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To understand the arch of Donald Trump’s political career so far, he should be seen as a Machiavellian and monarchical figure without any concrete political ideology or ideals beyond his own self-aggrandizement. Trump has switched party loyalty on many occasions, even spending most of the 2000s as a registered Democrat. (more…)
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Stalin’s dictatorship, too would be expected to foster ‘a permanent condition of stress by creating enemies at home and abroad and/or by imposing upon the population gigantic tasks that would be unlikely to be carried out in the absence of the dictatorship’ as well as, ‘a charismatic image of the dictator,’ ‘a utopian goal, carefully kept in a remote future’ and ‘proscription of any deviating values, supported by threats and acts of repression.’
-Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941, Penguin, New York, 2017, p. 306. (more…)
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One of the things I like about Donald Trump’s promise to impose tariffs is how it places the needs of American producers over the needs of American consumers. With strong tariffs in place, consumers might be forced to pay more for superior goods than they normally would, or simply pay more for goods in general. This naturally happens when government artificially influences the market. Without fair competition from foreign goods, domestic producers face less pressure to reduce their prices. By increasing the prices of foreign goods, government is in effect reducing its supply for the majority of consumers, who would not realistically be expected to pay such higher prices. And with reduced supply comes higher costs. (more…)
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In summer 1789, King Louis XVI of France summoned the Estates General to Versailles in order to solve France’s deepening financial crisis. The Estates General consisted of the First Estate representing the clergy, the Second Estate representing the nobility, and the Third Estate representing everyone else. (more…)
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In this final livestream of 2024, Greg Johnson was joined by several special guests who reflected on the biggest events of 2024, discussed their predictions for 2025, and shared their resolutions and plans for the New Year. It is now available to download or listen to online. (more…)
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The principle of verification is supposed to furnish a criterion by which it can be determined whether or not a sentence is literally meaningful. A simple way to formulate it would be to say that a sentence had literal meaning if and only if the proposition it expressed was either analytic or empirically verifiable.
-A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic
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Dick van Galen Last with Ralf Futselaar
Translated by Marjolijn de Jager
Black Shame: African Soldiers in Europe, 1914 – 1922
New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015
Dick van Galen Last (1952 – 2010) was a librarian and senior researcher for the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His Ph.D. dissertation was on the use of sub-Saharan African troops during World War I and the following French occupation of the Rhineland in the 1920s. The dissertation was edited and published as a book after his death. (more…)
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In what has to rank among the least surprising discoveries of 2024, it has been revealed that Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, is not a populist crusader, but is instead a self-interested globalist in search of cheap labor. Since Christmas, online political debate has centered around the H-1B visa controversy, with Musk loudly proclaiming his support for the program. Musk’s views on these visas could be attributed to greed alone, but I suspect that there is another factor at least partly responsible for his position on this particular issue. (more…)