In his ambitious new book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery (Regnery, 2022), the distinguished Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony poses a sharp challenge to the view that freedom is the highest political value, and in this week’s column, I’d like to address his challenge, which I find illuminating, though mistaken. By “freedom,” I mean what Rothbard,
Richard Arneson has been a major figure in political philosophy for the last few decades, and in this week’s article, I’d like to look at some points he raises in his article “Liberal Egalitarian Critiques,” his contribution to The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism , pp. 564–78. In the article, Arneson distinguishes between “hard”
Robert Kagan is one of the most vigorous supporters of an “ideological” American foreign policy. America, in his view, should extend the blessings of liberal democracy worldwide, and in doing so, we necessarily act as a hegemonic power in the present circumstances—not, he hastens to add, so that we can for selfish motives dominate the world but
As you might suspect, I don’t think so, but the philosopher Gregory Salmieri is decidedly of a different opinion, and in this week’s article, I’d like to examine some of his arguments on this topic in his thoughtful essay “Objectivism,” published in The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism (pp. 82–101). Salmieri agrees with anarcho-capitalists
Both Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard thought highly of Alfred Schutz, an Austrian philosopher and sociologist who studied with Mises in Vienna and worked as both an academic and an investment banker in Austria and later in the United States. (He spelled his last name “Schűtz” in Austria but Anglicized it to “Schutz.”) In today’s column, I’m
Last week I wrote about Alfred Schutz, an excellent philosopher who has much to teach us. This week I’d like to talk about another philosopher, David Stove, who falls into the same category. He has a big advantage over Schutz. He writes with great vigor, is easy to follow, and has an immense capacity for satiric wit. Murray Rothbard would have
Bertrand Russell is one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century but isn’t usually studied as a social or political philosopher, though I am hardly the first to think that his contributions to these areas are underrated. He did not support the free market but nevertheless had much to say about the state that readers of the Mises page
The recent school shootings have led many people to want to restrict or deny altogether our right to own guns, and in these troubled times, it is all the more essential to bear in mind the reasons for that right. To that end, I’d like in this week’s column to discuss the excellent essay by the philosopher Lester H. Hunt “Guns and Self-Defense,”
People usually don’t study the philosopher George Santayana very much today, and he was not a libertarian, but rather a “skeptical conservative.” Ludwig von Mises took him seriously, though, and often quotes him, though sometimes to disagree; and in this week’s article, I’d like to look at what he says about the state in Human Society , the second
Michael Munger, a political scientist and economist who teaches at Duke University, argues in his excellent essay “Libertarianism and Public Choice,” included in The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism , that public choice offers a more persuasive defense of free-market libertarianism than natural rights. In this week’s article, I’m going to
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.