Free Republic

A former high-ranking EPA official who recently was sentenced to prison for fraud told lawmakers last month that, before he left the agency, he was working on a "project" examining ways to "modify the DNA of the capitalist system." The startlingly blunt comment was included in newly released transcripts of John Beale's deposition before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. One group that is frequently critical of the Obama administration's energy policy, the Institute for Energy Research, said the claim is a "smoking gun" that reveals the administration's true intentions.

The French government is trying to reign in its deficit by jacking up taxes, including the capital gains tax, which it wants to bring to the same level as the tax on income earned by the sweat of your brow—an old philosophical pillar of the French left. But an explosive essay published last Friday hit a nerve with entrepreneurs, venture capital investors, artisans, and mom-and-pop business owners. And their anger, which spread across the social media, the papers, and finally TV news, turned into an open revolt. The trigger was an editorial in La Tribune by John-David Chamboredon, Executive President...

According to the late economist Joseph A. Schumpeter, “a socialist form of society will inevitably emerge from an equally inevitable decomposition of capitalist society.” He further stated: “The capitalist order tends to destroy itself and centralist socialism is … a likely heir apparent.” In the sequence of modern history, no trend could be more significant for the fate of humanity than the trend toward socialism. Those who think socialism has been intellectually discredited and politically defeated have misunderstood a game where reversals are frequent as victories are undone by the subtlety of the defeated. One may admit that socialism’s deficiencies...