This Day In History: Economist Frederic Bastiat was born on this day in 1801. I actually have a Bastiat T-shirt. Economics is often called the "Dismal Science" but this became less so with Bastiat often injecting humor into it. Robert Heilbroner writes in his "Worldly Philosophers": "There was...a man who has been almost forgotten in the march of economic ideas. He is Frederic Bastiat, an eccentric Frenchman, who lived from 1801 to 1850, and who in that short space of time and an even shorter space of literary life—six years—brought to bear on economics that most devastating of all weapons: ridicule...Bastiat had a gift for pointing out absurdities; his little book Economic Sophisms is as close to humor as economics has ever come." For instance, in his Candlemakers’ Petition he wrote of candlemakers petitioning the Government to help them combat their enemy the sun, as sunlight was hurting their business.
He was also one of the earliest opponents of Socialism.
This Day in History: Revolutionary Che Guevara was born on this date in 1928. I know that it's trendy to wear Che apparel...but you probably shouldn't. Che Guevara helped establish the first Cuban concentration camp, where he housed people he didn't like: Gays, Jehovah's Witnesses and anyone else that didn't match up to his Socialist Ideal Man. He was a mass murderer that enjoyed torturing animals, and he was a white supremacist who maintained that Africans held their racial purity because they wouldn't bathe. He also described Mexicans as “a band of illiterate Indians.” But none of that matters as Che's likeness has been known as "the face that launched a thousand T-shirts." And there is a certain irony in BUYING a Che shirt, because in doing so you are engaging in the very economic system he sought to overthrow. Jay-Z has been seen wearing Che shirts with BLING (again, a contradiction of the anti-capitalism Che stood for). Even Prince Harry has been seen wearing a Che shirt, but then in the past he has also been seen wearing Nazi outfits so at least he's consistent. Converse used the image of Che Guevara in one of their shoe ad campaigns. In Peru you can BUY "El Che" cigarettes. In France you can BUY "El Ché-Cola." Taco Bell, Leica and many others have used his image. It's delicious that he is being exploited by the Capitalist system he hated.
"Let’s say that all you knew about Adolf Hitler was that he painted scenic pictures, postcards, and houses in Vienna, loved dogs and named his adorable German Shepard 'Blondie,' and frequently expressed solidarity with 'the people.' You might sport a T-shirt adorned with his image if you thought such a charismatic chap was also good-looking in a beret. But your education would be widely regarded as incomplete." Lawrence W Reed
