Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy is a lesser evil than democracy, but outlines deficiencies in both. Its methodology is axiomatic-deductive, allowing the writer to derive economic and sociological theorems, and then apply them to interpret historical events.A compelling chapter on time preference describes the progress of civilization as lowering time preferences as capital structure is built, and explains how the interaction between people can lower time all around, with interesting parallels to the Ricardian Law of Association. By focusing on this transformation, the author is able to interpret many historical phenomena, such as rising levels of crime, degeneration of standards of conduct and morality, and the growth of the mega-state. In underscoring the deficiencies of both monarchy and democracy, the author demonstrates how these systems are both inferior to a natural order based on private-property.Hoppe deconstructs the classical liberal belief in the possibility of limited government and calls for an alignment of conservatism and libertarianism as natural allies with common goals. He defends the proper role of the production of defense as undertaken by insurance companies on a free market, and describes the emergence of private law among competing insurers.Having established a natural order as superior on utilitarian grounds, the author goes on to assess the prospects for achieving a natural order. Informed by his analysis of the deficiencies of social democracy, and armed with the social theory of legitimation, he forsees secession as the likely future of the US and Europe, resulting in a multitude of region and city-states. This book complements the author's previous work defending the ethics of private property and natural order. Democracy - The God that Failed will be of interest to scholars and students of history, political economy, and political philosophy.

    Russ Roberts argues that the true underlying cause of the mess was the past bailouts of large financial institutions that allowed these institutions to gamble carelessly because they were effectively using other people’s money. The author warns that despite the passage of Dodd-Frank, it is widely believed that we have done nothing to eliminate ‘Too Big to Fail.’ That perception allows the largest financial institutions to continue to gamble with taxpayer money.

    involvement in endless wars, driven by a deep infatuation with military power, has been a catastrophe for the body politic. These pressing problems threaten all of us, Republicans and Democrats. If the nation is to solve its predicament, it will need the revival of a distinctly American approach: the neglected tradition of realism.Andrew J. Bacevich, uniquely respected across the political spectrum, offers a historical perspective on the illusions that have governed American policy since 1945. The realism he proposes includes respect for power and its limits; sensitivity to unintended consequences; aversion to claims of exceptionalism; skepticism of easy solutions, especially those involving force; and a conviction that the books will have to balance. Only a return to such principles, Bacevich argues, can provide common ground for fixing America’s urgent problems before the damage becomes irreparable.

    $40 million was missing. The credit union's manager: Republican Party activist Lawrence E. "Larry" King, Jr., behind whose rise to fame and riches stood powerful figures in Nebraska politics and business, and in the nation's capital.In the face of opposition from local and state law enforcement, from the FBI, and from the powerful Omaha World-Herald newspaper, a special Franklin committee of the Nebraska Legislature launched its own probe. What looked like a financial swindle, soon exploded into a hideous tale of drugs, Iran-Contra money-laundering, a nationwide child abuse ring, and ritual murder.Nineteen months later, the legislative committee's chief investigator died—suddenly, and violently, like more than a dozen other people linked to the Franklin case.Author John DeCamp knows the Franklin scandal from the inside. In 1990, his "DeCamp memo" first publicly named the alleged high-ranking abusers. Today, he is attorney for two of the abuse victims.Using documentation never before made public, DeCamp lays bare not only the crimes, but the cover-up—a textbook case of how dangerous the corruption of institutions of government, and the press, can be. In its sweep and in what it portends for the nation, the Franklin cover-up followed the ugly precedent of the Warren Commission.

    When it first appeared the New English Weekly predicted that 'for the next five to ten years it will cetainly remain a work with which no one who professes any degree of information on sociology or economics can afford to be unacquainted.' Fifty years on, this prediction seems a little understated.Why has the work endured so well? Schumpeter's contention that the seeds of capitalism's decline were internal, and his equal and opposite hostility to centralist socialism have perplexed, engaged and infuriated readers since the book's publication. By refusing to become an advocate for either position Schumpeter was able both to make his own great and original contribution and to clear the way for a more balanced consideration of the most important social movements of his and our time.

    She is a forensic commercial real estate appraiser specializing in eminent domain valuation. Her nearly 30 years of experience analyzing land use and property value enabled her to recognize the planning revolution sweeping the country. While fighting to stop a huge redevelopment project in her city she researched the corporate, political, and financial interests behind it and found UN Agenda 21. Impacting every aspect of our lives, UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is a corporate manipulation using the Green Mask of environmental concern to forward a globalist plan.

    From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm--the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country--from parks and pools to functioning schools--have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world's advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare.But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we simply can't do on our own.McGhee marshals economic and sociological research to paint a story of racism's costs, but at the heart of the book are the humble stories of people yearning to be part of a better America, including white supremacy's collateral victims: white people themselves. With startling empathy, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.

