We were shocked at how many ways Solzhenitsyn mentions that the Soviets devised to torture someone — probably at least 100 different ways are mentioned in this book, including a slow grinding of the private parts of male prisoners with a guard’s jackboot, and making you stand for days, forcing you to sleep while standing up. The Soviet Union was a nation where you could be arrested for absolutely nothing and sent to the Gulag or Siberia for ten years or longer, or be taken to the basement of Lubyanka prison in Moscow, never to been seen again. It was a society where neighbor ratted out neighbor and even children turned in their parents. This book is a stunning work of literature that shows exactly how sick and depraved the Soviets were in the 1917 to 1956 period. Solzhenitsyn uses sarcasm (“!”) and dark humor better than any other writer. Even he was shocked at how brutal, inhumane, sadistic, and paranoid his fellow Soviets were.

Movie: "Triumph of the Will" (1935) – directed by Leni Riefenstahl.

The Man in the High Castle – (series) – (2015-2019). starring Alexa Davlos, Rufus Sewell, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. – What if Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had won World War II?     A Review of This Series.

"The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy." — Milton Friedman.

Socialism would be wonderful if the word meant “socializing with your friends over a cup of coffee or a beer," [thank you Mike Lindell for this quote], but history proves that socialism has been a huge disaster, resulting in the slaughter and misery of millions. F. A. Hayek explains why socialism is bad and why capitalism (not crony capitalism) and freedom is vastly superior.

Ayn Rand discusses the difference between capitalism and collectivism in this book. “Collectivism” is a term that Ayn Rand used extensively in her work. It means “socialism.” Socialism means, “the government pretends to pay you, and you pretend to work.” Rand was a believer in free market capitalism (not crony capitalism or state capitalism), and warned of the dangers of the government and private actors (the non-producers) destroying production and the producers, who were the ones creating the businesses and enterprises that produce all of the jobs and goods that we need and take for granted.

Hazlitt was a libertarian philosopher and free market economist. He was a member of the Austrian School of economics. He warned us of the dangers of government intervention.

“…the only thing to do with cash by that time [in July, 1922, the inflation rate was 700%] was to turn it into something else as quickly as possible. To save was folly. Undoubtedly, however, as in Austria, there were many farmers who behaved outrageously. Dr. Schact’s account of the inflationary years recalled that farmers ‘used their paper marks to purchase many useless things as well. That was the period in which grand and upright pianos were to be found in the most unmusical households.’ Anyone who was alive to the realities of inflation, he said, could safeguard himself against losses in paper currency by buying assets which would maintain their value: houses, real estate, manufactured goods, raw materials, and so forth.”

Dr. Theo Morell was Hitler’s personal physician before and during World War II. He was basically a quack, but made a huge contribution to the world (and to us) by keeping detailed, accurate records of the snake oil nostrums, dietary prescriptions, and dangerous drugs that he prescribed to Hitler. Did these treatments contribute to Hitler’s genocidal impulses? Hitler had cholecystitis, a chronic inflammation of the gall bladder ducts, and was a vegetarian. (Hitler once bragged to a couple of schoolgirls that he ate 1 kilogram (2.2 lbs.) of chocolate a day!) Did his physical health influence his mental health? Did his gut microbiome dysbiosis affect his behavior? What causes this kind of evil? This is what we want to know.

Video: "High Hitler"

Article: Did Hitler's diet play a part in his behavior?

Benjamin Roth was an attorney practicing in Youngstown, Ohio, during the Great Depression. He kept a diary with many financial observations through and after the 1930’s Depression. He was initially impressed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal program, but soon realized that too much government intervention was extremely bad for the economy and for our freedoms. (The Supreme Court ruled that many of FDR’s New Deal programs were unconstitutional.) His diary is a fascinating look back at the U.S., and a warning for the future, during the decade-long hardships that the people of the U.S. and the world endured. Roth had the same fascination with the stock market and with inflation that we have today. He didn’t like the government’s reliance on inflating the currency instead of increasing taxes, which the government knew would hurt the recovery and would antagonize voters. (There is truly nothing new under the sun.)

Read how there was a really bad recession in 1921 before the Roaring Twenties that was as bad or worse than the recession that started the Great Depression, but cured itself in about 18 months because the Federal government did nothing except reduce spending (!).

A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the progressive movement.

Another book that has caused much misery and confusion and will cause much hardship in the future. Keynes theorized that the government could prop up the economy by stimulating it with printed money during bad times and withdrawing the stimulus during good times. The governments of the world, who are populated with Keynesian economists and Ph.D's, now think that it's good to keep stimulating the economy no matter what.

Albert Speer was an architect and a close associate of Adolf Hitler, who loved art and architecture. Speer was also the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison at Nuremberg.

“Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly." – One of the tenets of communism according to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in “The Communist Manifesto (page 70).”

The massive money-printing by the Fed causes huge distortions and mal-investments in the economy. It results in a staggering increase in income inequality as the economy becomes more and more financialized, which mainly benefits the upper 1%.

 1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. 

 2a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property. 

   b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state. 

 3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done. 

 1: of, relating to, or in the manner of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus known for his defeat of Hannibal in the Second Punic War by the avoidance of decisive contest. 

 2 [the Fabian Society; from the members' belief in slow rather than revolutionary change in government] : of, relating to, or being a society of socialists organized in England in 1884 to spread socialist principles gradually.

 1a: a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed. ["To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities."] 

  b: a theory advocating elimination of private property. 

 2 [capitalized]  a: a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the Soviet Union.
  b: a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production.
  c: a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably.
  d: communist systems collectively. 

1 [often capitalized] : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. 

 2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control// early instances of army fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge. 

1: centralized control by an autocratic authority.

2: the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority. 

an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

not true capitalism. A combination of a powerful central government with large corporations, in other words, fascism. Benito Mussolini, who created the word “fascism,” defined the word as “the merging of the state and the corporation.” Another word for this is “corporatism” or “crony capitalism.”  

true capitalism. What the U.S. had from about 1870 to 1913, the year the Federal Reserve Bank was created by Congress and the banking cartel. Free market capitalism requires a small central government that doesn’t intervene in the market. It also requires a gold standard and a free banking system, where there is no central bank (i.e., there is no currency monopoly);  where local or state banks issue their own currency backed by gold, usually at a 20%-40% fractional reserve ratio, because the banks don’t need 100% coverage of the currency, which were essentially gold warehouse receipts. (See the picture below of the currency that a bank in Dubuque, Iowa printed between 1863 and 1935.) Banks would usually honor other banks’ currencies because they were familiar with that bank and had had a relationship with that bank in the past based on mutual trust. The period from 1870, or right after the Civil War, to 1913 led to a flourishing economy with the good kind of deflation, where prices go down as producers became more efficient at producing goods, and everyone’s standard of living increases. This period is when many iconic companies were started, such as the Santa Fe Railroad, RCA (Radio Corporation of America), Ford, and hundreds of other automobile companies during this Golden Age of Automobiles (see below for some automobiles created during this time). This was also when companies, such as Standard Oil, became dominant as the age of petroleum began. Entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie became so wealthy that they were able to donate tens of millions of dollars to fund libraries across the U.S. Charities like the Red Cross (founded 1881) and Salvation Army (1865) were created during this period to take care of the indigent. (This was before welfare, food stamps, Section 8 housing allowances, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.)

1899 Stanley Steamer

1916 Studebaker Speedster

1916 Packard Twin Six Touring

1896 Armstrong Phaeton Gasoline Electric Hybrid

Click on the pictures above for more information about these cars.