Tom Woods

Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who is widely listened to by Christian voters in that state and who is now syndicated in several other states, has asked me to come on his program this Wednesday for about half an hour, around 4:15pm Central, to make the case for Christians to vote for Ron Paul.

Deace is no Ron Paulian himself, but he’s had me as a guest in the past and we’ve had some fruitful discussions.  His listeners voted my interview with him on nullification his program’s best interview of 2010. He is also sound on the Herman Cain question. (The linked article doesn’t point out that Deace also criticized Cain for having supported TARP.)

Listen at his site (upper-right corner) or on one of his affiliates.

In response to this chess post from today, someone asked about my game with Walter Block at the Mises University program this year. I don’t have a bird’s-eye shot of the people watching, but there were lots of spectators. Here are a couple photos from that game, which was great even though I lost!

Of course you do. Then spend less time arguing with people online and voting in online polls, and spend more time doing these eminently practical things.

It shouldn’t even be a contest, of course — a man who (unlike the others) predicted the housing collapse at the start of the bubble in 2001, a truth-teller who (unlike the others) is willing to be booed on live TV rather than back down from his positions, and a man of courage who (unlike the others) tells you specifically what he’ll cut, should be at 95 percent in the polls.

Remember, incidentally, that our candidate enjoys an advantage at caucuses, where the intensity of a candidate’s support really counts (it’s the real diehards who go the trouble of participating in a caucus). Same was true of the Ames Straw Poll. Polls of “likely straw poll goers” had Ron at 16%, but at the straw poll itself, among the people who actually showed up as opposed to merely telling the pollsters they would show up, Ron won nearly 28% of the vote.

I haven’t had a chance to read this paper by Walter Block and J.H. Huebert in defense of the corporate form, but I present it to readers who may be interested.

Last time I posted on this topic I had an angry, uncomprehending critic going on about corporations that don’t pay wages high enough to satisfy him, etc., and scolding me for defending such a thing. To make this as clear as possible this time, what we are discussing here is not the particular practices of certain corporations (though I’m sure I would disagree with that critic even there) but on the corporate form itself, and whether it exists only as a result of special state privilege or could emerge in a free society on the basis of freely accepted contractual arrangements.

I stayed up late last night finishing The Queen’s Gambit, a novel recommended to me by the great Walter Block. I disagree with reviewers who say you don’t need to be interested in chess to enjoy it. But if you do love the game, you will be intrigued by this glimpse into the mind of fictional chess prodigy Elizabeth Harmon. For people like me — pretty decent amateur players, but that’s about it — it isn’t envy but fascination we feel when faced with someone who can play through master games in her head, who can find a killer move overlooked by the great Paul Morphy, etc. But even Elizabeth Harmon can’t see everything, and angrily rebukes herself in the quiet of her own mind during her games when an opponent surprises her. So we amateurs aren’t alone in that.

The story of how 8-year-old Elizabeth goes from learning how the pieces move to competing against the greatest players in the world within ten years is a very compelling one. Some adult themes, so it’s not for kids.

Incidentally, Walter and I played against each other in a public exposition at this past summer’s Mises University program at the Mises Institute, after I’d won a tournament (to my genuine surprise) at the Institute (5 wins, one loss) against the chess-playing graduate students in residence for the summer. Although I was ahead by two pawns, I couldn’t press my advantage, and facing time trouble and a tenacious Walter, I lost. Next year!

And to all you undergraduate and graduate students out there, be sure to apply for Mises University 2012.

I get a lot of inquiries regarding books on economics that might be suitable for younger readers, say between sixth and ninth grade. The three titles I recommend are:

(1) Lessons for the Young Economist by Robert P. Murphy. You can read this book for free online, but your student will want a hardcopy. It’s a very attractive, large-size textbook on good-quality paper. Thorough in scope but basic and understandable in exposition.

(2) How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes by Peter D. Schiff (with Andrew J. Schiff). A very accessible book for young people, complete with illustrations and characterized throughout by the clear exposition for which Peter Schiff is well known.

(3) Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? by Richard J. Maybury.

I’m normally a progressive rock guy, but as I approach 40 next year I find myself indulging in the occasional “adult contemporary” deviation, to the horror of my friends. The other day I was surprised to learn my wife had never heard this popular ’70s song by Gino Vannelli, and since then I can’t get it out of my head.

Another worthy grassroots initiative.

It’s tempting to spend all your time attacking opponents of Ron Paul on the Internet. It’s easy and it’s satisfying. And, to be sure, it’s good for people to see that there are intelligent responses to these uninformed criticisms.

But if you want to do something practical and extremely effective to get the word out about him, often to an audience that has never heard of him before, there’s no beating the Phone From Home program. Here’s Dr. Paul urging people to take part:

And here’s how to get started.

A recent South Carolina poll has three status-quo candidates — Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich — with a commanding lead. South Carolina Republicans evidently believe the country is basically on the right track if they’re content with candidates who pledge to change things about one to two percent.  (Cain supporters will dispute this, but the evidence is right here.)

Regarding Gingrich, I reproduce a passage from Rollback:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a reputation for being a right-wing ideologue. But it is surely a strange right-wing ideologue who credits Franklin Roosevelt with lifting the country out of the Great Depression, joins with John Kerry on “climate change,” and supports (among many other things) the Medicare prescription drug benefit, federal programs to pay for more teachers, Internet access for every American, and rewards to students who take challenging math and science courses — not to mention his sympathy for federal energy policy and Hillary Clinton’s proposed national health-care database, among other things….

[In 1994,] the GOP leadership made the [election] into a referendum on [Gingrich's] “Contract with America,” a series of proposals the party pledged to champion if elected. Democrats and Republicans alike pretended it was a radical assault on government spending and activity — Democrats in order to frighten their base, and Republicans in order to energize theirs. The Contract was, in fact, a hodgepodge of trivial changes that both kept the basic structure of the American Leviathan intact and neutralized the more ambitious plans and proposals of freshman congressmen who may actually have wanted to change something. The center-left Brookings Institution had it right: “Viewed historically, the Contract represents the final consolidation of the bedrock domestic policies and programs of the New Deal, the Great Society, the post-Second World War defense establishment, and, most importantly, the deeply rooted national political culture that has grown up around them.”

And, of course, don’t forget this:

UPDATE: Here’s Gingrich supporting the individual mandate (thanks to Fima Shlimel):