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 Twenty years ago, if you were to buy all of the devices that allow you to do what your iPhone and its apps can do today, it would have cost more than $3
million. And that $3 million price tag does not include the technology that could not have been bought at any price because the technology did not exist, points out economist Richard Rahn, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. The iPhone is a camera and music player; computer for email, maps and directions; alarm clock, Rolodex, calendar, photo albums, voice recorder, flashlight and stacks of newspapers and magazines; a personal library; and a source for all the world’s info and
knowledge through Google.
As presidential candidates decry the stagnation in income as well as income inequality, you do not hear much about “those reviled capitalists all over the world” who have created more and better goods and services, “improving everyone’s real standard of living, well-being and happiness,” writes Mr. Rahn.
Almost all of the great innovations came from those in the private sector who created them out of the desire for more wealth or just intellectual curiosity. The socialist countries have produced almost nothing — except for bread lines, coercive and destructive taxation and regulation, and gulags. Yet politicians all over the world proudly proclaim themselves to be socialists and attack the
capitalist wealth creators and innovators — as if the real world had never existed.
In real terms, almost all foods and raw materials are becoming both less expensive and more abundant (in terms of man’s economic ability to grow or obtain them). Each year, the United States and other developed countries grow more food, and now with even less fertilizer per pound, on less land. If you have flown over the Northeast United States, you may have noticed that it is now largely woodland
where even a half-century ago it was largely cropland. As the woods have come back, so have the animals — with even a densely populated state like New Jersey having a problem with a growing bear population.
Mr. Rahn argues that entrepreneurs and business people need to be allowed “to give us many more $3 million gifts by producing and creating all of those products that better our lives.”
FLASHBACK Video: Milton Friedman on Capitalism and Poverty
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In The American Conservative, Rod Dreher warns readers, “Good luck pressing on with that open door to Middle East refugee migration, Chancellor Merkel. The future belongs to leaders like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who gave a powerful speech a week ago today, on Hungary’s national
holiday.”
Orban said:
The main danger to Europe’s future does not come from those who want to come here, but from Brussels’ fanatical internationalism. [Note: By “Brussels,” he means the European Union. — RD] We should not allow Brussels to place itself above the law. We shall not allow it to force upon us the bitter fruit of its cosmopolitan immigration policy. We shall not import to Hungary
crime, terrorism, homophobia and synagogue-burning anti-Semitism. There shall be no urban districts beyond the reach of the law, there shall be no mass disorder. No immigrant riots here, and there shall be no gangs hunting down our women and daughters. We shall not allow others to tell us whom we can let into our home and country, whom we will live alongside, and with whom we will share our country.
Donald Trump has clearly captured the nationalism spirit and tenacity of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has not, and she now is paying the price. Mr. Trump will continue to add to his delegate count by telling Americans that an “America comes first strategy” is the new order of business for the country. It is going to be a theme of nationalism,
not a George Soros and moveon.org fanatical internationalism, that is going to govern America’s actions in the future.
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 Ann Coulter writes about the multicultural disaster of London and Belgium and the naiveté of European leaders. Here in America, as Ann details, it is Donald Trump who appears to understand the horror of multiculturalism gone astray. And judging from the massive size of
Trump rallies, Americans are looking for Trump and Trump alone to offer some answers.
Ann tells readers, “After the mass murder committed by Muslims in San Bernardino, which came on the heels of the mass murder committed by Muslims in Paris, Donald Trump proposed a moratorium on Muslim immigration.”
Explaining the idea on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump talked about how Muslim immigration was infecting Europe: “Look at what happened in Paris, the horrible carnage. … We have places in London and other places that are so radicalized that the police are afraid for their own lives. We have to be very smart and very vigilant.”
Trump’s reference to London’s no-go zones was met with a massive round of sneering, which is what passes for argument in America these days. Jeb (Bush), said Trump was “unhinged,” Sen. John McCain called him “foolish,” and former vice president Dick Cheney said Trump’s remarks went “against everything we stand for and believe in.” (Based on
Trump’s crushing primary victories, Cheney is no longer qualified to say what “we” believe in.)
