting its relationship with Coke and Pepsi. Those two brands spend big bucks on the Super Bowl and on the network, in general. I get it. But all CBS would have to do, if Coke and Pepsi put the pressure on, is say, “Hey, we’re just the unbiased middle man here. It’s not up to us what competitors of yours say about you.” There’s no need for the medium to have a say in the message.”

   Could this become another media backfire ? Will SodaStream end up with more publicity , free of charge , via the controversy than it otherwise would have if the ads had run as planned ? Stay tuned 

Related articles

• The Super Bowl Ad That Coke And Pepsi Desperately Don’t Want You To See (thinkprogress.org)
• SodaStream Calls an Audible (fool.com)
• SodaStream Wants to Be a Pop Star Next Week (fool.com)
• Pulled Super-Bowl Ad Creates Super Buzz for Soda Upstart (entrepreneur.com)
• SodaStream Super Bowl Ad Rejected for Picking on Big Soda Brands (mediabistro.com)
• The Super Bowl Spot Bogusky’s COMMON and SodaStream Had Banned (thedenveregotist.com)

Galt’s Gulch , Michigan ?

Going Galt in Detroit? $300,000 to Become a Citizen of a Proposed Free-Market Utopia

 

 

” If you had the opportunity to live in a free-market utopia — complete with its own currency and government — would you do it?

Well, you just may get your chance.

While the city of Detroit continues to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, one developer is proposing a radical and revolutionary idea to rekindle the American spirit and bring Detroit back into prosperity.

The driving force behind the plan, developer Rodney Lockwood, wants Detroit to sell the city’s Belle Isle Park for $1 billion to private investors who will then transform it into a utopia free of big government and ideally full of job creation and innovation. Belle Isle is an uninhabited 928-acre island in the Detroit River, between the U.S. and Canada.

Under the plan, the island would be developed into a U.S. commonwealth or city-state with around 35,000 people. Citizenship for the “remarkable new nation” would cost $300,000 in most cases. The community would also have its own laws, transportation, customs and currency.”

Related articles

• Detroit Real Estate Tycoon Wants To Turn Island Into A Utopia For Rich People (chicagoist.com)
• Should we or shouldn’t we ‘Go Galt’? (genomega1.wordpress.com)
• Pardon Me, Boy, Is This The Glennbeckistan Choo-Choo? (mfi-miami.com)
• Glenn Beck Plans $2 Billion Libertarian Commune (politicalwire.com)
• Independence Park to be Glenn Beck’s ‘Galt’s Gulch’ (secularnewsdaily.com)
• Rick Haglund: Could Belle Isle become Rodney Lockwood’s Fantasy Island? (mlive.com)
• Galtian paradise for idiots (dailykos.com)

Ancient Proverb – Take Your Advice From Success Stories , Not Failures

RAHM EMANUEL URGES MAJOR BANKS TO STOP SERVING GUN MAKERS UNLESS THEY SUPPORT ‘COMMON SENSE’ GUN CONTROL

 

 

 

   And people should listen to him because he and his preferred methods have done so much to improve the safety of Chicago and it’s residents … Not

” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is urging two of the biggest financial institutions in the country to stop supporting gun manufacturers unless the companies agree to “common sense reforms” on firearms. The issue of gun control aside, the request sounds a little like blackmail.

Emanuel reportedly sent letters to the CEOs of Bank of America and TD Bank urging them to stop lines of credit, financing for acquisitions and expansions and financial advising unless they get on board with gun control. Among other things, the former Obama advisor wants gun makers to support criminal background checks on all gun sales.”

   Once again the mayor of a major US city , a public employee mind you , takes it upon himself to try and dictate policy to private businesses . Remind us what on earth is American about public officials deliberately trying to stifle the very American businesses and citizens that pay their bloody salaries . 

 

  Related : We have already seen Bank of America’s attitudes toward legal American businesses and also their respect for our borders and laws .

  Perhaps we should take stock of Herr Emanuel’s ways and put them to use for the forces of good and the free market . Why don’t the stockholders of the banking business call on their institutions to stop facilitating the continual degradation of the value of America’s equity and investments by helping to fund the politicians that are foisting this historic pyramid scheme on us and giving the bill to our children ?

Related articles

• This is a hold up: Rahm Emanuel takes gun battle to banks (washingtontimes.com)
• Rahm Emanuel Cranks Up The Pressure For Banks To Stop Doing Business With Gun Manufacturers, Dealers (patdollard.com)
• Rahm Goes Fascist on Firearms (pjmedia.com)
• Rahm Emanuel to Banks: No More Credit for Gun Manufacturers (pjmedia.com)
• Rahm Emanuel to banks: Hey, how about you stop serving firearms manufacturers? (hotair.com)

State Approved Freedom

Obama Inaugural Disguises Collectivism As Liberty

 

 

 

” According to this president, “being true to our founding documents … does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way.” Liberty, we are to believe, is an eye-of-the-beholder proposition.

