Nineteen eighty-two was not a happy year for freedom. A severe and protracted recession gripped America. Many were beginning to wonder if Ronald Reagan was going to be a one-termer. Unemployment in Britain hit a postwar high. Across the Channel,…

As Europe’s economic debacle gathers apace, there’s no shortage of commentators saying “I told you so.” The impact of factors such as out-of-control welfare states, excessive debt, widespread bureaucratization, a flawed monetary experiment, low-productivity, and labor market rigidities seems obvious…

No more austerity! Judging from recent European election results, that’s the message presently being shouted at European politicians all over the old continent. It’s a mantra echoed across the Atlantic by Americans such as Paul Krugman. Austerity, they argue, isn’t…

Much can change in five years. In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy, a man who forged his reputation as a dynamic no-nonsense Interior Minister, was viewed by many as France’s best chance in a generation to break away from the country’s hyper-interventionist…

What does an Argentine-born Cuban Communist revolutionary executed in the Bolivian jungle 45 years ago have in common with a small town on Ireland’s west coast? Apart from tenuous ancestral connections, the answer is nothing. Recent attempts, however, to manufacture…

In recent years, American liberals’ love-affair with all things contemporary Western European (sans Margaret Thatcher and Benedict XVI) has acquired an increasingly desperate edge. As evidence for the European social model’s severe dysfunctionality continues to mount before our eyes, the…

If there was ever any doubt about one of the Obama Administration’s key philosophical commitments, it was dispelled on Jan. 20 when the Department of Health and Human Services informed the Catholic Church that most of its agencies will be…

If there is one word that captures many Europeans’ response to the continent’s financial crisis, it is denial. Witness the description by the editors of France’s newspaper-of-record, Le Monde, of France’s S&P credit-downgrade on January 13 as “un non-événement financier.”…

After almost four years of stimulus-packages, deficit-spending, and quantitative easing, it now seems obvious that traditional “Keynesian” remedies to our current economic woes have failed to put America back on track. Nevertheless many economists and politicians continue to promote such…

Most of us have now lost count of how many times Europe’s political leaders have announced they’ve arrived at a “fundamental” agreement which “decisively” resolves the eurozone’s almost three-year old financial crisis. As recently as late October, we were told…