When I was in grade school, I learned that America was a republic . There were checks and balances built into the political machinery of the country, our teachers taught us, and things like the Electoral College and indirect election of senators (now defunct) to insulate the body politic against the will of the fickle masses. Our American history
The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter New York: Random House, 2020, 656 pp. Abstract: Zachary D. Carter, author of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes is a new intellectual biography of a person who is arguably the most important person of the twentieth
Review of Walter Scheidel, Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019) The Roman Empire is often presented as the fabric of Western civilization. The languages, laws, religion, mores, and implements of the Western political imaginary come in large part, in one way or another,
It was about this time in March 2003 that the bombs began to fall on Baghdad. I remember it well. I watched with a bit of trepidation as the TV news carried image after image of phosphorescent flashes lighting up the black desert night sky. I wondered what would happen to American society as we entered what looked to be a long season of war. The
Jason Morgan (jmorgan@reitaku-u.ac.jp) is associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, Japan. PRIME MINISTER ABE SHINZŌ’S RESIGNATION AND THE END OF AN ERA IN JAPAN On August 28, 2020, Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzō entered a Tokyo press conference and began speaking. Speculation had been building for weeks that Prime Minister Abe
For as long as I can remember, my family and I have greeted men and women in military uniform with a “Thank you for your service.” Like many other average Americans, when we see people in fatigues at a local restaurant we sometimes pick up their tab when we pay our own. My father, grandfather, and great-grandfather served in the United States Navy
Mises Wire readers are probably familiar with nineteenth-century American proto-libertarian Lysander Spooner (1808–87). Spooner’s radical challenges to statism are best summed up by the title of Murray Rothbard’s edited collection of Spooner’s greatest writings: Let’s Abolish Government . Spooner was a great American , an anarchist committed to
In late May we learned that, after a five-month deployment to one of the most dangerous cities in the world, the American military would finally be going home. Well, not really. They already were home. The dangerous warzone was the American federal capital, Washington, DC. And the “danger” that the military was supposed to be countering was
Neo-Spoonerism: there is no treason against the federal government, because the federal government does not abide by the document which it claims as its foundational authority to govern. Original Article: “ What Spooner Can Teach Us in Our Age of Neofascism “ This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael
Private security tends to provide its services to the highest bidder. And you know that almost always ends up being the regime itself. Corn farmers just can’t cut the same kinds of checks that tax farmers can. Original Article: “ Private Security Isn’t Enough: Why America Needs Militias “ This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by
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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.