President Bush is right to recognize the fruitful role of America’s private, faith-based “armies of compassion.” For many reasons, such groups are far more effective in solving social problems—poverty, homelessness, and illiteracy, to name a few—than are government programs and bureaucracies. They treat the whole person, which means they get to
Among those who see privatization--the disassociation of government from goods and services that are otherwise economically viable---as a very desirable thing, a debate has raged for quite some time. Should government subsidize what is being privatized as a step away from nationalization? The same sort of debate would be quite appropriate when it
In her April 12, 2001, column in The Washington Post , ominously entitled “ Think of the Children ,” Mary McGrory concludes that the government should help out more. She relates the story Elizabeth “Cookie” Jones of Washington, a young single mother of three who was profiled by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Katherine Boo in the
In response to the Code Red computer worm, CNET News Executive Editor David Coursey , in his column entitled Cure for Code Red: An Internet border patrol? advocates some measures that, while they may be intended to prevent future outbreaks, would instead ensure a further diminution of our freedoms. Stating that “if our homes were as much under
According to the latest government statistics, the “heroic consumer” is keeping us out of recession, or at least is making our economy grow. That was the lead story on “NBC Nightly News” recently, which meant I was not much interested in hearing how it ended. Myths are myths, whether told by storytellers or by Tom Brokaw. At least Aesop’s
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.