The Free Market 26, no. 1 (January 2008) Margaret Atwood’s poem “Siren Song” begins: This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons even though they see the beached skulls. Our rulers know how to sing that song, and they sing it day and night. The
The Free Market 20, no. 2 (February 2002) Shortly after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush created an Office of Homeland Security. How many of us have stopped to ponder the meaning of that action? For more than fifty years, the United States has maintained an active—some might say
The Free Market 12, no. 12 (December 1994) “Peace on Earth” should be more than a holiday cliché. The costs of war and its perpetual threat are immense, and threaten freedom and civilization itself. Even with the end of the Cold War, the U.S. finds itself in an endless series of military squabbles, including Panama, Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti,
“The business of buying weapons that takes place in the Pentagon is a corrupt business — ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom. The process is dominated by advocacy, with few, if any, checks and balances. Most people in power like this system of doing business and do not want it changed.” – Colonel James G. Burton (1993, 232) In
My idea of a great president is one who acts in accordance with his oath of office to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Not since the presidency of Grover Cleveland has any president achieved greatness by this standard. Worse, the most admired have been those who failed most miserably. Evidently my standard
[ Robert Higgs’s Schlarbaum Award Acceptance Speech, delivered on October 12, 2007, at the Mises Institute’s 25th Anniversary Celebration .] Margaret Atwood’s poem “Siren Song” begins: This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons even though they see the
[Foreword to Great Wars and Great Leaders by Ralph Raico (2010)] For many years, I have described Ralph Raico as “my favorite historian.” When David Theroux and I were making our plans in 1995 for the publication of a new scholarly quarterly, The Independent Review , and selecting the scholars we would ask to serve as associate editors, I knew
[Excerpted from “Caging the Dogs of War,” Independent Review 13 (2), Fall 2008).] Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are
[This talk was the Arthur M. Krolman Lecture at the 30th Anniversary Supporters Summit of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Callaway Gardens, Georgia, on October 26, 2012. Click here to watch the video of this talk.] Many people are misled by formalities. They assume, for example, that the United States went to war against Germany and Japan only
Discurso de aceptación del premio Schlarbaum de Robert Higgs, pronunciado el 12 de octubre de 2007 en la celebración del 25º aniversario del Instituto Mises ]. El poema «Canto de sirena» de Margaret Atwood comienza: Esta es la canción que todo el mundo le gustaría aprender: la canción que es irresistible: la canción que obliga a los hombres para
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.