    It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn't know who it was. By the end, exposing someone's address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn't know who it was. The '90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we're still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job. Beyond epiphenomena like Cop Killer and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a '90s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it. In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, "The video for 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany" make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.

    While those in power have been distracted and disorderly, China has waged a six-front war on America's economy, military, diplomacy, technology, education, and infrastructure--and they're winning. It's almost too late to undo the shocking, though nearly invisible, victories of the Chinese.In Stealth War, retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding reveals China's motives and secret attacks on the West. Chronicling how our leaders have failed to protect us over recent decades, he provides shocking evidence of some of China's most brilliant ploys, including:- Placing Confucius Institutes in universities across the United States that serve to monitor and control Chinese students on campus and spread communist narratives to unsuspecting American students.- Offering enormous sums to American experts who create investment funds that funnel technology to China.- Signing a thirty-year agreement with the US that allows China to share peaceful nuclear technology, ensuring that they have access to American nuclear know-how.Spalding's concern isn't merely that America could lose its position on the world stage. More urgently, the Chinese Communist Party has a fundamental loathing of the legal protections America grants its people and seeks to create a world without those rights.Despite all the damage done so far, Spalding shows how it's still possible for the U.S. and the rest of the free world to combat--and win--China's stealth war.

    But behind the scenes, there were more petty fights and fraught relationships than signatures on the Declaration of Independence. From the violent brawl between Roger Griswold and Matthew Lyon in the halls of Congress, to George Washington’s battle against his slave Harry Washington, these less-discussed clashes bring to light the unpredictable and volatile nature of a constantly changing nation. Additionally, this gripping narrative delves deeper into the famous feuds, such as the fatal duel of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and the many rivalries of Thomas Jefferson (which were as often personal as political.)America’s great forbearers fought with each other as bitterly as our politicians do today. Founding Feuds reveals the true natures of the Founding Fathers and how their infighting shaped our nation as much as their cooperation, in fact sometimes even for the better.

    Buckley, Jr.Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind is one of the greatest contributions to twentieth-century American conservatism. Brilliant in every respect, from its conception to its choice of significant figures representing the history of intellectual conservatism, The Conservative Mind launched the modern American Conservative Movement when it was first published in 1953 and has become an enduring classic of political thought.The seventh revised edition features the complete text and an introduction by publisher Henry Regency.A must-read.

    Exploring how the bombings of 7/7 can be traced back to groups and individuals trained and supported by Britain, Curtis draws on formerly classified government files to unravel a long history of the British government's secret collusion with and direct involvement in Islamic terrorism, from 1945 to the present day.From the overthrow of Iran's popular government during the 1950s and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, to Libya, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia's ruthless internal oppression, Secret Affairs shows Britain's hidden hand in the rise of global terrorism. At a time when British forces are being sent to wage war in Afghanistan in increasing numbers, Mark Curtis' book shows how the seeds of today's lose-lose situation were sown a long time ago in a hidden politics as ineffective as it was immoral.

    This must change to insure a capitalism that works for us all.In this scathing indictment of our current global financial system, The Value of Everything rigorously scrutinizes the way in which economic value has been determined and reveals how the difference between value creation and value extraction has become increasingly blurry. Mariana Mazzucato argues that this blurriness allowed certain actors in the economy to portray themselves as value creators, while in reality they were just moving existing value around or, even worse, destroying it.The book uses case studies - from Silicon Valley to the financial sector to big pharma - to show how the foggy notions of value create confusion between rents and profits, a difference that distorts the measurements of growth and GDP.The lesson here is urgent and sobering: to rescue our economy from the next, inevitable crisis and to foster long-term economic growth, we will need to rethink capitalism, rethink the role of public policy and the importance of the public sector, and redefine how we measure value in our society.

    The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West’s rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the twentieth century secured its global supremacy. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many worry that the emerging economic power of China and India spells the end of the West as a superpower. In order to understand this possibility, we need to look back in time. Why has the West dominated the globe for the past two hundred years, and will its power last?Describing the patterns of human history, the archaeologist and historian Ian Morris offers surprising new answers to both questions. It is not, he reveals, differences of race or culture, or even the strivings of great individuals, that explain Western dominance. It is the effects of geography on the everyday efforts of ordinary people as they deal with crises of resources, disease, migration, and climate. As geography and human ingenuity continue to interact, the world will change in astonishing ways, transforming Western rule in the process.Deeply researched and brilliantly argued, Why the West Rules—for Now spans fifty thousand years of history and offers fresh insights on nearly every page. The book brings together the latest findings across disciplines—from ancient history to neuroscience—not only to explain why the West came to rule the world but also to predict what the future will bring in the next hundred years.

    This book examines the legacy of this world-changing weapon, from its creation as means of fighting the Nazis to its ubiquity today in every kind of conflict, from civil wars in Africa to gang wars in L.A. This is not a 'gun book' per se but a look at how this weapon has changed the world.