Here is a refutation of Socialism in under 10 minutes.

An African parable on how profits work to the benefit of all society. Produced by the Free Market Foundation as a gift to African Students For Liberty.

An outraged Briton makes a point about Islam and asks a question that needs answering:

Colonel Richard Kemp, formerly Commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, deplores the abandonment by the Western world of the values that made it strong and great, and explains why he admires and defends Israel. (We have a difference of opinion with him over the expression “Judeo-Christian values”, but heartily agree with everything else he says.)

In this short video, Ezra Levant demonstrates how dangerously silly is this president of the United States.

The ancient theatre of Palmyra

This is from GOPUSA:

The historic city of Palmyra has fallen almost entirely under the control of Islamic State, after forces loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, collapsed under a seven-day siege that has left the magnificent ruins there exposed to near-certain destruction by the terror group.

Not so much a “terror group” – terrifyingly savage though it is – as an Islamic army on the warpath for conquest, subjugation, destruction and loot.

The ancient city, once a Silk Road hub and one of the cultural centres of the ancient world that occupies mythological status in Syria, is home to some of the most beautiful and well-preserved ruins of antiquity, including the Temple of Bel, built in the first century.

Isis considers the preservation of such historical ruins a form of idolatry and has destroyed temples and historic artefacts, as well as ancient Assyrian sites in Nineveh in Iraq, after conquering the province in a lightning offensive last year.

The group has profited from looting historic treasures, in addition to scoring propaganda victories by the wanton destruction of archaeological sites, and Palmyra is likely to face a similar fate now. …

Experts say the group benefits from its destruction of cultural heritage because it shows the militants can act with impunity and exposes the impotence of the international community in the face of the provocations.

Valley of the Tombs: The Royal Necropolis of Ancient Thebes was located south-west of Palmyra in an area called the Valley of the Tombs. This image shows an underground burial chamber for three wealthy brothers

The Muslim mass-murdering terrorist, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who placed bombs among the watchers of the Boston Marathon in 2013, has been sentenced to death. Good.

The Washington Post’s report of the conclusion to his trial includes this:

If sentenced to life, Tsarnaev would have been held at a Supermax prison that has been described by a former warden as a “version of hell” and a place that “is not designed for humanity”. His attorneys used such descriptions to argue before the jury that a life sentence would not be a reprieve.

We are for the death penalty for murderers, but wish it could be carried out quickly and cheaply. A life for a life. Even if many hopeless years in a hellish prison would punish the murderer far more severely.

Here is a long BBC documentary about a prison in which murderers are locked up for life in Russia –  where, strange to say of that blood-soaked land, there is no death penalty. Does it deter murder as effectively as capital punishment? It should do. It is grim beyond imagining.  

Marco Rubio made an excellent speech to the Council on Foreign Relations; on how bad US foreign policy has been under Obama’s disastrous leadership, and what it ought to be.

He says “the three pillars of his doctrine” are “American strength, the protection of our global economy, and a proud advocacy for America’s core values.”

Here’s the video:

Today is the 116^th anniversary of the birth of F. A. Hayek. (Friedrich August von Hayek.) 

He is one of the greatest defenders of liberty in the history of the enlightened West.

His work as an economist is enormously important.

Milton Friedman said of him:

No person had more of an influence on the intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain than Friedrich Hayek. His books were translated and published by the underground and black market editions, read widely, and undoubtedly influenced the climate of opinion that ultimately brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

An article at Townhall by David Boaz lists some of the plaudits and honors he received:

Who was Hayek? He was an economist born and educated in Vienna. After the Nazi conquest of Austria, he became a British citizen and taught there [in Britain] and at the University of Chicago for most of his career.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974.

President Ronald Reagan called him one of the two or three people who had most influenced him …

President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom.

Margaret Thatcher banged his great book The Constitution of Liberty on the table at Conservative Party headquarters and declared “This is what we believe.” …

He is the hero of The Commanding Heights, the book and PBS series on the battle of economic ideas in the 20^th century.

His most popular book, The Road to Serfdom, has never gone out of print and saw its sales explode during the financial crisis and Wall Street bailouts.

John Cassidy wrote in the New Yorker that “on the biggest issue of all, the vitality of capitalism, he was vindicated to such an extent that it is hardly an exaggeration to refer to the 20th century as the Hayek century”. 

If only! No Western country, even under leaders that held him in the highest esteem, put his theory into practice. Every one of them is a welfare state to some degree. In all of them government is an agency that redistributes wealth. Hayek believed the business of the state is to protect liberty with the rule of law, not to plan the economy, or intervene in the working of the free market. He taught that only the free market can provide the signals that make for the most efficient use of resources. Central planning is socialism – and socialism, Hayek explained, tends towards totalitarianism.

Here is Hayek, champion of free market capitalism, talking about Maynard Keynes, advocate of government intervention in markets and the economist whom Western states have preferred to follow:

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote:

“Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it … He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”

Hayek (we quote from here) “called the free market system a ‘marvel’ because just one indicator, the market price of a commodity, spontaneously carries so much information that it guides buyers and sellers to make decisions that help both obtain what they want. The market price of a product, a component of the invisible hand, reflects thousands, even millions, of decisions made around the world by people who don’t know each other or what the others are doing”.

Hayek’s most popular and least technical books The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty ought to be prescribed reading in every high school and every university in the world.

We doubt they will be. The socialists have won. The decline of the West may be irreversible.

First Pamela Geller was attacked by terrorists for holding a free speech event. Then she was attacked by the media for the same reason.

Ezra Levant of TheRebel.media looks at the media’s twisted treatment of Geller after the foiled shooting in Garland, Texas.

The left-slanted media want sharia enforced in America rather than US constitutional law.

And not only the left-slanted media. Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, and Greta van Susteren of Fox News have also blamed Pamela Geller for exercising her free speech rights. Dhimmis all.

However, also on Fox News, the excellent Megyn Kelly argued with Bill O’Reilly and decisively showed him to be wrong – though he still didn’t seem to understand that he was.

Kelly told O’Reilly … the point [Pamela Geller and her organization] were making about free speech was a solid one. The First Amendment, she said, isn’t meant to protect popular speech; it’s meant to protect “the most outrageous, offensive, incendiary speech”. 

O’Reilly countered, “It’s always cause and effect… This is what happens when you light the fuse, you get violence.” Kelly was surprised to hear that, telling O’Reilly he sounds like he’s “attacking the event itself”.

When O’Reilly said he would “do it another way,” Kelly got really fired up and said this:

“You know what else the jihadis don’t like? They hate Jews. Should we get rid of all Jews? That’s the path we’re gonna go down if we don’t stop catering to the jihadis.”

Watch the video here.

Pat Condell instructs new “progressives” how to behave and what to say to be politically correct: