The Liberals are, at last, beginning to wake up. For decades the Liberals and the Old Left have been regaling us with exaltation of the power, the glory, the grandeur of the President, especially in foreign and military affairs. The President was, uniquely and miraculously, the living embodiment of the Will of the People. Once every four years the
If there was anything that characterized the Old Left it was adulation of labor unions and of the process by which the government has created, maintained, cabined, and confined these unions to its will. Government control inevitably follows government privilege, and, as in the Fascist or Communist countries, privileged unionism has become in
One of the most vital struggles in the writing and publishing of history is the conflict between the government’s propaganda myths, enshrined in ‘official history’, and historical reality brought forward by ‘revisionism’. In a time of foreign policy crisis the publishing of revisionist material is especially welcome; hence the importance of the
This issue marks the beginning of the second year of the publishing of Left and Right . If the Nation can celebrate its centennial and National Review its tenth year of existence, we may be permitted a modest celebration of our own first anniversary. In a sense, our own longevity is already more remarkable than theirs. We began as an act of faith,
Why be libertarian, anyway? By this we mean: what’s the point of the whole thing? Why engage in a deep and lifelong commitment to the principle and the goal of individual liberty? For such a commitment, in our largely unfree world, means inevitably a radical disagreement with, and alienation from, the status quo, an alienation which equally
In recent months, the cry of ‘black power!’ has been heard resounding in the land. As usual, both Conservatives and Liberals have reacted violently and on the wrong side, each for their different and characteristic reasons. The Conservatives, in their mindless racism, can only react in paranoid visions of nameless “Reds” and of black violence
Above all else, Earl L. Francis cherished freedom; and to Earl Francis freedom meant working for himself, his own man on his own property. He found that freedom far from the madding crowd, high in the Catalina Mountains of Arizona; “A man can be free in the mountains,” Francis used to say, “He doesn’t have to punch a clock or take orders from a
The cataclysm of Pearl Harbor occurred twenty-five years ago, and yet the average American, bemused by official propaganda, still thinks of Pearl as an unprovoked act of Japanese aggression that took the United States and the Roosevelt Administration unawares. Yet the ‘revisionist’ insight: that the attack was sought and welcomed, and known of in
There he stood, his tie askew, his balding head disheveled, the ashes from his beloved pipe flying all around, his intelligent and merry eyes twinkling as he scored some outrageous, logical, and beautifully penetrating point to some clod who couldn’t tell the difference between the host of cardboard “individualists” and this one genuine article.
Among the activist organizations of the New Left, two and only two have had a direct impact on American life: SNCC And SDS (the Berkeley phenomenon has been important, but has not been contained in anyone organization.) SNCC, founded in 1960, was the first, and its militance, direct action, and spirit of participatory democracy provided the
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.