Marbury v. Madison took the written U.S. Constitution and superseded it with a British style system of an unwritten constitutionality. This was judicial review and it lasted until the New Deal when the jurisprudence of limited government figured out that the...
limited government
Why America’s Founders Didn’t Want a Democracy
In his book "Liberty in Peril," Randall Holcombe challenges the presumption that liberty and democracy are complementary. When I took history and government in school, many critical issues were misrepresented, given short shrift, or even ignored entirely. And those...
Is The ‘Mother of all Bubbles’ About to Pop?
When the New York Federal Reserve began pumping billions of dollars a day into the repurchasing (repo) markets (the market banks use to make short-term loans to each other) in September, they said this would only be necessary for a few weeks. Yet, last Wednesday,...
War Is Not a Conservative Thing
Perpetual war and aggressive interventionism have become the hallmark of Republican foreign policy. But war is not a conservative thing. Last month, I saw somebody assert unironically and in complete seriousness that Californians need to reelect Rep. Maxine Waters...
Forget the Russians: It’s the Federal Reserve Seeking to Meddle in Our Elections
The US Constitution never granted the federal government authority to create a central bank. The Founders, having lived through hyperinflation themselves, understood that government should never have a printing press at its disposal. But from the very beginning...
If Deficits Are This Huge Now, What Happens When the Recession Hits?
The Treasury Department released new budget deficit numbers this week, and with two months still to go in the fiscal year, 2019's budget deficit is the highest its been since the US was still being flooded with fiscal stimulus dollars back in 2012. As of July 2019,...
The Failure of Liberal Democracy in Europe
The New York Times podcast took a tour of Europe as only this show can do, with astonishing production values and depth of insight. It provided a fresh look at a creeping but dramatic shift in the shape of European politics. In Italy, Hungary, France, Germany, and...
The American Old West: How Hollywood Made It “Wild” to Make Money & Advance Gun Control
Hollywood has a clever way of distorting our perspective on history, and a great example of this is Western film – a movie genre we've all come to love. Cattle rustlers, guns blazing, outlaws running loose, and vigilantes dishing out vengeance indiscriminately. These...
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