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[This article is excerpted from a longer report written in 1961 for the Volker Fund and the National Book Foundation on a two-volume American history textbook, A History of the American Republic , by George B. DeHuszar. The full memo is in  Strictly Confidential , edited by David Gordon. ] This is, to put it bluntly, a poor book. Any work on

At the beginning of 1776, New England was ready for independence. So were such leading radicals as Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry of Virginia, Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, and army leaders such as George Washington and Charles Lee. But the bulk of the colonies and the Continental Congress were not. One of the main stumbling blocks

Its Significance Fifty years ago, an exuberant American people knew little and cared less about economics. They understood, however, the virtues of economic freedom, and this understanding was shared by the economists, who supplemented common sense with sharper tools of analysis. At present, economics seems to be the number one American and world

I think it important to delineate briefly what relativism is and what the issues are on this important topic. Let us first consider the polar opposite of relativism: absolutism. The absolutist believes that man’s mind, employing reason (which according to some absolutists is divinely inspired, according to others is given by nature), is capable of

[This essay is chapter 15 of the book Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature .]   Why be libertarian, anyway? By this we mean, what’s the point of the whole thing? Why engage in a deep and lifelong commitment to the principle and the goal of individual liberty? For such a commitment, in our largely unfree world, means inevitably a radical

[Rothbard’s 1991 introduction to “Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor,” which was written in 1970.] Introduction In the two decades since this essay was written, the major social trends I analyzed have accelerated, seemingly at an exponential rate. The flight away from socialism and central planning begun in Yugoslavia has

[This essay was written in 1970. Read Rothbard’s 1991 introduction. ] I. 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

[This year marks the 60th anniversary of John Kenneth Galbraith’s celebrated book, The Affluent Society , which sparked much public discussion at the time of its publication about disparities between ever-increasing private wealth and what Galbraith claimed was an impoverished public sector lacking in social and physical infrastructure. Murray

[This article is excerpted from the title essay and the introduction to the first edition of Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays .] Introduction to First Edition Probably the most common question that has been hurled at me — in some exasperation — over the years is, “Why don’t you stick to economics?” For different reasons,

[First published in the Libertarian Forum , August 15, 1969.] Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), late 1960s   This open letter is addressed to the libertarians attending the YAF national convention in St. Louis this Labor Day weekend. Notice I said the libertarians in YAF; I have nothing to say to the so-called “traditionalists” (a misnomer, by