Free Republic

Every once in a while, something comes along that perfectly encapsulates the idea of so-called "social justice" in action. For all the wonderful critiques that have been written about this wretched concept by its many detractors,[1] none quite match the elegant simplicity of a recent work by some of its advocates. I am referring here to a recent video made for the World Day of Social Justice[2] in which students and teachers complete this sentence: Everyone has the right to _____. The video is a colorful montage of possible completions to this sentence, set to some pleasant easy-listening music. It...

The main reason why so many state and local governments are bankrupt, or on the verge of bankruptcy, is the combination of government-run monopolies and government-employee unions. Government-employee unions have vastly more power than do private-sector unions because the entities they work for are typically monopolies. When the employees of a grocery store, for example, go on strike and shut down the store, consumers can simply shop elsewhere, and the grocery-store management is perfectly free to hire replacement workers. In contrast, when a city teachers' or garbage-truck drivers' union goes on strike, there is no school and no garbage collection...

LAST JUNE, Luigi Padovese, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of the Turkish port city of Iskenderun, was murdered in his home by a 26-year-old Muslim who stabbed him eight times in the heart and then severed his head while shouting “Allah is the greatest.” He is one of many priests murdered in Turkey since 2008. Here are words of appropriate outrage from Europe. Austrian MP Ewald Stadler, in a speech addressed to the Turkish ambassador last week, decries the Islamification of the West and the “romance of tolerance and human rights.” “Your devotion to freedom of religion is pure hypocrisy,” Stadler...

Nothing like hearing someone browbeaten in German to get the blood flowing:... I don’t know who this guy is. Maybe he’s part of some fringe party. I think what he says here is entirely defensible though. Islamists here in the US play the same game, demanding treatment their own home governments would never extend to any other religious minority.

Professor Leads an Austrian Revival Peter J. Boettke, shuffling around in a maroon velour track suit or faux-leather rubber shoes he calls "dress Crocs," hardly seems like the type to lead a revolution. But the 50-year-old professor of economics at George Mason University in Virginia is emerging as the intellectual standard-bearer for the Austrian school of economics that opposes government intervention in markets and decries federal spending to prop up demand during times of crisis. Mr. Boettke, whose latest research explores people's ability to self-regulate, also is minting a new generation of disciples who are spreading the Austrian approach throughout...

The economic mystery of 2010 is the persistence of high unemployment, in spite of stimulus that follows the prescription of the prevailing Keynesian orthodoxy. Here’s an alternative to that orthodoxy. In the United States, the economic mystery of 2010 is the persistence of high unemployment, in spite of the application of the stimulus treatment that follows the prescription of the prevailing Keynesian orthodoxy. I wish to offer an alternative to that orthodoxy. For the followers of John Maynard Keynes, economic activity consists of spending. When economic activity slows down, their prescription is to increase spending by government, businesses, consumers, or...

We live in an era of unparalleled confusion on monetary and economic issues. It’s almost like a shoot-out among the economists in the Old West, except that here you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys. You read so many conflicting reports, editorials, and newsletters that it’s easy to get befuddled. There are those who say inflation, those who shout deflation. Some say print more money, others say halt the printing presses. There are those who say bail them out, and the others who say let them fail. There are those who say gold is going up to...

Question: Hello Paul! Do you ever plan to present the ideas of economists that adhere to the Austrian School of Economics (Students of Von Hayek or Von Mises)? Their understanding of the nature and causes of the business cyle enabled them to foresee much of what has happened in the last few years. (Peter Schiff and Marc Faber are successful examples.) Thanks for your friendly commentary!Paul Solman: Yes, the resurgence of the Austrian School is worth a look, and was suggested to me by none other than Robert MacNeil a few weeks ago after Rand Paul's victory in Kentucky. Look...

".. you can't fix debt intoxication with another bottle of whiskey. What we're doing now will inevitably lead to another crisis, this one much worse than the last. Burdened with the bad paper they refused to unload, the banks will get into cash flow trouble as their attempt to extract ever-larger amounts of money from everyone else in society to paper over their own insolvency will ultimately fail. The Federal Government will see the market back up rates irrespective of what they try to do, just as Greece has. This will force borrowing costs higher, and ultimately make destruction of...

