LEARN THE FUNDAMENTALS OF

THE PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY,

ECONOMICS, AND POLITICS

OF

FREEDOM:

“FREE PEOPLE/FREE MARKETS:

PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY”

CLASSES OFFERED BY

The Independence Institute

[AVAILABLE FOR COLLEGE CREDIT]

Two Saturdays only:

January 30, 2010

February 13, 2010

9:00a.m.-5:00 p.m.

13952 Denver West Parkway, Suite 400

Golden, Co 80401

For more information,

Please call [303] 279-6536

or go to

http:/www.i2i.org/main/page.php?page_id=259

I’m hoping to get a lot of reading done this summer.  The following books are on my list:

My Books

• Cleon Skousen, The 5000 Year Leap:  The 28 Great Ideas that Changed the World
• Mark Levin, Liberty and Tyranny
• F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
• Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism:  The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
• Ronald J. Pestritto and William J. Atto, eds., American Progressivism:  A Reader
• Ronald J. Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism
• Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man:  A New History of the Great Depression
• Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler:  The Age of Social Catastrophe
• Glenn Beck, An Inconvenient Book
• Walter Williams, Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism
• Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
• Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Library Books

• Thomas E. Woods, Jr., and Kevin R. C. Gutzman, Who Killed the Constitution?  The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush
• Randy E. Barnett, Restoring the Lost Constitution:  The Presumption of Liberty
• George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits:  How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism
• Andrew Klavan, The Last Thing I Remember

The following organizations, which I would classify as conservative, all rate members of Congress on issues that they, the organizations, consider to be most important:

• The American Conservative Union: Congressional Ratings
• Free Trade, Free Markets: Rating Congress
• NTU (National Taxpayers Union) Rates Congress
• Council for Citizens Against Government Waste: Congressional Ratings
• Americans for Better Immigration: Immigration Report Cards
• Americans for Tax Reform: Congressional Ratings and Awards
• Center for Security Policy: National Security Scorecard 2007-2008
• Eagle Forum Scoreboard
• Family Research Council: Voting Records
• Federation for American Immigration Reform: Voting Reports
• FreedomWorks Key Votes: Economic Scorecard
• American Land Rights Association
• Gun Owners of America:  GOA House Ratings, GOA Senate Ratings

This morning I was listening to Glenn Beck on the radio while I was driving to campus. He was talking about how the country is moving toward fascism by way of socialism and suggested that his listeners read the definition of fascism in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics at the Library of Economics and Liberty.  Here is the first paragraph of the definition by Sheldon Richman:

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism–“blood and soil”–for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.

I found these definitions as well:

• “a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition” (“fascism” at Merriam Webster Online)
  
• “a political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism)” (“fascism” at WordNet)
• “[a] system of government that promotes extreme nationalism, repression, anticommunism, and is ruled by a dictator” (“Vocabulary Words Starting With Letter ‘F’” at Oswego City School District Regents Exam Prep Center)

Even though it has a “capitalist veneer,” fascism is obviously still tyranny.  A couple of definitions I found, and didn’t include, put fascism at the far or “extreme” right end of the political spectrum.  Since it puts the nation or race above the individual, it clearly belongs at the left end with socialism and Marxism.

capitalism = freedom

socialism = slavery

I’m posting these tweets here because they have disappeared from my updates page along with others posted during the same time.  The ones before and since are still there.

I want Obama to fail.

I want his policies to fail.

I want the Democrats in Congress to fail.

I want liberals and liberalism to fail.

I want socialists and socialism to fail.

I want universal health care to fail.

I want cap and trade to fail.

I want Democrats’ efforts to raise taxes and increase the size and power of government to fail.

I want Obama’s efforts to ruin the U.S. economy to fail.

I want Obama’s and other Democrats’ efforts to destroy capitalism to fail.

I want Obama’s efforts to undermine the Constitution to fail.

However, I want America and Americans individually to succeed.

Video:  “Capitalism is at Stake“