To prove Trump wrong, reporters called British authorities and asked them: Are you doing your jobs? They responded, Why, yes we are! The head of London’s police said, “Mr. Trump could not be more wrong,” and London mayor Boris Johnson called Trump’s comments “utter nonsense.”
Within days, however, scores of rank-and-file London policemen begged to differ.
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With the potential appointment of the radical anti-gun judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, Americans’ individual right to bear arms is only one decision away from being history. In this series I’ve already explained that you need to find the right gun for you, and then get trained properly in how to use it.
Once you know how to safely handle your firearm, it’s time to begin working on your accuracy. This is where practice begins to take precedent over enthusiasm. It’s easy to get jazzed up about going to the gun shop and loading up on new equipment, and it’s not hard to sit through a Sig Sauer Academy course learning the basics from the best of the best. But the repetition and dedication
of long-term training for accuracy is where most shooters give up. Good training and learning the fundamentals correctly the first time can save you hours of training trying to unlearn bad habits.
In the video below Sig Sauer Academy Director Adam Painchaud walks through the two most important aspects of fundamental shooting skills: trigger finger discipline, and muzzle management.
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 You
may look at my headline with a touch of disbelief, and, to be honest, I would most often join you in the disbelief camp. But I can assure you without reservation that the steps I am going to outline for you in my “Invest Like a Millionaire” series can be truly transformational for you and your family.
I have practiced the program I will outline for you for over four decades. Over the decades, I have taken fewer than a handful of significant losses in my personal account. The last such unpleasant outcome occurred over a half a dozen years ago when I cleared out a portfolio position related to an analyst with whom I no longer wished to be associated.
In most years I do not have a transaction in my account that would generate either a gain or a loss. Given what you have already read from me, it should be clear that you probably are not familiar with anyone else who could have written these words. I hope we are off to a compelling start in my “Invest Like a Millionaire” series.
In part two, I will introduce you to the two most important words in investing. If you learn nothing else from me but these two words, you certainly will be far ahead of where you were before you began your journey through “Invest Like a Millionaire.”
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 Radical jihadism is not going away anytime soon. It is only going to get worse, writes Peggy Noonan in the WSJ. The jihadists’ weapons and means will get worse. Right now it’s guns and
suicide vests. In the nature of things their future weapons will be more sophisticated and deadly.”
The usual glib talk of politicians—calls for unity, vows that we will not give in to fear—will produce in the future what they’ve produced in the past: nothing. “The thoughts and the prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium,” said the president, vigorously refusing to dodge clichés. “We must unite and be together, regardless of nationality,
race or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism.” It is not an “existential threat,” he noted, as he does. But if you were at San Bernardino or Fort Hood, the Paris concert hall or the Brussels subway, it would feel pretty existential to you.
Ms. Noonan cites a piece by Graeme Wood in the Atlantic, in which he writes, “We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change . . . and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world. …
committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people.”
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You’ve got mail. It’s always nice to get a gem of an email from a client.
E.J.
If there is anything I have learned from Dick Young, the most important thing is that it is all about compounding. Please note the attached advertisement from Taylor Cadillac which posted in the latest issue of the Self-Starter, the monthly magazine of the Cadillac-LaSalle Club. This classic example backs up everything Dick has always taught us in his writings. Please pass the article on to
him.
Regards to Becky and the kids.
Happy Easter.
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 Last week we looked at the best that could
be hoped for as concerns right-of-center think tanks on foreign policy. Today we’ll look at one of the biggest obstacles to a sensible GOP foreign policy: the GOP donor class.
It’s important at the outset to dispel a myth about super-wealthy GOP donors and foreign policy: the idea that they are monolithically hawkish and Middle East-obsessed. A good number of top GOP donors have much more sensible and restrained views on foreign policy than one would know from seeing the Party’s foreign policy stances. That’s because all the donors who have moderate views on the issue don’t care enough to fight on it, and all the donors who care about
it have extreme views.
