As quoted by F.A. Hayek in his 1956 Preface to The Road to Serfdom, De Tocqueville described the process of government enslaving a people in servitude: The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a […]
Archives
-
Quote for the Day! From De Tocqueville
12 Nov 2013
-
Taking Blessings for Granted–Why We Ignore the Benefits of Sound Political Economy to our Ruin
11 Nov 2013
As Christian political economists, your Berean bloggers are neither conservative nor liberal (in the classic sense), but rather a combination of both. And while there is nary a drop of modern liberal blood in our bones, we nonetheless appreciate modern liberalism’s discontent with the status quo, often agreeing with their ends, even though almost always […]
-
Quote for the Day! From Cornelius Van Til…
05 Nov 2013
Faith abhors the really contradictory; to maintain the really contradictory is to deny God. Faith adores the apparently contradictory; to adore the apparently contradictory is to adore God as one’s creator and final interpreter. What has this got to do with political economy? I’m not sure. But it is such an awesome quote to remind […]
-
Fellow Berean Mark Smith highlighted the President’s oft-repeated claim that if you like your health care you can keep it, characterizing it as misleading. Of course, many are using the stronger form of “lie” to describe this. I remember at the US Air Force Academy, the definition of a lie in our honor code was […]
-
Quote for the Day! Arthur Brooks at his best
01 Nov 2013
From a CNBC video a couple of years ago, Crony capitalism….is the codependent wife of statism. Brooks is spot on; the source of cronyism is a large state that has the power to favor one group over another. And this favor only comes by harming others. This seems to me to be the definition of […]
-
Much of our current political polarization is explainable by the conflicting visions underlying each side; visions that Thomas Sowell suggests reflect a basic understanding of the way the world works. In many cases, people with similar values will nevertheless disagree with each other because they view the world differently. Yet there are also questions of […]
-
Obamacare sticker shock: “I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it”
28 Oct 2013
There are so many dimensions of possible problems with Obamacare; the technical problems with the website are masking other much more problematic concerns. Higher costs, fewer choices, and coercive mandates are only now being considered by consumers as the actual implementation of the law is upon us. As I listen to the debates of the […]
-
A Failure in Leadership: Launch of Obamacare
23 Oct 2013
One of the most damaging accusations against Mr. Obama in the rollout of the Affordable Care Act came from his chief Lieutenant for healthcare, Kathleen Sebelius, as she tried to defend him: CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked when the President first learned about the considerable issues with the Obamacare website. Sebelius responded that it was […]
-
In our last update on Obamacare, we questioned whether Day One mistakes were just the technological tip of the iceberg. The verdict is now in; Day One was just the tip of the iceberg, and now the question is only how big is the iceberg? The simplest part of Obamacare–the website that provides the initial […]
-
You say “Really? Are you just an anti-Fed nut case?” Well, I’m certainly anti-Fed, and my wife won’t confirm or deny #2. But let me make my case. As economist Russ Roberts likes to say, economists often tell “stories” that we think reflect reality. These stories are backed by a particular theory and often have […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach