Fascism: The Career of a Concept . By Paul E. Gottfried. Northern Illinois University Press, 2016. Vii + 226 pages. Paul Gottfried’s immensely erudite survey of interpretations of fascism puts one in mind of Ludwig von Mises. Although Gottfried does not discuss Mises, readers of his excellent book will again and again be surprised and instructed
In a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 3, 2012, President Obama called a budget proposal of his Republican opponents in Congress “thinly veiled Social Darwinism.” What did did the president mean by this comment? The budget proposal in question, he claimed, would require drastic cuts in government programs designed to aid
[ Debating War: Why Arguments Opposing American Wars and Interventions Fail . By David J. Lorenzo. Routledge, 2016. viii + 233 pages.] David Lorenzo, a professor of international affairs at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan, has undertaken an ambitious task. America has engaged in many wars throughout its history, and all of them have
Few books have as misleading a title as Hard Choices . For Hillary Clinton, as this tedious memoir of her years as Secretary of State makes evident, there are no hard choices. The Solutions to all political and economic problems are easy. We must always rely on the directing hand of government, guided by the superior wisdom of our moral and
Tibor Machan passed away yesterday, a few days after his 77 th birthday. It is hard to believe that Tibor is no longer with us, as he was a man of indefatigable energy. He was an ardent defender of libertarianism; and in a vast number of publications, he showed a rare ability to apply philosophical principles to contemporary issues. In
In the view of John Tamny — an editor at Forbes and RealClearMarkets — economics as it is usually studied and taught in universities is unnecessarily complicated. The basic truths of economics are simple and require no difficult mathematics to understand. Readers will be reminded of Hazlitt’s great Economics in One Lesson . Entrepreneurs vs.
Volume 17, No. 4 (Winter 2014) Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames New York: McGraw Hill, 2014, xvii + 249 pages Money is an odd book. Its odd character can be brought out through an analogy. Imagine that someone wrote an eloquent book about price and wage controls. The book showed how attempts to control prices led to economic disaster. Faced with
I met Antony Flew at a Mises Institute conference in 2001. He did not share the admiration common among philosophers for John Rawls. For him, The Theory of Justice was a travesty: Rawls’s failure to define justice until late in the book especially upset him. His vehemence, combined as it was with great charm, made an unforgettable impression.
In a recent post on Facebook, Professor Peter Boettke of the George Mason University Department of Economics speaks in harsh terms of the view of libertarian rights held by Murray Rothbard and others, who, he thinks, were too clever for their own good. He complains, “there is a habit among libertarians to engage in what I have called ‘litmus test’
Today is Ralph Raico’s eightieth 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 devotion
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.