Lew Rockwell numa breve entrevista informal fala do próximo grande lançamento do Mises Institute. Uma biografia de Ludwig von Mises por Jörg Guido Hülsmann. Oito anos de trabalho e investigação, incluindo os chamados "Vienna papers", capturados primeiro pelos Nazis depois levados pelos Soviéticos para Moscovo. Muito curioso é a menção que Mises passou por Lisboa a caminho da América durante a Guerra.

The Story of the Lost Papers

"(...) In 1938, when the Nazis made their move into Austria, Mises had already been teaching in Geneva at the Institute for International Studies for four years. The German police entered Mises's Vienna apartment (where he had stopped for a short visit only weeks earlier), examined his papers, packed them into 38 boxes, and took them away.

Margit Sereny (and her daughter, Gitta, now a famed author) fled to join Mises in Zurich. They were married there and lived in Switzerland for two years before emigrating to the United States in 1940. After his arrival, Mises wrote his affecting book Notes and Recollections to provide a brief chronicle of his life to that point. He died in 1973, assuming his precious papers were gone forever.

(...)and it reveals that the Austrian collection (or "fund") in this archive consists of a massive assembly of 34,000 crates more than five football fields long. The Mises papers were contained in 196 large files."

Durão Barroso “Vamos mudar o modelo de desenvolvimento económico”.

Mas já agora, o que quer dizer "Vamos"? E de que "modelo" está ele a falar? E quem é estabeleceu o presente "modelo"?

"Under the heading "Unjust aggressor," the Dizionario ecclesiastico ("Ecclesiastic dictionary", UTET, 1959) derives the following statement from Thomas Aquinas:

"Without doubt one is allowed to resist against the unjust aggressor to one’s life, one’s goods or one’s physical integrity; sometimes, even 'til the aggressor’s death... In fact, this act is aimed at preserving one’s life or one’s goods and to make the aggressor powerless. Thus, it is a good act, which is the right of the victim."

There are three conditions under which legitimate self-defence must lie:

"That he who is the target of the force is an aggressor and an unjust aggressor... That the object of the defence is an important good, such as the life, physical integrity or worthy goods... [and] That defensive violence is proportionate to aggression." Under these conditions, "One is also allowed (not required) to kill other people’s unjust aggressor."

On these grounds, even a great Catholic author, J.R.R. Tolkien agrees:

"The aggressors are themselves primarily to blame for the evil deeds that proceed from their original violation of justice and the passions that their own wickedness must naturally (by their standards) have been expected to arose. They at any rate have no right to demand that their victims when assaulted should not demand an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1995, p. 243.) In his well-known novel, The Lord of the Rings, the evil Sauron requires of free peoples that "men shall bear no weapons," otherwise he will assault them (The Lord of the Rings, 2001, p. 872.)"

Christians and Guns by Carlo Stagnaro

A former college student, Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman, is sitting in an Egyptian prison, awaiting sentencing tomorrow. His alleged "crime": expressing his opinions on a blog. His mistake: having the courage to do so under his own name.

Soliman, 22, was expelled from Al-Azhar University last spring for sharply criticizing the university's rigid curriculum and faulting religious extremism on his blog. He was ordered to appear before a public prosecutor on Nov. 7 on charges of "spreading information disruptive of public order," "incitement to hate Muslims" and "insulting the President." Soliman was detained pending an investigation, and the detention has been renewed four times. He has not had consistent access to lawyers or to his family.

(...)

Soliman is not a threat to Egypt, but this prosecution is.

Whether or not we agree with the opinions that Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman expressed is not the issue. What matters is a principle: People should be free to express their opinions without fear of being imprisoned or killed. Blogging should not be a crime.

Filling a lapse in the debate on the role of religious thought in economic theory, The Church and the Market A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, informed by the history of Catholic economic thought, shows that the long-seen contradiction between Catholic faith and support for the market economy does not exist.

Europeans believe that, while the U.S. economy may create more growth, they have it better when it comes to job security, income equality, and other factors. Gersemann, a German reporter went to America, and found that the greater market freedoms in America create a more flexible, adaptable, and prosperous system than the declining welfare states of "old Europe." This book presents statistical data in extensive yet accessible charts and graphs.

The "Ethics of the Market" makes a distinctive contribution to the literature on the morality of the market by synthesizing the work of a number of liberal scholars into a systematic defence of the free market on ethical grounds. This defence addresses questions of social justice, the moral pre-requisites of a market economy, the nature of the needs that the market satisfies and the appropriate boundaries that should be placed around the operation of the market.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., senior fellow of the Mises Institute and LRC columnist, has won the $50,000 first prize in the Templeton Enterprise Awards, for the best book in "humane economics" over the last two years.

