While we should cheer for liberalization to grow and spread throughout the Middle East, American principles counsel our government not to interfere. One of these principles, after all, is that government (even our own) is an inherently dangerous agent best kept on as short a leash as possible. Another of these principles is that top-down social engineering is bound to have undesirable unintended consequences – a fact that is no less true when the social engineers are headquartered in the Pentagon and the State department as when they are headquartered in the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education. The same government that Mr. Kristol so often, and rightly, criticizes for making a mess of matters here at home is unlikely to become a shining example of efficiency, rectitude, and Solomaic wisdom in foreign lands.

Yes, the Social Security “trust fund” is indeed filled with ample quantities of interest-bearing U.S. treasuries. But the same organization (Uncle Sam) that is the creditor on these treasuries is also the debtor on them. Ask: when Uncle Sam cashes in these treasuries to get funds to pay promised Social Security benefits, who pays Uncle Sam the principal and interest on these treasuries? Answer: Uncle Sam – who must, of course, raise taxes on flesh-and-blood people to get the dollars that he pays to himself so that he can then pay out promised Social Security benefits. I.O.U.s written to one’s self are not assets. They are, instead, pathetic reminders of one’s gross financial irresponsibility. Bernie Madoff is in jail – rightly so – for duping people with the same sort of financial flim-flammery that the White House budget director today peddles

Hackers are creators and developers in the Internet-code-writing world, while slackers are those that feel entitled: willing to live off the toil of others. While the pace of technology is breathtaking, government remains behind the curve, regulating, hampering, and in some cases eradicating human progress. It’s a fight for civilization.

Thousands of protesters gathered outside government headquarters this week, ultimately seizing the legislature building on Friday and Saturday. Estimates ran as high as 68,000 people crammed into the main square. Sunday marked the sixth day of protests organized by labor unions and university students. Protesters shouted angrily and signs denouncing the regime were evident everywhere. On Saturday, a smaller pro-government group invaded the square, but thanks to the action of the state police, the two groups were kept apart and no violence resulted. The protesters had high praise for the police

The second Poverty Enlightenment has entailed much debate and a mixed record of successes and failures in the fight against poverty. But it is at least encouraging that the recent rebirth of the resistance to government intervention that prevailed through most of the 19th century has not come with a return to that century’s complacent acceptance of the inevitability of poverty.

Government should attempt to provide the most services for the least cost. The goal of unions is to do the least work at the most cost. Once again that is a simple undisputed statement of fact.

But of course, the Fed has to continue to assert that its super low rates really have no distorting effect on the wider world. The learned blindness is truly astonishing. Anyone with an operating brain cell can see that the object of Fed policy is to blow a new asset bubble to create a wealth effect to stimulate demand (or more accurately to prop up asset prices, and since the Fed has said it does not believe in asset bubbles, it won’t recognize it has created one till after the fact). And as we have also said repeatedly, the Japanese demonstrated in the late 1980s when they explicitly tried to create a bubble to stimulate domestic spending, that the end result is a financial crisis and a bad economic hangover.

We all remember how liberal news coverage of tea party rallies rarely failed to note that they were “predominantly white.” Somehow, that is no longer a salient fact when the same outlets cover illegal sick-outs by Wisconsin teachers. Why would that be?