A Light Shining in the Darkness

This time of year, adherents to the world's great religions celebrate a Great Light shining in the Darkness. The setting is perfect for inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere, who have lived through the darkest months of the year and now anticipate the bright days ahead.

Absent its various sectarian interpretations, the symbolism should be especially meaningful for we libertarians, because we see our philosophy and way of life- which is the way of peace and mutual, voluntary cooperation among humankind- as a great light shining in the darkness of centuries of coercion, slavery, and war.

I believe our very lives span the winter solstice of human history. The oldest among us have seen in their own life times, the very blackest horrors governments have ever conceived or perpetrated against humanity. The great darkness of absolute statism in all of its ugly forms, from fascism to communism to military dictatorship, has blanketed the earth in its foul, polluted mire for a century.

Yet in the midst of this great darkness there has shined a great light, the dawn of a new era, and the promise of brighter days to come. Humanity is awakening. I say again- the humanity inside each of us is awakening to the hope and possibility of a free and open society. Playing no small part in this crucial turning point has been the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Shining a light on the darkness of ignorance, information famine, propaganda, and lies, the Internet is- without any rivals- the number one reason and hope I have for the belief that truth and freedom will prevail over lies and slavery in our lifetimes. Its advent is not only metaphorically a great light shining in the darkness, but quite literally, the use of Light itself to spread and store information. How perfectly poetical!

So I will leave you with the injunction to hope and to marvel at the Great Light men have wrought, and to fight tenaciously to keep that Light free and unobstructed by the designs of power-hungry legislators and executives in Washington. History has no shortage of King Herods.

Thomas Sowell Returns

By: Thomas Winslow Hazlett Reason

How To Cripple The Real Estate Market In Five Easy Steps

If the government and the banks had just allowed real estate prices drop to market equilibrium, we'd be out of this mess and housing would truly be affordable. But the government is determined to artificially prop up housing prices, whatever the cost to the economy. If you were head of Central Planning (howdy, Ben!) and were tasked with crippling the real estate market, here's what you would recommend. Choke the market and banking sector with zombie banks... Have the central bank (the Federal Reserve) buy up $1 trillion in toxic, impaired mortgages... Lower the rate that banks can borrow from the Fed to zero, and then pay the banks interest on all funds deposited at the Fed... Try to prop up the housing market by giving poor credit risk buyers loans with only 3% down... Load young people up with the equivalent of a mortgage in student loans... OK,let's see how our Organs of Central Planning are doing: check, check, check, check, check: a perfect score! they're...

Tax Bill Is Beginning of Formal Debt Criminalization

The noose is tightening on liberty. The United States Congress is steadily headed to a place where those who owe money to the US government shall be treated criminally. This phenomenon is advancing domestically and now, increasingly, internationally. The first shot in this latest campaign took place in 2010 when US President Barack Obama signed into law The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. It demanded, basically, that foreign banks withhold up to 30 percent of the income that an American abroad might earn. This bill isn't working so well because overseas banks are not cooperating (a state of affairs that was certainly expected). Thus, there is a need for something else: Senate Bill 1813, recently introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). This bill, in part, states that taxpayers with unpaid taxes over US$50,000 may find their passports confiscated. This isn't criminal per se, but the IRS has recently made noises about "sharing" information with police a...

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