This is what we are to have in mind as we swallow the “ask not what your country” line of Obama’s address: “preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”

In other words, there is no real liberty without big government. Or perhaps we should turn to Orwell’s 1984 to break the code: “Freedom Is Slavery.”

Obama says he’s all for entrepreneurs, Grandma and her apple pie, but “a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.”

 

 

 

 

Illustration By Michael Ramirez

 

 

Related articles

• President Borg: Obama’s inauguration speech a call to ‘collective action’ (twitchy.com)
• Susan Stamper Brown: The president’s ever-changing definition of ‘liberty’ (appeal-democrat.com)
• Obama Disguises Collectivism As Liberty In His Inaugural Address (cornhusker4palin.newsvine.com)
• Second Inaugural Address: Obama Declares War on Liberty As We Know It (breitbart.com)
• Obama’s Declaration of Collectivism (nationalreview.com)
• PJTV: Hail to the Leftist: Obama’s Inaugural Speech the Worst In American History (ncrenegade.com)
• Obama Redefines ‘Liberty’ to Mean Government Compliance (conservativeread.com)
• Obama’s Target is Not Just Republicans, but the Constitution Itself (politicalcrazyness.tumblr.com)

We Pay For Our Own Destruction

Poll: Majority Of Young Americans Want Government To Do More

 

 

  ” Five-nine percent said the United States needs bigger government, while 37 percent responded that the government is doing too many things that should be left up to individuals and the private sector. Furthermore, 53 percent said the government needs to expand its role in health care.

“The rise in young people embracing paternalistic government comes as no shock,” said Gabriella Hoffman, a field coordinator for the Leadership Institute, in an interview with the Daily Caller. “Most have developed contempt for free enterprise and limited government from their college professors who inject anti-free market, socialist and even Marxist views into their lectures.”

Related articles

• Most Young Voters Actually Want Bigger Government (businessinsider.com)
• 45 percent of US Democrats favour socialism. Fortunately most Americans still believe in capitalism (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• Favorables: Socialism 24% Capitalism 68% (tarpon.wordpress.com)

We Could Use A Few Of These Geniuses Right About Now

13 Genius Quotes On Free Market Economics

 

” The free market economy has been taken for granted by the American people as the dynamic generator of the nation’s vast wealth. Our capitalistic economy is currently being “fundamentally transformed” into a central government-dominated system, threatening the vibrance that has made America the land of opportunity. The following ‘thirteen genius quotes’ display the moral underpinnings of the market economy and dispel some common misconceptions. “

 

 

 

Here is a Sample : Click the headline to read them all .

 

 ” “All other persons and groups in society (except for acknowledged and sporadic criminals such as thieves and bank robbers) obtain their income voluntarily: either by selling goods and services to the consuming public, or by voluntary gift (e.g., membership in a club or association, bequest, or inheritance). Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be forthcoming. That coercion is known as ‘taxation,’ although in less regularized epochs it was often known as ‘tribute.’ Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match.” — Murray Rothbard “

 

 

 

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Related articles

• Free Market Economy in energy vs Government Interference [Laurence Lowne] (ecademy.com)
• Taxation Is Theft (theburningplatform.com)
• “Businessmen like to style themselves as the defenders of the free market economy, but as Luigi…” (futureof.biz)
• Libertarian Party Platform (benjaminstudebaker.com)
• The First 30 Years of the Mises Institute, and the Future (thedailybell.com)
• Murray Rothbard on “Greed” and Price “Gouging” (economicpolicyjournal.com)
• Intellectual Hipsters: Libertarians (benjaminstudebaker.com)
• (D)ear Leade(R) by Chris Dates (zerogov.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Moral Paper Route

What Is Capitalism?

A Lecture By Ayn Rand

 

 

“An exposition of capitalism and of the crucial question its enemies evade.”

Related articles

• Obama Thinks Ayn Rand is For Teens (For Predictably Childish Reasons) (reason.com)
• Obama says Ayn Rand is for misunderstood teenagers (salon.com)
• Is Capitalism Heartless? (arc-tv.com)
• Ayn Rand still the most dangerous woman in America (opinion.financialpost.com)
• What a Shock — Obama Doesn’t Like Rand! (americanthinker.com)
• Will This Election Settle Republicans’ Ayn Rand Debate? – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)

A Cato Forum Invitation

Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government

 

BOOK FORUM
Monday, September 24, 2012
6:00 PM (Reception To Follow)

 

Featuring the authors Yaron Brook, Executive Director, Ayn Rand Institute; Don Watkins, Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute; moderated by David Boaz, Executive Vice President, Cato Institute.

Obama Considering EO to Implement Cybersecurity