I knew a pure heart who rejected distrust. He was a pacifist and libertarian and loved all humanity and the animals with an equal love. An exceptional soul, that’s certain. Well, during the last wars of religion in Europe he retired to the country. He had written on his threshold: “Wherever you come from, come in and be welcome.” Who do you think answered that noble invitation? The militia, who made themselves at home and disemboweled him.

As I’ve repeatedly noted, economics, politics and law are inseparable and intertwined. As Aristotle pointed out thousands of years ago, “The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.” Without the rule of law, the state crumbles, and the government bonds and other investments crumble with it.

It has been duly noted by scholars that the two great totalitarian philosophies of the 20th century, communism and fascism, had similar methodologies and similar goals, so to speak. Certainly, denigrating the importance of the individual and subsuming his or her personal interests to the greater goals of the national movement were integral to both those horrific philosophies. Yet this underlying anti-individualist, collectivist theme continues — not just on the left — in today’s political environment.

The academic Left, which includes UCS, has adopted the economics of J K Galbraith. The view is that Big Corporations do not respond to the market (which is a myth anyway), that consumers have no real choices, that advertising creates demand, that corporations need to be forced to do what is best for consumers (who don’t really understand what is best for them anyway). From that view, regulating the production and sale of new types of cars is giving the consumers what they truly want, if they were smart enough to understand their own interests.

Today, in what would be a major news story if the times we live in were not so bizarre, the Senate voted 97-0 against President Obama’s FY 2012 budget. Obama’s budget was such a joke that not a single Democrat was willing to support it. So one naturally asks: do the Democrats have something better to propose? The answer is: No. The Democratic Senate has not come up with a budget in two years, thereby violating federal law.

The mainstream media are so desperate to portray economic trends in optimistic terms that a lot of our current malaise is left unexplored. I think this is especially the case with respect to unemployment. The scope of the suffering created by large-scale long-term unemployment has somehow failed to register. The real unemployment will never get in the books, so to speak, at least so long as a Democrat is president and an election is looming. Consider Professor Edward Lazear’s take on the recent employment data: “[T]he increase in job growth that occurred over the past two years results from a decline in the number of layoffs, not from increased hiring.

There are plenty of policies out there that are doing active damage to the poor, often (perversely) in the name of “social justice.” Getting rid of these policies is the place to start.