The heralded work is his wonderful and much-needed The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy.

"Of particular interest is Professor Woods's primary target: not so much the social-gospel left but the Catholic right, which argues against free enterprise and laissez-faire with surprising intensity. By taking on these critics of the market, as versus easier leftist targets, he has set for himself the most difficult task of providing a corrective concerning economics to those who are most attached to Catholic teaching on faith and morals and yet are dogmatically attached to various forms of government intervention designed to shore up morals and faith. He shows that market economics is not contradicted by binding Catholic teaching but rather supported by it. "

Ledeen Doctrine, as related by neocon columnist Jonah Goldberg: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."

Alinho em qualquer iniciativa que reivindique que os Municípios possam por sua iniciativa proibir a actividade económica do aborto quer por clínicas privadas quer por estabelecimentos públicos, e que, mesmo nos Municípios que não o proibam possam as Juntas de Freguesia por referendo local, proibi-lo também.

É para não ser imposta uma Moral e permitir a diversidade pelo exemplo. E defender as especificidades das comunidades. Valores de esquerda que a direita deve também reivindicar para poder viver um pouco do seu suposto conservadorismo social independentemente dos quadros penais e regulatórios nacionais, sempre sujeitos à lógica da unicidade, luta com quem, irá sempre perder. Aliás nem perde, o seu conservadorismo desaparece submerso na lógica inescapável do centralismo democrático.

Adenda: Isto para não falar numa lógica federal quanto aos Açores e Madeira com votações na ordem dos 2/3 pelo "Não".

Gary North fala do filho: "Caleb North, R.I.P. "My son, the youngest of my four children, age 24, died sometime in the last two weeks." E acaba assim "Instead of sending an email of condolence to me, call your kids and tell them you think they are terrific. Be specific as to why. It will help them work on their good points. The older they are, the less you can do about their bad points. Put your effort where it counts."

O Estado da Macedónia está agora a publicar anúncios fazendo publicidade às suas condições:

10% de IRS

10% IRC

3, 1% de inflacção

Infra-estrutura da WiFi

Será que é porque o seu povo é mais liberal? A sua constituição?

Não essencialmente (embora quem tenha passado pelo verdadeiro socialismo deve também estar disposto a afastar-se dele a maior velocidade), é obrigado a ser liberal porque está a concorrer com outras ordens politicas. Só existem dois "checks and balances" que realmente funcionam, e ambos são cruciais para qualquer ordem que se queira liberal:

- Ter que concorrer com outras ordens politico-constitucionais (outros Estados)

- Enfrentar o pedido de Secessão (ou mais levemente, de autonomia) interno por uma das suas partes.

Se a Macedónia não se tivesse separado da Jugoslavia tal não era possivel. Assim como os agora pequenos Estados Bálticos, ou a Eslováquia, etc.

Chuck Hagel is hot, John McCain is not And the recipient of media blessings these days is Chuck Hagel, senator from Nebraska. (...)After all, nobody is surprised anymore when a Democrat opposes the war, but it's notable when a Republican breaks ranks with his own party's president - especially when he uses such punchy language, referring to the Iraq surge as the "most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam." Such hot talk has earned Hagel a place of honor in the pages of GQ's January issue, under the headline "The Angry One." And the object of much of Hagel's anger, of course - to the media's obvious delight - is Bush and his neoconservative coterie.

Chuck Hagel and the return of the Old Right The coming battle for the soul of the GOP : Just as the Midwestern Republican progressives such as Borah opposed the National Recovery Act, so Hagel and a growing number of conservative and libertarian Republicans oppose the PATRIOT Act and the rise of the surveillance state. In his GQ interview, Hagel replicates not only the positions but also the essentially libertarian sensibility of the Old Right in its opposition to authoritarianism, centralism, and war:

"We have always been able to protect national security without sacrificing the liberties of the individual. Once you lose those rights, it's very hard to get them back. There have been arguments made that if we just give up a few rights, it will be easier to preserve our national security. That should never, ever happen. When you take office, you take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. That is your first responsibility."

Hagel's analysis of the "surge" – and, by implication, the entire Iraqi project – is sheer incredulity. He's asked if the 20,000 or so troops being sent will be enough to "secure Baghdad," and you can almost hear his bitter laugh:

"It's not ours to secure. We have never understood that! We have framed this in a way that never made sense: 'Win or lose in Iraq.' Wait a minute! There is no win or loss for us. The Iraqis will determine how this turns out. We can help them with our blood and our treasure and our standing, but in the end they have to deal with the sectarian problems. That is what's consuming that country. It's not al-Qaeda. It's not the terrorists. That's not the main problem over there. It's a civil war!"