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
Being on a lifeboat does not sound like a pleasant experience. You’re hungry, baking under a hot sun, surrounded by sharks and endless miles of ocean, and the extent of your living space is maybe ten square feet. Being stuck on a lifeboat is not an ideal way to enjoy the ocean. So given that being stuck on a lifeboat sucks so much, wouldn’t it be
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
“The fetus is the property of the entire society. Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity.” This was the justification Romanian Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu offered for his 1966 “Decree 770.” Aimed at increasing the Romanian economy through population growth, Decree 770 criminalized
When studying the history of the Civil War, there are two things that become increasingly apparent about Abraham Lincoln. The first is that he is an incredibly enigmatic figure. His views are ambiguous, often by design as he navigated a political environment that had been torn apart and reassembled with a fragile new party, in which Lincoln had
Whatever our faults, it can never be said that libertarians need to read more. I’ve never known a group of people to consume such large doses of dense and dismally boring literature than the liberty community. However, I sometimes get the impression that our literary excursions rarely deviate from our own literature. This is understandable, of
The term “cultural Marxism” has gained traction in recent years, usually employed pejoratively against young leftists and Social Justice Warrior ideologues. Like any such political pejorative, including those used by both the left and the right, the common rejoinder is that, by the overuse of the term, it has either been rendered meaningless or
I occasionally see libertarians who advocate the decriminalization of marijuana and other illegal substances as being preferable to outright legalization. The logic is one to which we might be sympathetic: decriminalized substances cannot be taxed, while legalized substances are more easily subjected to sales or excise taxes, as well as a panoply
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
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.