Today is Ralph Raico’s seventy-ninth birthday. He is the greatest living historian of classical liberalism and a leading libertarian theorist. He was a member of Murray Rothbard’s legendary Circle Bastiat and one of Murray’s closest friends. Ralph has been my friend for more than thirty-five years, and his learning, analytical abilities, and
Today is Hans Hoppe’s birthday. He is an outstanding libertarian theorist, in the tradition of Murray Rothbard, and his strikingly original work ranges widely over philosophy, history, and economics. He is a scholar of the highest integrity and courage, and all lovers of liberty are in his
I highly recommend Terrance Tomkow’s Retributive Ethics to anyone interested in new approaches to ethics. Tomkow discusses with great insight a number of issues central to libertarianism, including self-defense and property rights. He holds that we have no positive moral duties and on this basis assails Peter Singer’s influential contention that
[This review of Charles Murray’s new book “By the People” appears in the September-October 2015 issue of The Austrian .] Charles Murray thinks that government has become arbitrary and tyrannical. In doing so, it has betrayed the “Madisonian” heritage of America, which strictly limited the power of the government to interfere with individual
Today would have been Joey Rothbard’s 87th birthday. She was Murray Rothbard’s “indispensable framework. “ She was a scholar in her own right, but she devoted her life to helping Murray. She was a wonderful friend, and I miss her very
Charles Murray thinks that government has become arbitrary and tyrannical. In doing so, it has betrayed the “Madisonian” heritage of America, which strictly limited the power of the government to interfere with individual liberty. “As I [Murray] got into the book, I discovered I had to find a label less cumbersome than ‘people devoted to limited
Many people in Catalonia wish to secede from Spain and form their own country, but the Spanish government has used force to block them from doing so. What should libertarians think of this conflict? In trying to answer this question, it is useful to seek guidance from Mises and Rothbard. Not that these two thinkers are always right, but it is a
Today would have been the 81st birthday of Ralph Raico, who died last December 31. His intellectual brilliance was evident from an early age, and while still in high school, he attended Ludwig von Mises’s seminar at New York University. There he met Murray Rothbard, who became his lifelong friend. Ralph was one of the most brilliant members of
A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order by Richard Haass Penguin Press, 2017 Richard Haass is a foreign policy professional of great knowledge and experience. He has served as director of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department; and for the past 14 years, he has been president of the Council on
The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Economic Growth, and Increase Inequality . By Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles. Oxford University Press, 2017. Viii + 221 pages. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Progressives claimed that the American political system was corrupt. Large financial and
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.