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[Rothbard wrote this in 1950.] Whether the American war effort remains “partial” or eventually becomes “total,” methods of mobilization are rapidly becoming our most pressing economic problem. Obviously, mobilization for war inevitably involves hardships for the populace, and lowered standards of living for the duration of the war effort. The

[ Libertarian Forum (March 1983)] Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek, To take one blow, and turn the other cheek; It is not written what a man shall do, If the rude caitiff smite the other too! —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Somewhere in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead there is a striking passage where one of the Bad Guys (and Rand’s Bad Guys are

[This unsigned editorial, written by Murray N. Rothbard, appeared in the April 15, 1969, issue of The Libertarian (soon to become The Libertarian Forum ).] April 15, that dread Income Tax day, is around again, and gives us a chance to ruminate on the nature of taxes and of the government itself. The first great lesson to learn about taxation is

Our country is beset by a large number of economic myths that distort public thinking on important problems and lead us to accept unsound and dangerous government policies. Here are ten of the most dangerous of these myths and an analysis of what is wrong with them. Myth #1 Deficits are the cause of inflation; deficits have nothing to do with

Every day that passes brings further evidence, in the marvelous phrase of Bill Kauffman in Chronicles , of “the enormous gulf between those who live in America and those who run it.” We who live in America are firmly convinced that we are taxed far too much, that government spending and taxation are eating out our substance to support a growing

The recent rioting and virtual civil war in Northern Ireland points out, both for libertarians and for the world at large, the vital importance of pushing for and attaining the goal of national liberation for all oppressed people. Aside from being a necessary condition to the achievement of justice, national liberation is the only solution to the

If men were like ants, there would be no interest in human freedom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, interchangeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, would care if they lived or died? The glory of the human race is the uniqueness of each individual, the

[Philosopher] Eric Mack [in his article “Permissible Defense”] uses a device employed by all too many libertarians—of holding the ideal free-market anarchist system or a limited government as virtually equivalent to the current State-ridden system. Thus, he points out quite correctly that isolationism makes no sense as a principle for a

The following is an interview conducted in the Summer of 1990 with Murray Rothbard for the Austrian Economics Newsletter.  AEN: Any recent thoughts on hermeneutics ? MNR: That’s a history-of-thought question, since hermeneutics has been crushed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and David Gordon . Part of their critique is that the hermeneuticists were unable

In the conservative and libertarian movements there have been two major forms of surrender, of abandonment of the cause. The most common and most glaringly obvious form is one we are all too familiar with: the sellout. The young libertarian or conservative arrives in Washington, at some think-tank or in Congress or as an administrative aide, ready