Editor’s Note: Ron Paul, Distinguished Counselor to the Mises Institute, and a founding member, celebrated his 78th birthday this week. In this selection from a speech in the House of Representatives in 1999, Ron Paul outlines why private property and privacy are essential to the preservation of civil liberties. It is perhaps noteworthy that this
Editor’s Note: This selection is taken from Chapter 5 of Ron Paul’s new book, The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System . The free-market principle of open entry is challenged by governmental restrictions on access to consumer markets. There are many official justifications for these restrictions, but the main one is
Ron Paul, Distinguished Counselor to the Mises Institute, recently released his new book The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System. Dr. Paul spoke with us about his new book and how decentralization, competition, and online instruction are revolutionizing education. Mises Institute: Your books in the past have tended to
Supporters of warfare, welfare, and Wonder Woman cheered last week as Congress passed a one trillion dollar “omnibus” appropriation bill. This legislation funds the operations of government for the remainder of the fiscal year. Wonder Woman fans can cheer that buried in the bill was a $10,000 grant for a theater program to explore the comic book
[ Editor’s Note: This is a selection from the last chapter of Ron Paul’s A Foreign Policy of Freedom .] The most succinct statement about how governments get their people to support war came from Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials after World War II: Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his
For many of us concerned with liberty, the letters “NDAA” have come to symbolize Washington’s ongoing effort to undermine the US Constitution in the pursuit of constant war overseas. It was the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2012 that introduced into law the idea that American citizens could be indefinitely detained without warrant
[ Editor’s Note: In the wake of numerous accounts of TSA’s inability to provide quick and efficient security screening at airports, it’s interesting to read what (then) Congressman Ron Paul had to say about creating a new federal agency. This article originally was published on November 19, 2001, as Congress scrambled to “do something” in response
Three recent stories regarding three government agencies — the IRS, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) — show why we should oppose big government for practical, as well as philosophical, reasons. In recent months, many Americans have missed their flights because of longer-than-usual TSA
Late last week the markets were shocked by a surprisingly bad May jobs report — the worst monthly report in nearly six years. The experts expected the US economy to add 160,000 jobs in May, but it turns out only 38,000 jobs were added. And to make matters worse, 13,000 of those 38,000 were government jobs! Adding more government employees is a
Liberty means to exercise human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others. This means, above all else, keeping government out of our lives. Only this path leads to the unleashing of human energies that build civilization, provide security, generate wealth, and protect the
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.
