Why is knowing economics and history important? Because without the knowledge these disciplines give us, we can be as stupid and as destructive as a Belarusian despot.

The answer is more freedom, not more politics and coercion. Why is such common sense so infuriatingly uncommon?

The more one allows the world’s wonders to witness to him, the less he’ll want to play God with other people’s lives or with the economy that their trillions of individual decisions create.

Let me take you on a stroll through history, stopping for a few moments to tell you of some men and women born on September 29 aside from me.

Whenever he spoke or wrote, he wasted no words; he said what he meant and meant what he said. His two vetoes of the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Act were masterful.

If I were running today, I think I would choose the inspirational hit from Les Miserables, “Do You Hear the People Sing?”

Calvin Coolidge’s words are as spot-on today as they were in 1923 when he said, “To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.”

Focus on character-building so that someday you can honestly express the sentiments of the Apostle Paul on the night before his martyrdom: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

There’s simply no evidence that homeschooled children (with a rare exception) make anything but fine, solid citizens who respect others and work hard as adults.

What’s the difference, asks an old joke, between a successful bank robber and one who ends up in prison?

Dora de Ampuero is a champion of individual freedom. Several generations of young people have been enlightened and guided thanks to her.

FDR was less of an ideologue than he was a shallow opportunist capitalizing on the public’s demand for “action.” With the gift of an orator’s tongue, he could sell just about anything to a desperate public. As a candidate in 1932, he sold the antidote to the poison he later injected. Usually, these things are done in reverse order.

Good economics is more than possible. It is imperative, and achieving it begins with the knowledge of what bad economics is all about.

If you favor the student debt cancellation plan of Joe Biden, you cannot make a credible case that Jesus made him do it.

Freedom works. It's a lesson that needs to be told, re-told, and told again. (Image: 1946 Japanese banknote.)

Americans can be thankful that the cynical effort to corrupt the Court in 1937 was defeated by principled legislators like Montana’s Burton K. Wheeler. We should hope that any similar schemes in the future will meet the same fate.

Individual freedom is precious and rare. It is constantly threatened by concentrated power, ignorance, collectivism, contempt for rights and property, and other evils. Securing and keeping freedom is a continuous, historic struggle.

Exploring freedom as a concept, with Jan Kuban of Polsko-Amerykańska Fundacja Edukacji i Rozwoju Ekonomicznego - PAFERE (Polish-American Foundation for Education and Research in Economics).

May his Grand Tour for Liberty Go On!

Everybody wants the world to be a better place. We often feel helpless, assuming that what happens is outside of our ability to make a difference. I don’t buy that defeatist attitude.