The Hot Air Machine

  IN political science there is a concept known as “Conquest’s laws of politics.” It is named after Robert Conquest, a conservative British historian best known for his books on the Soviet Union . Similar to Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics,” Conquest’s laws define three principles of political action that can be considered reliably accurate. These three laws are: Everyone is conservative about what he knows best. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. All these laws have interesting implications and can be looked at one by one. However, today the one law that I want us to focus on in particular is the second law, that, “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” It certainly sounds interesting and can have broad implications for political strategy. For libertarians in ...

  TO those who do not keep detailed tabs on me you might not have been aware that this past week I attended the Mises Institute’s 40 th anniversary summit . This was my first ever Mises event that I attended, and boy let me tell you that it was GREAT! Since not many people were able to attend it (thanks be to God that I of all people could) and it was full of captivating and endearing moments I’ve decided to talk about what happened and what I experienced, to share what it’s like to get involved with the Institute.           The summit was three days long, although the majority of events were concentrated in the second day. The first day began at 5:00, which was good for me since I arrived in Phoenix the day before meaning I had a day-and-a-half to myself, and it was to consist of a dinner and introductory talk by Jeff Deist, then two talks: one by Judge Andrew Napolitano and another by James Grant. Alas, we were rained on and the Jud...