The opinion that is dished out in textbooks every year by academic historians is ideologically mostly left-liberalism or left-radicalism. The effect of this is to bias what is written, especially with recent events. The historians see class conflicts as driving forces.
History of Liberty
This 25-lecture instructional seminar presents a reinterpretation of the history of liberty from the ancient world—an ambitious agenda, but a wonderfully successful conference. Hosted at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, 24-30 June 2001.
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The European Miracle was one in which humans achieved sustained growth for the first time on earth. Why Europe? Because of European decentralization and private enterprise.
There was a natural law tradition from antiquity and the middle ages. Natural law is the oldest and most frequently used concept of political theory. Natural law is the principles that are to be established if justice were to prevail. Or, it is the scientific laws of man and his environment.
Lessl’s field is rhetoric. The history of the relationship between faith and science shifted when the theological nucleus was removed and science was inserted. Rhetoric was left behind. Faith was erased in the middle of the nineteenth century. Kant was intensely hostile to Catholicism. He wanted to...
Most of what is said about nation-states is not true. They are neither democracies nor republics nor nations nor states. There is no natural relationship between government and state. Men have been governed by many things that are not states. Throughout most of history man has lived without a state.
The transforming ideology of the American Revolution consists of four elements: liberalism, republicanism, English law, and Protestantism. Liberalism was developed by the Levellers, saying that natural rights could be evolved from natural law.
Natural law does not depend directly on God’s will. Natural law goes back to at least the scholastics and perhaps Thomas Aquinas. Modern Natural Rights theory began in 1625. Modern theory recognizes the institution the state. Natural law is thought to produce inalienable natural rights. They speak...
Albion’s Seed is a great book about the four migration folkways into the colonies from Great Britain during 1629 through 1775. The groups had many characteristics in common which may be what made future union possible, but the groups were also different. Puritans hated Quakers. Everybody hated...
This is a federal constitution. Federalism is the most important idea for liberty. You must maximize your choices and you need meaningful choices, made against a cultural background. Federalism requires such moral correctness that it makes it the most difficult system to maintain. Federalism always...
People learn their political views through what they believe about history. Memorials function to push certain interpretations, e.g. about the War Between the States and the greatness of rulers like Lincoln and FDR.
Jeffersonian States Rights Doctrine until the Civil War was grounded in three freedom documents: The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, and The Treaty of Paris of 1783. Those documents emphasized independent states, not a single nation or union.
You can’t take Southern secession seriously because of slavery. Illinois is worth pondering because Lincoln supported the laws against blacks because he did not think that free blacks could ever mix with whites. A superior position was assigned to the white race. Lincoln meant every word. He voted...
The Progressive Era covered the turn of the 19 th-20 th centuries until about WWI. It delivered such delights as the Federal Reserve. Accelerated statism with a philosophical veneer favored experts on boards making economic decisions efficiently. This era birthed the regulatory state.
One of the problems of the American Empire is that there is a lot of empire denial going around. You cannot want to rule the world and yet say that what you value is laissez-faire economics (like National Review does).
The 1917 Revolution gave birth to both the reality and the myth of the Bolsheviks and the democratic left. The social democrats rejected the violence which was part of the communist party. They claimed to follow a democratic path to socialism. They turned Marx into a wise man that should not be...
Economic theory is essential for understanding history. It is difficult to interpret data without economic theory. Theory cannot come from data. All states are aggressive. All wars require economic resources. More liberal states will pursue more aggressive policies. The biggest bullies will get away...
Certain themes that relate to the New Deal between 1933 and 1938 ended in 1938 when FDR moved on to repair all the problems of the world, not just the country. The Congress and the people were receptive to all proposals that they thought would benefit them directly. Agencies that were created in the...
Charles Adams is a rare tax historian who leads us back to Greeks and Romans and the history of liberty. The Battle of Marathon was critical for Greek civilization to seize control of Western Civilization. The Greeks had no direct taxation, just indirect. This is what fostered liberty.
WWI was a kind of turning point. Bolshevism, National Socialism and fascism are related ideologies which surfaced after the war. Fascism was the wave of the future in 1920 with its notion of government central planning.
Several court cases must be mentioned. Each makes a point. Plessey v. Ferguson: Segregation Separate but equal is ok. Brown v. Board of Education: Separate schools are inherently unequal . Green v. County School Board of New Kent County: Freedom of choice desegregation plan unconstitutional.
Mises was well-versed in history, but many economists are not. History must be understood and revised. Wilson distorted the truth about how America entered WWI. The propaganda was not to be questioned. Wrong lessons are taught. The 1929 depression was displayed as proof that the free market had...
Thomas Sowell’s book, Civil Rights, lays bare many of the myths of the Great Society. What did ordinary people do before an advanced welfare state? Anti-poverty programs like the 1965 Job Corps did not turn out well. There was less poverty before the programs. Federal aid to education, like Head...
The warfare state does not want peace, it wants war. Conducting a permanent war requires three things. There must be an underlying convincing belief that the war is worthwhile. Some interest groups need to stand to gain money or power. And, crises need to provoke reliable and ongoing responses...
Murray Rothbard popularized the concept of the welfare-warfare state. He didn’t like either of them. He knew that if the state was doing anything there was plunder involved. Welfare was any handout from the government to anyone. One book that handled warfare and welfare systematically was Crisis and...
The role of the intellectual is a perennial question. Why do they act the way they do? Why are they hostile to the free market? Is the state really virtuous and the market really vicious? Mises thought the anti-capitalist mentality was rooted in envy. He also thought our entire culture was soaked in...
