Dale Steinreich | The Libertarian Institute

Remembering the Tea Party, Fifteen Years Later

by Dale Steinreich | Dec 19, 2022 | Featured Articles, Politics

December 16, 2022, is the fifteenth anniversary of the modern Tea Party. That fact will come as a surprise to many readers who take the mainstream narrative about the Tea Party at face value. The mainstream account begins on February 19, 2009, when Rick Santelli, live on CNBC from the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), declared a rebellion against "socialism" one month into the Obama administration. If you’re already sensing something amiss, that’s understandable. An editor at establishment NBC lighting the fire of an anti-establishment rebellion? An uprising over...

Charles Krauthammer: Intellectual for the Ruling Class

by Dale Steinreich | Jul 13, 2018 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

In " The Intellectuals and Socialism," F.A. Hayek contrasted intellectuals with scholars, original thinkers, and specialists. The intellectual is a public figure who is a "secondhand dealer in ideas" who is not necessarily very bright but can speak and write with confidence and authority about a wide range of subjects with which he or she has little direct knowledge or experience. What can make the intellectual class so dangerous is its insularity combined with its unprecedented power (via Big Media) in modern democracies to influence public opinion over the long run. One has to wonder what...

How the Feds Blocked Effective Flood Insurance

by Dale Steinreich | Sep 11, 2017 | Economics, Featured Articles

As the floodwaters brought by Hurricane Harvey last week recede and new hurricane Irma moves slowly toward the Eastern U.S., it might be edifying to review how millions of Americans, despite federal anti-flood efforts, came to live and work in hazardous to dangerous flood-prone areas. The foundation of the current disaster traces back at least to the late 1920s under Republican interventionist Herbert Hoover. In 1927, a very destructive flood occurred along the Mississippi River. Secretary of Commerce Hoover’s relief campaign greatly increased the power of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to...