Once in a while, a book comes along that shakes so many of your core beliefs that you are left questioning either the integrity of what you have read or your own knowledge. In this particular case, I had the privilege of a sneak peek at The Return of the Great Depression by Vox Day and with most certainly can state, it is the latter. RGD as it shall be referred to from now on, as can be inferred from its title makes a very compelling case as to the state of our economy and where this nation is potentially...

It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones — and often deliberately so. Far from viewing the past as a potential source of wisdom and insight, political regimes have a habit of employing history as an ideological weapon, to be distorted and manipulated in the service of present-day ambitions. That’s what Winston Churchill meant when he described the history of the Soviet Union as...

Barack Obama in his own words during a speech at a recent NATO Conference

“There’s a lot of -- I don’t know what the term is in Austrian -- wheeling and dealing, and people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics,” he said in response to an Austrian reporter’s question.

George Bush’s critics rightly roasted him for his tortured syntax and waterboarded grammar, and used it to make the claim that the graduate of both Harvard and Yale was an idiot.  Well, perhaps, but I don’t recall him ever claiming that Austrian was a language.  It takes a highly-esteemed intellect, it seems, to miss the fact that Austrians mainly speak German:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr7zhnctF4c   Obama: It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian...

President Barack Obama made a world-class gaffe in front of the entire planet's press during his news conference in Strasbourg, France. The transcript was released by the White House on April 4: Q Sonja Sagmeister from a little country, Austria, from Austrian Television. Mr. President, you said you came here to learn and to listen. So a quite personal question -- what did you learn from your personal talk with the European leaders? And did this change in a certain way your views on Europe and its politics? PRESIDENT OBAMA: It's an interesting question. I had already formed relationships with...

Q Sonja Sagmeister from a little country, Austria, from Austrian Television. Mr. President, you said you came here to learn and to listen. So a quite personal question -- what did you learn from your personal talk with the European leaders? And did this change in a certain way your views on Europe and its politics? PRESIDENT OBAMA: It's an interesting question. I had already formed relationships with many of them. ... There's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian -- wheeling and dealing -- and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and...

Palaiz [sic! - Palace is spelled Palais in French] de la Musique et Des Congres Strasbourg, France 4:32 P.M. (Local) ---[SNIP]--- [Full press release at link above]  Q Sonja Sagmeister from a little country, Austria, from Austrian Television. Mr. President, you said you came here to learn and to listen. So a quite personal question -- what did you learn from your personal talk with the European leaders? And did this change in a certain way your views on Europe and its politics? PRESIDENT OBAMA: It's an interesting question. I had already formed relationships with many of them. Some of...

"WILL CAPITALISM SURVIVE?" was the question before the lunch table Wednesday. "It hasn't been tried," I replied, "at least not since the McKinley administration and certainly not since 1914," when the Federal Reserve started operations in earnest. In doing my conservative curmudgeon act, I probably came across as supercilious. But my response also reflected my reaction to the smug contempt toward free-market philosophy in general and Ronald Reagan and his lesser successors in particular expressed elsewhere in the press of late. The credit crisis and the ensuing global economic contraction have failed to make an impression on academe, where free-market...

The NEFA Foundation has obtained a new communiqué from the Army of Islam in Gaza, in which the group urges the Austrian government to release Muhammad Shawqi Mahmoud from jail. In March 2008, Mahmoud was sentenced to four years in prison for belonging to a terrorist organization. Mahmoud, a central figure in the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), was involved in producing a March 2007 GIMF video that threatened Austria and Germany if the countries did not withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.

Vienna - Austrian far-right parliamentarian Susanne Winter was convicted Thursday of incitement because of her anti-Muslim statements, including the claim that Islam's prophet Mohammed was a paedophile. A court in Winter's home town of Graz also found the 51-year-old politician guilty of humiliating a religion. She was sentenced to a fine of 24,000 euros (31,000 dollars) euros and a suspended prison term of three months, Austrian news agency APA reported. The politician, who took a seat in parliament last fall for the Freedom Party (FPOe), made the anti-Islamic remarks in January 2008. She also proposed in a discussion with students...

