In January of 1819, the New York City district attorney made his case against a man who allowed his pigs to roam the streets of the city, creating a nuisance. Although the attorney called no witnesses, he regaled the jury with horror stories about the problems associated with letting pigs roam the streets of New York. This practice, which was
Among conservatives, Ronald Reagan is held in deific esteem. Find any Republican debate Bingo or drinking game, and his name is certain to be one of the triggers to take a drink. Even among many libertarians, Reagan is still viewed as one of our greatest presidents, if not the greatest outright. The reasons for the romanticization of Reagan are
In 1768, the Portable Theology, or Brief Dictionary of the Christian Religion was published under the authorship of Abbé Bernier. It claimed that all of the “dogmas of the Christian religion are immutable decrees of God, who cannot change His mind except when the Church does.” Posing as an authority on Church doctrine, the piece was actually
In 1966, Milton Friedman wrote an op-ed for Newsweek entitled “ Minimum Wage Rates .” In it, he argued “that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books.” He was, of course, referring to the then-present era, after the far more explicitly racist laws from the slavery and segregation eras of United States history had
In 1215, in the Borough of Runnymede, a group of English nobles met with King John. During the meeting, they pressured the monarch into surrendering some of his autocratic powers. Among the kingly prerogatives that King John relinquished was the authority to confiscate property and detain nobles without cause. King John signed the famous Magna
The Progressive Era Murray N. Rothbard Edited by Patrick Newman Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2017, 600 pp. I have heard people say that Murray Rothbard has been more productive after his death than many academics during their lives. His newest posthumously published book The Progressive Era certainly adds weight to this claim. Edited by Patrick
Recently, I wrote an article defending the legitimacy of the term “cultural Marxism.” The conservative right is often accused of lobbing the term about without real meaning, which may be true in many cases, but I argued that it does have a legitimate definition that can be acknowledged even outside of the left-right political divide. Like
It is a common fallacy, particularly (but not exclusively) among the conservative right, that if a person is successful in business, he or she must have the requisite knowledge to make wise decisions regarding economic policy. This, unfortunately, is dangerously naive. In his Theory of Money and Credit , Ludwig von Mises argued that There are no
In the early 1990s, historian Eric Foner and Lynne Cheney were interviewed on the talk show Firing Line about the National History Standards, which was enjoying some national attention at the time regarding what account of history was being included in public school textbooks. During the interview, Cheney accused Foner of being an historical
By the middle of the nineteenth century, anti-Catholic sentiment was raging. After a flood of Catholic immigrants came into the country — largely due the Irish potato famine — nativist sentiment turned against Catholics to such a degree that the first Republican presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, was (falsely) smeared as a Catholic by his
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.