[Excerpted from chapter 5 of Albert Jay Nock’s Jefferson ] The Constitution looked fairly good on paper, but it was not a popular document; people were suspicious of it, and suspicious of the enabling legislation that was being erected upon it. There was some ground for this. The Constitution had been laid down under unacceptable auspices; its
[This article is excerpted from chapter 5 of Albert Jay Nock’s Jefferson .] The debate over funding and assumption [of the states’ Revolutionary War debt] was at its height when Mr. Jefferson took his place in the cabinet. There was relatively little trouble about funding, but assumption was dragging its keel; it failed in the House, but was
[From Our Enemy, the State ] If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact: namely, a great redistribution of power between society and the State. This is the fact that interests the student of civilization. He has only a secondary or derived interest in matters like price fixing, wage fixing, inflation,
[This article originally appeared in the American Mercury in March 1936. An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Donna Orlando, is available for download .] I believe that when the historian looks back on the last 20 years of American life, the thing that will puzzle him most is the amount of self-inflicted punishment that Americans seem able
[This article was first published in the American Mercury in November 1936. An MP3 audio file of this article, narrated by Steven Ng, is available for download .] Now that the campaign is ending, our citizens are presumably deciding whether to vote for Tweedledee or Tweedledum, and speculating on what is likely to happen to the country if either
[Excerpted from The Theory of Education in the United States (1932). An MP3 audio file of this article, narrated by Joel Sams, is available for download .] The subject that I am appointed to discuss is the theory of education in the United States. This discussion has its difficulties. It brings us face to face with a good many serious
[ Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943; 2007)] I was greatly interested in seeing that our system of free popular instruction was producing results, both negative and positive, which were quite different from those which its original designers expected it to produce. As Herbert Spencer has shown, no man or body of men has ever been wise enough to
[ Jefferson (1926; 2007)] Throughout the period of his ambassadorship, Mr. Jefferson found little doing in the way of business. Vergennes was polite, considerate, straightforward. They discussed one article of commerce after another, but could never come to much more than nominal terms. In the matter of rice, flour, fish, and “provisions of all
[The Page-Barbour Lectures for 1931 at the University of Virginia .] Traditionally, an educational system was conceived of as an organic whole, with distinct lines fixed between its units; and each unit was supposed to exercise its function with strict reference to the units preceding and succeeding it. When we organized our system, this was also
[ The Theory of Education in the United States: The Page-Barbour Lectures for 1931 at the University of Virginia ] We have seen that our school system is precisely such as one would expect; and we now see that our educational institutions are precisely such as one would expect. They cannot help themselves; their organizers and administrators
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.
