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[Column written by Murray Rothbard for the New Libertarian 4, no. 7 (April-June 1980): 13–15.] The Iran/Afghanistan crises have been a god-send to Jimmy Carter. From being lowest in the polls of any President in American history, Carter has vaulted to a probably shoo-in for reelection. Iran helped; but it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

[Chapter 19 of Rothbard’s newly edited and released  Conceived in Liberty , vol. 5,   The New Republic: 1784–1791 .] A particularly vital aspect of the Constitution was the procedure to be set up for its ratification. The draft proposed that the Constitution be submitted to Congress and then to special conventions, so that state legislatures could

[This passage is excerpted from Murray N. Rothbard’s  Conceived in Liberty , vol. 5,   The New Republic: 1784–1791 .] All the articles of the draft plan having been considered by the convention, the amended draft was referred on August 31 to a grand Committee of Unfinished Parts. In the committee, the nationalists, not content with their plethora

[This passage is excerpted from Murray N. Rothbard’s  Conceived in Liberty , vol. 5,   The New Republic: 1784–1791 .] The Federalists shrewdly decided to strike hard and swift and drive the Constitution rapidly through the states. The Federalist leaders were a small and cohesive group concentrated in the cities of the eastern seaboard, knew each

The libertarian creed emerged from the “classical liberal” movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Western world, specifically, from the English Revolution of the seventeenth century. This radical libertarian movement, even though only partially successful in its birthplace, Great Britain, was still able to usher in the

[This passage is excerpted from Murray N. Rothbard’s  Conceived in Liberty , vol. 5,   The New Republic: 1784–1791 .]  One of the most important aspects of the proposed Constitution was its authorization for a permanent national standing army, a striking contrast to the simple reserve constituting the state militia. The standing army was a

[Chapter 2 of Rothbard’s newly edited and released  Conceived in Liberty , vol. 5,   The New Republic: 1784–1791 .] It has been alleged—from that day to this—that the depression which hit the United States, especially the commercial cities, was caused by “excessive” imports by Americans beginning in 1783. But this kind of pseudo-explanation merely

[This passage is excerpted from Murray N. Rothbard’s  Conceived in Liberty , vol. 5,   The New Republic: 1784–1791 .]  As the epochal struggle for Massachusetts began, it was clear that the majority of the people of the state opposed the Constitution. Furthermore, in contrast to Pennsylvania where the Federalists had the important advantage of

[Excerpt from Murray N. Rothbard, A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2005), part 4, pp. 400–24.] By the end of 1925, Montagu Norman and the British Establishment were seemingly monarch of all they surveyed. Backed by Strong and the Morgans, the British had had

A. Bimetallism Government imposes price controls largely in order to divert public attention from governmental inflation to the alleged evils of the free market. As we have seen, “Gresham’s Law”—that an artificially overvalued money tends to drive an artificially undervalued money out of circulation—is an example of the general consequences of