"Do You Austrians Have a Better Idea?" Daily Article by Robert P. Murphy | Posted on 2/2/2009 12:00:00 AM A lot of people get annoyed with Austrian economists because they tend to be so dogmatic (we prefer the term consistent) and because they cloak their strictly economic claims with self-righteousness (we prefer the term morality). After a good Austrian bashing of the latest call to steal taxpayer money and waste it on something that will make a given problem worse, the stumped critics will often shout, "Oh yeah? Well do you guys have a better idea?"Now, in truth, someone...

WASHINGTON — A new analysis shows that California would get a whopping $21.5 billion under an economic stimulus plan that’s expected to be approved by the House next week, making it the biggest winner among the 50 state On Thursday, staffers of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee estimated that California would receive $4.5 billion to spend on highways, bridges and other projects.Other stimulus money would be aimed at programs for child care, job training and energy assistance for the poor, among other things. Under the House Democratic plan, the biggest source of aid to states — $79 billion —...

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- Former Democratic Assemblywoman Nicole Parra has a new job in the Schwarzenegger administration coordinating economic development. Parra will earn $128,124 directing the governor's regional development issues in the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. Parra, who termed out last year, earned headlines when assembly Speaker Karen Bass evicted her from her Statehouse office for not supporting her party's budget proposal. Parra, from Hanford, represented the 30th Assembly District from 2002 to 2008. After terming out, she supported Republican Danny Gilmore in his successful bid to succeed her.

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for kidnapping two Austrian tourists last month in Tunisia in an audio recording aired Monday on Al-Jazeera television. A man who identified himself as Salah Abu Mohammed said in the recording that the terrorist group kidnapped the two Austrians on Feb. 22 in retribution for Western cooperation with Israel, but said the hostages were in good health. "We tell Western tourists that at the same time they are flowing into Tunisian lands seeking joy, our brothers are being slain in Gaza by the Jews with the collaboration of the Western...

Two Democrats have introduced legislation sought by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that could broaden voter support for a twice-delayed, $9.9 billion high-speed-rail bond on the November ballot. A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, Sabrina Lockhart, said Thursday that the administration worked with the rail board to draft the Galgiani and Ma bill. The bill by Assemblywomen Cathleen Galgiani of Tracy and Fiona Ma of San Francisco would allow the bonds to be used for all segments of the proposed 700-mile rail system. The bond's current language dedicates the money only for the proposed segment between the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas.Ma and...

Just minutes before a midnight deadline, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have placed on the Feb. 5 presidential primary election ballot an advisory resolution urging President Bush to immediately withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. Schwarzenegger said in his veto message such a vote would be superfluous when voters can determine the future course of Iraq policy with their votes for president.

As many Townhall readers may remember, I spent last week blogging from Grove City College’s Center for Vision and Values conference on “The De-Christianization of Europe: From Nicea to Nietzsche”. It was a privilege to be a part of this highly philosophical, conservatively intellectual examination into the decomposition of Christian values that’s taking place across the world. Grove City truly is a bastion for principled education and it was refreshing to observe the students as they interacted with some of the brightest minds in modern religious studies. Following the Virginia Tech travesty, I reflected again on my experience at Grove...

Austrian sniper rifles that were exported to Iran have been discovered in the hands of Iraqi terrorists, The Daily Telegraph has learned. More than 100 of the.50 calibre weapons, capable of penetrating body armour, have been discovered by American troops during raids. The Steyr HS50 is a long range, high precision rifle The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year......(excerpt)

An Austrian carpenter accidentally shot a four inch nail into his brain and didn't even get a headache.Tom Schoenitz, 30, was working on a roof in Salzburg when he bumped into a colleague who was holding a nail gun. His head knocked against the gun and the pressure accidentally activated it - shooting a nail through the carpenter's skull and into his brain. Schoenitz, who told emergency workers he felt no pain, was rushed to hospital where the nail was removed after being embedded in his head for 90 minutes. Doctors said they are running tests on the man to...

Austrian voters veer back to far-Right By Michael Leidig in Vienna (Filed: 02/10/2006) Austrian voters swung back to the far-Right in elections yesterday with the Freedom Party and a splinter group led by Jorg Haider, the populist hardliner, gaining more than 15 per cent of the vote. Chancellor Schussel: preliminary results looked to have swung to the far-Right and left his party in second place But in the preliminary results, the centre-Left Social Democrats looked to have just edged ahead of the conservative Chancellor, Wolfgang Schussel, and his OeVP party. A grand coalition between the two leading parties is a...

