Program Idea for the Department of Education

Dear Mr. President:

The Department of Education should formulate two educational programs concerning socialism.  One would be addressed to fifth graders and the other to tenth graders.  The programs would be the product of leading historians and economists, who would educate students as to the history of socialism, its economic failure, its political failure, and its history of mass murder.  The showing of the two programs would be a prerequisite for states’ eligibility for federal aid.

Zilvinas Silenas, a refugee from Lithuania and the new president of the Foundation for Economic Education, recently appeared in an interview on Dan Elmendorf’s Redeemer Broadcasting (http://redeemerbroadcasting.org/content/plain-answer-podcasts / A Plain Answer: A Case Study - Socialism as it was in Lithuania - Zilvinas Silenas ).  In the interview Silenas describes in vivid detail the horrible realities of socialism. Material like this could be combined with history that short circuits the left-wing indoctrination that is occurring in America’s schools.  Indeed, a discussion of political correctness and biases in the educational system should be a part of the presentation, which would be given in one-to-two-hour assemblies of students. 

The chief argument against this idea is that it can be coopted and turned into a pro-socialist presentation when the Democrats gain power.  However, such a step would create a focal point for debate, for much of the subversion currently occurs more subtly.

Along with Silenas and FEE, Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars could help appoint a commission that would create the presentation.

Something needs to be done now about the misinformation in which American students are being indoctrinated.   

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Cc: The Honorable Betsy DeVos

Mike Huckabee Should Study Economics

Last week Newsmax reported that Mike Huckabee felt that too many conservatives are too focused on economic rather than social issues. Newsmax's Ralph C. Hallow writes:

"In a sign of lingering divisions on the right, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee blasted last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest meeting of conservatives in the nation, saying it was unrepresentative of the Republican Party as a whole.

"'CPAC has become increasingly more libertarian and less Republican over the last years - one of the reasons I didn't go this year,' said the former Southern Baptist minister, who enjoys a devoted following among Christian conservative voters and who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008."

I have told my colleagues in New York's Republican Liberty Caucus the same thing I'm going to say to Huckabee. The religious movement cannot go it alone, nor can the libertarian movement. Together they can win. That means that libertarians need to compromise on certain social issues and Christian-oriented Republicans need to respect (compromise is not the right word because libertarian economics is totally compatible with Christianity) libertarians' economics concerns.

During the Bush years big government apologists, who often were really neo-conservatives, adopted Christian rhetoric but advocated policies that subsidized banking and the pharmaceutical industry supposedly in a move toward "compassionate conservativsm". Those of us who are committed libertarians will no longer stand for this. I would rather see Obama in the White House in 2012 than another Republican like George Bush or Mike Huckabee.

So Mr. Huckabee has to make up his mind. Either he will work with freedom oriented Americans, or he will remain a newscaster.

Moreover, the idea that there is anything "compassionate" or "social justice" oriented about Keynesian economics is ridiculous. Anyone who thinks that should contact the Foundation for Economic Education and obtain a copy of Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. Laissez-faire capitalism provides greater social justice than any other economic system in human history.

Governor Huckabee, it's time to study economics.

My Blog at Republican Liberty Caucus

The Republican Liberty Caucus has set me up to blog on their site, and I will be blogging there a few times a week as well as here. My first RLC blog appeared a day or two ago.

My wife Freda and I had lunch this afternoon with Lee Currie, excecutive director of the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington on Hudson, New York. I heartily recommend this organization for anyone concerned about the economy. FEE has played a historic role in furthering economic ideas. Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley and Ralph Nader (yes, you read right) published early articles in their journal, the Freeman, and FEE was the means by which Ludwig von Mises was able to make a living after fleeing the Nazis in the late 1930s.

Where is America going? Things have not been going well for libertarians and conservatives. Our problem HAS NOT been the election of President Obama. As Shakespeare put it in Julius Ceaser, "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves if we are underlings". I don't like to think of myself as an "underling" but if the sandal fits, I'll wear it.

The public is unhappy with the bailout, but what have libertarians done to push the issue? We need a new Andrew Jackson who is going to run against Nicholas Biddle Bernanke and John Quincy Obama. Now is the time.

My old friend, Professor Chuck Gengler of Baruch College in New York forwarded this clip from the old movie Network. Let's not take it any more. It is time to start overthrowing the old guard in the Republican Party. We need to get revved up.

Henry Hazlitt on the Bush-Obama Bailout

Henry Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson in 1946 and it was republished in 1978. I was just re-reading it and noticed these paragraphs on pages 186-7 of the Three Rivers Press edition available through the Foundation for Economic Education:

"The effect of keeping interest rates artificially low, in fact, is eventually the same as that of keeping any other price below the natural market. It increases demand and reduces supply. It increases the demand for capital and reduces the supply of real capital. It creates economic distortions. It is true, no doubt, that an artificial reduction in the interest rate encourages increased borrowing. It tends, in fact, to encourage highly speculative ventures that cannot continue except under the artificial conditions that give them birth. On the supply side, the artificial reduction of interest rates discourages normal thrift, saving and investment. It reduces the accumulation of capital. It slows down that increase in productivity, that "economic growth," that "progressives" profess to be so eager to promote.

"The money rate can indeed, be kept artificially low only by continuous new injections of currency or bank credit in place of real savings. This can create the illusion of more capital just as the addition of water can create the illusion of more milk. But it is a policy of continuous inflation. It is obviously a process involving cumulative danger. The money rate will rise and a crisis will develop if the inflation is reversed, or merely brought to a halt, or even continued at a diminished rate.

"It remains to be pointed out that while new injections of currency or bank credit can at first, and temporarily, bring about lower interest rates, persistence in this device must eventually raise interest rates. It does so because new injections of money tend to lower the purchasing power of money. Lenders then come to realize that the money they lend today will buy less a year from now, say, when they get it back."

When that occurs, only severe disruption of the economy will end the hyper-inflation. The policies of the past twenty-five years, supported by a majority of Americans, is leading us to that point. The Bush-Obama bailout is the tipping point

Car of the Future

There comes a time when the gears of the universe click into place and the automotive future revs into high gear. A few days ago the Foundation for Economic Education offered to donate a book I am using for my senior seminar to my students, Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlett. Around the same time, the Republican Liberty Caucus of New York chair, Carl Svensson, set up a meeting in New Paltz with Robin Yess. It is no small coincidence that Yess ran for Assembly in the 101st district in New York, which is where I happen to live. Today, Ms. Yess forwarded the following video link from the website of (can you believe it?) the Foundation for Economic Education! On top of which I was just thinking of doing a blog about the automotive bailout. Plus, I just bought a car.