[ Previously unpublished online; Faith and Freedom 2, no. 9 (May 1951). ] Tempestuous “Old Hickory” has been one of the great storm centers of historical controversy. The old-line historian, who flourished about the end of the nineteenth century, regarded Andrew Jackson with undisguised contempt. He considered Jackson an unwashed, wild-eyed
[ Previously unpublished online; Faith and Freedom 1, no. 4 (March 1950) .] Citizens of the old Roman Empire distrusted paper currency and refused to accept anything but gold or silver coin as money. So the rulers found themselves barred from inflating the money supply by the unobtrusive method of printing additional currency. But the Roman
[ Previously unpublished online; Faith and Freedom 1, no. 3 (February 1950). ] When the war of the American Colonies against the British Crown broke out in 1775, the money supply of the Colonies consisted of about ten million dollars in gold and silver coins — “specie.” The taxation was difficult for the newly-formed Continental Congress and its
One vexing current problem centers on who becomes the citizen of a given country, since citizenship confers voting rights. The Anglo-American model, in which every baby born in the country’s land area automatically becomes a citizen, clearly invites welfare immigration by expectant parents. In the U.S., for example, a current problem is illegal
[From the Rothbard Archive, originally published in The New York Times , September 4, 1971.] On Aug. 15, 1971, fascism came to America. And everyone cheered, hailing the fact that a “strong President” was once again at the helm. The word fascism is scarcely an exaggeration to describe the New Economic Policy. The trend had been there for years,
The recent rioting and virtual civil war in Northern Ireland points out, both for libertarians and for the world at large, the vital importance of pushing for and attaining the goal of national liberation for all oppressed people. Aside from being a necessary condition to the achievement of justice, national liberation is the only solution to the
If men were like ants, there would be no interest in human freedom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, interchangeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, would care if they lived or died? The glory of the human race is the uniqueness of each individual, the
The following is an interview conducted in the Summer of 1990 with Murray Rothbard for the Austrian Economics Newsletter. AEN: Any recent thoughts on hermeneutics ? MNR: That’s a history-of-thought question, since hermeneutics has been crushed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and David Gordon . Part of their critique is that the hermeneuticists were unable
[This article originally appeared in the publication New Libertarian in April 1985.] Since anarchists and other libertarians are, to say the least, an embattled minority, we have tended to be indulgent toward anyone and everyone in our ranks, even those who have been busily pecking away at the vitals of the libertarian position; Or, to change our
In the 20th century, the advocates of free-market economics almost invariably pin the blame for government intervention solely on erroneous ideas — that is, on incorrect ideas about which policies will advance the public weal. To most of these writers, any such concept as “ruling class” sounds impossibly Marxist. In short, what they are really
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.