Glenn Beck Today

Posted by Tom Woods on June 8th, 2010 | 5 Comments »

I’ll be on Glenn Beck today, along with Gene Epstein of Barron’s and Prof. Yuri Maltsev, discussing F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.

Nullification Available for Pre-Order

Posted by Tom Woods on June 3rd, 2010 | 3 Comments »

My latest book, Nullification, is now available for pre-order.  Please help me spread the word about it!

Here are a few endorsements:

“This book is a must read for all who cherish liberty. During these times that challenge our freedoms there is no one more qualified to make U.S. history relevant to the fight against big government than Thomas Woods.”
-Barry Goldwater Jr.
Former Member of Congress

“In clear and well-documented arguments, Tom Woods gives hope to those who wish to tame the federal monster as the Framers intended – by using the utterly lawful and historically accepted principle of nullification. You must read this book.”
-Hon. Andrew P. Napolitano
Senior Judicial Analyst
FOX News Channel

“Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.’ It turns out that at least two thirds of congressional spending is absent of any constitutional authority. That means that at the very least, it is going to take the vigorous use of nullification to restore the American republic. Anyone in the Tea Party movement or elsewhere who really wants to limit government ought to start by reading this highly readable and informative book.”
-Walter E. Williams
John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics
George Mason University

On Nullification, the TSA, Ron Paul, and Other Topics

Posted by Tom Woods on May 25th, 2010 | No Comments »

This interview I did in Atlanta in January was just posted.

The Hysterics Meet Their Match

Posted by Tom Woods on May 22nd, 2010 | 4 Comments »

Jacob Hornberger goes after the hysterics on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as the claim that you must be a “racist” to oppose it.  At this point, with the Tea Party “racist,” the GOP “racist,” libertarians “racist,” constitutionalists “racist,” nullifiers “racist,” and opponents of Obama “racist,” and with Keith Olbermann warning that people driving pickup trucks probably have sinister intentions and whites who call Obama “arrogant” are using a “racist” code word, presumably we are reaching saturation point, when people finally figure out this Orwellian smear is meaningless.

Leftist obsessions aside, the number of losers who sit around thinking of ways to do gratuitous harm to people for arbitrary reasons is vanishingly small.  Leftists know it, too, or otherwise they wouldn’t favor mass immigration.  How, in good conscience, could they invite so many vulnerable people from all over the world into a country still on the verge of segregation after decades of legal and moral penalties?

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Which Only Wicked Oppressors Could Oppose, and For No Good Reason)

Posted by Tom Woods on May 21st, 2010 | No Comments »

In light of the hysteria in recent days, here’s some valuable information from Thomas Sowell, from his indispensable book Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?

Sowell notes that champions of the Official Version of History ignore already existing trends in black employment, well under way long before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, from which we are taught all blessings flowed.  Writes Sowell: “In the period from 1954 to 1964, for example, the number of blacks in professional, technical, and similar high-level positions more than doubled.  In other kinds of occupations, the advance of blacks was even greater during the 1940s — when there was little or no civil rights policy — than during the 1950s when the civil rights revolution was in its heyday.

“The rise in the number of blacks in professional and technical occupations in the two years from 1964 to 1966 (after the Civil Rights Act) was in fact less than in the one year from 1961 to 1962 (before the Civil Rights Act).  If one takes into account the growing black population by looking at percentages instead of absolute numbers, it becomes even clearer that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented no acceleration in trends that had been going on for many years.  The percentage of employed blacks who were managers and administrators was the same in 1967 as in 1964 — and 1960.  Nor did the institution of ‘goals and timetables’ at the end of 1971 mark any acceleration in the long trend of rising black representation in these occupations.  True, there was an appreciable increase in the percentage of blacks in professional and technical fields from 1971 to 1972, but almost entirely offset by a reduction in the percentage of blacks who were managers and administrators.”

Sowell further notes that Asians and Hispanics show similar long-term upward trends that had begun years before the passage of the 1964 Act, and which were not accelerated either by the Act itself or by the “affirmative action” programs that (inevitably) followed.  Mexican-Americans’ incomes rose in relation to those of whites between 1959 and 1969, but not at a greater rate than between 1949 and 1959.  Chinese and Japanese-American households had matched their white counterparts in income by 1959 (in spite of the fact that Japanese-Americans had been interned in concentration camps less than two decades before, and countless Americans blamed Japan for the loss of their sons).

New Book Coming — Smear Artists Ready

Posted by Tom Woods on May 20th, 2010 | 5 Comments »

My new book, Nullification, is coming June 29.  Wait until you see the cover design.  The design people are brilliant.

The smears that will be hurled my way are entirely predictable.  No one is allowed to adopt, much less advocate, an unapproved opinion, especially one directed at the heart of the regime, and anyone doing so can expect the heretic treatment.  (The Left, once a revolutionary movement, is now a bunch of shills for power and established institutions.  “Question Authority” is long, long gone.)  I will be portrayed as a sinister person who wants to bring back the Southern Confederacy, though why a libertarian would want to restore a regime that protected slavery and engaged in military conscription and monetary inflation is never explained.  (But when Woods was in college [sixteen years ago], he….  Yes, that’s what they are actually going to pull.  Nevermind all this.)

I’ve already smacked down two geniuses: here and here.  There will be more.

My own political philosophy, which embraces 100% self-ownership, and thus is opposed to all forms of forced labor always and everywhere, is described in this lecture (the next video in the series starts when the previous one finishes).  Anyone who tries to pretend I support slavery (slavery!) is therefore not just a numbskull, but a liar.  I am more antislavery and (for that matter) antiwar than any one of my critics will be.  I guarantee that.

In anticipation of the parade of automatons, I’ve just added a section to my articles page called “Against the Smearbund.”

The more hysterical the attacks are, though, the better.  Because then, when the inevitable person of good will reads the book and sees how reasonable and persuasive it is and how firmly grounded in American history its arguments are, he’ll start to wonder about the hysterics: what the heck is their gripe against this book?  Sure, they might disagree with its conclusions, but it’s obviously not crazy or evil. Why won’t they treat its arguments on their merits? Might these people just be irrationalists who want to intimidate people into silence?

These are just the questions we want people asking.  Why can’t these critics (if I am not dignifying them by assigning them such a hallowed designation) honestly debate what are obviously reasonable arguments?  Why must they resort immediately to smear-and-destroy mode?  Anything that discredits the smear artists is an advance for freedom.

Austrian Economics and the Financial Markets

Posted by Tom Woods on May 19th, 2010 | No Comments »

Don’t forget this conference in Manhattan on Saturday, featuring Marc Faber, Lew Rockwell, and a bunch of other important speakers.

WeRefuse.com

Posted by Tom Woods on May 19th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

This is a worthy effort.  Let’s make nullification and resistance as mainstream in the future as acquiescence in federal supremacy is today.

Here’s the Article I Mentioned in Iowa

Posted by Tom Woods on May 16th, 2010 | No Comments »

Jeff Matthews on protecting the people and making nullification stick.  Thanks, Iowans, for your wonderful hospitality.

Need Another Book on the Financial Crisis?

Posted by Tom Woods on May 14th, 2010 | No Comments »

I think this brand new book, which I’ve just ordered, will be good: Kevin Dowd and Martin Hutchinson, Alchemists of Loss: How Modern Finance and Government Intervention Crashed the Financial System.  I’m not familiar with Hutchinson, but Dowd is definitely on the side of the angels.