A former employee of an Austrian industrial group was detained in Innsbruck on suspicion of spying for Russia, Austrian television said Thursday. Reports say that the 48-year old detained individual transferred confidential information to a Russian company about technological processes, specifications and clients of the Plansee Group, which specializes in producing refractory metal products and special materials. Plansee chief executive Michael Schwarzkopf said the company would seek compensation from the detained employee adding that Plansee was currently evaluating the material damages. He said the employee had been detained Wednesday after the company had contacted the country's Interior Ministry, which had...

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday told officials in his hometown in Austria to remove his name from a sports stadium and stop using his name to promote the city. The governor's request came after politicians in Graz began a petition drive to rename the stadium, reacting to Schwarzenegger's decision last week to deny clemency to condemned inmate Stanley Tookie Williams. Opposition to the death penalty is strong in Austria. In a letter that began "Dear Mister Mayor," Schwarzenegger said he decided to spare the Graz city council "further concern" should he be forced to make other clemency decisions...

PASSAIC - There are few Lemkos left, and even fewer who speak their original Slavic dialect. Most of those who do remember have gray hair. But over dill chicken soup in the meeting room of Saints Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Cathedral on Sunday morning, the dozen or so members of the Lemko Association agreed on one thing: They were proud to be Lemkos, even if they always have to explain themselves. "We're a people without a country," said Maryann Bacsik, 53, of Little Falls, whose grandfather came here from Eastern Europe in 1907. "Many people my age have no...

WASHINGTON - California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, in the nation's capital boosting his plans to run for governor, said Tuesday that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has brought an autocratic "odor of Austrian politics" to the California statehouse. "It has a little bit of the sort of odor of Austrian politics. There's a sort of arrogance of power that bothers me," said Lockyer, who has raised $11 million for his campaign. Asked if he was referring to a particular era in European history, Lockyer said, "I'm just talking about the culture - that there's a long history of autocracy. It's an elite...

VIENNA, March 9, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – In what some fear could be a curtain raiser for a major policy shift in a country considered somehow tolerant, Austrian Interior Minister Liese Prokop has called for banning hijab-clad Muslim women from teaching at schools. “I consider now the legality of banning hijab in schools,” Prokop told the state-run Falter Magazine Tuesday, March 8. “But, anyhow, I will throw my weight about the ban.” She argued that wearing the hijab in schools runs counter to the values of Austrian society. “Muslim women suffer from oppression and their rights are down-trodden,” the minister claimed,...

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb 12 (Reuters) - California's Republican loyalists said on Saturday they are ready to rally behind Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ambitious political agenda that includes ballot measures Democrats vow to defeat. Republicans meeting at the party's state convention in Sacramento said they will eagerly fight by Schwarzenegger's side if he asks voters to support this year's agenda through ballot measures, a sharp contrast to a September convention when party officials feared key conservative members would not embrace the socially moderate Hollywood icon. But Schwarzenegger has in recent public appearances rarely missed an opportunity to stress he stands with conservatives...

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran has contracted to buy hundreds of high-powered rifles from an Austrian firm, the company's owner said Wednesday. The sale drew an indirect rebuke from the United States, but Austrian government ministries said no laws were broken. Wolfgang Fuerlinger, head of Steyr Mannlicher GmbH, confirmed the deal between his company and Iranian authorities and said U.S. Embassy officials had expressed concerns the arms could make their way to Iraq for use against American troops. He said he could not confirm Austrian media reports that part of the order - 800 long-range semiautomatic rifles that can penetrate...

Chris Whittle, who edits Sunday Morning Shootout ... has a fascinating, wide ranging post on his site Eject! Eject! Eject!, which hits many of my political-entertainment industry buttons. The amn knows whereof he speaks, and has a lot of worthwhile thoughts. >>There are only eight conservative actors in the history of Hollywood, and five of them have been elected to high office. (The sixth was elected president of the National Rifle Association, the seventh was elected Mayor of Carmel, California on a pro-business platform, and John Wayne had the class to never run for – or from – anything.) If,...

VIENNA, Austria - Austrian historians are ridiculing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the Republican National Convention that he saw Soviet tanks in his homeland as a child and left a "Socialist" country when he moved away in 1968. Recalling that the Soviets once occupied part of Austria in the aftermath of World War II, Schwarzenegger told the convention on Tuesday: "I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes." No way, historians say, challenging Schwarzenegger's knowledge of postwar history - if not his enduring popularity among Austrians who admire him for rising from a penniless...

