When I was a student at the Munich American High School and Cleveland’s John Adams High School, I studied American history and was taught what had been then and still seems to be the standard account of the American Civil War. My own children have received roughly the same instruction during their primary and secondary educations in Virginia,
In ancient times, the philosopher Aristotle championed a policy of moderation, by which he meant steering a path between two faulty extremes. For example, there is an alternative to acting cowardly and being rash, and that moderate position is the virtue of courage. This doctrine of the mean, as it came to be known, is the core of ancient ethical
Let us examine the tragic story out of Florida of the young boy whose arm was severed by a shark and then reattached, after the shark was killed by a ranger. MSNBC describes the dramatic events: Jessie was attacked by a seven-foot bull shark while playing knee-deep in water at Gulf Islands National Seashore near Fort Pickens, in the Florida
The Free Market 17, no. 7 (July 1999) Free markets may be productive, a common complaint runs, but they lead to unjust results. For instance, writing in The New Republic (March 29, 1999) Cass R. Sunstein of the University of Chicago School of Law closes a book review this way: A familiar problem with unrestricted free markets is that they can
Walter Block has penned a response to my paper in which I argue that there isn’t much more than a verbal difference between limited government (minarchist) and defense-insurance agency (anarchist) libertarians. Block disputes my thesis for one reason: He defines government as necessarily coercive. Volume 21, Number 1 (2007) Machan, Tibor R.
Back in the mid-’80s, I had a very brief stint as a civilian employee with the federal government of the USA. It was actually my second gig with the government, my first having been four years of military service in the U.S. Air Force. Both experiences taught me about a good deal, including public finance. Let’s start with that Air Force
Only a small part of this interview with Tibor Machan appeared on a national television show. Here is the full transcript. Q: So, the sign outside the IRS says taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. MACHAN: That’s just false . . . taxation is essentially a relic of feudalism. It is the rent that kings took for allowing the serfs and
Once, when my son was in elementary school, they had some kind of special event celebrating the achievements of various students—I can’t recall just what the festivities were all about. What I do recall vividly is that the principal had invited a local politician to head up the feast, to make a keynote address, some kind of inspirational speech
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.