On Tuesday, December 17, 2002, Arenac Township and Omer City, Michigan held a joint referendum brought about by the actions of one woman, Cheryl Perry. The Perrys simply no longer wished to be looted by the Omer municipal government, even if it was only $41.62 a year. Omer bills itself as the Onion Capital of the World, although no one seems to
From shiftless bum to employee. Who can argue with that? Apparently the usual suspects at Commercial Alert, one of Ralph Nader’s anti-capitalist “watchdog” organizations. Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert, said the homeless who act as billboards should be paid minimum wage. “If they don’t get minimum wage, this is exploitation,” he said.
Loni Wells is desperately ill. The 20-year-old Canadian is among the nearly 3,000 Canadians who require a kidney transplant each year. Suffering from a rare kidney disease called Focal Membrano Proliferative Glomerionephritis (MPGN), Loni required 8 ½ hours of dialysis every day after her kidney’s failed completely in February 2000, and later
On February 4th, President Bush eulogized the life of Winston Churchill. The president described Winston Churchill as a “great man” and quickly zeroed in on the mistress that both Bush and Churchill share: war. “He was a prisoner in the Boer War, a controversial strategist in the Great War. He was the rallying voice of the Second World War, and a
[This article was o riginally published in 2004. ] The legend of William Tell, the Swiss legendary hero who symbolizes the struggle for individual and political freedom, has its origins in medieval Switzerland, in the tax rebellions that launched the Everlasting League and the defeat of an empire. Settled first by the Tene, then the Celts and then
Who among us isn’t familiar with the legend of Robin Hood? A friend of the oppressed, kind to women and children, a robber of the rich and giver to the poor (which has warmed the hearts of socialists and totalitarians ever since), Robin was pursued throughout Sherwood Forest by the cruel Sheriff of Nottingham. Over the following centuries, later
“The freedoms won by Americans in 1776 were lost in the revolution of 1913,” wrote Frank Chodorov . Indeed, a man’s home used to be his castle. The income tax, however, gave the government the keys to every door and the sole right to change the locks. Today the American people are no longer the master and the government has ceased to be the
The stakes are high, the public is divided, and extreme rhetoric is flying. So it always is the month before the presidential election. Why? Because of the power of the office, the very existence of which is contrary to any robust notion of freedom. The President of the United States on his sole decision deploys troops anywhere in the world,
Much of the commentary of Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith has focused on alleged comparisons between the rise of the Empire in the movie to the disciples of deception and the apprentice torturers of the present regime in Washington. Others have drawn the connection more broadly on how the forces of evil in general rise to power on
From The Rude Awakening Newsletter (Wednesday, October 20, 2004): The IMF was conceived in July 1944 at an international conference held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. John Maynard Keynes and Harry White, according to the exhibition in the IMF’s main foyer, envisioned the IMF “helping each county set a fixed but changeable exchange rate for it
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.
