Craig Cantoni | The Libertarian Institute

Is Capitalism Incompatible with Libertarianism?

by Craig Cantoni | Feb 27, 2018 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

Steel magnate Hank Rearden is one of the main fictional characters in Atlas Shrugged. A self-made man, he risked his savings and worked exceedingly hard to build a steel company that provided employment to scores of workers and that developed a new, stronger steel that would revolutionize the railroad industry. His character represents the social and economic benefits of industrial capitalism. Rearden is eventually driven to walk away from his business and from society by a petty, arrogant academic/bureaucrat, who had never created one job and who embodied the envy at the root of socialism....

Upside-Down America: Manafort, Hillary, Miller and Parkland

by Craig Cantoni | Feb 24, 2018 | Blog

When I was a kid, my Italian-American mom, who was a superb cook, made pineapple upside-down cake, which was an all-American desert. Now I’m retired and living in a nation that has upside-down priorities and ethics. Two recent examples are particularly telling—and sickening. The first is former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort being indicted for secretly paying a small number of former European politicians to lobby on behalf of Ukraine. At the same time, there are about 11,000 registered lobbyists in upside-down Washington who are paid by various interest groups to lobby on their behalf....

The Feds Misplace $21 Trillion and a School Shooter

by Craig Cantoni | Feb 19, 2018 | Blog

Americans are rightly chagrined that the FBI had known that Florida mass killer Nikolas Cruz was a threat but didn’t follow up on the information. But Americans shouldn’t be surprised. In addition to misplacing a potential shooter, the feds have misplaced $21 trillion. If they can misplace $21 trillion, they can certainly misplace one bad guy. A February 13 story in City Journal details how the $21 trillion was misplaced. It seems that when federal agencies can’t balance their books, they just plug in a number to make them balance....

A School Shooting: Pull Out the Old Scripts

by Craig Cantoni | Feb 15, 2018 | Blog

Last night I went to bed after watching a couple of hours of coverage on various networks about the horrific school massacre in Florida. This morning I got up at 4:45 and began watching more coverage. When retiring last night, I mentioned to my wife that it was curious that no mention had been made in the news about the killer’s family situation, and, specifically, whether he grew up with his dad in the house or was he from a broken or blended family without his natural father. I also wondered if he had been on a psychotropic drug. This morning the news said that the shooter’s “adoptive”...

Time for a New Works Progress Administration

by Craig Cantoni | Feb 14, 2018 | Blog

My fellow libertarians will become hysterical with this commentary and send me to the intellectual gulag. Conservatives and liberals will join hands with them. Why? Because they won’t like my alternative to Trump’s plan to rebuild America’s infrastructure. Instead of throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at crooked states, at politically-connected construction companies, and at unionized labor, as Trump’s plan will do, my alternative is to resurrect the 1930s-era Works Progress Administration. A new WPA could be a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and other illegal immigrants, could...

A Surreal Scene from American Healthcare

by Craig Cantoni | Feb 6, 2018 | Blog

Scene: A luncheon on Superbowl weekend at a resort in the foothills of the Catalina Mountains in metro Tucson, Ariz. In attendance were about 200 patients of a local family physician, who hosted the luncheon to show his appreciation to his patients. I’m not hallucinating. This actually happened. The doctor indeed thanked his patients with a luncheon. I know, because my wife and I were there. The physician was trim, fit, personable, gracious, and funny. A transplanted Canadian, he joked that the reason he had become a doctor was that he wasn’t good enough at hockey to play the sport...

Reason Lets Me Down

by Craig Cantoni | Feb 4, 2018 | Blog

Thanks to evolutionary psychology and biology, I’m like most hominoids: a big bundle of emotions, chemical reactions, automatic motor functions, instincts, illogic, and irrationality; plus a much smaller amount of reason and rationality, but at least a larger amount than the combined reason and rationality of Sean Hannity and Joy Behar. Given my evolutionary make-up, my natural inclination is to react instead of think, to reduce the complexity of the world to simple memes, to seek out sources that confirm my biases, to follow an alpha-male or alpha-female leader, and to find safety and...

Libertarians: “Our Rulers Are Wearing no Clothes”

by Craig Cantoni | Nov 30, 2017 | Blog

Libertarians have always said that our rulers are wearing no clothes. Now it’s turning out that this figure of speech is the literal truth. A day doesn’t go by without it being exposed that some ruling elite in the media or politics has exposed himself to some underling female. This doesn’t surprise libertarians, who know that media and political power go hand in hand with such creepy behavior as standing with one’s genitals in hand in front of a female. That’s because being an influential person in both the media and politics requires a high degree of phoniness, hypocrisy, outright...