[This article appears online for the first time and is reprinted from The Alternative: An American Spectator (February 1975), where it appeared under the title “Ludwig von Mises.”] It is said that a number of years ago, when Bill Buckley was at the beginning of his career of college-speaking, he once wrote two names on the blackboard and thereby
The Free Market 15, no. 4 (April 1997) It is the widespread view in academia that John Maynard Keynes was a model classical liberal in the tradition of Locke, Jefferson, and Tocqueville. Like these men, it is commonly held, Keynes was a sincere, indeed, exemplary, believer in the free society. If he differed from the classical liberals in some
[Excerpted from “Harry S. Truman: Advancing the Revolution,” in Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom ] A “Near-Great”? When Harry Truman left office in January 1953, he was intensely unpopular, even widely despised. Many of his most cherished schemes, from national health insurance (socialized
In 1783 the treaty ending hostilities between Great Britain and its rebellious colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America was signed in Paris. For their part the English proclaimed that, “His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations “ — there
Wherever blame for the war might lie, for the immense majority of Americans in 1914 it was just another of the European horrors from which our policy of neutrality, set forth by the Founding Fathers of the Republic, had kept us free. Pašić, Sazonov, Conrad, Poincaré, Moltke, Edward Grey, and the rest—these were the men our Fathers had warned us
[This article appeared in the New Individualist Review , Volume 3, Number 3, Fall 1964, pp. 29-36, and is reprinted here as a prescient look at the errors of the old conservative critique of libertarianism and conservatism’s vulnerability to the statist temptation.] The publication of a symposium on the question, “What is conservatism?” provides
Albert Jay Nock, distinguished man of letters and philosophical anarchist, was an inspiration to thinkers as diverse as Murray Rothbard and Robert Nisbet, Frank Chodorov and Russell Kirk. A personal friend of the father of William F. Buckley, Jr., he was a kind of guru to the young Buckley as well. In April, 1945, Nock wrote a cheery letter to two
Churchill as Icon Opportunism and Rhetoric Churchill and the “New Liberalism” World War I Between the Wars Embroiling America in War—Again “First Catch Your Hare” War Crimes Discreetly Veiled 1945: The Dark Side The Triumph of the Welfare State Churchill as Icon When, in a very few years, the pundits start to pontificate on the great question:
Having been asked to write a brief appreciation of Murray Rothbard on the occasion of his 50th (!) birthday, I find myself in some embarrassment. In a sense, nothing could be easier. I have known Murray for nearly 20 years — since we met at the NYU seminar of his mentor, the great Ludwig von Mises — so there is certainly enough material for a few
[ Leon Trotsky • By Irving Howe • Viking Press, 1978 &bull 214 pages. This review originally appeared in Libertarian Review , March 1979.] Leon Trotsky has always had a certain appeal for intellectuals that the other Bolshevik leaders lacked. The reasons for this are clear enough. He was a writer, an occasional literary critic — according 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.