It is hard to overstate the extent of the problem. One good illustration was when Jeb Bush was summoned to Manhattan last May to promise he wouldn’t listen to James Baker, he went further, explaining that “If you want to know who I listen to for advice [on the Middle East], it’s” George W. Bush. According to one attendee, this statement was followed by:
a very positive response, just based on faces around the room. There didn’t seem to be any sort of negative reaction.
This sequence of events raises the possibility that the hawkish, pro-Israel donors who exercise enormous influence over the Party’s foreign policy might not be very bright, even taking their preferences as a given. Why would these people believe that the man whose Iraq War loosed a maelstrom of fanaticism and violence in the region, who set the table for an Iran deal they loathe, and who gave fewer weapons to Israel
than Barack Obama would be a good influence on Middle East policy going forward? Are they even paying attention?
One is forced to conclude that for many of these men, a swaggering, immodest nationalism and the occasional ill-conceived war is enough to qualify as “strong” on foreign policy.
On the other side are a number of GOP donors who have sensible views on foreign policy, to include, it appears, Charles Koch. Koch’s institute has run a number of worthy programs on foreign policy of late, and Koch’s remarks in a recent interview with the Financial Times included this sensible line of inquiry as regards the U.S. reaction to terrorism:
We have been doing this for a dozen years. We invaded Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. Has that made us safer? Has that made the world safer? It seems like we’re more worried about it now than we were then, so we need to examine these strategies.
One is forced to try to suss out the views of a Charles Koch on these issues, however, because he does not ensure, as Sheldon Adelson does, that his craziest foreign policy views will be viewed deferentially by the entirety of the Party.
The bitter truth is that a sea change would be needed in the GOP donor class to fix the Party’s foreign policy. That sea change would have to involve a group of super-wealthy donors becoming irrationally interested in a reasonable foreign policy, if “rational” is defined in any way as “self-interested.”
The United States is so safe that it can swat at bees’ nests halfway around the world with little cost beyond marginally higher deficits and thousands of dead service members. The donor class, like much of the country, is insulated from these costs thanks to the size of the nation and to its all-volunteer fighting force.
Until and unless an elite identity politics emerges among GOP donors that finds it ignoble to constantly clamor for and start wars but never win them, there is very little reason to hope that GOP foreign policy will change.
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 Former CIA bin Laden unit chief
Michael Scheuer alerts Americans that because of the 2nd Amendment, Americans, unlike most unarmed European citizens, ensures that the American citizenry can, if they so choose, defend themselves against the Islamists, the national government, or perhaps both. Scheuer continues:
What the aftermath of the Brussels attack requires is popular recognition that the Belgian and Western intelligence and police services — no matter how successful they are — will have not the slightest impact on the strategic reality that the West, is now, and for at least a decade past, being beaten to death by the Islamists. They have defeated our armies in two wars, they have spread
worldwide, they have — despite the lying if condescendingly soothing words of Obama, Biden, McCain, Cameron, Hollande, Clinton, Cruz, the treason that calls itself Neo-Conservative, etc. — very successfully changed the way we live…
The West’s lethal Islamist problem has been wrought by two factors. The first is the war the Islamist started and are waging and winning against the United States and Europe….
For American and European citizens, then, it is increasingly difficult to identify the greater enemy, the Islamists who kill them or the self-centered, arrogant elite that rules them and allows the Islamists to kill them. How this predicament will resolve itself is hard to tell. For the most part — I have read — Europe’s citizens are unarmed and so it seems they will have to watch their
societies, traditions, and history be consumed by a combination of the urban guerrilla war the Islamists have already started and the feckless policies of their unmanly governments which both fuel that war and lack the ruthlessness to win it. They will be unable to defend themselves by killing either enemy. In America, however, the 2nd Amendment — and the vastly better armed citizenry it has allowed to grow in response to Obama’s tyranny — still ensures that the citizenry can,
if they so choose, defend themselves against the Islamists, the national government, or perhaps both.
FLASHBACK VIDEO: Michael Scheuer | How and How Not to Fight Terrorism
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