VIENNA (AFP) - Demonstrators blocked key motorway links between Germany and Italy through the Austrian Alps for a third day in protest against the threat of pollution caused by new EU relaxations on truck traffic. Two motorways were paralysed with long tailbacks of vehicles through the Inntal Valley in western Tyrol and the Tauern between Salzburg and Upper Austria, a motoring association spokesman said. "Several hundred demonstrators blocked vehicles for kilometres in the Inntal near Innsbruck and in both directions of the Tauern tunnel," he said. Trucks were expected to be trapped in the Inntal until early Thursday because the...

Dismissed by critics as a free-market extremist, economist Friedrich Hayek is gaining new attention as a forerunner of cognitive psychology, information theory, even postmodernism. A reintroduction to one of the most important thinkers you've barely heard of. AT A RECENT think-tank luncheon in Raleigh, economist Bruce J. Caldwell chatted with a local lawyer active in Democratic party circles. The man asked Caldwell what his new book was about. "It's an intellectual biography of Friedrich Hayek," replied Caldwell, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He got a blank look. "He was an economist. A libertarian economist." What an...

"[Sociologist Ernst] Troeltsch distinguished between church, sect, and mysticism as primary types of religious life. The church is more peremptorily inclusive and achieves greater accommodation to worldly institutions. The sect demands voluntary commitment from its members, is more perfectionistic in its aims, and often adopts a critical stance toward existing social arrangements..." -- Donald A. Nielsen I recently took the long form of the Are You an Austrian? quiz, which is about whether I agree with economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, not about whether I have the same country of origin as the new governor of California....

Are You an Austrian? Take the following quiz of 25 questions on economic issues (or go to truncated 10-question version). Click on the answer that most describes your view. You must answer all 25. Submit your quiz, and get your score emailed to you. There will be no follow up emails. (Q&A prepared with the assistance of Randall Holcombe, Peter G. Klein, Robert Murphy, D.W. MacKenzie, Joseph Stromberg, and Mark Thornton&?none of whom bear final responsibility for the answers.) The method and scoring of the quiz will be revealed once you submit your answers. Essential sources for understanding the Austrian...

VIENNA The U.S. Embassy on Tuesday criticized an Austrian multimedia artist for comments about America's role in Iraq. The remarks were made in a speech remembering victims of a Nazi concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops in 1945. Andre Heller, a poet and singer who has won acclaim for staging circus, music and theater events, addressed about 10,000 people Sunday at a commemoration of the 58th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp. It is estimated that 200,000 people were imprisoned and tortured at Mauthausen, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) west of Vienna, as well as in smaller...

VIENNA, Austria - Austrian far-rightist Joerg Haider accused U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of being "war criminals" who violated international law by striking Iraq). In an interview for Wednesday's issue of the Austrian weekly magazine News, the former Freedom Party leader also renewed an offer to give Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri refuge in Haider's home in the southwestern province of Carinthia, where he is governor. Haider, who made two controversial visits to Iraq last year and reportedly met with Saddam Hussein, has spoken out harshly and repeatedly against the U.S.-led war. Bush and...

ISTANBUL, Turkey, Oct 28, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Residents of a northwestern Turkish town threw stones at an Austrian tourist who was dressed in a black cloak and had piercings on his face because confused locals thought the man was a Satanist, police said Monday. Police had to take Sascha Michael Mariacher, 28, into custody Sunday to protect him until the angry crowd dispersed in Edremit, a town of some 30,000 people, some 200 kilometers (120 miles) southwest of Istanbul, police said. Mariacher, who had red-dyed hair and wore large hoop earrings and silver rings, had come to...

LINZ, Austria (AP) -- An explosion rocked a discotheque in the western Austrian city of Linz early Saturday, and police said they found remnants of a hand grenade at the scene. Twenty people were wounded, four seriously.The explosion occurred at about 3:20 a.m. (9:20 p.m. EDT) at the X-Large Disco in Linz, about 120 miles west of Vienna, the Austria Press Agency reported. Bits of a grenade were found not far from the disc jockey's booth, the reports said.The wounded were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment of shrapnel wounds, Austrian radio said.